jacktan.org

took a cab over to my brother’s new 3 story house in bukit batok, he needed me to help him out with his new router and cctv system.

it’s always fun to meet my 2 nephews and niece, they’ll just stop doing whatever they are doing and run to me shouting and screaming “uncle jack! uncle jack!”

must make it a point to meet them up more often, love kids when they are at this age.

spent 30 minutes rewiring all the cables, i always thought my brother was a little tech savvy with all his gadgets and toys but i guess i was wrong…or maybe he just couldn’t find the time to really sit down and do it.

managed to get everything working in perfect condition and was given a tour of his new house. his new $500,000 solar panel was just unbelievable, it comes to a point where he needs to pay less than $20 for his electric bills every month…with most of his aircons on almost 24 hours.

he also installed this designer fan which cost more than just a few thousands, something very nice to look at but i’ll probably not spend anything 1/2 the cost for a single ceiling fan.

took a cab back to jurong and met up with aaron and weixiang for supper before going back.

working on saturdays are always boring and today’s no exception.

wanted to go back early to catch up with my sleep but trond insisted of having lunch together so we went to jurong point to try out the new japanese buffet restaurant, kushin bo.

loved the food at kushin bo at their other outlet in suntec but have never tried their buffet. at around $30 a pax, the spread was huge and they had all my favourite japanese food…they had everything you ever wanted to try in a normal japanese restaurant.

they even have this chocolate fondue machine that was just too much to give it a miss.

trond drove his dad’s car, a limited edition merc slk, which was just super flashy. my very first time sitting in such an expensive car and the feeling was very different. just love the way the engine purrs!

went back around 3pm and had a nap till 7pm. mom forced me to go along with her to settle some disputes between the neighbour next door and us.

their maid had apparently choked up $800+ in handphone bill and have accused my maid of using her handphone.

my mom had originally thought this was a good idea to prove that their maid was a devil behind that angel face but it kinda backfired.

it seemed that my maid wasn’t as angelic as what my mom thought and has been talking behind our backs. things she said involved me so much that i lost my temper at my maid there and then and pissing me off big time is not a very good thing to do, especially in public. shouted at her so loudly and fiercely that even my ah beng neighbour was shocked.

i won’t say much about what happened but my maid got it really good from both my mom and me, we are still deciding if we should send her back since she has been with us for over 10 years.

but i am pissed, super pissed…so much that i just feel like giving her a tight slap on the face.

she will get it from me for a long long time…

my leg wasn’t healing so i decided to resume my appointments with my chiropractic. made an appointment for 2.30pm which means i have to leave office halfway.

went for lunch with the whole neublick team, namely sofie, trond, charlie and myself, at boon lay before getting a free ride back home.

we were supposed to go to my cousin’s grandfather’s (not my side) wake so picked up my granny along the way before going over to park mall where my chiropractic is.

saw my first gtr 35 up close and personal at the carpark, it’s really a dream car, a car i would prefer over a porsche anytime.

went up to my chiropractic and didn’t have to wait very long this time, had the usual bone cracking, nerve wreaking massages and i could feel my muscles actually loosening up.

he gave me a scolding after that while i was still on the bed with a super hot water bag on my back, i tried lying to him that i was not actively exercising but just couldn’t convince him. he then gave me an ultimatum of not doing any sports for the next 6 months.

no badminton, no swimming, no blading???

for 6 months???

kill me ba!!

went over to the wake and my mom (like all women do) starting gossiping about everything under the sun especially my new car and my bad leg.

sharon came to my rescue by saying she needed to go orchard to run some errands so all 4 of us cousins decided to just hand around in orchard instead of torturing our ears at the wake.

had dinner at wheelock’s place, sakae sushi again!

2nd time in 2 days.

it was sharon’s treat for the day so i decided to pay for cab fare back to the wake.

got back and did what we did best at funerals, mahjong!

played with sharon, melvin and our granny and the 3 cousins ended up winning the granny.

was supposed to go at around 8.30pm since sharon’s boyfriend had something to do but we ended up playing till almost 10.30pm before deciding to go home.

had no idea why i even started this post but it just popped into my mind so here’s a list of people close to me that i’m proud off…

1) my mom definitely! i don’t really care what happened in the past with regards to her marriage but i’m really proud of having such a capable mom. i admit she does has her faults (actually got many!) but i’m sure many who knows her know how capable she is.

2) my godbrother yiteng. he’s someone whom i treasure since hong kah days and someone who is just great to talk to. great conversations never fail and i’m always impressed with his ideas and the way he thinks. he’ll be someone great and successful in the future and i hope we can always stay close to each other in this life time. although super kaypo at times, i’m sure he’s just being concerned.

3) my brother heng thye. being someone who grew up in a really broken family and had a really hard time during his younger days, he still managed to get through nus as a lawyer and a really successful one at that. now with offices in singapore, vietnam and a few more in other countries, he’s really a successful person.

4) my sister lee gee. also someone who grew up in a really broken family and moved out of the house even before i was born, she is now a director in one of the biggest banks in the world. not just a director in the singapore office, she’s the director of operations asia wide.

5) my eldest sister lee fang. often abused by my dad during her younger days (way since i was born) and from what i heard, she was really hated by my dad since he blamed her for his first marriage. also moved out of the house before i was born. when my dad had a stroke and eventually passed away after 10 years, she was the most diligent one, visiting my dad almost everyday in the hospital and running around helping out during the funeral without bearing any grudges. although i’m the least closest to her, i’m still very proud of having her as my sister.

6) my cousin chun yew. someone who has never work a day in his life, he started off from the same primary school as me and went on to chinese high and hua chong for his secondary and junior college studies. completed his national service and went into nus at the age of 21. he’s the same age as me and even till now at 28, he’s still there doing his doctorate. i’ll be calling him doctor cheong in future. also someone who plays similar games with me, he never fail to impress me with his ideas and often rise up the ladder although i started the same time as him.

there are still many people close to me that i’m proud off but these people are the ones i really salute.

slept right into the afternoon and waited for my mom to pick my maid and i up for an early dinner.

went to the paper wrapped chicken place near maju camp, the same place i had dinner with trond just last week.

after eating almost the same dishes again, i think such food shouldn’t be eaten too often…once in a while is okay but too much of it will cause adverse effects.

went over to bukit timah plaza for a walk, it has been many years since i was there.

i remember when i was much younger, i used to love coming to bukit timah plaza cause of a particular restaurant called “wishbone” and i actually realised that the restaurant is still alive!

the deco has changed a little but i’m very sure the tables and chairs are still the same as when i used to come when i was still in school uniform.

had a walk around the supermarket, bought quite a lot of stuffs and also bought myself a new pair of goggles finally, now i can carry on my swimming plans.

did up the price list for work and met trond. he actually came down all the way to my place just to pass me a chocolate cake. thanks pal!

came to realise that the weekend was almost over and i still had shit loads of work to do so quickly rushed everything, hopefully everything will be alright.

started maple-ing with nelson on the private server, took me about 2 hours to level till 50.

i got a feeling i’ll be spending the next few days at home maple-ing non stop…

oh well, at least my fridge is fully stocked up after today.

time really flies, it has already been 1 year since my dad passed on and it feels like just a few months ago.

woke up early in the morning, mom needed to pick up my granny and 6th uncle before going down to the columbarium at chua chu kang.

the meeting time was supposed to be 10.30am but i think i gave my elder brother the wrong timing and he arrived at 10am instead, since there was a huge jam in clementi towards town, i decided to take a cab down to the columbarium first while my mom continued on her journey to pick up granny and 6th uncle.

realised that my 2 elder sisters weren’t coming, there were already there on sunday to pay their respect since they couldn’t make it today. had a long chat with my brother, talked about cars, careers, dreams and a whole lot of other stuffs while smoking.

and he supports my decision to get the renault!

it’s just so cool to have an older brother who smokes with you!

waited for almost an hour before my mom finally showed up. my 6th uncle’s wife was also with them which meant i’ll probably not be sitting my mom’s car back.

prayed, burn paper, prayed again, burn more paper, prayed more and finally done!

my mom’s car was full (doh!) so had to take a lift from my brother, he was on his way to chua chu kang to pick his wife up so it was on the way.

we were both still early for our appointments so he drove us to his new house around the place and gave me a short tour. it was actually very near the bukit batok driving center and the place was huge.

wish i had a 3 storey house to stay in…

supposed to meet up with weixiang, aaron and colin for a jb trip at 1pm kranji mrt but it was still darn early so decided to walk around lot1 to waste some time.

met hufeng and realised she’s already married to hanwei, congrats!

called weixiang and he was feeling sick so he’ll be giving the trip a miss, both aaron and colin were obviously going to be late.

what happened next was something that made me see red and i just exploded…big time!

right from the start of the trip, i’ve already make known that the pain in my leg is terrible and i somehow i would expect my friends to take that into consideration when stepping out in another country,

but oh no, they just had to fucking jump over the divider and board the bus while i had to limp to where the divider started some 20 meters away and the bus was gone by the time i got to the boarding bay.

what kinda friends will do such a thing??? and moreover, we were already halfway on another country’s soil.

knowing my leg was giving me problems, why the hell do you need to be so impatient and not wait for me?

and i was just a few steps away from the bus when it left, why can’t you just signal the driver to wait for just a couple more seconds?

and even if the driver refuses to wait for the couple more seconds, it won’t kill you to fucking alight the bus and wait with me for the next one.

at least, this is what I WOULD DO IF I WERE IN YOUR SHOES.

and what’s with the fucking sms on being a fat liability,

i, for sure, DO NOT want my leg to be injured,

i DID NOT choose to be injured,

i DON’T WANT to be injured in the first place,

it’s NOT my choice that my leg fucking hurts.

if you think i’m a liability since my leg hurts, then don’t agree to coming in the first place.

and it’s not your fault that the bus left? oh the driver’s fault right?

WHOSE FUCKING IDEA WAS IT TO JUMP OVER THE DAMN DIVIDER AND NOW YOU BLAME THE BUS DRIVER?

every time, every fucking time i meet you, there’s a 98% chance of you being late but did i grumble?

have i ever made a huge fuss?

i lived with it!

i lived with it cause i respected you as a friend and took your bad time management as part of the friendship.

will it kill you to just wait for me in return for that few seconds?

will it kill you to walk with me around the divider since i obviously had problem walking?

will it kill you to have missed that first bus?

what’s the use of rushing through the customs, we’re not playing amazing race or something, we have all the time in the world…for the day.

we are good friends and i thank you for that but at least give me that little respect as a friend,

i don’t want to be fat, i can’t help being fat.

i don’t want my leg to hurt, i can’t help feeling the pain.

i didn’t choose to be that way.

you don’t hear me calling you an ugly old fart do you?

and so, this is what happened at the malaysian customs…

i went to city square myself, had lunch at mcdonalds before coming back to singapore.

not been blogging for the past 3 days so better start on it before i feel too lazy…

it’s a little habit of mine but i just can’t seem to blog on my desktop, i have to carry my laptop downstairs or on my bed and blog on it.

oh well, better get started.

i got my way in the end and convinced them to have the dinner at keppel club’s jade palace instead of long beach at east coast. luckily for me, they actually like the food there with the exception of the salmon sashimi which we discreetly managed to discard.

ordered quite a lot of dishes, more than 10 actually but the service was kinda slow, took them 20 minutes just to get the bun for the chili crab.

ended up spending almost 2 hours there but we were all stuffed like crazy, also loved the mango pudding dessert and got 3 helpings of it personally.

oh well, at least everyone’s happy and we managed to settle the bill before discretely between the grand children as well so it was a successful surprise for our mothers and grand mother.

at just $85 for each of the 4 of us grand children, i think it was much cheaper than going to the restaurants in east coast.

no pictures thought, i did bring my camera along but forgot all about it till i got home and as expected, my cousin and i spent the whole evening talking about battle stations.

planned for an early mother’s day celebration tomorrow for my grandmother, joining us will be my 2nd aunt’s family so there’ll be a total of 9 of us including my cousin’s baby.

the bill was supposed to be split between the 3 families but we, the young generation, decided to be generous and give them a surprise treat tomorrow.

and then comes the hard part…deciding where to go for dinner.

we had choices from tong lok in vivo, black society in vivo, imperial kitchen in vivo, nosignboard in esplanade, long beach in holland and jumbo in east coast.

chances are, my 2nd aunt wanted somewhere cheap since she doesn’t know we’re paying so she probably wants to go somewhere my mom doesn’t.

for us younger generation, as long as there’s good food, we don’t mind paying the few extra bucks and not nick pick on things like gst and service charges.

i guess for now we’ve settled for jumbo at east coast but i expect last minute changes.

i’m actually trying to sell the idea of going to jade palace in keppel club, went there previously with kc and colin and the food there was quite good.

for $40 a pax, we could have unlimited crabs, prawns and everything we can find in the other seafood restaurants but that’s just an idea…

i’ll probably need my oldest cousin to back me up otherwise it’ll just be an idea and be kept that way.

gst package and my bonus is in so i have a little extra to spurge before i turn broke again.

and i somehow foresee the conversation tomorrow between me and my cousin will be all on battle stations.

lol!

was feeling bored at home and surfing around for cars when my cousin, zhiyuan, msn-ed me.

we started talking about cars and he was soon on his way over to pick me up to go car viewing.

i actually didn’t know he changed his 2 year old toyota ist for a peugeot 207cc 6 months ago, i’ll talk more about it later.

our first stop was the mini showroom and we ended up spending probably an hour there just drooling over the mini s cooper, it was seriously love at first sight but the price was just too steep for me.

a stock mini s cooper would cost around $129 000 and knowing myself, i’ll probably soup it up which will total up to about $150 000.

it was way beyond my budget but i’m still not putting the car out of my sight as yet…probably just hoping for a miracle.

next stop was volkswagens, wanted to check out the golf gt/gti, the passat and the jetta which yiteng had recommended.

the golf gt’s within my budget but it doesn’t come with the 3 door version and the gti’s around the price of a stock mini so it was a no go as well.

i love the passat but with the v6 engine, the car will probably drink more petrol than me drinking water. the jetta is just not me so i didn’t really look much into it.

mitsubishi was next and i swear if i ever wanted to buy a mitsubishi car, i will never buy it from the direct distributor.

the showroom was practically empty and there were at least 5-6 sales executive around but non came to serve us, we even had to walk up to them to ask for a price list.

with this kinda service, who the hell will buy from them when i can get the same models from parallel importers and at a discounted price.

was actually considering the lancer ex gt 2.0 but the gearbox used was notorious in the market for defects so decided to strike it off as one of my choices.

another model on my list was the colt 1.5 mivec turbo charged but didn’t get to see it in the showroom. i strike it off my list anyway since it was using the same gearbox as the lancer ex.

honda’s showroom was next but we probably spent just 10 minutes there…there were really no cars there that i was interested in, not the civic for sure, not the accord, not the jazz, nothing!

peugeot and ford were next (they were in the same building) but i’ll talk about the ford mondeo first.

another car in my list but this is a 2.3 liter car and upon a closer look, i still think it’s a nice and great car but just isn’t me. it’s too uncle-ish…lol!

i actually had nothing in peugeot that interest me but after sitting in zhiyuan’s car, i started really liking it.

spoke the salesman and he told me something that zhiyuan told him when he bought his car…it was something like

“it’s not all the time that we can buy a convertible car due to family restrains or other issues like having kids around”

it’s rather true, both my cousin and i are nearing 30 and our next car will probably be family car so this is the only time we have left to really pick something out of the ordinary.

and at $105 000, it’s still pretty much around my budget.

the only 2 problems i foresee will be…

1) to get my mom to agree with it

2) i only like the car in red and my cousin’s car is red too

oh well, it isn’t till the 3rd quarter this year that i can buy it so there’s still plenty of room for discussion but for now, my mind’s made up…

peugeot 207cc it is.

-

met colin around his place for dinner, walked around the estate to kill time before going home.

mom “requested” that i fix up the wii asap as she wanted to try out the games…

the first thing she wanted to play was “dance dance revolution” on the dance pad.

and then, for the first time in my entire life, i saw my mom acting like a lunatic.

i don’t mind looking at the ah lians playing the same in the arcades but this was a whole different sight!

for the 15 minutes that she and my maid played, so much noise (screams, shouts, laughter) was produced that my neighbour actually knocked on the door asking if everything was alright.

i’m dead serious!

she was still playing 30 minutes later when i left home to meet up with colin and aaron.

anyway i’m kinda happy for her, it has been sometime since she was really happy and laughing like this.

and so for now, 3 cheers to the wii!