here i am, once again. on duty on a beautiful saturday, my friends are at sentosa playing frisbee, having meals and sending friends off at airport in the evening, and i am here. to use mild language, bah humbug.
i've realised that i'm not much of a blogger. anyone who actually comes here sometimes (i don't have a hit counter) would know it from the sporadic entries. but upon just a little bit of reflection, i've gotten a clearer picture of my attitude towards this whole blogging thing.
hmm... reflection, clearer picture. so true, even literally, that you never know quite what you look like unless you look in a mirror..
so often, i think of something that i feel like entering here. but its not always convenient, i'm not always near a computer, and i rarely have privacy. it would help if the computer in my room had internet, but i've given up on making that a reality anytime soon. i need the privacy somehow, a strange contradiction considering that what i type is available worldwide. but i do, and it hinders the frequency of my entries.
besides, i always think i have better things to do than blog. it seems a better use of my time to be actually doing things than blogging about them.
this exceptionally long break was due to a long-awaited family trip that lasted about nine days. it's the first time we've gone overseas as a complete nuclear family since Feb 2002, which is a 3-and-a-half year hiatus. it's been my first trip of over a week since December 2001, which is significant to me because i think that breaks of under a week are not sufficient to fully recharge the batteries.
the previous day's duty clerk has just left, which means that i will be interrupted at intervals by the telephone. as such, excuse any incoherent writings which may follow beyond this point.
we went to perth, and it was good. we left on a tuesday afternoon, and therefore i spent tuesday morning packing, amongst other things. wasn't too sure how to pack for winter, eventually found a general concept to work with which made things easier - long sleeved tee, short sleeved tee, jacket, jeans as one set, packing about three sets.
*phone rings. i just called a sergeant a sir. owell*
got pretty annoyed with my dad that morning. kept bugging me to help out with the house cleaning. i had expected house-cleaning. i had planned for house-cleaning. but i had planned house-cleaning AFTER bag-packing, as my priorities stood. my mum packs for my dad, so that he is free to clean house, but i don't have that luxury. i mean, there isn't much point in cleaning up all the stuff in your room only to dig it all out half an hour later to pack right? yeesh. had to consciously watch my mouth and hold in all the sarcastic/whiny comebacks i could think of.
i was ready to go 10 minutes before schedule. shoes on and all. dad was in the toilet and didn't get out till five past. hmm. took cab down, checked in luggage, stole address tags from neighbouring airline counter (valuair doesn't provide those), wandered into duty free. bought nothing. never do. got free coke from McDonalds, took many photos in the cactus garden in the airport itself. went on plane.
plane was approximately 80% empty. 34 passengers for 168 seats. my dad counted, being the walking encyclopedia that he is. after take-off, he shooed us all off to find a set of three seats to lie down on for a little shut-eye. the food was really really really good. very simple, but very good. rice, hot-plate tofu, kailan. piping hot, very tasty. i took a few shots of it.
touched down in perth. was going delirious stepping through those airport doors. "We'reherewe'reherewe'reherewe'reherewe'rehere!!" something like that. happy. tasted the brisk wintry air of 11pm Perth, and revelled in it. took about 50 brochures off the shelves at the airport, hopped into cab. went to hotel.
the roads were entirely empty. we had entire stretches of road completely to ourselves, and went minutes at a time without seeing another vehicle. checked into hotel. we had booked just one room, seeing as we only planned to stay one night, from about midnight to 8am. figured we could survive for that long. turns out we almost didn't. the heater, as far as we could tell, wasn't working. and in the morning, we discovered that we had left a small window open. it was 3 degrees out. genius.
anyway i've typed for an hour and i'm tired. more later.
