bLog By Pixels: The long week

Many things occurred this week.

Monday was Daniel and Jamie's ROM day. I was the photographer of the day. Pictures will be up on my multiply soon, I hope. And I hope they like the pictures.

At the same time, renovations my place started. The house is now in a huge mess. Anyway, plans include a shrunken bathroom to make way for a larger kitchen/dining area. The bathroom in my parents' room now has a heater which was previously in the bathroom that's being downsized. So far, the ceiling, lights and most of the wiring has been done up, which explains this entry. Now it's the kitchen. Once that's done, the toilet bowl and sink in my parents' bathroom will be replaced. I'm taking pictures of the daily progress, but no time lapse video though. The family needed to coordinate the leave schedule to jagah (look after) the place while the contractors do their thing. The house is covered in a layer of dust from the destruction of the old kitchen.

Work was somewhat affected by this renovation at home as I needed to take leave for Thursday and Friday, and that is on top of Monday's leave for Daniel's ROM.

As for the weekend, the contractors worked on Saturday. So that sort of put me under house arrest, at least till 6. My dad had a long week at his work too. He slept through that day and through the noise from the renovation works. (He works on the ground to make Singapore the busiest port in the world, this usually means long hours or even 24 hour shifts)

For me, the past 4 days allowed rest and also restlessness. I entertained myself with an old game playable on the mac. It didn't help that the haze got from bad to worse. The worst part was watching the news interview a met station person who says the day's average PSI hit 80 when everyone can literally smell something burning in the air. I was out on Friday night to meet the girlfriend at Chinatown. The haze was so bad that Chinatown Point was barely visible from Outram MRT station, except for it's CDL logo. Everywhere else, lights accentuated the haze, it felt like Genting, only more uncomfortable and much much stuffier. The situation was the same for yesterday. Thank God Sunday has been a clear day so far. It is His day of the week after all.

Anyway, the girlfriend and I managed to squeeze in a movie on Saturday night at the neighborhood cineplex. We caught World Trade Center. I liked it. Probably because I identified with the disbelieve when the news broke out during that time. I was at field camp in Tekong during Basic Military Training. All I remember was that the sergeant opened up his field chair, sat on it and started spouting the news to us like the Hokkien storyteller from long long ago. The first thing that came to my mind was, "Sergeant, lur gong si mi lan jiao?" In English, "Sergeant, what nonsense are you talking about?"

Ok, back to the movie. It mainly talked about 2 survivors' ordeal when the tower they were in collapsed. They were pinned down under rubble. To "pass time", they talked to each other about their lives and their family. They flashback on their times with their wives and children. One of them also had an encounter with Jesus Christ in his dream. Jesus even brought him a bottle of water! Ok, that's a spoiler for you.

To cut the story short, both of them were found and rescued eventually. But I guess the morale of the story was really the importance of family.

So after the show, I walked the girlfriend back to her place. As I walked home, I noticed this...