Quotes
Ken: D’you want the duck’s head?
Lisa: No, that’s gross! You eat it! You’re a fatass.
Ken: Shut up, Lisa, or I’ll stuff it down your throat.
Lisa: DO IT.
Ken: I’ll do it when you’re asleep. You ever watch The Godfather?
Renee: Why are we all taking pictures here?
Lisa: Dad wanted a picture of the 2008 calander.
Ken: Y’know Dad, it’s a digital picture. There’s the date on it.
Uncle: Huh, then what I did was kinda stupid, wasn’t it?
Me: ????? (Another testament to how bad my Chinese is. I meant to write ‘Merry Christmas’, but I wound up writing ‘happy lay egg!’ instead).
Mom: *can’t stop laughing*
Me: I liked the bit about Adam and Eve in the Bible. Not bad la… can read la.
Julia: xD What, you’re turning the Bible into a book review? ‘A+++ WILL READ AGAIN’.
Me: ‘NOT BAD NOT BAD!’ xD
Julia: xDDD
Me: So… what was that book you were reading again? War and Peace, right? Shit, that book is so long.
Julia: Uh, actu-
Me: Christ, I hate reading long books, and look at you. That’s like the book of all books.
Julia: It’s CRIME AND PUNISHMENT, not War and Peace!
Me: Potato, potahto.
Presents
Since I’m usually not one to celebrate Christmas, I was delighted (and surprised) when I got presents from my aunt and two cousins. My aunt got me a set of gloves, hat, scarf and socks, because she knew I wasn’t exactly feeling in the most comfortable of climates. Ken and Lisa got me Lair for my PS3.
As usual, my low self esteem kicked in again and ‘I don’t deserve this’ rang in my head. I felt awfully guilty that I didn’t get them anything, and felt even worse when I realized that I wouldn’t know what to give them anyway. They knew me and what I leaned towards, and I actually couldn’t say the same. I looked through the photos of the gifts they unwrapped in the morning, and every single time it was ‘yeah, why didn’t I think of that?’
I mean… I suppose practice makes perfect or something. The only gifts I received my entire life were worth $10 (SGD) or less, and I pretty much reciprocated with the same amount (when I remembered), and here they are, giving me stuff that’s worth over USD$60 each. I feel just awful. My family doesn’t give gifts, on account of 1. not celebrating Christmas, 2. we’re a bunch of stingy assholes, and 3. the most expensive thing on our list is Chinese herbal tea from those weird traditional medicine centers.
Mom’s more sensitive to this type of stuff, although I suppose her gift picking skills are as atrocious as mine. She does give gifts, but sometimes I think the stuff she gives are absolute nonsense. Dad never honed his gift picking skills, seeing as he thinks giving people stuff is a waste of time and money, and relies on my mom. I’m probably wedged between the two - I think gift giving’s important, but I suck so bad at choosing gifts that I don’t do it. I suppose Julia’s the little beam of light in the family.
You know what? I wish I could read minds. That would make life a whole lot easier.
—
My uncle grabbed a old photo album when Ken and Lisa were young, and showed them to our guests. Heh, as it turned out, I was in some of them. I was probably 2-3 years old. My aunt then recounted the story of how I liked Ken so much I would jump on the couch and scream his name whenever he visited (I suppose that really never changed; I did that to my youngest aunt on my dad’s side of the family, and that tradition stopped that day when I saw her bring home her fiance. I think, on an unconscious level, I never really forgave him for stealing away my favorite aunt).
Another story by my uncle. I was a pretty active baby. I’d run off so quick they couldn’t catch me. When they finally caught up with me, and their backs were turned, I’d disappear again. Look how far I fell off that bandwagon. (I’m actually not sure how I turned out to be so lazy. I remember being a very active kid as well, even after I moved to Singapore).
I think it’s just… strange to see how big our lives differ when we moved. I think Lisa, Ken and I were close when we were young, and it’s just sad to see that we’ve turned out so different. I keep feeling that if I stayed a few more years… just a couple of years, everything could have been better.
—
K, nvm the emo crap. I just talked to my dad and my mood’s 10 times happier. 
Annoyed
Every week I find more new and exciting ways to fuck up the impressions my cousins have on me.
On another note: new layout, for better accessibility. I’m still sticking with my Keira Knightley one, though.
Moar Ken goodness.
Ken: I like big cars that feels like a freaking car. I want a car that’s comfortable. I like this car. Do you like this car?
Renee: Yeah, I do.
Ken: Do you like this car, Elaine?
Me: No. I like small cars.
Ken: You LIAR.
Ken (to Renee): I hate your car.
Renee: My car’s FINE.
Ken: Your car sucks. Your air conditioning is broken.
Renee: My A/C works FINE.
Ken: No it doesn’t! When you turn it on it’s like you just turn off the heat. It doesn’t cool at all. It’s like a little, tiny FART.
Renee: My car is PERFECT. PERFECT.
Oh, Ken.
Ken: Hey, it’s Ken speaking.
Me: Hey Ken, it’s Elaine. I’m at the airport now.
Ken: Elaine?
*pause*
Ken: I don’t know an Elaine.
Me: STOP IT KEN!
Ken: *laughs*
—
Ken: Hey mom, I didn’t pick up Elaine at the airport. She said she wanted to stay in Singapore so she didn’t catch the flight back.
Aunt: Oh really?!
Ken: Yeah, she said something about wanting to stay with her family for a couple more weeks.
Aunt: REALLY?!
Me: *hits Ken*
Ken: Yeah, she called me and said I didn’t need to pick her up.
Aunt: YOU LIE, KEN. LET ME TALK TO HER.
Ken: *laughs*
—
Ken: Not a very big fan of musicals. I went to watch CATS, and I didn’t get it at all. It was just a whole bunch of cats prancing around… and that song, that’s really popular?
Me: Yeah?
Ken: I swear, they must’ve sung that shit about 10 times. I’m like, I GET IT.
—
Ken: Are you sure you don’t need me to help you?
Me: I’m fine, Ken.
Ken: Are you sure? If you fall and kill yourself down those stairs I’m not going to get you!
Settling In
Okay. I completely take back what I said about respecting your elders, at least for this grandmother in particular. Because she’s seriously insane. She talks to herself all the time, keeps calling me ‘mei mei’ (little girl) despite the fact that I’m 20 years old, sleeps and snores everywhere and every single time she talks to me it must be about food. We have to repeat ourselves 20 times before she gets us, and most of the time she doesn’t anyway. She can’t walk much, and never leaves the house.
My two grandmothers (maternal and paternal; the one I talked about was… uh… my cousin’s grandmother. Is there a word for that?) aged pretty gracefully, and I guess that was where I got my respect from. My maternal grandmother is SANE, still can walk about and take 13 hour plane trips with no backlash, and is as healthy as ever. My paternal grandmother still has black hair. Not as poised as my mother’s side of the family, but still she is SANE.
Good Grief, I don’t know what happened to this one.
Cousins are still crazy. They spent a good 20 minutes yelling at each other because someone threw away the vacuum cleaner filter and nobody knows who it was. I wonder what it’ll be like if something more drastic happened… Like the TV broke or something. Dude, the entire house will collapse with the sound of their voices.
Got my laptop today! I’m so happy! The screen’s 15 inches… and it looks HUGE. I mean seriously. It’s as big as the 17 (or 19? Don’t remember) inch we have at home. I don’t know if I can carry this to lectures without figuratively blocking the people behind me. This thing takes up half of the desk space as it is.
And Vista sucks. I couldn’t get Firefox to work and had to read the troubleshooting guide for Vista. I can’t uninstall programs directly via the Control Panel anymore, and for some reason Microsoft thinks that double-checking if I want to open ‘unauthorized’ programs on the computer is a required feature now. Blah.
