well well, today was a rather interesting day.

started off kinda....."Bloody hell i just wanna get a few more hours of sleep dammit", but eventually responsibility and committment poured a bucketful of cold ice water over my sleep-misted face and i rolled out of bed. fortunately i got out on the correct side, and felt pretty good after washing up.

met jianliang for lunch at shaw tower for dim sum, which was a colourful event. he was still same old same old, had quite a laugh. esp at the incessant monologues he held while he was driving and the numerous comments and noises he emitted. he is clearly a forerunner in, if ever there was one, singapore's biggest motormouth. of course i mean this in a good way (i would never badmouth anyone honestly!) and he was highly entertaining.

then it was bugis street with meifen. the minute i stepped out of the cool air-conditioned bugis junction into the sticky, humid, stagnant air outside, i had to channel all my willpower into blocking the nerve signals frantically sparking their way to my leg muscles, to fight down the urge to turn around and head back into the building. or jump into a hole broken through the ice in antarctica in the middle of its harshest and coldest winter. that would probably just suffice in dousing the momentary fire i was set on.

in simpler terms, it was damn bloody hot and my perspiration couldn't bloody evaporate because the air itself was bloody saturated with water vapour from god knows where, and i honestly just wanted to bloody run into a fridge and hide for a few hours.

but duty calls, and meifen wanted to buy a bag from bugis street. the dutiful friend in me pricked, no, stabbed my conscience with a letter-opener and bade me to carry on with what i came here for. that is, to go to bugis street and accompany mf as she looked for a suitable purchase, you fool.

aiya anyways, we walked around a bit and i was starting to get accustomed to the temperature, that is to say, the temperature one would encounter in a diamond-lined furnace fitfully burning away in the deepest pits of hell. the fans that shopkeepers benevolently placed in their shops helped quite a bit also.

i went there with the intention to disappoint shopkeepers all round, not even allowing them the shortest glance of my wallet by stuffing it into the furthest reaches of my bag.

and when i left bugis street eventually, i was $40 lighter and 4 items heavier. blooooooody hell. i think i'm a retail addict. it's practically compulsive shopping, walk walk walk, see see see, ooh i like, buy buy buy. i need psychiatric help, i tell you. i think i get more exercise from reaching into my bag and opening my wallet to hand over dollar notes than i do from walking around the shopping malls.

yikes. anyways, headed over to the library and wanted to get more Pratchett. but unfortunately it wasn't to be, because i called brendan and somehow it occured to me that i must take a bus over to ridley straight away so that he could fetch me back from there. so off i went, in search of an elusive bus-stop ouside something called the smu school of accountancy, "aided" by verbal instructions from brendan. with the accusing punctuation marks because with his ever-so instructive instructions, i made a circuitous route to the bus-stop, hopped onto bus 111, and endured a torturous route which circled and looped like the most agonised and demented serpent you could ever imagine, before finally heading in a general direction of my intended destination. i swear the bus passed by the same tree (distinguished by a sort of hangy-down, droopy type of look) three times and the lady in front of me looked positively green with nausea from all that spinning. after much anguished (and of course, inaudible) curses at bus companies all over the world, i finally reached ridley. and met derrick coming out (he went to the gym).

then, with the full expectation of swinging open the front door to find brendan all ready with the car keys out to go home, he was, gasp..... absent. not a single particle of brendan to be found. after a quick call, it appeared he was upstairs in the study, not ready to go home yet la, i thought i told you the earliest i could leave was 5.30pm, now only 5pm, but that's the earliest la, when we leave can also be the latest, so you go find something to do, watch tv or read something la, when i'm ready then i call you. click.

suppressing violent thoughts (ok i exaggerate), i hunted down a magazine and proceeded to devour it for close to three-quarters of an hour. even made a coffee with chocolate milk, was stumbled upon by auntie carol, auntie doris and uncle tommie, went to do a #2 somemore. (yes, it is extremely unsociable behaviour to post private and sensitive information about certain, ahem, processes that a person partakes in on a daily routine [possibly less frequently] but nevertheless it served the purpose of showing exactly how long the period of time i was made to wait was)

finally the King and Queen of Singapore arrived in their regal splendour, and bade their base and subservient subjects follow, for they were now ready to depart. follow i did and we reached home. shower, dinner etc etc. minor details.

then at 8pm i went up to change and get ready for the 9.30pm GV Grand Gold-Class harry potter movie. yup you got that right. GOLD-CLASS. anyways, i was done by 8.30pm, went to enquire as to whether His and Her Royal Highnesses were ready to leave for our appointment to meet my cousins at 9pm at great world city. the fine oakwood door to their resplendent bedchamber swung open to reveal, His Imperial Majesty had just awoken from his royal slumber and would be hastening to get ready to leave in the monarchial carriage as quick as he can. when he finally came down it was already 9.07pm exactly (the memory was so clearly etched in my mind) and we drove out in a jiffy. only for His Venerable Supremeness to discover that the carriage was low on horsepower. ie. oh shit, we need to drop by caltex to go pump petrol. comments swallowed, i waited in the car. then when we left the station, it was oh, in the general region of... 22 bloody minutes past 9 freaking oh-clock. brendan drove like all of hell's demons were clambering atop the roof of the car and i think we must have lifted 10 inches off the ground when we went over a bump on the road. also i ruminate that we caused 3 different pedestrians to hastily leap into the nearby bushes to avoid our car, and 2 fellow drivers to scribble down furiously our license plate number as use for incriminating evidence.

anyways, we reached by 9.35pm and hastened to the theatre. where everyone was waiting, for I had their tickets. all in all, gold-class wasn't that nice also la. reclining chair, big and comfy. blanket given. a small table in front. a few service staff came in before the movie started to take orders for f&b and left without a trace later. screen size and audio/video quality were all the same.

aaaaand of course, the movie itself. yaaawn. totally different from the events in the book, possibly the only things retained in the movie version were albus dumbledore's half-moon spectacles and snape's oiliness. again i exaggerate. but anyways, i have learnt not to expect too much from any movie version of any book. there were of course some gripping scenes in the movie. and the odd confusing moments where i thought i was watching the lord of the rings, when dumbledore and potter were in the cave and the inferi swarmed, which incidentally all looked like gollum. and dumbledore conjured the flames, which incidentally looked like gandalf battling the whatchamacallit.... yes, the balrog.

anyways, director had a lot of balls to add some of the things he did in the movie. of course he must have had full blessings from rowling but still, what he added really changed the storyline significantly. like the random fatherly concerns that dumbledore had for potter (him and hermione spending a lot of time, him needing a shave or whatever), the miscellaneous shots of malfoy testing out the disappearing cabinet or cupboard or whatever. and what he omitted changed it gigantically also. no fleur, not rufus scrimgeour, no tonks-lupin screentime etc etc.

aiya a lot of things la. but i suppose the director didn't want to simply repeat everything in the book word for word. it'd be like watching the book on a screen, he must've thought. well i for one would have liked that thank you very much, but it appears arty people need their queer little 'artistic impression', 'poetic license', 'my perspective versus your perspective' moments. wanted to leave his mark yada yada. not just mindless copying etc etc. probably wanted to stamp "RICHARD YATES" clearly across the screen for everyone to see the whole time.

anyways, post cut short by unforeseen circumstances (ie. bedtime). will possibly resume in near future.

till then.