The Heart Keeps Beating

[ The Memories ]

Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Come-on

Today, i've been told that my (fairly long) nails would be haphazardous for lesbian action.

And to think i've already cut it couple weeks back for my mock exams - so that they wun cut into my palms when i write.
(And about one centimeter off each nail too. Yeah, i'm left mostly with stubs now and its still long to them.)

Oh well, now i know wat else to look out for shd i be looking for a girlfren. Lolx!

Pple can start hinting their availability to me by brandishing their short, clean nails now, wahahaha~

**Kk, joking to the pple who already have short, clean nails, u dun have to start hiding ya hands the next time u meet me, bleah =p Tho i must say, if u flaunt it, its as good as a come on. Lolx!

+ Ursula r e m e m b e r s again + 2:28 AM

Sunday, March 26, 2006

Shadows

You remind me too much of someone, and i can only recall dissapointment from those experiences.
I have swore to myself no more and now i shall keep to my promise.
Dun start wat u noe it pains to continue.
A nip in the bud may seem heartless, but i have learned a lesson and i have learned it well.

It is surprising how far-reaching the effects of one betrayal can do to u.

+ Ursula r e m e m b e r s again + 4:52 AM

Saturday, March 25, 2006

Drifted... attention...concentration...priorities...TIME!

I shall make a trip down to the Esplanade and walk around the river banks soon before my lecture schedule starts to become more hectic couple of weeks later so that maybe i can get inspired and start writing more poetic blog entries instead of jus pushing my mouse all over the internet pages everyday at home now.

Or i shall attend some concert/ musical/ exhibition to see art in all its real life splendour instead of getting the prostituted version online or through DVDs.

Or i shall go out and take up some community tai ji or some other interactive sports so that i can get some new social interactions instead of living vicariously thru the characters in mangas and anime that i read and watch nearly everyday now.

Heck, i shd even be studying as i'm sure everybody beside myself is doing for the exams in May.
Why am i so laid back u ask?
Why, indeed. If i had the solution do u think i'll still be here hitting keys on my keyboard?

I shd be hitting my notes, but those manga and anime sitting in the various hard drives in my house has never seem more alluring. Argh.

I. MUST. BE. MORE. DISCIPLINED.

(Typing the above as i decide on going thru another volume or so of Prince Of Tennis before i pack my bag for tml's morning lecture. Hopeless! My self-discipline has flown out the windows the day i boxed all my 'O' level materials. Sigh.)

+ Ursula r e m e m b e r s again + 1:17 AM

Thursday, March 23, 2006

More invitors-of-phone-wrath

I absolutely hate rude farkers over the phone.
After the router fiasco, i actually have the f-up luck to receive two such phone calls today.
Why?! Is there something about my voice that says "pls abuse me"!??
Jus because i have better phone manners and am usually polite over the phone and thus may convey the false impression of a mild-mannered, easy-going and good-natured person who jus takes it as it comes, does NOT mean that i will not get angry over rudeness and bad attitude. For the record, i CAN simmer, and when i get mad, i am VERY vocally aggressive.
(Recollects two such recent 'intimidations'... they farking deserve every shout ok.)

The next bloody farker is so gonna get a blasting from me her ears will ring for weeks after that. Believe me, i'm VERY experienced in cussing at pple in person and over the phone when i feel injustice has been done to me or a family member.

+ Ursula r e m e m b e r s again + 7:33 PM

Saturday, March 18, 2006

Tinker and sweat

Guess wat?
I finally have my router (and accompanying adapter) up and running.
Been setting the thing up, installing, and troubleshooting for the past 2 days.
'Quick Installation' my foot!!

And the Linksys customer service pple speak an altogether different language from earth.
Their english is so accented i trully dunno where they came from. At first i tot they may be Caucasians, but then how bad must MY english be if i cant even understand half the words coming out of their mouths (and i dun mean we're toking in technical terms thats why i dun understand them, its their bloody ACCENT).

I got so frustrated (if climbing high and low for 3hrs n getting all dusty and sweaty and itchy wun do that to u, spend another 20mins on the phone wif these clowns) that i finally asked (very politely still, haven blown my top yet) to be transfered to another operator because "i'm very very sorry, but i dun really understand ya accent".

Only to be replied a resounding "No".

Get this, they're telling me, a customer, "no"?!
Not "i'm sorry but... (something or other)", but jus a "no"??!
Ok...(veins start popping in my forehead)...
"You mean there're no other operators beside yourself?"

"Yes."

"So there's no one else who can help me?"

"No."

(Veins pop somemore... inner demon is yelling "Go get me ya manager/administrator! I want to complain ya farking insolent attitude!")
"Ok..."

And i had to tolerate that bitch for another 10-15 minutes while i continue searching my com for errors.

Have i mentioned wat else trespass in the first 10-15mins before i asked to be transfered (unsuccessfully i might add) lest u might think my temper unfounded?

Operator bitch: "Can you give me the model number of ya router, Vivis?"
(yes, she calls me 'Vivis' when i gave her my full name, when most other customer service officers will call me 'Ms. Tan' until i tell them otherwise. I may not feel comfortable having pple call me Miss Tan, but that dun mean i am giving that presumptious bitch any leeway to call me by my first name without my permission. Okok, maybe if she weren't so rude from the beginning i wouldn't have minded usually.)

"WRT54G"

"And wat version is it, Vivis?"

"Version?", (checks box and manual the router comes with, "its not stated... (trying my luck reading from the manual) maybe SH?"

"No, Vivis."

"You mean thats not the version?"

"Yes."

"Ok... wat about (reads from box)?"

"No, Vivis." (Notice how comfortable that bitch is with my name now. Wat am i? Her daughter?!)

A few more attempts at finding and reading out the elusive model version later...

"Ok, why dun u give me an idea where can the version number be found? " (Dark clouds of anger starting to form ominously above my head.)

"No." (Obviously unable to see the ominous formation above my head over the phone.)

"Look, if u tell me where to find the version number, maybe it might be easier for both of us." (Lightning splintering from the dark clouds now.)

"No."

Wat the fark?? Its ridiculous!
Curse and swear...
I haven received such bloody bad service since... since, ever.

And that bloody bitch was lying by the way.
After installing my main router, i encountered problems (again) while installing the adapter and called in and got a different operator! So wat does she bloody mean by there isn't any other operators she can transfer me to??!

I wun ask u all to boycott Linksys products totally because not all the operators are these bad (in fact, only one out of the three i toked to in the end was nice actually). But i did take down the operators' names as is usually the case when i get customer service over the phone (to be more polite when i'm toking to them and so they know that they have to be polite too when they're serving me cos i have their names and so i have the power to call in and complain in the case of bad service and get their asses burnt, as in this case.) The bitch's name is Marco. Goodbye Marco.

Ok, even if i dun get u fired, i can at least flame you, you who besmirch the name of ya company.
Linksys, if u happen to come across this, get ya customer officers trained in some phone ettiquettes and social/customer service ettiquettes for god's sake!

And toking bout the Scientific Management practice with most on-phone customer service (think Starhub's, Singtel's, M1's)... u cant even get a 'yes' or 'no' answer from them!
If i ask a question hoping to get a short direct answer (eg. "so if i do this this this this, that that that that wud happen?"), they have to repeat my whole question in their answers and their answers wun have a yes or no in it (eg. "if u do this this this this, that that that that wun happen."), when a simple "yes" wud suffice.

In the end i concluded (after speaking to all three operators and discovering that they're all heavily accented in an unidentifiable accent) that the customer service officers at Linksys are probably hired from Philippines or Indonesia or somewhere... That wud explain why i cant understand their accent since i've come across most other Caucasian accents and have no trouble understanding them.

All in all, its been a terrible experience with these Linksys products. Or if not the products, then with its setup and installation. Wat "Quick Installation"... wat "One touch setup button"! 'Quick' for whom?! And that 'one-touch setup' has many cables to setup and devices n programs to install before u can even go near touching it!

And because the ethernet network cable provided wif the router was too short (ok, this is not the product's fault, but it sure gave me more problems on top of the ones its already given me), i even have to make another trip to Sim Lim, Bugis to buy one. And when i came back, its climbing all over my room to re-install all the cables and network all over again.

Ok, i can already see myself losing half a year of my life after this fiasco.

To top it off, i'm not done installing all the necessary programs in my mom's new com. (Its not new new, jus given to us by a relative who got it extra from her office and have no use for it. Most of its memory have been wiped already so i have to install most stuff from scratch.) Its been ages since i have a virgin (or mock-virgin in this case) computer to start with and the process of installing and updating its ram while tedious can be quite satisfying too :)
I'm tinkering about it as i blog now... 39GB of memory to fill... who says pleasure can't be found in work? Heh ;P

+ Ursula r e m e m b e r s again + 6:07 PM

Monday, March 13, 2006

Right on the nail

Take the quiz:
what sort of boy are you looking for?

intelligent and chaste
Intelligence is a major factor to you, maybe not in such a fanatical way but you truly prefer it if your boy has some sense. You would also prefer it if he has the sense to wait for the right person and doesn't think than he can wantonly give himself away because he's a boy--he takes things like that seriously. Of course, it also doesn't mean that he has to be an extreme genius or extremely naive.

Quizzes by myYearbook.com -- the World's Biggest Yearbook!

Haha, yeah. I cant stand pple who're too stupid (wat, u dun understand wat i'm toking about? sorry, no patience). Or boring (wat, no personality, or god forbid, no content to ya personality? sorry, no patience) . Or totally a whore/ walking dickhead (dun even come within earshot man! I swear i'm not responsible for wat comes out of my mouth if i'm pissed).

Ok, maybe intelligent AND chaste is a tall order (hey, i noe we're not exactly living in China's Song dynasty now).
But then again, alot of nerds do portray those characteristics.... Mm hmm...
If u catch me loitering unduely long in the libraries now you know why.

+ Ursula r e m e m b e r s again + 7:30 PM

Saturday, March 11, 2006

Plaintive solace

Sometimes u jus get so tired of living.
No, i'm not being suicidal dun worry, I'm jus thinking in terms of living in general.
There is sadness everywhere u look, around us, in our lives, our families, frens, loved ones, it makes u think why are we still bothered going on with our daily lives as it is.

Then the answer comes to me - its a responsibility we owe the living.
Our lives are only important because of wat we make of it and because somebody else cherish it. We have the feelings of our family and the pple who love and care for us to think about, we have the duties to our parents, siblings to take care of.
But all these responsibilities sometimes are jus the shackles that bind u unwillingly to this earth.
They may be the things that keep u living, but they are also the things that keep u from dying a care-free death.

I thought i had become a more optimistic person now, and in a way i still am.
But i guess my anguished past has a way of creeping up on me sometimes still.
I guess, they have never really dissapeared, merely faded into the shadows, the melancholic wisps always hovering at its edges, never that far away, waiting to reclaim us into the dark throes of emotional anguish whenever we let down our guard.

And wat can living, breathing pple do?
We run, keep running, never stop running.
We fill up our lives with work, events, activities, things to keep us busy, things that seem to have a meaning, things which makes us seem more important, things to make us think life's worth living. We keep ourselves busy, we run, we look forward, we glimpse backwards occasionally to remind us of the shadows never far away, and it gives us reason to run faster, we try not to falter, and when we do, we take a breather in the loving allure of the shadows, and sometimes we linger, but when darkness becomes too much to bear, we pick up our steps and start running again, we may not know where our final destination will be, or even where our next destination is, but we keep running because we believe that it will lead us somewhere, and we may find out where, and one day, maybe one day, when we look backwards, the shadows will seem further away than it is now, so we keep running, we keep running, we keep running....

+ Ursula r e m e m b e r s again + 4:51 AM

Friday, March 10, 2006

Time to indulge....

Tml's my last mock paper officially.

After being cooped up at home for so long, on my ever-lengthening list of wat-to-dos now include:

having...
1) BK breakfast
2) KFC (chicken, zinger, bandito)
3) Mac's breakfast and Fantastic chcken rice burger
4) MOS Burger's strawberry milkshake
5) The sausage-prata wrap from Takashimaya's basement
6) Hip fast food grill at Taka's basement
7) Dim sum buffet at Miramar Hotel

8) Going Bugis to get my pretty slippers (like if i feel like splurging and they still have stock)
9) Getting my writable CDs and burning my manga and anime (like, finally)
10) Fitting for new contact lenses
11) Going Daiso or Body Shop to get my loofah/exfoliator/ footscrub
12) Shopping
13) Celebrating birthdays
14) Catch up on the DVDs i've ordered
15) Getting a Sugar Daddy to make all the above possible and so i can throw in a few more material gains as well
16) Suntanning and swimming
17) Going for a movie marathon at my sis' fren's invitation
18) Catching up on my animes i've taped on my VCR the past few weeks

+ Ursula r e m e m b e r s again + 11:27 PM

Thursday, March 09, 2006

March babe

Happy Birthday to da gal Huishi!!! =D

So many pple turning 21 now...
join the club man!

Its now cool to be 21 ok?!
20 sux. Neither here nor there. U've hit the big two-zero, u're as cao lao as anyone who'd officially passed their teens can be, but u dun have the benefits accompanying a 21 year old (watching RA movies legally, registrating for marriage independent of ya parents' consent, n for some guys at certain places-clubbing).

Yup, i feel better passing my 21st bday than i did my 20th.
(Esp cos the world really falls down on u when u first hit ya TWO-X age; at least after one year, i've kinda gotten used to the idea that i'm no longer held irresponsible for any criminal actions, haha.)

Yup, being 21 is very in now ;)

Although, i guess i'll always be a 17 year old at heart.

+ Ursula r e m e m b e r s again + 4:43 AM

Wednesday, March 08, 2006

Little tree trunk and accompanying spindly twig

You never realize the importance of something until you lose it/ are lacking it.
Take bodily functions for example.

Armed with my MP3 Player, i decided to go running last nite.
One S.H.E album and a few Fish Leong's songs later, i was still running and showed no signs of tiring.
I had stepped out of the house at 8.50pm thinking of reaching home before 9.30pm for a quick shower n get down to my studies.
By the time i stopped running after 7 rounds around my estate (only becos i tot my mum mite actually come down to look for me and who noes where she'll walk to since she doesn't exactly noe my running route), it was 10.20pm and i had ran for exactly 1hour and 20minutes. Not including the usual 10mins cool-off walk back home.

Before any of u get too impressed, it was the first time since my JC days that i'd run for so long too.
Usually i drop after 2-3 rounds around my estate.

And lest any of u not get impressed at all, hey gimme some credit, it was the first time since my JC days that i'd run for so long, usually i drop after 2-3 rounds around my estate. Haha.
(Music rocks man! MP3 players ROCKS!!)

And though i never felt out of breath throughout the whole hour-plus run yesterday, my feet are screaming retaliation today. I can barely walk now and my left ankle feels sprained.
Resting most of my weight on my right leg when i walk now.
Its so ironic that i dun feel out of breath throughout my run yesterday, but feel so tired after walking the few steps from my room to the kitchen in my state now.
If i'm unlucky, i'll probably have a tree trunk for my right leg and a tree branch for my left when all these's over, jus like the times i really sprained my ankles in sec sch and had to rely on getting around on my one available leg.

And guess wat?
After that long run and a long bath afterwards and the pain starts kicking in, i din have the energy to settle down to my notes afterall.

+ Ursula r e m e m b e r s again + 4:33 PM

Saturday, March 04, 2006

Whose line

Studying for my mocks.
Some pple destress by having a cigarette break, a little tv, a little blasting of the stereo. I destress by reading a few scenes of
Whose Line Is It Anyway? transcripts online... resulting in a lot of mirth, stitches in the stomach from laughing out loud once too often, and eyes more weary from all that reading than even before i'd started my break.

Its alot of fun i tell u.
A classic example of one of the games, called Narrate between two of my favourite Whose Line improvisation comedians - Colin Mochrie and Ryan Stiles.

Colin Mochrie a woman customer in Ryan Stiles' hardware store. Narrations in italics. Speech in usual font.

Colin: I was hoping he had the kind of hardware I needed. I'm a hard woman to please. Even harder to look at.

Ryan: Can I help you?

Colin: Yes, I'd like a big hammer.

Ryan: I knew she wanted a big hammer. Maybe a couple of nails and a good screw. I showed her what I had to offer. Well, ma'am, you might want to take a look along the shelves.

Colin: As I looked along the shelves, I could feel his eyes looking at every curve of my body. I could almost hear his heart scream "I want you".

Ryan: I hope you have a man around the house who can help you with those kind of things. I knew she didn't because I'd gotten a look at that big butt of hers. I knew there wasn't a man in Essex that would go after her. That'll be $59.95.

Colin: He was charging me way too much. I knew that I would have to kill him. Kill him like all the other men who were just scum and treated me like dirt, not realising that inside me was a beautiful person aching to get out and would never get....

Ryan: Hey, $59.95!

Colin: (pulls a gun) I'm sorry, big boy. That's the last overcharging you'll ever do.

Ryan: She pulled a gun on me. She didn't know that behind her was the store manager Phil with a shot gun.

Colin: (steps forward to narrate, Ryan grabs the gun) I fell for the old store manager Phil behind me with a shot gun gag. That was the eighth time this week. But he didn't know that Elmer, my pet termite, was crawling up his leg ready to bite into his jugular...

Ryan: What am I? Stupid?

Lolx!!!
Its crap, its lame, n its jus wat i need to get my mind off all those dreary notes =p

In fact, i love Whose Line so much that if i shd have only three days left to live, i wud invite the cast of Whose line comedians (especially the regulars Colin, Ryan and Wayne Brady from the US cast) over for dinner for one of those nites and have my fill of laughter before i die ^_^

U guys can check out more trasnscripts from the website below if u're interested:

http://www.whoseline.net/show/trans.html

http://www.whoseline.net/show/games.html

+ Ursula r e m e m b e r s again + 9:06 PM

Wednesday, March 01, 2006

Coming into your own

Humans have unlimited wants. We want so many things material and immaterial - a good life, good health, a happy trouble-free family, more frens, tussle-free relationships, more money, more time, a better career, more leisure, better looks, better grades, a bigger house, a better car, nicer clothes, more branded stuff, more varied lifechoices, a better social-life, a more meaningful existence, and if all else fails, the money to buy happiness.

Life isn't always so smooth-sailing. We aren't always given wat we think every equal human being shd be entitled to. In other words, life isn't always fair.

It goes beyond the things we wan to but have no means to buy sometimes, to the kind of affair we have no say over in life. Like ya family, the state of poverty u're born into, the hereditiery or physical ailments u suffer from.

It is so easy to say that we shd look at the bright side and jus count the little blessings in life.
But how many of us can really have that kind of xiong jin in the face of imminent problems? If they say they can, i say that they have never really met with any serious unsolveable setbacks in life before.

As Sandra Oh had said in an episode of Grey's Anatomy to Dr. Burke, "At least your problem has a solution. Some don't."

Problems aren't unique to anyone; everybody has some problems of their own.
Wat differs though are the feelings and emotions it provokes, the experience and thoughts it generates, and the lessons it taught every different individual. You may not emerge from it unscathed, but u leave with one more knowledge, one more lesson in life. These life experiences are your ammunition. You may not see them as such now, and you may not see how they can help you, but if one thing my own experiences has taught me, it is that an experience gives you new knowledge, and knowledge is power - it gives u the power to resist or to grab the chance; to reject or to embrace; to be careful or to enjoy life while u can; to choose wisely or to believe in ya gut instinct; to be strong or to learn when to let go and rely on another for strength. Every experience spawns yet a new perspective. And through these life's ups and downs, you learn to become stronger, more resilient, and to come to your own in time.

+ Ursula r e m e m b e r s again + 10:22 PM