Weekend warrior

Monday was a public holiday, giving rise to the phenomenom known as The Long Weekend.

And boy, did this one feel long.

Skip the rest of this entry if you fear the mundane. It's mostly narrative this time.

Most of the weekend passed by under the premise of housework. It's amazing how time zips past when you've got a hundred and one things to do. Not just when you're having fun.

Saturday was spent cleaning up the house. J's mum offered the services of her maid, who promptly washed the windows, scrubbed the balcony floor and cleared up the dirt that's accumulated in the rails of the sliding doors. All under two hours, too - I'm impressed. Both of us together would probably have taken longer to finish the same.

In the evening, we headed out to Muji to take a look at their household items. J and I love their stuff, but it's always priced higher than I think is reasonable. That didn't stop us from grabbing a couple of plastic storage thingies.

Sunday was relatively eventful, save for more housecleaning in the morning (does this ever end?). The afternoon saw us headed over to Mark's place in Changi. As we were approaching the turn-off leading to his place, J gave Mark a call to ascertain the block and unit number.

"Hello. Hey, I'm not home yet. Car just ran out of fuel."
What!??
"Yeah. I'm on the highway, opposite the PA campsite. Probably going to walk to the nearest station and buy some petrol."
You just wait there. We're going to get you some.

So I spun the car around and roared into the nearest Shell station, and we picked up a tin can of fuel (around $3 worth), some paper towels, and a small bottle of water. Had to make a fairly large loop to get to where Mark's car was stopped, on the road shoulder along the highway. We later found out that it was the sixth time he'd run out of fuel on the road - he already had a siphon tube handy for the petrol, and his junkyard boot had another two empty fuel cans inside!

The best thing is, he'd just stopped at a BP station to buy food, and didn't even think of topping up.

J gave him an earful. That's our long-time friend and my ex-boss for you.

Later that night, J and I were hauled down by my father-in-law to watch some Chinese charity cultural performance, for which he was a part of the organizing committee. Acrobats and not opera, we were promised. The synopsis didn't sound too bad. So we went into the theatre and sat down with my siblings-in-law.

It was worse.

Right after the third item, J and I made our way out of the theatre. Uggggh. Old-style chinese cabaret singing? With a terrible sound system that made a mockery of loudhailers? Not my cup of green tea. I thought I'd go nuts if I'd stayed in there any longer! My youngest brother-in-law was already fast asleep in his seat, fully-trained (Sleep Anywhere Forces).

We spent some time walking around Chinatown instead. I sampled an egg tart from Tong Heng (yummy) while J had a char siew sou. Ended up in some household knick-knack store to browse, when my brother-in-law called. Apparently my father-in-law had come around to spot-check during the performance, and J's brother gave him some lame excuse about us being hungry and going to find something to eat. Whoops. So we made our way back to the theatre and slipped in before the show ended, having to endure some more medieval madness.

As Hari Raya Haji fell on Sunday, the following Monday (yesterday) was a public holiday. Woke up really early to visit J's uncle and aunt in Pasir Ris (really nice and spacious HDB apartment) before heading downtown for more household shopping. Bought a steam iron and ironing board after deciding against getting one of those Novita boutique steamer-thingies - they're nice but not really worth the money, especially for shirt and pant crease lines.

Dake and partner came over to visit later that afternoon, and the four of us ended up having dinner at the recently reopened East Coast Lagoon food centre. Ordered a couple of chicken wings, and half a duck from my favourite braised duck rice stall. Yummy. Still can't find a drinks stall with satisfactory coffee there, though. I couldn't locate the coffee uncle that I used to order from, and there seem to be waaay more drink stalls around the new centre anyway. Oh well.

Couldn't find any time over the last three days to sit down and write stuff down. I had a few thoughts that I'd wanted to offload, but they're a distant memory now. Maybe they'll come back in the next few days, and I'll remember to scribble them down. Hopefully.