of cynicsm, skepticism and incredulity
Friday, May 1, 2009
That pretty much sums up my feelings last week on thursday. (I know it's long overdue, but as Yichen likes to point out, I'm supposedly the slow-acting kryptonite to computers.) It began in the morning with a talk by Ms Lai, advising, reprimanding and instructing us to be more vigilant in wake of this swine flu. About halfway through the unusually long morning talk in the parade square, the girls in a distant class started screaming.
The automatic reaction was that there was a cockroach there, to which Ms Lai said, "don't worry, there's nothing scarier than swine flu right now". However, after some time, the intruder revealed itself to be a bird.
A fat bird. A fat pigeon that could barely fly. I feebly flapped amongst the rows of students, eliciting screams where it flew, and laughter where it didn't. Even the teachers were laughing, and Ms Lai paused and asked some teacher to take it away. In the end, some dude picked it up with his hands and cartd it off elsewhere. I would see that creature soon.
I was reading the Da Vinci Code all throughout the previous night, (wednesday night) doing not a shred of work and engrossed in the book. When I finished reading it on thursday, I felt a bit skeptical over all the hoo-ha that ensued over this book. Sure, its merits of delicious amounts of interesting facts did seem nice, but having read Angels and Demons just before this, I found most of the story very familiar.
Someone dies horrifically. Langdon wakes up. He gets involved. Excitement ensues. The ****spoiler****
seemingly insiduous organisation is not insiduous at all. The mastermind is one of the most unlikely of candidates, with not so much evil intentions than he has a yearning desire for something.Meh.
****end of spoilers****
I hadn't finished the book at first recess yet though. It was ten that I was having lunch with my classmates that, from nowhere, the fat bird popped over my shoulder and came to rest at the table we were at. In between my friend and I, it began to eat the chicken meat on my friend's chicken rice plate. It was fearless. We were incredulous.
"should I whack it away with the Da Vinci Code?" I knew some friends had something aganst killing insects etc...
"whack away," Was his reply. Or something along those lines...
Well, it was faster than it looked, or my movement was seriously too slow. It got away, hovering away rather than flying away, to another table to rest. The girl at the other table just stared at it wide eyed. Rather funny, I'll say.
Anyway, we later spent Compass (or the equivalent of CME) learning all about the Swine Flu. We were told of the situation, some conflicting media reports, some measures against it, (apparently, if you don't wear an N95 mask properly, it won't help at all. If that is the case, use an M95 instead. Less clean job of isolating the germs between you and the infected, but once you get used to the 9.98kg hunk of god-welded piece of love, it works like a beaut.) and also the alert levels. I'm less of a skeptic about all these "orange", "red" and "back" threat levels than I was before, but I still find them a tad misplaced in the whole indicator thing. I know its purpose and reasoning, but... It just doesn't seem to resonate with me.
At the end of the day, I went for tennis, essentially a long session of phototaking, recreational-team trials, ex-co elections, dinner at Ikea and culminating in a sad movie session watching Fast and Furious 4. Where to start. Most of the stuff before the elections saw me finishing up my Da Vinci Code, (which some of them dubbed "the Bible") then listening to the speeches made by the J1's, (this girl actually, in the middle of her speech, when at a loss of words, did the "hnnnnnnh!" sound and swayed on the balls of her feet,
twice, which I found damn funny.) and having a meatballs dinner that was treated courtesy of Ms Suey at Ikea.
I left early to attend to something, (not sure if I'm at liberty to say what here) but the shuttle bus took so long to come that I met up with the rest of the team leaving, at which point I abandoned my plans and relented to watching a movie with them. Bad choice, it turned out.
The movie was bad, but then again, I don't want to complain about it since I knew what I was getting myself into. All the other choices sucked too, anyyway. 17 Again? Not anymore. Taken? Been there, done that. Horsemen? Nay. Friday the 13th? No thanks, not my cup of tea. X Men Origins wasn't showing, if it were, that would have been the one-eyed man. (The online version Joel and I watched recently was the one that wasn't finished, but I still felt that even if I had viewed the completed one, it somehow didn't feel like a full movie.)
The movie ended around 1:40, with Bryan snoozing intermittently during the movie. At the end of it, some of the team were complaining why some of the actors were so stupid (not in accepting the screenplay, but like, "why didn't the guy move away when he saw the car going towards him?" All I could do was to watch silently as they actually talked about it.) Seriously, last time I'll go out with that bunch. We left but didn't know what to do next, so someone wanted to get milo from McDonalds, and off we went. Lazed about until thereabouts of 2:30, then I finally was released from my bonds and cabbed back home with three others (if not for me needing their cab company, I would have zhao-ed long time ago.) Got back at about 2:50.
I had only been that late home once, (or twice? I don't know...) and that was after prom the year before last.
One day of cynicsm, skepticism and incredulity.
posted by joseph at 3:08 PM