“Stole” by Kelly Rowland isn’t such a bad RnB song… “He was always such a nice boy. The quiet one, with good intentions. He was down for his brother, respectful to his mother. A good boy, but good don’t get attention. One kid with a promise, the brightest kid in school. He’s not a fool, reading books about science and smart stuff. It’s not enough, no. ‘Cause smart don’t make you cool…”

It’s one of those special sequential number dates today: 03/03/03! I’m not sure what the official term is, but it’s not as impressive as palindromic dates (which occur much less frequently).

Right now, it still feels like the muscles around my trunk and arms are burning into me, but not quite as badly as they did this morning. When I woke up this morning, I sat up in bed and the muscles around my mid-section immediately made their presence known. If they weren’t already a part of me, they definitely were at that moment, because those were burning temperatures that could have fused metal let alone flesh. Come to think of it, the other muscles in my upper body weren’t exactly helping. The last time I woke up in this state, the pain wasn’t exactly ephemeral. I’ll get to that later.

When you get stuck in a situation involving matters of the heart, it’s quite normal to want to discuss it with people; your friends or fellow siblings. Yogi’s brother had developed a crush on one of the pretty young femmes in his workplace and wanted her to know about it. He could have done worse than to turn to his older brother and ask him for his advice because he was advised to a rose with a note attached, leaving a phone number, which was sound advice given the circumstances. He still couldn’t have done worse than to ask Yogi to come up with the note itself. Actually, he couldn’t have done much worse, according to Sanje. Yogi had decided against a simple note, in favour of a little poem which would have been pretty impressive actually, if she was into RnB or gangsta rap. It wasn’t crude, but it rhymed. It wasn’t a serious love note, but a love note which could be construed as a sarcastic love note (It’s better not to write a serious love poem to a stranger because it will do less damage if the recipient shrugs you off).

I asked why he hadn’t incorporated his trademark line into the poem, “If you stick with me, you’ll see flying cars,” but it was left out due to lack of space (character restriction in the note). We’d always laughed about that time-travelling line and he had always been proud of using it. There were lines in the poem he wrote for his brother too, which had been in his repertoire circa 1997; lines I had first seen during my first year of University in the lecture hall, on a scrap of paper destined to be seen by a strange girl’s eyes. That line didn’t really work then and I couldn’t help but be reluctant to put a wager on it this time round either.

One of the prime lines in this poem was “You’re looking fine, in your Calvin Klein” (note: Calvin Klein was the pinnacle of affordable style back then). He had never claimed to have came up with that line but he kept us thinking that he had, but told us on Saturday that he actually hadn’t, but had heard it from a song. “So from the first moment we met you, you’ve been lying to us?” Now if he had been wearing a hairpiece this whole time too, he could have sold himself as the world’s best liar.

We popped into the new 3G store, which opened recently to offer UK customers a taste for the first time of true broadband mobile communication. Now it was possible to receive streaming video on a mobile and do video conferencing. Need I also mention the possibility now of healthy incremented cellular radiation? I’m not sure what the increase/decrease in magnification is on the newer phones, but I’m guessing it’s an increase. It would then be quite appropriate for the “G” in the “3G” to be related to the “gray,” the standard unit of measurement used to describe the amount of energy transferred by radiation to an object (if you recall Physics class: an absorbed dose of one gray is equivalent to the absorption of one Joule of radiation energy by one kilogram of matter). So perhaps the answer of the magnification is right there in the name: 3G = 3 x radiation dosage from current cellular phones of the first generation. Yes, it would all make sense if they hadn’t already announced that the “G” stands for “generation,” but it would be foolish to brush aside this mere coincidence ^_^. Anyway… in any case, I can’t deny that these new phones are neat and it’s taken the UK years to catch up in network technology with our antipodean friends, namely those in Japan (all hail the sexiness of J-Phone!). It’ll be an exciting time in maybe a few years from now when these phones will become commonplace and you are able to stare your phone stalkers right in the eye.

Sunday has officially become “Jogging day” for me. But no, I didn’t think it up all by myself, my brother had a say in this. He’d been enquiring about my recent foray into idiosyncratic cardiovascular routine, asking how often I go and what routes I took. Seemed he wanted to stay trim too, so has decided to go jogging with me on Sundays in the afternoon for around 30 minutes (which when you’re running, seems more like 30 years). He could leave me behind in a race quite easily and on the track at the park he was able to lap me with what seemed like minimal effort. I can only run for about 6 minutes straight before coughing and spluttering to a rest, but he could run for about 15 minutes without stopping. Pretty impressive because I think he is doing better than I did when I was his age. I used to do cross country running in school and I think I ran for about 12 minutes or so before regressing to a walk. My decline in fitness began when I was in college, when the final 2 periods of Wednesday were free to partake in sports/games. A group of us always said we were going swimming, meaning that we were able to leave the premises and just go home without so much as straining a joint (I’m sure the potheads gave the same excuse too, only to speed off to the area behind the bikesheds to fire up a different kind of joint). I think in the whole 2 years of college, we went swimming only once and that was during the first week. In retrospect I think that was also the day I started turning into a pig ^_^. I don’t believe I did any sports for about 2 or 3 years after that, unless you consider Snooker or Pool as a serious gentleman’s sport. I only started getting trim again with martial arts in University and that only lasted about a year, since transporting the sheer load of homework became enough exercise in itself. So, it became full circle again by the time I graduated for my first degree. Then I did only so much as pick up a pencil and run up a flight of stairs during my second degree, but now I’m back on the straight and narrow road that promises a healthier me at the end of it.

Experts say that when working out, one should allow a day or 2 to rest to give the muscles time to repair. For me, I usually have no choice, because after a few sets the previous day, I would be in enough pain to stop me working out the following day. They also say diet is important; to eat well to give the muscles material to work with. Good thing then that this morning/afternoon my parents decided to go shopping and have a buffet lunch at Oriental City. My stomach gladly welcomed “all you can eat” SE Asian cuisine to bursting point, which necessitated the undoing of my belt by a few notches.

Dad: I think I’m full now.
Me: Come on! They’ve got some nice desserts there. Go try them.
Dad: I can’t eat as much as some people. Some people can eat a hell of a lot. {Stares at me}
Me: I’m sure if there was a sumo convention here they’d eat this place out.
Dad: Yes, but usually, there isn’t so they do well here.
Me: Well, the thing is, the set buffet price is set high enough for them to always make a profit.
Dad: Yes, because for every person that can eat a lot, there’s 3 other people who can’t eat as much.
Me: True, but they do everything in bulk here.
Dad: This place is like KFC. They mass produce the food.
Me: That’s the only way they can make a profit. But, like with the casinos, the house always wins.

Now what would have been funny was if my dad then said “Shut up and eat,” but he didn’t because he doesn’t have the same level of wittiness on a full stomach. It was funny hearing him compare KFC with SE Asian eateries and say “Some people can eat a hell of a lot” (whilst staring at me and at the same time looking a bit worried as though the place was his own establishment).

Afterwards we popped into the tropical fish store in the centre and I saw, for the first time, Bubble Eye goldfish. The rare African albino frog (Xenopus Laevis) was interesting too as I’d never seen one in the flesh, even if it wasn’t as interesting as Plucky, the transgenic albino frog who expresses green fluorescent protein in her eyes. Also said hello to Origami, who is Oriental City’s famous giant Gourami. We then picked up a few portions of durian and headed home. I was relieved to find that to this day, durians packed in polystyrene containers and cling film still look like portions of chicken on sale in supermarkets. To some, their smell might evoke the scent of festering pieces of chicken too.