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It rained last night and Olivia told me,

Quick! Close the windows! Wait the hamsters get wet!

Hamster escaped

Hamster escaped and wasted an hour of our precious time trying to capture it. So now it's going to spend the night in my room, hearing me snore.

Oh well, who asked it to be so adventurous.

(It's actually spending the night in my room because we did not want to risk it escaping while we transfer it into its actual home, which is a very sad pail.)

Hamsters

Four different hamsters:

The athletic baby's baby

The angry father

The sleepy baby

The greedy baby

The only time I can stroke them is when they're eating or busy running on the wheel because when they are running on the wheel, they will still be trying to run from me but they can't run away from me.

Hamsters scared

Yesterday afternoon I came home to a surprisingly sight - all 4 hamsters' cage and tanks placed in the living room:

Moved from their original places, for some reason:

So I asked my mom why were the hamsters in the living room and she answered,

Because this morning outside doing something, then very noisy. Brother was worried the hamsters will be scared, so he moved them here (out of the balcony and into the living room).

My brother is better than me!

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Olivia, to me,

Eh, my yahoo mail is oliviaxxxxx@yahoo.com.sg then what is my password?

Baby hamster died

One of our baby hamsters died.

It was trapped between two flaps of cardboard on the inside of the pizza boxes and was literally flattened to death. We didn't even know until this morning when brother opened the box and saw a furry head sticking out. I believe it struggled to death because the head wasn't squashed, just the body flattened. Perhaps the windpipe broke or the bones or something. We're suspecting it was because Olivia pushed down the cover of the box very hard yesterday and the baby didn't have enough time to react to it.

I wonder if the mother was trying to pull it out or something. Brother said when the body was being cleared, the mother was sniffing at the spot.

=(

Quotes

Part of the conversation I had with my father just now,

爸爸: 要不然我们带 hamster 去植物园 让它们跑跑，好不好？它们会不会跑掉？
我：你不会说我们绑一条绳子在他们的脖子上！
爸爸: 对 hor！
爸爸: 还是去沙滩啦！我们带我们那个木的东西 (wooden pen which we built) 放在沙滩上，让它们在沙里玩！等下它们爬出来，我们追到半死啊! 哈哈！

(Father: Let's bring the hamster to Botanical Gardens, let them run about for a bit! Will they run away?
Me: Why don't you tie a string around their necks?
Father: Yar hor!
Father: Or let's go to the beach! Bring that wooden pen and place it on the sand, let the hamsters dig! Wait they escape and we have to catch them, haha!)

Interview; Hamster

Due for an interview in school this afternoon and I'm nervous.

Number of interviews I have ever gone through: 1.
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Father hamster has yet found a new position and place to sleep in:

Vertically, between the glass and log.

We were wondering why he is sleeping in this most interesting position and I postulated that it might be because the weather has been rather warm lately and the glass is relatively cool. Oh yar, not to mention he likes weird positions. We have seen some of the 2nd batch of baby hamsters climb over him while he was sleeping like that, their foot in his eye and he did not even twitch!

4 baby hamsters

We found the 4 baby hamsters tumbling around in the running wheel, playing with each other and snuggling together, last night.

Then they froze when my handphone's flashlight shone into their faces.

Quotes

Father, telling me to put plants at my desk,

... If you don't put ah, then you will be very short-tempered then you won't be able to find husband then cham ah (something like "die" or "very bad" in English)!

I started laughing because he can link from plants to finding a husband. Olivia came in and told me she thought I was crying.

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Olivia, singing campfire songs from her Red Cross file,

Pizza Hut, pizza hut
Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Pizza Hut.
McDonald, McDonald,
Kentucky Fried Chicken and a pizza Hut.

Me, laughing after she has sung it at least twice,

Last time our campfire songs no "McDonalds" or "Pizza Hut" or "KFC", you know!

Baby hamsters

Exam's the day after tomorrow, so I've got time for a couple of posts. Like I've said before, our 3rd generation of baby hamsters are quite big already.

Firstly, to give you all a sense of how large or small the hamster is, here's a picture of the portion of the tank it's in:
See the little white container at the bottom? The little brown thing inside is the baby hamster.

Baby hamster trying to get into the container of food:

Baby hamster trying to eat big (relative to its size) hamster food:

It was all very cute and sweet so I leaned over to the other side of the tank to tell the father hamster that his babies are very grown up already:

Father hamster can't be bothered and wants to sleep like that.

Random photo of Olivia's finger and the other hamsters:

Our house feels like a hamster breeding zoo.

Second paper; Hamsters

Second paper tomorrow. I told myself I'll go to bed by 10.30pm and now it's 10.50pm. Tomorrow's a GEM paper. Supposedly easy to score. I took a day and a half to study for it. I'd better score!

Actually I took a cute baby hamster photo today because the four babies are actually big enough to run around and (try to) eat (big, hamster) solid food and I wanted to show you all just how tiny they are! However, I spent a full 11 hours studying today so I'll blog about the baby hamsters some other time.

Oh yar, there's one baby hamster that is blind in one eye. When my father saw it, he said we must keep it because it is so poor thing.

What?

I replied (exact words edited),

Are we a Hamster Disability Centre or something? First we have the 2nd smallest baby of the first lot (because the smallest one was eaten up) and now we are going to keep a half-blind baby.

I was just kidding. The half-blind baby's really cute but looks so poor thing. So unless somebody really wants it, we will keep it for sure.

And I think the female of the first lot of babies is pregnant.

Oh god. How many generations of hamsters are we going to own? The male hamster should quit being so horny already.

Hamster(s)

Not enough time to blog. Seriously, this is my most serious and most well-used semester - including exam period. Ironically, I have 6 modules and 6 papers to take, supposedly my most heavy semester so I'm supposed to be a complete wreck and all, which I still am. Sorta.

Anyway, hamsters say hi for me since I'm not free.

Tried to take a picture of father hamster sleeping with its head sticking out of the tube but it woke up and showed me his ass instead:

Father hamster peeking out

Father hamster sleeping in the wheel

I think the weather must have been too warm for it to sleep inside any enclosed area. It has been sleeping in the running wheel or somewhere in the tank, whole body stretched out. Sometimes it sleeps on its back, sometimes on its side,


sometimes it finally sleeps like a hamster - all curled up.

Anyway why the heck would it be sleeping in the wheel?!

Baby hamster

At least I think it's the baby hamster. Or it might be the father. Forgot which it was because picture taken quite some time ago. It's not technically a baby anymore but well, we haven't quite worn off calling it that. It's akin to calling a human "baby" in his/her mid-twenties.

Dammit, I'm supposed to not blog and let the hamsters do the talking.

Cousin's ROM

This afternoon was spent at Mandarin Oriental Hotel attending the ROM ceremony of my cousin, Junxiang and his now-wife, Shandy.

It was odd, seeing the cousin who was the naughtiest of us lot get married first. The same cousin who scared me at Haw Par Villa's wax museum, threatened to push me into the pool with a dragon sculpture and fought with me over who owned which body part of our favourite uncle. He also attended the same university as me though in a different course. I remember the three of us had lunch and studied a couple of times together when I was in year 1 and 2.

Now they have already graduated for a year and I am ending my 3rd year of university studies. It was not too long ago that I was only a year 2, watching them work on their Honours theses in the library. Last week, I stood in the library and watched the Journals section, remembering they liked studying there the most because it was quieter and warmer. I realize I miss them and those few times spent together. Time has absolutely flown past and I realize that somehow school don't feel the same, knowing they are no longer studying there. Well, at least I still have 2 other cousins in there still! =)

So today I watched my cousin get married. I really like Shandy and am happy that she is now related to us. Yet at the same time I have this odd feeling that we are all growing up.

And my fantastic relatives have skipped directly from asking, "Do you have a boyfriend?" to "When are you getting married?"

ROM ceremony was held at Axis Bar & Lounge at Mandarin Oriental Hotel. The hotel was a lovely place - even the toilets were gorgeous! They had hand towels, tissue paper and proper soap bottles with equally wonderful smelling soap. The bar itself was beautiful as well, a lovely place to relax and, I'd bet, awfully romantic at night.

The area where the ceremony was to be held:


Junxiang in the jacket on the right, his parents and my father on the sofa:

Junxiang

Flowers to be held by Shandy later on

Quite some time later, Shandy arrived with the photographer and just about everyone else, except the Solemniser.

Shandy

Shandy's only 2 years older than me.

Junxiang opening the gift from Shandy

There's a photographer on the right and the white blur is one of Shandy's closest friends who was taking video and photos the entire time.

I was starting to get really hungry by then. The waitresses were serving tea and coffee but for some reason, probably because I wasn't sitting down, I did not manage to get a cup of drink at all. So I stood in the bar, drinking water from my own bottle. Anyway wherever I sat, I'd have to move off because the photographer kept taking photos where I'd be in the way.

It was funny, watching the photographer take photos of the couple because they were so shy.

Finally, the Solemniser arrives.

The couple clarifies some things about the ceremony with the Solemniser (which is really too solemn a word because this Solemniser is anything but solemn).


At one point, Junxiang asked him quite loudly,

Where is the script? I can't remember the whole thing.

We all laughed.

Finally and somehow without much warning, the ceremony starts. The whole thing was carried out with everybody standing. You'd think that everyone will be sitting down in chairs, watching the whole ceremony quietly, but NO.

This is the most squashed ceremony I could have ever imagined because everybody was just kind of crowding around, watching everything very closely. Whenever there was a significant portion in the ceremony, like the exchange of rings or the holding of hands, there was a huge rush to take a photo of it. It was really hilarious because there was really only a small distance between the couple and us. Heh, I am one of those rushing to take pictures and was squashed several times.

Ceremony was quite long and in the middle, we clapped and the Solemniser said, "And we are only half-way through it!"

So after they have said their "I do"s, they went on to uh, I guess the second part of the marriage vows.

Junxiang, repeating after the Solemniser, saying his vows:


Shandy, repeating after the Solemniser, saying her vows:


It was at this point that Shandy started crying while repeating the words. She had to pause several times to hold back her tears and at the last line, stopped for quite some time, trying not to cry until she forgot the line and the Solemniser had to repeat the last line again.

Junxiang's face just crumpled up when he saw her cry and he wiped away her tears after that. You could have felt everybody around on the verge of tears as well. Mine just leaked out of my eyes.

Solemniser asked rhetorically, "Isn't love the most beautiful thing?" Then I think he pronounced them husband and wife (haha, I don't remember) and said he may now kiss his lovely wife. So they kissed.

And then the Solemniser said,

You can see they have been practicing last night.

I told you this Solemniser is not solemn.

They then signed the certificate, lawfully making them husband-and-wife.

And finally we had our refreshments. Singaporeans as usual, piled lots of things on our tiny plates. I felt like we were eating at a coffee shop instead.

Watched the newly-wed couple and realized nothing about them has really changed. If you look at them from the same perspective as before, they are still a couple in love. If you look at them from another perspective, they are still in love but are now married. It is sweet, but odd.

It finally ended at about 5pm. My uncle fetched us home, I nearly puked on the car because of the mixture of food and tea in my stomach, the rocky ride and the fact that the auntie beside me kept yawning and I kept imaging her breath in the car and around my face. Had to open the car window, eat a sweet, hold a plastic bag and pray we would arrive at our destination(s) soon.

So I declare my cousin is married! =) The first over on this side of the family.

I wish both Junxiang and Shandy a happy marriage! 祝夫妻俩，白头偕老！

p/s If my Chinese words are wrong, do tell me! Thanks!

Twitter-vomit

Not enough time to study = no time to bathe = no time to blog

Don't tell others I have not bathed.

There were so many times today I wanted to log in to twitter to twit using my phone then I realized I don't have an account anymore so I put my phone down again and laughed at myself - HAHAHA!

Ok, that was for fun.

Anyway my day was so much cleaner without twitter. Cleaner as in no interruptions (I mean besides the TV). My brother fell ill with fever so he did not return to camp tonight, instead he's going back tomorrow. His platoon is now 5 people short because 5 others called in sick as well - 3 truly ill, 2 chao-geng.

He came back and said he fired a gun and it was damn shiok (feels satisfying), then I murmured under my breath that Freud would say something like "that shows you unconsciously want to kill" and then retorted to myself, "Yar, right, whatever, Freud, haha!" All in public, while queuing outside Suki Sushi. Then he demonstrated all the positions, cocking and what to do when the bullet got stuck... In public too, outside Suki Sushi. Oh he also said the firing was loud.

By right tomorrow he would be throwing grenades around but now I guess alternate arrangements will be made. I told him he's sick, then wait he go back blur blur hold on to the grenade.

When Brother went down to fetch his girlfriend this afternoon, I asked Olivia at the dining table, why can't the girlfriend just come up himself, why must he go fetch her? She replied,

Because she is his (mouths silently) darling,

Then she giggled. I told her because then he can hold her hand and kiss her with none of our family present.

Oh yar, cousin Junxiang and his finacee, Shandy, are going to the Registry of Marriage this coming Tuesday. So exciting!

The reason why this post sounds weird is because I read Edmund's post first and his style influenced me.

Then I thought about it, how often when you see people walk towards the lift, then u faster press press press the close button press many many time!! then the lift close, you safely have the lift to yourself as you sing nonsense and repeat i fark u lah 1001 times and say i going to kill u ah your whole family all die i gangster i tell you etc. oh yah when the lift close fully then u point middle finger at the person who was running toward the lift (butcan no longer see you). Maybe I have mild OCD. Maybe. Sometimes I wish the person running towards the lift was a guy and he happened to have an erection then when I close the lift doors then his lan jiao will gana stuck and he will scream AHHHHHHHH!!!! NOOO!!!!! then if the lift move up can see his lan jiao moving from the middle of the doors, moving downwards then I can point finger and HA HA HA HA!! Ok no, I never thought of that before.

I'm his paparazzi.
For a moment I forgot my victim's name.

And this is what happens when I am deprived of twitting for 2 days - "twitter-vomit". It sounds more interesting than "twitter-diarrhea".

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Father, filling out a survey,

Do hamsters count as pets?

Piggy

Piggy is an angel:

Halo on piggy's head courtesy of Olivia.

Hamsters away from home

For two consecutive days, we have given away 3 baby hamsters out of the 5. The previously lively tank now seems a little quiet and empty with only 4 hamsters left - 2 parents, 2 babies. Father made them a multi-storey house out of boxes with many holes for them to explore and poke their heads out, just the day before. He also put in the running wheel. I presume the hamsters love the wheel because at one point in time there were 4 hamsters in there and nobody could run. They just kind of sniff around until one gets bored and jumps out. Then when there are 2 inside the wheel and one is running, the other one has to run as well, regardless of whether it desires to do so. The little ones run really slowly because they just aren't used to the idea of a wheel.

Although now you would expect them to be running about late at night, climbing everywhere in the house, poking their nose around, fighting to get on the wheel just so that nobody can run, chasing after each other and practicing their high jump by jumping against the tank in an attempt to escape, last night they were relatively quiet. Only the parents were taking turns on the wheel while the other 2 babies were out of sight. I later saw one lying in a dark area, flat on its tummy and looking rather forlorn. I wonder if it is because it missed its siblings. I would imagine it is rather disconcerting to have 3 gone missing in two days.

Two of the hamsters were given to the brother's girlfriend. The hamsters have each other for company so I reckon that's alright. The other one is now with cousin YY. It was all alone in the small tank we had placed it in and we could see it was rather afraid. It was shitting a lot and scrambling about quite a bit instead of sniffing around calmly like it usually does in a new environment. Although YY has her own hamsters and the little one is sure to be in good hands, it is its first time, and last time, away from home, all alone in a strange environment.

Thinking about it is a little sad.

Hamster fugitive

人家养 hamster, 我们也养 hamster。 可是为什么人家养的 hamster 又胖，又笨，走得又慢，我们家的 hamster 却是又胖，又聪明，跑得超快？

The male hamster is kept in a tank and had never jumped out before. We thought it was too stupid to know how to escape and this morning it proved us wrong. We think it might have used the centre of the toilet roll as a step to climb up the water bottle and then from the flat top of the bottle jumped out of the tank.

I told my brother about it at 6am this morning and he replied asking us to check the storeroom, commenting why we were so unlucky.

Yar lor. I thought hamsters only know how to mate at super speed once every 6 minutes. Turns out they know how to escape too.

So if you see a fat hamster limping along the roads, please leave a comment on this blog.

*update*
Hamster found hiding under fridge! Finally found him, I'm so happy. =D And I accidentally squished it slightly while trying to capture it.

First time out

到头来还是家最重要，最温暖。

Brother on the ferry towards Tekong last Thursday

Last night Brother booked out from camp for the first time since he first enlisted a week ago. It's only a week for him because Good Friday fell nicely in the middle of his initial 2 weeks period, so he came home after 1 week, but only for 1 day.

He took the taxi home since my father was working that evening and when we heard his voice at the door, I abandoned my computer with anime D. Gray Man still playing on my browser (damn, I had to replay it after that), grabbed my camera, decided it would take too long to load, then grabbed my phone instead and got out of the room. Olivia was already there.

We found him at the door in full uniform. I realized if it's your own brother, it really is nothing seeing him in uniform. Well, except for feeling a little touched and glad about seeing him again. I stopped him at the door and wanted to take a picture of him, to commemorate the first time ever he came home from the army. So he was grinning sheepishly at the camera. His girlfriend, Xiao Yun, was at the door with him. Think she went to Pasir Ris Bus Interchange to meet him.

Mum's hand pushing his hand off as he embarrassingly rubbed his head

The moment he took off his cap, he was saying he looked like an egghead and I immediately agreed. His body looked too big while his head looked too small. According to the father, most guys look like that when dressed in that uniform without his cap or hair. He looked ok once he was dressed in his normal clothes, though.

Olivia gave him a card she had made and a card she had bought. On the card says "Welcome home!", "I missed you!" and "Don't leave me again!" I think brother was touched. I groaned and told her not to write such mushy stuff =P

I was standing at the kitchen door, taking this picture and asking him about stuff in the army, like how his bunk mates are, what they did etc. He said those in his platoon aren't only JC students but also from polytechnic and other places. And boy, do the people there know how to swear!

Wah lao, a lot of bad words lah! All better than me!

I laughed at that. It was one thing to know that it was that way inside based on what your male friends tell you, but it was another hearing it from your brother's mouth.

I asked if there were water parades, he said yes and demonstrated how it was with the commands and having to recite the 7 what of the SAF what before drinking. He also said there were a lot of lectures to attend and it was really boring. He would fall asleep during the lectures. Once, his friend fell asleep and had drool dripping out of his mouth.

That aside, amazingly in his 7 days there, he never learned how to wash anything with washing powder. The only thing he washed was the brown shirt they had to wear in camp. So when he came home, he took out a ziplock bag with 4 pieces of underwear inside and asked me how to wash them. I looked at him in disbelief then instructed him step-by-step. No way was I going to touch those 4 pieces of cloth. And throughout his 7 days there, he never once washed his number 4 though he has worn it for marching several times. Either he don't perspire much, the uniform don't absorb perspiration that easily or they didn't wear it a lot of times because I sniffed it (gingerly) and found there to be no smell.

He also said he didn't want to wash because it was very difficult to fold up the sleeve. Whatever.

Anyway his girlfriend wanted to stay the night. I don't know who said she is to sleep in brother's room but my mother did not allow and said she is to sleep in my room if she is staying overnight. Mum came over to my room to tell me and mouthed to me "what if they make love, then how?" I rolled my eyes. As long as she doesn't get pregnant... In the end perhaps her father did not allow it so she went home.

Brother spent the rest of his time on the computer and phone that night, I suppose satisfying that Internet and phone craving. Then he went to bed nearing 12 midnight, earlier than usual.

This evening he had to go back in again and we sent him to the interchange, the entire family including Xiao Yun.

BOY, WERE THERE A LOT OF MEN-IN-GREEN THERE!!! As long as it's not my brother, I am happy looking at them all. Imagine a whole lot of them, all in Smart 4, all that testosterone! I could not help but grin a little to myself. I walked through a whole crowd of them! Left, right, front and back, I was surrounded by green! It was like a dream come true.

So we waited with him until one of his platoon mates came to tap on his shoulder to tell him they had to gather. I did not understand why all other platoons were standing in the interchange under light while his had to gather beside the interchange, on the grass patch, in the dark. Maybe they wanted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the colour of the uniform because I sure could not see who was who, especially since all of them had eggheads.

Olivia just started waving randomly to the group where we were standing, a distance away. Her rationale was that he would see us and wave back, and he actually did do that. Only that several others also started staring at us wondering why the kid was constantly waving at them. Xiao Yun also waved a couple of times.

He soon got on the bus and that was about when my father realized brother did not tell us what platoon he was from. So he's back there on the island, stuck for the next 7 days.