Ellene: Me Blogs of Absolutely Crappy Stuffs

When we heard of treasure hunting, we always imagine a dark gloomy cave on a deserted island, people digging in the ground furiously searching for long lost treasures, spanning over a few hundred decades…well, this is a blog about a treasure hunting expedition which i recently went through, albeit a MODERN treasure hunting.

    To those people out there who must have been thinking, what the heck could a MODERN treasure hunting be? Well, to be precise, it means a unique treasure hunting experience with a modern twist added to it. And so it all begins….

    One dark gloomy evening, I stepped out from a ship and at the next instant, the ship blasted its horn and started moving away. I spun around and admired the dark clouds hanging at the grey sky spanning over the whole horizon while making my way slowly down the dark pathway. Reaching the first cave, i dug my knapsack for the map and stealthily, step inside. Slowly i ventured deeper into the unknown territory…leaving behind the brightly lit pathway, into the darkness beyond…

    Suddenly, a tall rectangular object caught my attention. I inched forward towards it slowly, cm by cm as to be careful not to cause any unwanted attention, after all, i’m here on an adventure..(Flashback: Ee Lin, you know, there’s this great treasure chest i heard somewhere near here, it contains valuable treasures from the past years. Heheh..i wish i’ll be able to find it..)

    As i got closer, the tall object’s shadow loomed eerily over me and i realized to my excitement that it seems to look like a treasure chest, i mean, it’s tall, with 3 compartments, and wait, there’s a long wire running along the wall behind it…It must be a trap!! A great trap to prevent people from getting their hands on the treasures lying within.

    Hmm…let’s see where this long wire links to. So, i edged forward and..OMG!! It’s connected to a deadly looking white thing that looks like a timer fuse where at the slightest movement, it will blow up!! Dang!! I need to somehow or other deactivate this trap..I won’t let this to stand in my way to the so near yet so far treasures lying in front of me!! So, i set about analyzing the white foreign socket like thing…socket?!! Oh my, i couldn’t believe it, but the home science that i studied in school actually proved to be useful in such situation. Thank god i paid attention to those boring lessons. Heheh…i’m able to defuse this trap, wahahaha!!!

    With the miserable trap out of my way, the treasure will be mine alone…or so i thought. A rustle was heard from behind me and a voice cracked out, "What are you doing here?" Startled, i jumped (almost out of my skin, but luckily, it’s still intact) and to my deepest horror..another person had discovered this place..NO!!! i found it and i worked so hard to bid Good Riddance to that horrible trap, no way am i going to share my hard earned reward with someone else.

    "Relax, i’m not here to harm you. I thought i heard sounds so i came to check. Huh? You’re here for something?" (Oh no, how can i tell her that i’m here for the treasure, she’ll sure want a portion..) "Ahahah..i’m here uh..exploring see, haha, what about you?" "Me? I just came to check. Why are you standing in the kitchen with the lights off?"

    For a second, my mind went blank…OMG!!! I’ve actually sneak into a kitchen looking for treasures?? How stup can i be…I can’t believe that i bought the lame story of a treasure chest in this era..oh no!!!! She chuckled at my reaction and walked towards the tall, 3 compartment treasure chest like thing and yank open the top compartment. A gust of chilly cold air blasted in my face, numbing my already stiff senses. Something caught me eye and i instinctively picked it out.

    With trembling hands, i examined it then gripped it tight while punching in the air. I’ve found a treasure!! It’s a long tube and on it imprinted the valuable seal that mark it as a treasure of the long past years…It’s a tube of Smarties that expires in the YEAR 1999!!!!

    Well, there you go, a suspense of treasure hunting, which actually is just a normal ransacking through the refrigerator(the tall 3 compartment treasure chest) and was being laughed at by my cousin(the resident) of the dark "cave"(our home). But heck, i’m really surprised when i saw that tube and yea, i’m really excited, i mean, who wouldn’t? It expires in the year 1999. And its now 2008. By the way, that ship which i stepped out from, it’s a lift and the map i got from inside my knapsack, it’s the house key.

If you’ve been to Singapore, I’m sure most of you have heard of the famous mee pok. I can’t remember whether I posted up a picture of it(it’ll be better if you seen a picture of it), but anyway, its FLAT noodles immersed in vinegar with ketchup and sauce topped with minced meat, mushrooms and the likes of it. Really liked the taste and even got my Singaporean aunt to do the impossible by actually bringing out a few packets of mee pok stored in plastic containers. Well, while toilling for the recent mid year exams, somehow, I remembered the age long joke of mee pok. I have modified parts of it as I can’t really remember the whole story.

A long long time ago, in a serene village, the noodle clan and the dumpling clan coexisted peacefully side by side together. The dumpling clan was lead by the barbarous giant ‘tua pau’ (literally translated as big dumpling) while a fair petite ‘tang hoon’ (glass noodle) guided the noodle family. Although both clans’ leaders were of immense difference in nature, they managed to strike a balance and respected each other.

One fine afternoon, the then young ‘mee’ had a heated argument with the timid ‘mee suah’ (the white coloured noodle). ‘mee’ was well known for his quick temper and stubborness, so when the argument turned rough, with ‘mee’ shouting at the top of his voice at poor ‘mee suah’, ‘hor fan’ together with a few adults came to ‘mee suah’s aid while trying their best to clam down the furious ‘mee’. When ‘hor fan’ decided to report the incident to ‘tang hoon’, ‘mee’ got scared and ran out of the main house.

He ran as fast as he could and slowed down when he reached the open playground, panting as hard as he could. The incident that had just happened really made him mad to the point where he gritted his teeth in anger. Why must ‘mee suah’ always refuse his suggestions? He just suggested that they sneak out at night to experience the nightlife of the adults but not only had ‘mee suah’ refused flatly, but the cowardly ‘mee suah’ even threatened to tell the adults about it. What a useless chicken!!

Suddenly, ‘mee’ caught sight of little ‘pau’ happily playing a game of tag with his group of friends. ‘Pau’s white complexion reminds ‘mee’ of ‘mee suah’ who ironically happens to be pure white too, and this fueled his fuming anger to the max. Blood boiling, he stormed over and hovered above a fear sticken ‘pau’ who started crying. All his friends ran off from the playground as fast as their little legs can carry them.

With his anger blinding him, ‘mee’ then caught hold of ‘pau’ and proceed to beat him up in revenge. At that time, ‘pau’s friends had already informed ’siew pau’ who summoned a few of dumplings and rushed to the aid of ‘pau’. On seeing the furious group, ‘mee’ got scared out of his wits and ran for dear life.

Due to that incident, ‘tua pau’ demanded that the noodle clan hand over ‘noodle’ to the dumpling clan for punishment and also compensation for the injuries of ‘pau’. However, as ‘mee’ had not returned at all and no questioning had been done, ‘tang hoon’ politely refused ‘tua pau’ requests. ‘Tua pau’ then angrily stormed off and upon returning to his main house, ordered a group of dumplings to go in search of ‘mee’.

So, early next morning, the group of dumplings scouted around the whole village in search of ‘mee’. Suddenly, in the distant horizon, they spotted ‘mee’ but he looked slightly different. However, they paid no attention to that and started chasing the assumed ‘mee’. The startled ‘maggi mee’ yelled out when a dumpling caught hold of him. The angry dumplings shouted, "Mee, don’t think just because you curled your hair, we won’t be able to recognise you." "Wait, I’m not ‘mee’..I’m ‘MAGGI MEE’!!" His pleas fell on deaf ears…

‘Tang Hoon’ paced up and down along the main hallway in the main house of noodle. "Mee is not back yet and maggi mee was mistaken as him and beaten up. This is getting out of hand, we must not let a fight between both clans broke out just because of this minor thing!" "But Tang Hoon, how can they just simply use their fists like this? It must be the influence of that Tua Pau. Afterall, he used to be active in the martial arts world." "Hor Fan, we must not think in that way. Always seek peace and compromise."

However, the more Hor Fan think about it, the more he felt that the dumpling clan was in the wrong. Finally after the 3rd day, he gathered a few like minded noodles and went out to seek revenge despite the disapproval of Tang Hoon. They couldn’t believe their luck when they saw Pau walking along a deserted road. Without giving another thought, they return what the dumpling did to Maggi Mee, shouting, "Don’t think that just because you’re bleeding, we’ll show sympathy." Unknowingly, they got the wrong person as it is Char Siew Pau that they were whacking and the gravy in him had leaked out..

At this point, a war had broken out between both clans. Each day, the warring clans will strike each other whenever any side let down their guard. All this while, Mee had hidden in the nearby forest, oblivious of the dispute that he had caused. He thought that everything should had settled down by then and decided to return. However, as soon as he turn down the road that lead to the noodle housing estate, a group of dumplings pounced on him. Realising that finally, the culprit who started all this commotion were caught, the pounded him with everything that they have. ‘WHAM WHAM WHAM, POK POK POK’ By the time they finished, Mee was totally disfigured and flatter than the flatworms.

Tang Hoon who believed that Mee had been punished severly offered 2 options for Mee. 1. Mee will be exiled form the clan. or 2. Mee must change his behaviour and do community service to the whole village for the rest of his life. Mee agreed to the second option and so he stayed. To mark the war that had erupted due to his foolishness, his name was changed to MEE POK, an apt name as Mee had been pok-ed flat. And thus, the noodle family has an additional member, mee pok, a flattened version of mee.

Life..what exactly is life? It is a real rare hard, totally out of this world topic. I mean, anybody can say they’re living a great life to their heart’s content, but are we all really sure it’s up to par on our expectations? Afterall, humans are a greedy race(pardon me for saying that).

Someone once said this, a great life is one where you enjoyed every single bit and second of the time you spent in this world. Well, I’d said we got great moments, not great lives, as at a certain point of life, there are bound to be some kind of obstacles and trials from God, where we lost our will to live on and curse every single thing in life while lashing our frustrations, thinking God had forgotten us.

To me, it is these little great moments in life that makes my life a wonderful one. Being able to spend quality time with people whom I hold dear, people whom I can totally trust and be myself with, these friends of mine are people who are totally rare in this world. I’m blessed by God to have a few great and close friends. They accept me for who I am, though I am well aware that I am miles away from being even a quarter perfect. They put up with all my weird ways and never complain much while helping me along the way(I’m the one who complains, heck, complaining are healthy). I must say, I really learn quite a lot from you all, especially in aquiring socialising skills, the main being recieving the latest informations..heheh.

I don’t know why I’m writing this, maybe cause I finally realise and decided that I don’t really need any ‘pride’ in maintaining a cold ‘aura’. To all my great friends out there, I really thank you for accepting me. God bless you all.

Plagues… Normally, people will think of some natural disasters. But, let me make this clear..there are many sorts of plagues, fot instance, human plagues.

What kind of human plagues, you may ask. Well, human plague (according to me, not Oxford) is a scenario where your MSN messenger, e-mail, and frienster is plagued by ‘humans’ whom you never knew they existed before. They’ll ask all sorts of questions just to make a conversation and you’ll be scratching your head wondering what on earth are those ‘humans’ talking about…

So, why am I talking about this madness? Well, simple, cause right now, I’m being plagued by humans!!!

Its soooo irritating.. I mean, who wouldnt? C’mon, we all know how frustrating it is to have to be on the run constantly, not because you’re a fugitive or something of that level but simply because you want to escape from the cultches of these so called ‘fans’ as labeled by my oh, very funny and humourous friends(i’m grateful for that). There are instances where on special days, the school authorities decided to allow the students to bring cameras…. cameras = danger. And on those particular days, i could be seen dodging the stairs as those ‘humans’ will be lying in waiting at the stairs ready with their trusty cameras, like predators waiting to pounce on their preys.

So, what do you think, people? Do i have the right to complain or perhaps i should bring these ‘humans’ to court over my rights on privacy.

(PS, the scenario described above happened a few years ago)

At last, I thought. After a hectic, busy, pure depressing week filled with test(both studies AND non-studies), it finally come to the wonderful precious weekend. We(friends and I) planned the best laid plan to relax our worked up, on the brink of crashing and shutting down cerebrum and happily decide on bowling. BUT but but but, to my utter dismay, here I am, in front of my desktop monitor, double checking my ecology report (thanks to Bio in F6). Why oh why on earth must my precious, long awaited Saturday night be ruined by such mundane activity. I hear the PS2 calling out to me, tempting me to pop in a game disk and start it up. My MP3 is also coaxing me to plug in the earphones and blast my fav songs. But as the way of our miserable life goes, we have to prioritize. A great teacher once said, we must priortise, or we risk going haywire.

So, here I sit, pondering why did I enter Form 6 and make my already miserable life into an even more miserable one. I can catch the next bus down to SG, the anime heaven(at least to me), but no, I am still here in front of my computer. Besides, a camp’s coming up, and we’re going up to a haunted bungalow of many creepy, unexplainable stories. Not to mention, the bowling plan for next week. Maybe life’s not that bad afterall.