i looked up...and i saw heaven

i was looking forward to this night for a whole week and one day. wing's night at tony's. it kinda sucked that they wouldn't let us buy drinks without our passports because apparently that's what the US law states when it comes to alcohol and foreigners. aye? anyway, i didn't really care about the grumpy waitresses. i came for my chicken wings and i sure wasn't gonna leave without them. and i'm probably gonna be back for more!

what's funny is that when we were there, this guy who works as one of the pirates at moreys asked if we wanted to go with them to join the ukrainian guys for drinks at their house and we asked where and realised that they were the same guys who kept going konichiwa to us and talking nonsense that night every time we walked past them on the shamrock night. yea, they were actually having wings with us two tables away. haha.

so anyway, the four of us (ken, kok meng, joy and me) ordered four servings of wings and settled for a jug of coke since we couldn't get some ice cold beer (fewjfknwkmlwouldhavebeengoodwiththewingsfqwnmlwd).

some shots. (the kinds that don't require passports or US ID =P)


so after heading back, joy and i decided we didn't wanna go for the drinks. we were awestruck by the sky which was powdered with stars and so upon reaching home, we packed our bags with junk food and a trash bag as our mat and took our bikes out to cycle to the beach to watch the stars.

i guess some of them we bumped into thought we were mad. but upon reaching the beach, i thought..mad? maybe. blessed? hell yea. as we walked our bikes across the sand towards the waves, it looked like a big black screen infront of us because the sea and sky seemed to be one and the sky was just strewn with stars. and once again, we were simply overwhelmed. yup, i looked up..and there i saw it. heaven.

we were sitting on our torn garbage bag on the sand and joy asked, "is that an aeroplane?" i looked up trying to see what she was talking about and while we were busy trying to see whether whatever she was talking about was an aeroplane, we saw...a shooting star. i think we both lost our breath for a moment because it was so unexpected. and then we both exclaimed and i think we could've cried. it was the first time i ever saw a shooting star, i think. after a while, joy asked me whether i made a wish and i realised that i didn't even bother to make one then. i felt that i had everything, that god had simply given me the best and i didn't need to wish for anything but everything to thank him for. and that shooting star was enough to tell me that. did anyone see that shooting star as it lived out its last few seconds of glory? were joy and i the only ones in the whole universe who saw it? did it shoot across the sky just for us tonight? maybe.

and as i was gazing at the sky, a few other things crossed my mind. it's just one big mess of stars out there and yet people have connected the dots and formed images out of them and given those constellations names and i thought, wow, what an imagination they must have (the most i could make out was a question mark, really). and another thought. from where we were, the stars were just dots and there must be billions of them. but i was thinking, imagine looking at each one of them upclose. you'd see it wasn't just a dot. it would be bustling with activity, colours and lights, gases and flames. billions of stars in the entire universe, and yet each one, thought just a speck from afar, is so brilliant and awesome! billions of people here on this earth. specks on cnn, specks on satellite images, specks in crowds at shopping centres or at school or in a theme park by the sea...yet, the kingdom of heaven lies somewhere in each one of them, the same thing which makes the stars bold and brilliant and the oceans vast and mighty...

it got too cold so we left after a while and as we walked away, i turned around and pointed to the stars and said , "astalavista babies". some moments just can't be caught on camera.

if shireen can cook, so can....ANYONE.

it's 11.22am and everyone's either at work or still asleep (at least joy and melt are). i wanted to make myself some pancakes for breakfast but it turned into a catastrophe! so i gave up and put some leftover pizza in the microwave to heat up. i hope i don't die. it's been in the fridge for some time now. ok i just threw it away cos it looked really suspect. that's quite a depressing start to the day...shireen can't even make pancakes to save her life! =/

ok time to move on.

so yesterday (so much for moving on), everyone in our floor went to either washington or atlantic city save for the 2 poor things who had to work and joy and me who decided to stay home and spend the day cycling and hanging out at the beach. it turned out to be a rather lovely day.

we decided to cook a really good lunch for ourselves and a really good lunch it turned out to be! i really gotta thank joy. i think i'm hopeless in the kitchen as you can see from my pancake disaster but joy patiently taught me everything, from peeling garlic to chopping onions to making the mashed potato and so on and so forth. thank you joy!!! =)

so this is us cooking!


watch us in action!


presenting....le magnolia roast


bon appetite!


so after our yummy lunch, we packed our bag and cycled to superfresh to get some stuff. oh yes, joy, melt and i bought bikes for 20bucks each from our neighbour. it was his last 3 bikes. fate brought us together i tell u! so, as i was saying, we cycled to superfresh and after that, we cycled to the beach! i think that's our favourite hangout right now.

our bikes suntanning...


it's gonna be a bright...bright...bright..sunshiny day!


shireen in the sky with diamonds...


it was a really lovely time at the beach. as usual. it was just the most amazing feeling! i was plugged into my ipod, singing and dancing to myself with my eyes closed and my hands raised up to the sky, surrounded by the sound of the waves, as the icy cold water was prickling my feet and the wind was ruffling my hair. nothing else mattered and i praised and thanked god with song and dance and a smile on my face and i must have seemed like i was 5 again and that didn't matter. and sometimes, i would glance to my right and see joy in the distance, dancing to herself too. and from time to time, our eyes would meet and we would dance with each other though we were at least 30 metres apart. haha.

so after that, we met the others at the one and only cinema in wildwood run by only one man who sells the tickets and popcorn and starts the movie and ends it and wishes you goodbye when you are walking out. watched the da vinci code and then we went back for a chinese food supper.

when we went back, we found melt, who had just come back from atlantic city, modelling her new clothes. they were all sooooo happy from their shopping. we were a bit jealous. just a bit. but i was more jealous that pamela had a comfortable armchair in her room so joy and i, what did we do? we stole her chair when she left the room and put it in our room. and you should have heard pamela's scream when she found her chair missing. joy and i immediately ran into joy's room and crouched behind her double decker bed in the dark, laughing and shivering, like little kids who were seeking cheap thrills while trying to avoid being caught. joy, joy, joy.

and oh yes, before i end, let us introduce our new roommate, cecilia. hi cecilia! =)


ok, wings night tonight! i'm hungry already! =P

p.s. joy came out and i told her my sad pancake story. i was genuinely sad and she made me do the pancakes again. and i made 5 beautiful pancakes in the end!! thank you joy!!! =)

be an organ donor

yesterday was my first day working in a ticket booth. it was alright at first. i mean, when i was observing the other admissions people pressing buttons on the screen and ka-ching-ing the cashiers and tearing tickets and tying wristbands, i thought it looked really fun. i guess it still is but it was just pretty tiring sitting in that chair for close to 12 hours yesterday and starving for most of the time!! nonetheless, a good experience.

of course, you do meet the occasional jokers who just want to have some fun or have nothing better to do. like this group of guys who came and said that they know a zach morey (i'm working at morey's piers, which is run by a certain morey family) who works in their school who said they could get wristbands for free. i just gave them a smile and an "okaaaaaay" look and i said that i would need some sort of coupon. and they started taking out all sorts of trash from their wallet. like clothes tags and something to do with smoking cos they wanted to give me something and asked whether i smoked. anyway, after having their fun and giving up after my repeated refusals to give them free wristbands, they said, "oh, it's ok....we'll just go eat then," and were gone.

and there was this other group who came and i was already closing and this guy went, "where are the froooogs?" in a really slurred voice. i really couldn't understand him. and i went , "sorry?" and he went, "where are the frogs?? where do you hit the frogs??" and for the life of me, i was stumped. and he looked so exasperated like he would explode if he couldn't hit the frogs. i really couldn't help him and he left in a huff. hmmmm.

and on the way back, some random guy just came up from behind me on the boardwalk and stroked my hair. i thought it was joy cos she was walking beside me but i realised the hand was actually attached to this tall black guy with braided hair and he turned around and smiled like he knew me. i was just stunned. i think i got stumped alot yesterday, huh?

something struck me while i was sitting in that booth for those 11 to 12 hours yesterday. people. you meet all sorts of people. some are really friendly and totally make your day. they say hello, smile, joke about your little mistakes, thank you really genuinely and even wish you a good day. then, there are some who are always already on the defence waiting for things to screw up to fulfil certain prophecies of life they already created. they shake their heads and frown, too prematurely if you ask me. signs of premature aging. you meet the mothers or fathers who look completely harrassed by their kids, the teenage girls who wear too much make-up, the teenage boys with pants threatening to fall off anytime soon, the little kids who come up to your window and wave hi just for the sake of it, the girlfriends who get irritated with their boyfriends and husbands who get irritated with their wives, the cheery grandmothers, the ones seeking to create fashion statements with their hair, the guys who act macho to impress the girls, the unsure kids who shut up pretty fast cos they always think they might be wrong, the dudes who talk nonsense to try to pick you up, the excited kids who can't wait to get onto the rides....just all sorts of people. sometimes they fight with each other infront of your booth. sometimes they're kissing each other infront of your booth. whatever it is, it's like you're looking into a fishtank from your booth window, taking sneak peeks into the lives of all kinds of people for a few seconds or minutes. it's a funny thing to consider, considering i'm the one who's locked inside those 4 walls and behind a window. maybe that's how the fish see it too, like that's the only life some of them ever know and it's us, humans, who are trapped in the tank..oh dear, my thoughts are wondering towards the minds of fish. next please!

so anyway, this is the ticket booth i worked in yesterday..


associate of the month!

i wish!

so now, it's sunday here and it's 1020am and we're waiting to go to work which starts at 1130am. luckily it's only till 6 today. melt and i just got back from mass from the church opposite (called st. ann's church by the way) and guess what melt is doing. sleeeeeeeeping. we'll be doing a post on her soon! melt! can you please stop sleeping and start blogging???

ok, i lost my drive to blog already. to end, here's a picture of the back of a truck we found some days back. we thought it was pretty amusing. toodles!

"CHINESE FOOD??!!"

"i hope a whale gets washed onto the beach so that i can push it back into the sea..."



after blogging yesterday, the four of us (kairen, joy, melt and i) decided to take a walk to anywhere just to get out of the house and found ourselves walking into a different part of wildwood we didn't get to see before. i mean, we're always either walking to the supermarket or the laundromat or the bus terminal or the boardwalk.

it was a nice walk. we saw many pretty houses which we wished we could live in, we found the lollipop motel (joy looked like a lollipop yesterday by the way. more like a candy cane.), watched a softball game for a little while and then, we found the beach! i mean, it wasn't the first time we went to the beach here. but yesterday, we found a really beautiful one! the weather was gorgeous and the waves were full of life and we could actually hear them. something about that whole place just made me feel so...happy. joy said the ocean made her sad. so did the guy i met on the aeroplane from singapore to germany. but standing there alone, faraway from my friends with my arms stretched out, pretending that there was noone else around, just filled me with awe. as though all of creation in all its majesty was created just for me, a mere speck in the entire universe. i like how small the ocean makes me feel. i like the ebb and flow of the icy water over my feet. and i like the way the wind messes up my hair. standing there, watching the ocean just stretch out to forever made me feel so thankful to be alive!

and as i was just standing there, i looked down towards my feet in the water and found a huge shell just lying in the sand, as though it was just waiting for me to come pick it up. and so i did and it was beautiful! the others thought it was no big deal but i can't begin to describe how special it made me feel! and as i was strolling along the shore, i found a few more and picked them up as well and ended up walking around with those shells in my hand for quite a bit.

i went back to join the others and found them peering at ladybugs. yes! ladybugs on the beach!!! how fascinating! joy thought they were disgusting. melt was just happily picking them up. i just admired them from afar because i have a love-hate relationship with bugs.

then, we took a slow walk back along the boardwalk and i liked this part of the boardwalk alot because it was quiet and you could still hear the sound of the waves. and along this part of the boardwalk were wooden benches with names engraved on them. i guess they were in memory of people who had passed on and i thought it was such a beautiful thing to have those benches there.

while walking along the boardwalk, we passed a restaurant and heard some tapping on the window. we turned to our right and saw a bunch of old men waving at us from inside the restuarant. shortly after, we heard a telephone ringing. it was from a public phone and there was noone around. we raced to the phone, with the hope of accomplishing our mission impossible dreams. kai picked up the phone and went "chinese food" in the most horrible tone. he went on for a while before he turned around and saw the whole bunch of guys from the restaurant waving at us and one of them was on the phone. we just burst into laughter as kai died of embarrassment. kai, kai...soon we shall do a kai post.

after that, we had dinner next to the panda restaurant, came back, went crazy in the balcony trying to get the attention of mag 2 (the house next to us) and talking nonsense all the way. then, we went to buy ice-cream and as we were coming back, the guys from downstairs intercepted us and made us go to shamrock with them. but we wanted to put our ice-cream back first. then, we walked over to shamrock (the club) where the 3 girls realised they didn't have their ID and so we had to walk back and come back again. the silly part was that we had walked up and down at least 6 times that evening and each time, we had to walk past these group of guys who kept going "konichiwa". this is not the first time i get greeted with a "konichiwa". it's preplexing to me.

ok this post is turning out to be really looooong. so many things happen in a day and i want to remember everything, especially the small little moments. the singing on the streets (with horrible improvisations and harmonising), the running in the rain, joy's childishness, melt's classic lines, our random bouts of craziness, the stitches from laughing so hard about absolutely nothing, laughing at each other's cooking, so many little things....and at the end of the day, i guess i'm just thankful for it all and everything leading up to this moment...

ok, i shall just end off with some more photos. don't we all just love photos...haha.

the lollipop motel


me and my shell (the first one)


=)

howdi part 3 ( i need to come up with something more creative)

it's been slightly more than one week since we got here. while we were not clocking in hours to pay the rent, here's what we were doing...

we ate alot...



we jumped around alot...



we bought lots of paper and made lots of cards...



we bought lots of other things actually...(translate: we shopped alot) =/



and we took lots of silly pictures...



so other than that, we slept alot, walked alot, msned alot, ate alot (ALOT!), took photos alot (ALOT!), went to the laundry alot (???)...

and yesterday, we got really sick of our unhealthy lifestyles and decided that we would wake up early to go jogging and eat lettuce for all our meals. we jogged (walked) for half and hour, came back and ate a hearty breakfast (apple jacks and bananas), lazed around, went for our cashiering training at the theme park (joy, melt and i are doing ticketing for the theme park and we're debuting on friday and we're gonna be so slick we'll rock your socks and boots off! hah!) and then we didn't know what to do after that. but we got hungry and decided to get the 99cents pizza from the shop along the boardwalk and then we saw....the swings! but we also saw...the sea! i mean, we see the swings and the sea all the time but we decided to go visit the two yesterday. here's the day in pictures (we took lots of photos, we gotta do something with them) ...

JOY to the fishes in the deep blue sea, JOY to you and me!



MELTing in your smile!



BOLLYWOOD MEETS WILDWOOD!!!



there's always something magical about swings...something that makes you feel 5 all over again... (melt is perpetually 5...=|)



i forgot to mention that the seagulls were so protective over their swings and hovering over us like vultures before that, creating quite a racket. we were so afraid our eyeballs were going to be plucked out of our sockets or something...seriously.

so, after that, we jumped even more..



and we jumped some more...



then, we got hungry and went for some chinese food. my chow mien with beef turned out to be crackers with onions and a sprinkling of beef. some people just never learn.

the panda restaurant near our house...i'm lazy to post about dinner onwards cos the uploading is taking so long!!!!! joy is scolding me, she's so fierce!!! and melt says that if we don't leave the house soon, we'll have nothing to blog about! melt, you haven't posted anything yet!!! i've been working on this post for a day! and it only takes you like...one minute to read it! or two! i demand you read it 10 times at least! anyway, go to JOY'S BLOG for the lowdown of dinner onwards..we seem to be posting exactly the same stuff!!!

so, i think i'm done. here's shireen signing off again...and here's the three of us nutcases again...

howdi part 2

ok, we kinda realised that there's only one word worth of entries so far. sorry to disappoint some of you who have dropped by so graciously. for example, i quote a certain family relation who said he felt like hanging flowers on the computer or pasting stickers on our blog so that it won't look so sad. you reading this, melt?

so anyway, melt and i started this blog so that you guys in singapore, or wherever in the universe, who have internet access, can stay tuned to us our and our lives. after all, we're 12 hours behind singapore and that's not very good for conversations, unless we're all staying in for lunch glued to our msn, which is erm, hmmm...so lets actually start writing something, shall we?

ok this is us.



and this is joy.



she's our roommate and she's pretty nutty and she likes chocolate with nuts and clean bedsheets. she put the sheets in the laundry twice last week. what's up with that?? but she's a blast and we love her!



and this is our house.


and these are just some snapshots around the house.



and this is the church across the street from our house!



and this is where we work!!



ok, that's it for now...stay tuned for more!!!

love,
melt and reenie

howdi.