some of you may remember alex. here are the entries that would refresh your memories:

[please say a prayer]

[appeal for witnesses]

[the visit]

[wtf?]

[bad news]

[schtuff]

[last visit]

[he's gone]

[the last goodbye]

so... there has been a verdict. and a fine. and, i do not think that i agree with it. money can't bring alex back, for sure - but a year's jail?! for fuck's sake! is it okay to commit murder if your weapon is a vehicle? is it considered "reckless driving" when the man accelerated on purpose, and jammed the brakes on purpose, with another human being on the bonnet?

[victim's parents to get $135k]

shocking.

is wrong with LJ?

it's crawling like a million snails.

it's no wonder i find it hard to update as much!

i HATE ants! the tiny kitchen ones!

they have been trying to attack the bubs. uncle john has put an ant chalk in the mail for me but in the meantime, i'm worried that something might happen while i'm asleep. damn these tiny ants that can wriggle through the air vents! in fact, i've once watched them wriggle in and out of an air-tight jar!

two entire bubs had once totally perished (not even a shred of evidence) in the spiderlab while i was in hk. one happened to be a bub that i'd given to uncle moo. the other was little lucille. my guess is they were freshly moulted and the ants crept in before their exoskeletons could harden (usually takes about a day). two empty jars were left.

so i'm especially nervous because bib has just moulted this arvo.

i tried using some ant pellets (which kill colonies by being carried back to their queen as food... then bam!) but the ants didn't seem too keen on them. in fact, they seemed slightly repelled instead. so as a last resort, i've built a pellet barricade around the bubs for tonight. fingers crossed that the ant chalk arrives tomorrow!

i will be going through surgery again, two procedures this time but in the same surgery session.

one will be a repeat of what i did last year, which was a laser surgery.

the other will require three incisions for key-hole surgery.

the good news is, cancer test was negative. although doc wasn't very clear on why my last operation didn't heal properly... a little worrying. but i guess if he's not worried, i shouldn't be.

surgery will probably be in a month's time.

i don't have good news.

second appointment tomorrow morning.

the moment of truth.

scary days are here again.

i've just caught bobby the second. :o

almost identical, except that bobby 2 is smaller. bobby 2 looks just like bobby when i first caught him.

wtf is going on?

this is just too weird.

third spidey, caught 5 minutes ago.

WTF?

do they think there's some sort of spidey convention going on in my room?!

spidey #3 is a very, very tiny weaver. even tinier than babyspidey. he's the size of a comma -> , with stripey legs!

this one happily spun a web hanging right under the bulb of my desk lamp, right in front of my face. by the time i noticed something swaying in the light breeze, he'd built the main 'beams' of his web and was about to fill in the walls... i was just commenting to my friend on msn that i see cobwebs on my lamp and there might be another spider around, when lo and behold - that little speck of ash that i thought was stuck on the web, started to run along the web-beams! holy macaroni.

can someone tell me what the fuck is going on?

am i experiencing spidey-invasion?

second spidey caught, 15 minutes ago.

my hands are still shaking.

this one is BIG. well, still small-ish, compared to like, hand-sized scary spiders, but... he's a good 7-8 times the size of spidey #1. and a different breed, it seems. i can't guess his breed, but he's more heavily built around the head and shoulders (do spiders have shoulders?) than spidey #1.

for all i know, he might be a common singapore household spidey. he does remind me of the ones my brothers used to catch and keep when we were kiddies. :)

but he sure looks scary. he's coming with me to the bio-science dept for identification for sure.

it wasn't easy catching him and transferring him into a jar. he seems more stubborn than spidey #1. also, he was on a wall and not hanging in mid-air, so he was harder to corner. he's now prowling around inside the jar. my skin crawls as i look at him. he looks like a hunter. i can see his face! omg, his eyes are so big - little black beady eyes staring back at me! he's a little furry, has thick, strong legs, and a robust body. he looks like he can jump. he actually looks like a small scorpion.

i wonder if he was the one who built that web to catch me. because it seems more probable that a spidey of his size could spin a web that big, as opposed to spidey #1.

i'm glad i worked through the night last night, so i was still awake this morning when mother spotted him. i wouldn't want her to risk being bitten while trying to catch him.

he really gives me the creeps.

will take pics of him when i wake up.

*shudder*

i sure won't be wanting to keep and feed this one.

it was a weird morning for me.

i'd gone to bed late last night, working as usual. at about 9am, my nose was super ticklish, so i sat up to blow it. then i took a sip of water from the cup that is always by my bed. as i was sipping, my blurry line of sight noticed something dangling in the air...

on went my specs and i stared in amazement at mr spidey, sitting in his web - a web that spanned across my queen-sized bed. it was a very large web. spun in a matter of hours. it stretched from the edge of my bed on the left, to the top of my shelf on the right. where spidey was sitting, was the middle of the web, which was eye level with me as i was sitting upright.

i was flabberghasted. i sat there and stared for about 5 minutes. a zillion things ran through my mind at this point in fast-rewind, back to the days when i got back from melbourne in april. those few days when i was unpacking the boxes that i'd shipped back from melbourne, i'd spotted two spidey babies. they might have traveled here in my boxes. little tiny dots they were. little round dots with tiny legs. very cute. they ran across my desk. i caught one and put him outside my window. the other one got away.

is this the one that got away?

he must have lived in my room for two months.

why is the web spun as if it is meant for me? this is the spot where i get on and off the bed. if i hadn't stopped for a sip of water, i would have gone headlong into the web while getting off the bed. spidey would have had a go at my face.

has he watched me for two months?

spidey fidgeted a little now and then, but mostly stayed in the same spot. i started to look around for options.

it must have been fate that i've had this empty glass flask by my bed for the longest time. with a glass cap. perfect. i grabbed a tissue to hold over the mouth of the spout.

spidey got a little nervous when i moved about on my bed. i toned down all my actions, and approached him very, very slowly and carefully. ultimate stealth. the prey sneaking up on the hunter.

got him.



he has grown 12 times the size of that little dot in 2 months.

i'd thought of releasing him in the park near my home. after some further thought, i googled and found the bio-science dept. rang them.

reached a certain professor, dr li. professor of spiders. :)

he said, never, never release him into the wild. a foreign spidey can do a lot of harm to local ecosystem.

when i told him there was another baby that i put outside my window two months ago, he freaked out. haha. :p i assured him that spidey doesn't look like a redback.

he requested for me to send spidey to his lab. i will try to squeeze some time out to do that on monday. meanwhile, he is my object of fascination on my desk. i will try to feed him a live ant over the weekend.

not only was his web hugeass, the threads were very thick. i doubt it would be the work of a local spidey. in fact, if he is really that same baby spidey, he sure has grown heck of a lot in two months!

i wonder if he'd wanted to catch me, the biggest prey ever. haha! what a big meal. can last for a year!

will his brother come back and avenge him?

:o

people with bad taste should not make artistic decisions.

people who are stuck in the past should look beyond their blinkers.

people who need help should wake up and smell the fuckin' truth.

alex has less than 2 hours to live.

going to see him one last time now.

just got an sms update.

alex has taken a turn for the worse... he may not make it past the next few days.

please help pray for a miracle, everyone.

the cabbie who ran alex over faces possible jailterm of 2 years and maybe a fine of $1000.

what kind of screwed up justice is that?

that's quite a joke isn't it? two short years and a thousand bux let you get away with running someone down on purpose and you get to ruin the life of a promising young man.

tell me it's a joke, singapore.

un-fuckin-believable.

we went to see alex today.

i couldn't recognise him. his head was so swollen... it was unbelieveable. we overheard the doctor telling his family about the operations they have had to perform on him. apparently, there was so much pressure in his head before the first operation, he would have died if they didn't operate. normal pressure is about 15. alex's was over 100. hence, the first operation was rather... explosive. the first operation had a lot of repercussions but it couldn't have been helped. the main objective then was to save his life. problems were bound to arise from such a dangerous situation and its only solution.

the doctor also said that the most important thing for alex to do now is to survive this week. he has multiple internal injuries which cannot be seen. there are many things which may cause his death anytime now, not just his head injury.

and if he does survive this week, there is the question of whether he would ever wake up.

if he does wake up, he would never be 100% alex as we know him.

those were the doctor's words.

it was a sad reunion for the bunch of us. to come together again in such a dark situation after bounding off in different directions was rather surreal. i wondered if alex had been happy the last coupla years. i wondered when he would smile again.

:[

for alex lim.

an old acquaintance is in ICU at TTSH, in critical condition.

apparently, a cab knocked into his car on monday night. alex got out to talk to the cabbie, who refused to talk to him and wanted to drive off. the silly boy went to stand in front of the cab to stop the bastard. guess what the cabbie did?

he floored the accelerator.

i can't imagine what sort of human would do that. the cab dragged alex for 10 metres before the cabbie jammed his brakes. alex flew off and hit his head very hard.

his brain has swollen. what i heard in the arvo was that surgeons were intending to remove part of his brain due to the damage. what i also heard was that he is in such a bad condition that they are considering pulling the plug.

if you're religious, please say a prayer for this good-natured young man. if you're not, please just have him in your thoughts. thank you.

in between freaking out last night, i entertained myself for a few minutes with night mode and my gorillapod. :)

second picture reminds me of resident evil, or silent hill...



that red streak was a car going by...

i should take a picture tonight of how things look on a normal night. :) i'll do it right now...

last night was a night of horror for me, not because i'm afraid of the dark - i'm not. i can sit in darkness for hours and be perfectly fine. no, it was much more horrifying than mere darkness.

at about 10pm, i was replying emails when everything around me went black. literally Everything. even all the buildings outside my window, for as far as i can see, miles away. all was black. everything has shut down. it was almost as if an invisible bomb of shadows has gone off.

my ibook went black too.

hang on, my ibook? doesn't it run on a battery? the battery is kept at full charge all the time. why has it shut down then? my ibook has been with me through a few blackouts, and it has always stayed awake throughout in the past.

my brain froze over in panic as the possibility of a power surge sank in. my logic board could have been fried. i had no way to imagine the state of my hard disk. i tried to boot it up, and there was no response.

i looked out the window and it was black everywhere except for the hospital. the street lamps have all gone off. traffic lights were not working anymore. it was miles and miles of darkness. i half expected to see zombies starting to appear on the streets.

doc went out to his lab to check on things and apparently, the entire block was shut down too. he couldn't even get into the building.

i spent the next hour freaking out on the phone to val. i've not backed up my data for about 6 months! all my work, my pictures... everything! possibly all a crisp! i was a wreck.

rang jean and she happened to be at sera's place. sera is a pretty pro mac user, and she advised me to let it rest unplugged for a night and try to reboot in the morning with the plug in. with that, there was nothing more i could do except to turn my mind inside out with worry. sent frantic smses to sean who lived nearby, to see if his place was affected as well. his area was fine, and he offered to take me to the service centre first thing in the morning. he was very calm and logical, and i was pacified enough to try to get an early night's rest.

this morning, i scrambled out of bed at 8:30am. the air was chilly and a breeze swirled in through my open windows. without bothering to throw on a jumper, i quickly sat down at my desk. after giving my ibook a pat, i plugged the charger in. my heart leapt as the orange 'charging' light came on. "that's a good sign", i said to myself. i then flipped up the screen and pressed the power button.

my heart settled back into its place as a familiar 'click' echoed under my finger. the little engine fired up and my ibook sprang back to life. it seemed to take a little more effort than usual (there was a loud hard disk whirring at the start), but my baby is alright.

i suspect that the battery has been fried though. i'm not sure if i'm going to test it by pulling the plug. i'll see about that when i go back to singapore.

for now, i'm just very, very, very thankful.

i'm now in a 70% empty room. am pissed off. very much so.

it has been a hectic, topsy-turvy 6 days leading up to what was supposedly the finale of my room revamp today. 30 years of stuff were sorted and half were junked. the plan was to throw out more through a second round of sorting when the new cupboards get set up today and i start allocating space.

which, didn't happen.

i woke up bright and early this morning, the day's schedule clear in my head. my old bed would be disassembled and taken away, bigscale shifting of my desk and other misc furniture to their respective new locations would then happen along with hardcore cleaning and wiping along the way, line floor with newspapers and paint one wall which i've plastered myself yesterday (with self-mixed cement) to cover holes where my old shelves had been (i ripped them out yesterday as well). after wall is painted, the floor will be thoroughly cleaned. then, i'll take my time to slowly sort out some more misc items left in one more cupboard to clear and throw away, while waiting for the delivery of my new furniture (three hugeass shelving units and one queen sized bed).

that's how things were supposed to go, according to the delivery time agreed upon by both parties.

one other clear instruction was to ring me an hour before their arrival.

so, i was about halfway through this schedule of events. i was happily lining the floor with newspapers, in fact, about to start painting my wall. it was about 1pm. suddenly, my mother answered the door, and before i knew it, two dudes appeared right behind me in my room, saying "this is where you want the furniture?"

wtf?

"why are you guys here so early?! why didn't you call me before you come?! you're not supposed to be here so early and you're supposed to call me before you come!! look at my wall!! i'm about to paint it and you're already here!! now what?!"

"someone called you last night what... "

"no one called me about this delivery last night!! anyway, last night is not the same as one hour before!!"

"but they did call you last night... "

"... "

they continued to insist on that moot point. "anyway, you can call and arrange for another time to assemble. don't worry!"

with that, i let them go. nothing more to be done at that point. they left hugeass brown packages all over the living room, passageway and any available space. my queen sized mattress is now in my balcony, blocking out all natural light to the living room. my 2-metre-tall glass cabinet doors are stacked precariously next to the kitchen entrance.

i rang the head office. only to hear that the earliest they would be available to assemble my stuff would be saturday. SATURDAY!! this is meant to be done TODAY goddammit. that's three whole days of living with all this clutter. my family has already been more than a little irritable with all my things stacked all around, and bags and bags of rubbish going out the door etc. now, there are bigass, monstrous boxes that reach almost to the ceiling to live with too!

hounded them three times via phone, still saturday. :(

even if it was all their fucking fault.

so now, i'm stuck. like a plug in a butt. all packing/unpacking has been frozen till new storage becomes available. i will be sleeping on my old mattresss on my empty floor for three nights. this entire mess will remain in limbo till saturday arvo.

wtf.