Leap day with Wong Li Lin

Disclaimer: The title is just a gimmick to attract your attention. The actual post will bore the living daylights out of ya.

Okay. How I spent Leap (year)day, Friday, the 29th of February, 2008.

Delivered some work to the printer at Bras Basah. Had a bit of a problem. Unfortunately- and it's unbelievable -but their version of AI is as outdated as bell-bottom jeans! And technology doesn't have cycles like fashion. Flabbergasted... Anyway, they aren't to blame at all, because, I know I've been told, but I forgot to save the file in eps format. (not to bore you with the technicalities, but recording my stupidity down will actually help me to remember in future!)

Planned to end work early & at Bras Basah, and afterwhich, nip down to Marina Square, meet up with a couple of good friends and catch "The Leap Years", which btw, I felt, is a great movie (maybe I'll review it, but by the time i get down to it, it'll have stopped screening), at 6:50pm. The late movies were fully booked and this one was going fast, at, let's see, 10 am in the morning when I did a telephone booking. Golly. Cathay & Golden Village were 95% fully booked and 5% going fast; it was a mad rush. Couples must have pre-booked it last week, or 4 years ago...

Anyhow, the self-generated inconvenience (nagging will ingraine the error deeper in my mind - an effective method, employed by mothers since the dawn of humanity) cost me alot of time. Finished my unfinished business at Bras Basah by 6pm, which left me only 20mins to get from Bras Basah to Marina Square cinema.

Now, for those who've been taught the art of telling the time, you must have spotted the discrepancy. The movie starts at 6:50pm, kevin. That's 50 whole minutes to get your ugly butt to Marina Square. Butt, but, and maybe you can learn something here - for those who know the art of movie ticket telephone bookings, you understand that the tickets must be collected 1/2 an hour before the movie screening time, if not it will be released to an overjoyed cinema patron - those 'last-minute-queue-to-buy-tix' kind, who will happily snap up your pre-booked but uncollected movie tickets.

Thankfully I've been blessed with long legs by God and my parents (who fed me well. Gosh, my mom... she must have been doing it right all along... I hate cod liver oil) and have long mastered the art of jaywalking, an essential life-skill for both the wanderlustful Globe-trotter and common Singaporean species alike. All the traffic lights worked in my favour, hehe, but the strangest thing I noticed was that the roads were clear of traffic everytime I needed to cross a busy main road. Just so the awesomeness dawns on you - for roads to be miraculously clear (vehicles mysteriously caught at traffic lights working in my favour) at peak hour on a friday evening in the heart of the city, this is a miracle. Thank you God. Also, I put my underdeveloped parkour (awesome sport, imo) skills to good use, by leaping over small obstacles like roadblocks, fallen tree trunks, overhead bridges and idling excavators. Just kidding - I meant pebbles, road dividers and sparse exhaust-plagued roadside greenery (sickly green).

So you see, when someone really wants something, the whole universe conspires to help him get it.  

A friend once commented that I'm the fastest walker she knows. And that she's the fastest walker (is this even a word?) among her friends, and they complain about her, so that's saying something. Which reminds me, did you catch that cool movie, Walker? Anything. Anywhere. (Almost)Instantly. Starring Anakin Skywalker aka Darth Vader (Hayden Christensen) facing off Mace Windoo w/o purply lightsaber (Samuel L. Jackson). Not a bad sci-fi no-brainer action flick. 'Least it was better than Rambo 4, which was a no-brainer lame action flick for senior citizens and past-their-prime weight lifters who wished to get a vision of how their future body will look like in their golden years. It's cool, but not a great movie. Imagine a glorified playboy Nightcrawler (from X-men) without the bad skin pigmentation & tail. Backpackers will be appalled at this blatant disrespect and disregard of proper back-packing traditions, which involve actual literal travelling, a little bit of getting lost, asking directions, revelling in the whole experience of it. 

Gawd, I'm long-winded. Just 50 minutes of my life and the story is 15 pages long already. I'm so born to be a scriptwriter. I haven't even got to the part where I'm queueing up for the tix yet.

Or maybe I did that on purpose. Huh, huh, huh! Think about it. After all, the dramas that keep us coming back for more always end each episode hanging. Man. I'm so born to be a director. Muahaha. Stay tuned! (not "stay-tune" like every talk show host says. That's bad grammar!)

Cheerio!