the entry about blocking up an ad shoot

i am a rock, i am an island. that's pretty much the mantra that was going through my mind. in fact, this was but one of the many thoughts that were racing in my head when i arrived at the set the very afternoon. what if i wasn't exactly what they were looking for? what if they didn't like how i posed? what if i broke wind? it was making me batshit with anxiety and panicky all over.

to cut the long story short, i had a modelling job and was scheduled to pose for an upcoming sunblock advert. i was faced with the task of looking fresh, sunshine-boy-meets-boy-next-door, and modelly right in the midst of switching careers, the most strenuous and grungy of human endeavors. the ad for the new series of sun tan care products, aptly named blockup!, necessitated me changing into my "beach outfitter" mien, i.e. stripped down to bare nothing, save but a pair of board shorts. so here i was in the fitting room. the dig was a makeshift one, i gathered, which was made of a billowy velvet curtain and suspiciously feeble-looking rings that were supporting the drape.

i stepped onto the set, and it was a pretty awkward experience: the crew were carefully scrutinizing me from head to toe. sure, i love attention and all (read: megalomaniac), but never have i felt so exposed and surveyed like a study object. one crew suggested that i did military push-ups before the shoot; i guess he wanted my man-boobs to swell up like i was doing a lingerie ad. another crew was tasked to spray squirts of water on my body to enhance the look of the tan appeal, but she was so shy she didn't look where she was spraying, my face endured a bukake-esque squirtful. and i thought i was supposed to be the sheepish one.

fast forward an hour and half later, i was all swarthy from the mix of the suntan lotion and water spray, i smelled exactly like freshly extracted coconut oil. great. so anyhows, here are a couple pictures taken during the set and also photos from the official website, www.blockup.com.sg. there aren't exactly that many, because i was still recovering from the shock of having my topless photo taken in front of a set crew. nevertheless, here's it:

a pedestal for the vertically challenged, yours truly.

the crew sifting through some of the shots.

extreme left: the ever-bashful water-squirter, jac.

the lineup of sun-care products from blockup!

the final product, on blockup.com.sg

p.s.: check out their facebook app at http://apps.facebook.com/blockup/.

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the entry about an afternoon nosh and thereafter

i admonish myself for mismanaging my meal schedules so badly these days, i'm having a bad time with bowel movements. i endeavored remedying the farce situation with consuming loads of fibre from fruits such as banana and papaya and downing tons of water; it didn't work. i even tried fybogel, and imagined myself sitting atop the throne later excreting the unspeakable, but it was pretty much a fiasco. i'm thinking laxatives next.

folks, never underestimate the power of inflation. a two-dollar bill fifteen years ago would have bought me a bowl of egg noodles and vending coke at the local school's tuckshop, and with change to spare. fast forward to now, and it's hardly enough to cover for even the entree, let alone a scrumptious budgeted full-course meal. miser-warts, beware. gone are the days of economical food.

so, a friend brought me for an afternoon delight of noodles-slurping affair. well, technically, i drove, i led the way, and i demanded he gave me a treat, but what gives? anyways, as i was chopsticking my plate of springy eggy noodles, enjoying the treasure find of wanton dumplings that was few and far between, i heard a massive cacophony of blaring percussions of the orient, represented by the likes of cymbals and large drums.

indulge in savoury eggy nosh from the likes of kok kee

the vendor's new kicks: waterproof and abundant

apparently, the hawker has just been retrofitted and refurbished, and a procession was in place to celebrate the brand-new facade of the center. amidst the sea of dizzying new beige tables were these lion mock-ups sluggishly batting their eyelids to the almost-tuneless music played by "the orange band". they are so called "the orange band", because i could think no other name suited it better. it was such a hot mess: the sweltering weather was beating down mercilessly and the ruckus wasn't letting up at all. the masquerade of lions nearly ruined an otherwise sumptuous feed.

the din was apparently too much for crony kevin

we moved on to something even more delectable: test-drive! get a load of my potentially new ride, a mercedes c-180.

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the entry of miniscule festivities

of late, i've been running down memory lane watching re-runs of mean girls with various friends so many a times that i could almost recite the entire transcript it's crazy! i know, right? it's like i've got a fifth sense or espn or something. someone spell me x-y-l-o-c-a-r-p.

anyhows, i must be really down in luck. i made another trip to the hospital yet again. apparently, a cyst-like lump on my wrist, which has been there for almost a year, is mushrooming to the size of a small quail egg. i've decided, for the benefit of those who indulge in quail congee delights, to not have any pictures taken. so here's how it went down:

i traipsed back to the same clinic, but consulted another doctor, who was a specialist in hand and wrist-related malaise. he gingerly poked at my lump (risque much), shone a torch at it (for whatever reason), moved the lump around to assess its mobility, and concluded it to either a case of ganglion or fibroma, both of which required a two-cm saucerization across the locale to extract said lumpy. in laymen's term, it just meant i need to fork out another $3,500 for the operation. fantastic.

on a brighter note, the last day of october, i.e. halloween, brought about some long-awaited fun. the gin gang decided to dress up in acjc outfits. i tried squeezing into my old school pants, and found it to be literally breathtakingly tight. in the end, i went as a flight attendant. hark back to the days, deja vu. meanwhile... photos!

chen liping and the whole gin gang

gary and me

colleen, the cool chick from cathay

shuhuei

power of the manly muscly dykes

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the entry about coming back, et al

my dad is full of worldly wisdoms like flossing and recycling newspaper as table-mats for our supper, and bathing during mid-day when the sun is hottest (thus eschewing the use of heaters and saving on electricity). just being in his presence, i am starting to assimilate his daily habits and stylistic preferences; it's not surprising to see me assuming the "sleeping buddha" position when watching the google box these days (courtesy of cookiedough senior).

anyways, i digress, yet again. most folks have been berating me, what the hell have i been up to?

so, being in prudential has really whipped me up to be this workhorse that i never knew i could be. i could be spotted sailing through the office cubicles at nine in the morning almost every day, sometimes, during the weekends as well. clubbing with my friends, which has always been the cornerstone of my social life, has taken a backseat, if not being cast off as being totally dormant.

of course, this wouldn't be the ideal situation which i could envision myself to be in. as much as this turned me around for the better, the old adage "all work and no play makes des a dull boy" still lives on. i haven't made a single trip to the gymnasium hitherto, and i don't surmise that makes any good either to be simply working constantly.

so, even though this might sound like a turnabout, i need to juggle my time before i burn out and fizzle like a candle that is lit on both ends. and speaking of sound, i learnt from a friend that a sound is also a metal rod that is shoved up the slit of a male weiner that is nine to eleven inches long. man, how it would burn!

my first paycheck from prudential.

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the entry about taking it off

so tomorrow is going to be the moment of truth. after three hundred and eighteen hours of confined rest, chugging tons of brands chicken essence and chicken tonic, and noshing fish for almost every other meal (apparently, this white meat is good for recovery of wounds), the sixteen stitches as a consequence of my unbridled stupidity would be removed.

even now, as i gingerly brush my fingers across the contusion, i could still feel crusts of dried-up blood tied up in knots with the stitches, not to mention a dose of marked pain along the bump still. i am a little iffy about my wounds having fully recovered, and if not so, the agony tomorrow would be abso-fucking-lutely excruciating. i am totally not looking forward to it.

nevertheless, i'm praying with clasped hands, that in twenty-fours' time, i'll be up and dandy, and ready to trudge myself and my lazy ass back to work after this hiatus. meanwhile, i am kicking at the ladder ferociously which caused my downfall, literally. damn you, ladder!

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the entry about the race-spectating insurgent

in light of what has happened recently, one would have expected yours truly to stay indoors, employ prophylactic measures and rest the week away. but as much as i have been chastised by my family and friends alike for a bad judgement call which resulted in a minor head trauma, stitches and all, i am all up and dandy the day after to attend the annual f1 singapore grand prix.

sop's for the race in question

i balked when i arrived at the scene. the entire atmosphere was buzzing with excitement, though the photos i took showed otherwise. there was a chattering buzz from the onlookers, a gig performing at a nearby stage, and vendors of the relative race teams hawking their paraphernalia to dizzying walker-bys. i saw one too many pot-bellied caucasians guzzling down ice-cold beer, and could only stare in hideous envy; i was instructed not to touch alcohol in the midst of my recovery.

anyhows, the bleachers we (ray and i) were allocated to gave us a grand view of the automobiles approaching us from a sharp bend and straight through right in front of us. surely there could be no better of a spectacle than this, i thought to myself.

bleachers of yellow and red

apparently, the race turned out to be nothing more than seeing the automobiles zip past us from right under our noses and disappear into the distant the very next micro-second. this happened for a couple of times and then, the race was over. i gnashed my teeth and swore, pumping my fists in the air. that gesture somehow made people look at me, as though i knew a thing or two about the entire state of affairs. in honest fact, i couldn't comprehend a single bit the intrinsics of the race and was absolutely clueless what was going on. i couldn't tell one car apart from the next. all i knew was that i experienced the fleeting reverberations throughout my body every time the race cars bolted past us it felt like a pulsating vibrator.

some other interesting pictures like the one below: this fellow homo-sapien doesn't seem to understand the concept of velvet ropes. he plumped himself comfortably onto the couch next to all the mannequins and was visibly nonchalant to everyone else staring at him.

looks like he's gonna keel over any minute

someone give him a wedgie already!

at the end of the day, lewis hamilton won. i made it out alive, with my throbbing wound carefully concealed in a cap slanted at a precise angle, but none the wiser about the workings of a grand prix race. i couldn't wait to get back home. viva la hovel!

the following are snippets i caught on tv, the irrepressible lindsay lohan hosting the f1's, beyonce and no doubt upping the chic factor with their concerts.

gwen shows who's the queen

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the entry about a mishap that shouldn't have been

drats! it seems like my momentum for work and gym couldn't have been more short-lived, only if it hadn't been impeded by some external force of drunken stupor and bad judgement. i arrived home a little past midnight, slightly inebriated after two pints of the better german erdinger.

by the usual routine, i would wheel around to the back of the house, rap on the window of my maid's room, and gently rouse her with my imploring pleas of "can you open the backdoor please?". incidentally, she wasn't in her room; she'd stayed the night over at my brother's.

key-less, i resorted to calling my folks' mobile phones a couple times. when it was to no avail, i dialed the home phone a number of times, in the hopes of them waking up by the deafening ring tones. when i was still lumbering outside after numerous tries, i attempted yelling their names in a hushed whisper, but after a while, i knew it wasn't going to work either.

road-weary and eager to collapse into my bed after a hard day's work, an implausible idea struck me. i reached for the ladder and positioned it under my room's toilet's window, which was on the second floor. i grabbed a wiry-looking receptacle i found in the store room, climbed to the top landing of the ladder, and attempted to hook the device over the window's handle. once having done that, i mustered all the strength i had in me, beer-goggled and all, and pulled myself upwards with the hook, in hopes of sidling along the window ledge and sliding through the window. that plan flopped, and the back of my head struck the wall, as i slipped and fell seven feet from the ground. fast forward a couple minutes later, i am in the hospital wing with a reported eight-cm laceration which required immediate attention.

sulking after realizing my jeans were stained with my blood

a drip was needed because i suffered huge loss of blood.

i was wondering why it wasn't blood transfusion instead?

still blood-soaked after changing the pillow for the third time.

here's pictures of the bloodied scene at ground zero when i got back home the following day, coupled with sixteen fresh stitches. ironically, in the franticness of trying to get inside the house the night before, i am home-bound for the next week.

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