E-mail or Ewww-mail? You don't mess with the... CraftCadet

Nothing much happened today. I slept at roughly 10am, dreamt that I flew off a building and upon impact, woke up at around 1.45pm. The trauma kept me awake till it was 3.30pm when I managed to hurl myself off another building again, except that I fell all the way till it was 8.30pm this time. And this is what improper sleep does to you. It messes up your head.

But it is going to end soon! Today is the day when I finally kiss midnight shifts goodbye. No more staying up, no more finding things to do, no more eating the same crap over and over again, but hopefully I'll find some way to continue blogging at home. I certainly like what I've managed so far.

So does the baby.

Like I mentioned yesterday, you don't mess with someone who loves her secondary school very much (cheryl_supernass@hotmail.com) if you wish to stay clear of trouble. Being someone who finds sadistic joy being in trouble, I did and thus have to change my beloved email address. And lo and behold, my 2nd email address!

xxcraftcadetxx@hotmail.com

Don't ask me why there's this xx[insert word]xx thingy. I've got no freaking idea why I put it there. Apparently I thought it was cool and I suppose it signalled the start of my obsession with long email addresses. Nevertheless, this email address has a history too, albeit not as scandalous as "junrenfigo@hotmail.com".


I was pretty crazy about two things during my secondary 1 & 2 days. One of them is NCC, which I suppose is the highlight of my secondary school life. I always felt that the lanyard (red and white) looks pretty cool on the No. 4 uniform and it didn't help that only staff sergeants can wear them for it made me wanted to attain it more.

Well it's supposed to look cooler.

Anyway with that, I was so enthusiastic about NCC that the word "cadet" refused to leave my thoughts when I brainstormed for a new email address.

Something had to go with cadet and I had trouble thinking of one. It couldn't be xxjunrencadetxx because it's WTF. And you know when puberty starts, suddenly all the girls are beautiful and you start viewing them in a totally different light. It was also this period when my Pikachu went to hell along with Blastoise, Charizard, Mewtwo, Articuno and Butterfree. But before I discarded all my Pokeballs in the bin, I went to visit Nurse Joy a couple of times. Somehow, she became pretty out of the sudden.


Puppy love was the norm then. But xxlovecadetxx, xxromanticadetxx and xxcupidangelcadetxx doesn't sound right either does it? I can't have an email address that has pervert written all over it. The XXX thing doesnt help too.

Other than NCC, the other thing I was crazy about was Renewal, a now defunct MMORPG. Till now, I've never managed to find another game that could rival the experiences and the friendships I made in the game. There were mainly three job classes for this game; Warrior, Magician and Craftsman. No prizes for guessing which job class I chose. Heh, I was the top craftsman in Singapore okay. Top in making armoury, weapons, mining, farming and making bread.

No, I'm not kidding. Serious.

As you can see, "craft" is a five letter word that starts with C and so does "cadet" (Duh.) And this can only mean one thing. You have to put them together! And viola, the lovechild spawned is none other than xxcraftcadetxx@hotmail.com (this paragraph is top notched lame, i know)

As cool as it sounded, it didn't sound very nice short-formed. (I used "craftcadet" as my nickname in Renewal) You see, me and my Renewal guild mates used to meet up quite frequently last time for outings and stuff like that. And although it's quite stupid, we don't call each other by our real names. In fact, we call each other by our In-Game-Names. So some of the more memorable ones are FrostBlade, Mystique, l33tmynah and 5erene. There was this guy named FLPJ too. I know it sounds stupid but hey it stands for Fun, Laughter, Peace and Joy.


With mine being CraftCadet with a rather lengthy 3 syllabes to it, the shortform is naturally just CC. But the way these guild members of mine like to pronounce it to di siao me, it could only be sissy, sissy and sissy.


And I hated that.

E-mail or Ewww-mail? How it all Began.

You know what is the toughest thing about blogging? Or rather trying to keep a blog going? It's finding things, interesting things, to talk about regularly. As you know, I've been working quite a lot lately and the most exciting thing that can happen in Transcab is when there are complaints and lost reports. And I just received a call from an old man complaining about something in Hokkien. He wanted to talk, I didn't want to listen, and thus he's currently still talking "with me" while I'm typing this. ;)

So there isn't any exciting events lately nor do I feel emo right now, so I guess the only option is to pen down my thoughts which, by the way, are getting increasingly random. And the idea of today's topic came to me when I was inputting my as-long-as-my-brother-down-there email address into hotmail.com. Yes, it's about email addresses.


Throughout my relatively boring 20 years of being on this planet, minus a few years learning how to walk, run and fly, a few more years watching Power Doo and Scooby Rangers, I've had quite a few email addresses. 5 and a half to be exact. (I'll explain what "and a half" means)

So I guess I was around 10 or so, when I got my first email address.

junrenfigo@hotmail.com

Ta-da! Not bad for the first one I would say. I have seen a lot more crappier ones in my life I swear. In fact, some people I know are using emails now that are worst than what I created when I was 10. (I'll leave that for the later posts)

This email address has history man. I spent decades trying to think of something that is cool, awesome, has-my-name-in-it-so-that-people-know-it's-me and one that shows my love for soccer. So I took my name, and the last name of a famous footballer, Luis Figo and combined them into one. And the response to my virgin email address was phenomenal.


"Wow, that is pretty cool man JR!" was the reaction I got from the guys, and "I'm so gonna add you in MSN!" was from the girls which sad to say, I didn't pay attention much to because all I wanted then was to train my Pikachu to level 99.


And so my "cool" email address followed me to secondary school.

You know, I wasn't that much of a popular guy among the girls in secondary school because I like to make fun of them. And one fine day I made fun of the wrong one and thus had to change my email address.

There was this girl in my class and her name is Cheryl. Very nice person when not angered and demonic when angered. And her email address is cheryl_supernass@hotmail.com.

You see, this email address belongs to the select group of email addresses that needs to be read out in alphabets instead of the words itself. Because what I interpreted then, at the age of 13-14, was cheryl_SUPERBIGASS@hotmail.com. Not to help is the fact she really did have one big ass then.

Damn I hope she doesn't come across this blog of mine

And so, I went around telling my pals about what I discovered and I made fun of her with that whenever I see her. It didn't take her long to come up with the perfect response.

junrenFEIGOU@hotmail.com... junren废狗@hotmail.com

From a dashing Luis Figo,


To a god damn 废狗,


From total coolness to an utter pile of crap. In case you don't know what fei gou means, it means useless dog in chinese. (I think) So with that, I had chants of "junrenFEIGOU, junrenFEIGOU, junrenFEIGOU" greeting me whenever I see her and her girl gang.

It had to be stopped. And thus, the email address needed to be changed.

--

In case you're wondering what the hell is nass, it's Ngee Ann Secondary School. Duh.

And oh my god, she is still using the same email address.

Talk about first impressions

Sadly, I'm back in the office at such hours again. Ended up listening to my manager's plea that she doesn't have enough time to plan for another person to replace me for the midnight shift. I could have insisted that I didn't want to, but then I start to think about the damn PSP that I lost back in May and that the pay for this 4 days will come in handy as a form of compensation to the PSP's owner. Hardly motivating, I know. But I've worked more days for nothing before. (my $600 debt) Enough about that, it's one of those "memory lanes" that I do not wish to walk into again.


I was purchasing some stuff at 7-11 right before heading off to work today and there was this not-so-friendly looking guy in his early 20s, dressed in singlet and bermudas and had his body filled up with tatoos. I overheard him asking the cashier if she has any idea where the super glue was. The cashier then pointed it out to him where it was and he had that relieved look on his face.


And it's amazing how fast and possibly inaccurate that I made an assumption about him. "He must be a glue-sniffer" was the first thing that popped into my mind. Makes me feel guilty how I stereotyped him. Tatoos + unfriendly looking + glue = glue sniffer.


But to my credit, I started reasoning with myself that he might not be a glue sniffer. Firstly, isn't super glue a tad too expensive to be used for glue-sniffing? Secondly, he might have broken something in his house and it needs to be fixed asap? And thirdly, he might be using it to fill up somebody's house's keyhole because the fella didn't pay up what he owed? He might be a loan shark instead! Tatoos + unfriendly looking + glue = loan shark harassing people.


It's indeed not easy to not stereotype people.

Speaking of first impressions, I personally do feel that I do not impress people upon the first time meeting them. I've gotten that I look like a smoker a lot. (which is so untrue because I will never smoke, sumpa kuajikualampa). I've gotten I look like a slacker too. (somehow I find this hard to deny) and a lot more negative stuff. Even my ex-boss said I wasn't presentable enough to meet clients. But presentable enough to do an awful lot of sai gang. Ouch.


But hey, it's just that these people haven't got to know me yet. Those who got to know me afterwards all say the same thing about me. That I'm the nicest, sweetest, and possibly the most deluded person on Earth.


However, it's true when they say "How many people do you think will give you the opportunity to show them the real you?" Not many, I'm afraid. Which is why first impressions is so important. And besides you feel good when you look good.

I can't remember the last time I felt good looking good though. It doesn't help when you have to wear a helmet that flattens your hair so much so that it makes you look ridiculously stupid. It doesn't help that my sleeping patterns is so varied that it leaves me looking as though I haven't slept for days. I swear I have that not-enough-sleep look in all my photos in Facebook.


It's amazing how easy I can achieve that "get out of bed" look. Unintentionally of course.

And I'm getting skinnier by the minute, so much so that Wei Jie has been reminding me that I've failed to finish my food even when I leave a crumb behind.


With that, I've identified three key areas that I should work upon. My hair, my sleepy look and my physique. But with National Service looming so near ahead, who needs to impress girls and bosses when all you need to do is to hang out with some insects and ghosts in the forest?

Guess first impressions has to take a backseat for now.