August was definitely a month of surprises, blessings and happenings for me. In various ways, things dropped into my paths in the most unexpected fashion, and created much excitement.
I guess some greater force out there is taking some sympathy on me, and still showering me with luxuries despite getting broker-er. For that, I am thankful.
If you haven’t been following me on Twitter, you probably wouldn’t hear of my incessant whines on a daily basis, and you wouldn’t have figured out that I have pretty much chronicled my life in bits and pieces over there.
And it is perhaps old news compared to what my tweets have to offer, but for the first time in my life I have won a contest!
I have never quite won anything in my life, especially in contests, and since I was never quite a sports person (see how lazy I am and you probably can make out why), medals and competitions are definitely out of my league too. As much as a gambler I am, I don’t actually invest in Singapore Pools at all. No 4D, no Toto, no S-league, not even on football. Is that much of a surprise I still remain a pauper?
Anyway.
The time when I had blogged this piece for the awareness of cervical cancer, and the responses had been overwhelming. I had someone from Japan sending me a note, I have a friend who went for pap smear and found abnormalities, I have had people going for vaccination after it. In a way, it was such a relief, and at the same time, it was the understanding, the support, as well as the message that was shared with others that triumphed all the other feelings I had felt prior to the posting of the entry.
After that post was up, I submitted it for Nuffnang POCC awareness blog contest, but shortly after my site was down and I have had since shifted from joewei.net to the present www.scarletscandals.com. After submission, there was no reply from anyone to acknowledge anything, and I kinda assumed the post was perhaps not read or not submitted since my site was down for quite a while back then.
When the dates were way past, I gradually forgot about the entire contest, and it was on one late afternoon of 12 August when an email came in to inform me I have won the 1st prize to the contest.
1st prize??
!!!
??!!
Okay, I have not even won any sort of consolation prize before (eh, fine, when I was in primary school I took part in a nationwide Chinese composition writing and I got consolation and won $50. I still kept the plaque cos it was the only thing I had ever won), so winning the 1st prize, what the more by merits, was something that had never happened to me.
And I was a happy camper when I collected my prize the next day since I was in the area, and met up with Boss Ming for a drink and a brief catch up before I scooted off to Sim Lim.
It was a nice catch up, and hearing his trip to Rome and all.. I could almost feel the excitement of the Moscow trip all over again, though I probably was spared the heartache of not witnessing the defeat in Rome.
Since I was in Sim Lim, I was seriously contemplating on selling the iPad since I wasn’t quite interested in it, and was wondering if I could make like, say, $500 to tide the tight month over.
It was an imported set of 32G Wifi. And at that time, the supply was still pretty scarce and when I was at Sim Lim, the boys were quick to want to have a look.
Immediately I had quite a few offers cos it was still minted in its coat of plastic.
Then this shop owner who actually wanted to buy it from me, told me that the retail price for an imported set is actually higher and asked if I am seriously considering selling.
And then I realised it wasn’t as cheap as I thought it was. I had thought its retail price was $600 you see.
The silly thing is, most people would think that if it is has a higher retail price, you sell it better, right?
It works the opposite for me. It actually tempted me to keep it. And the fact that I am such a hoarder, makes the iPad a tad sentimental for me to part. I mean, it was something that I had won by doing something meaningful… and.. I think Minibean will kinda enjoy it.
So the moment I decided to keep it, the boys were quick to deflower it.
The boys then quickly threw in their suggestion of what I should do with it. Keep it. They said I could tweet, I could blog and facebook with it. Guess what, that worked, and I said “Okay! I shall keep it!“.
And then ah.
It resulted in a damage of $100 OUTPUT for screen protector and casing.
Got slightly frustrated cos ended up must output for it. Bah.
Nonetheless, Minibean had great fun with it, and learnt plenty of stuff with it, to the point that nowadays the first thing she saw us, she wouldn’t greet us but would ask, “Do you have the iPad with you?“
Her favourite games include the memory matching game where you flip 2 cards over and match the animal pictures, and she is pretty darn good at it.
With the iPad, I also taught her how to handle losing, and that everything in life is not about winning. You have to learn to take defeat, and not let your ego get in the way. Sportsmanship, I told her.
Once she learnt that, I started to “put water” and let her win, hahaha.
She loves to play Angry Birds too. Though she is pretty glad when one bird managed to hit ANYTHING.
Eventually, the casing to the iPad was sold off, because someone who had bought an iPad for a day and bought they original iPad cover had decided to sell the iPad away after ONE day cos she grew so bored of it. So she was left with the original cover which she then passed on as a gift.
Which quickly became fingerprints laden, since it is like Minibean’s toy too.. Was given this silver apple logo sticker, and the cover has since got a cooler sheen to it.
Some of the days you didn’t hear from me and with me obsessed with me-time, I was busy playing this:
And I can’t believe this is what I forsake $850 (which I could probably sell for) bucks for.
Before it was loaded with games, I brought it home on the first night and after 5 minutes, it retired to a corner. Ever since, I have strict instructions to Minibean when she plays with it, cos it does hold something special to me.
***
My string of luck with the iPad seemed to continue on 22nd August when I helped out at an event and a contest of efficiency got me a tie with another chap. It came unexpectedly cos I was having fun and wasn’t one of those serious contestants for it. Perhaps the having fun part made it less pressurising and made it less of a chore and more of just something random.
The prize was.. yes you guessed it, an iPad. A 16 G wifi model, which if I have my hands on it, would probably be sold off.
I was told I did win by statistics, but seeing the amount of effort put in by the other chap, I felt the incentive could be his (maybe cos I already had already won one just a week before), or shared both ways.
I didn’t know how the arrangement worked out, but I was informed by organiser that they would actually give out cash incentive cos it was easier to split that way.
I was pleasantly surprised and pleased that I was awarded $500 for that day of effort, and since I would have sold the iPad anyway, I would think $500 for half the iPad was the best arrangement it could be.
YAY!
***
14 August 2010 – Citi Mobile Race
Was invited to a Citi Mobile bloggers event by 24Seven on one particular Saturday morning. As the event’s embargoed date is only recently lifted, I couldn’t blog about it earlier.
It was a hilarious Saturday morning when I woke Joanne up to realise she was already leaving home, because she had thought the meeting time was earlier!
I was jokingly saying we both will probably get lost cos we are both so clueless and blur.
The meeting place was at the airport, which makes it like the X-th time I head to the airport in recent months.
I had wanted to bring the iPad just in case it came in handy but had forgotten to do so as I rushed for the cab.. which was not on the agenda cos I had wanted to train down to Changi Airport.
I am just so spoilt. Tsk!
I nearly couldn’t find a partner after Jiali was last minute-ly caught up with her preparation for her trip, and thankfully, a very spontaneous Joanne helped to fill the role, and I couldn’t have asked for a better companion for the day!
I ended up having breakfast with her and her parents, which I got all jittery and now I know when men meet their partners’ parents for the 1st time, the nerves must have sucked!
I was somehow very glad to meet Brian, who was helping out, after meeting him the last time during Yasmin Ahmad’s event. I hope his arm had since recovered cos it was in a cast on event day!
We were then ferried to the nearby JetQuay, which is quite an exclusive lounge area, to be briefed.
I don’t remember what Claudia said, but I just thought the expressions captured on the girls’ faces are pretty… priceless.
Maybe it involved something about how they are gonna torture us or something.
Pardon the fat arms, I really don’t know where they come from. I would like to say they are muscles, but you guys would already know how much of a queen of denial I am so I am not even gonna bother to try.
A group photograph before the race commences.
We were then given $30 for travelling and off we went for the race. We were supposed to finish covering 5 locations in 3 hours, and take 4 pictures at each location.
The first one was Changi Airport, where we spent the most amount of time, and were the most energetic and creative.
We were supposed to think of ideas to show that we could bank anywhere and anytime with Citi Mobile.
And by anywhere, we really tried to think ANYWHERE.
Alas we didn’t take into consideration that the phone reflections might not work just about anywhere for us to capture the right angle.
So we ended up having awkward picture like this:
And so aptly, I had my passport with me, so it looked more convincing!
So these are pretty much what we were up to, and thanks to the input of Joanne, we ended up doing really silly things, and talked about really silly things and laughed ourselves silly.
We even jumped onto the shuttle train’s pole to mimic our pole dance moves, and there were some passengers on the train who started to snap pictures of us, and you could hear the clicking of the handphone camera snapping away endlessly.
We were so engrossed that we didn’t even bother to shoot dirty looks at them. Talk about dedication!
And then I ignored everyone’s stares and did this right outside Terminal 3. As you can see from reflections, it was not a quiet corner. I even had 2 uncles who walked past and asked to help Joanne and me take a picture together, before we said it was for a contest and I was short of telling them I am not crazy.
I even took the T3 slide just for photo-opportunity, much to the chagrin of the kiddos who had to wait for me to finish before they could take their turns.
Next stop we rushed to Orchard ION.
And I actually like this! It was supposed to show the joy of me on my payday after checking on Citi Mobile.
Then there was Bugis (where it rained) and I got splashed water at the fountain by kiddos, Chinatown, where we were delirious from the heat and fatigue that we lost our way after going to Clarke Quay for the final checkpoint that we couldn’t even find the restaurant for meet up though it was just round the corner.
We were tired and hungry!!
This is what hungry face looks like and I just wanted to eat! Apparently you can find special promotion for dining stuff through Citi Mobile too. So this was one of those I submitted as one of the 20.
Like I said, the 2 blur queens took some time to find the others who were already digging in!
The funniest part was, Joanne’s phone died exactly at this point. It threatened us with low-battery during our 2nd or 3rd checkpoint cos we were consistently trying to get the best angle, best idea, best pose so we took countless. Not surprise that it almost gave up on us but it hung on till the last minute! Awesome!
Then we had to upload the pictures and choose the shots. Joanne was at the helm of it cos my burnt brain cells don’t work well with anything fruit-y (it was an iMac).
We had to choose one, and eventually, this was what we chose:
And it was a mega surprise, cos with so many participants and plenty of creative bloggers, we were eating halfway when our names were called as 1st runner-up!
I stared at Joanne and we both went “OHHH WE WON SOMETHING!” and dropped our food to go up together.
It was $200 Takashimaya vouchers! Yay! Shopping time!
I think the best part of the day was the awesome people we met, of course there were not-so-awesome ones, but it was the blessing I counted.
And most fabulously, the company of Joanne. My favourite part was when we sat by the river, watched the boats cruised by, shone by the piercing late afternoon sun, but it was nice.
Very nice.
The cute thing is we didn’t co-ordinate our expressions and somehow everything turned out similar.
And oh, she was the one who suggested us to turn up in same colour outfit, and even though National Day was just over, many people still turned up in red and white!
And thanks babe, it was fun running around with you, and I think it was damn funny when we both started sprouting nonsense cos we were just so delirious and mumbling.
I think it wouldn’t have been as fun if not for someone as sporting and spontaneous like you, who actually egged me on when I was just too tired to go on.
And YAY! Vouchers to go shopping with 
Told ya I was very, very much blessed for the month of August. And hopefully, it will still hold true for the months to come 
