So yeah, I just had my bath and made myself some supper (instant noodles). Do you know that instant noodles here cost twice as much as in Singapore? Plus it is incredibly hard to find, only those bigger supermarkets sell them. Anyway, I was working out after posting my previous entry. Yeah, I am working out a lot more lately (like five times a week), primarily because the gymnasium is right next to the laundry room, and I do my laundry pretty often as I am only given two sets of uniform. We are supposedly ‘allowed’ to use the gymnasium at night as long as there are no members present, and so far, it is empty around nine, but to be safe, I only work out after ten. It takes about forty minutes to wash my clothes, and another forty to dry them, so all in all, I work out for like eighty plus minutes every time I do my laundry.

Well, I was saying, the food do take some getting used to, generally speaking, I am doing much better these days. I no longer need a map when I walk around Woodmere as I have already memorised most of the streets by heart. There are two supermarkets nearby which sells the daily essentials I need and then some, and I have located the nearest post office (most of you should have got my postcard by now, and you are welcome). I recently discovered a local grocery store which I frequent regularly for my vegetables and fruits, and I bought a prepaid mobile phone, opened a bank account (with Chase) and of course, I now know where to get cheap international calling cards and tasty Chinese delights. And oh, there is this liquor store which sells cheap whiskey and the lady boss, a (South) Korean, mistook me for one of her fellow countrymen when I first entered her shop. Seriously, do I really look that much like Yoon Ji Hoo?

There are a few sushi joints which I have yet to try, but I have made befriended this café owner which sells traditional American breakfast. Her name is Susan, she is in her forties and she runs the place with her brother-in-law. If you can recall my Facebook status, I went jogging after my very first night in Woodmere Club and was starving after my beef jerky dinner, so I settled down into her corner café for a hot cup of coffee and some toast. Having my first meal there was quite an experience, because thus far I have only seen such cafés on television and movie screen. And I left a tip on the table, just like the Americans always do, and just like I first imagined myself it. The whole thing was kind of surreal, if only I did not f*ck it up at the beginning.

See, ordering American breakfast is a f*cking pain in the ass. First, your coffee and you have to tell Susan if you like some milk and sugar, and if you prefer skim milk or regular milk, Sweet’N Low or regular sugar. Then comes your breakfast. Omelettes, salads, sandwiches, burgers, whatever- I had omelettes that morning. Now, you have to let Susan know what sort of eggs you like (egg whites or regular ones), scrambled or otherwise, and you want either bacon or ham with it, and if you want it by the side. Then you come to the toast, and you have to choose the bread (whole-wheat, white, rye et cetera) and if you like it toasted. So, after five minutes of talking, you are finally done. In the same five minutes, some of my friends have finished having sex and subsequently became pregnant, and I have only, well, finished ordering my f*cking breakfast. In Singapore, we just say “bak chor mee, mee pok, ai hiam” followed by our table number, and then we tell the drink-store lady “kopi-o” and that’s it, we are done ordering our breakfast.

But Susan was very patient and she took her time to explain everything to me- that was something the American drama serials and movies never taught me. She was rather friendly and she gave me advice about a few places in town I could hang out at night- like the pub (but that is another story for another day) and the movie theatres. Oh yes, I just caught The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 yesterday at a cinema in the next town (fifteen minutes by train). Well, a pretty average movie, the only interesting thing being fact that I just got myself acquainted with the New York subway system a couple of weeks ago and now I am watching a film about a robbery of a subway train. I kind of like the Ryder character played by John Travolta, a man who would stop at nothing to get what he wants, a smart man at that, but apparently not smart enough. Denzel Washington deserves a special mention for his rather touching scene with his wife about the gallon of milk she asked him to buy on the way home.

Well, as you can see, I am adapting better with each passing day, and like I have said, I am a product of my environment. Then again, adapting is one thing, Americanising is another. Unfortunately, I have to go to bed now, so I will blog more about the American’s way of life next week. Till then, take care and goodnight, Singapore.

You know everything takes time.

It is fifteen past seven right now, and guess what? I am on the rooftop right now (my very own ‘fortress of solitude’ I told you guys about in my last entry), sitting on one of the edges (don’t worry, it is only three storeys and I have the reflexes of a cat) and telling the world my thoughts. For obvious reasons, my laptop is currently on external battery, so I have got a little more than ninety minutes to complete this particular entry of mine.

I doubt it is a permanent thing, but the New York skies are f*cking bright even at seven in the evening. I was out walking about Woodmere town the other day and you barely even need the headlights to drive at nine at night- that is how bright it can get. By five in the morning, it is already as bright as a Harvard law graduate. Anyway, today was another of my off days, and I was supposed to go to the library after lunch but it was drizzling and I decided against braving the rain a second consecutive week (it always rain when I want to go out, f*ck). In the end, I spent the afternoon watching the Confederation Cup match between United States and Spain with my colleagues and managers (South American and American respectively).

I just made myself some dinner and as I snacked on some beef jerky now, it kind of reminded me of my first dinner in New York City. Well, I shall let you in on a few things first. Woodmere Club never does any breakfast, and there is no dinner either from Tuesday to Thursday, unless there is a special reservation of more than twenty. Lunch is slow on these three days too, and it is only on Fridays and weekends do business picks up. There are always functions on such nights- weddings, charity events, farewell parties, birthday celebrations et cetera, and these events often involve more than two hundred guests. Mondays the club is closed to members but opened to public, where people pay (a ton) to have a round of eighteen holes on the golf course, with breakfast, lunch and dinner included.

There is food every single day at half past ten in the morning, but dinner (at five in the evening) is selective, only when there are events and such. Whether I am working or not, I can eat for free, but like last Monday, there was a huge downpour on Sunday night and the greens could not dry in time, hence the public golf outing was cancelled, so I had to find my own three meals that day. Now, back to the packet of beef jerky- yes, that was my dinner for my first night in America. It was miserable, yet memorable. Let us rewind a couple of weeks.

The pilot somehow manage to fly twenty minutes faster (he must have turned on the Nitrous or something), and so at half past six in the morning, my plane touched down at JFK and I took my first step on American soil. After settling the babysitting duties Best Agent Ever assigned me, I made my way to Woodmere Club alone. I already printed all the maps beforehand (I stayed up the whole night before my flight researching on Google Maps), but the 0.8 mile specified on the website seemed a whole lot longer when one is jet lagged, carrying two huge bags and not staring at the destination from a laptop screen. F*ck.

I made my first friend at the train station (Stan, an elderly man with a head full of white hair ala Magneto), and as I told you before, I kind of stand out with my Asian skin and golden hair in little Woodmere, plus, everybody love to chat me up, even sixty-year-old grandfather. Miraculously, I managed to reach Woodmere Club five minutes early and I was then introduced to the managers and staff- they were all really lovely. Well, I already knew beforehand (from Best Agent Ever) that I was going to be the first student ever on this work and travel programme to the club, one of the so-called ‘pioneers’ and therefore I was particularly keen about leaving a good impression (before my two douche-bag-roommates showed up the next day and ruined my master plan).

I was showed my room and the cooks made me lunch and then, one of the Filipino waiter living next door brought me out to buy some stuff (a bottle of shampoo, some milk and THE packet of beef jerky). I took a nap and woke up at nine only to find there was NO DINNER. But I did not want to give my new friends and colleagues the impression that I was particularly difficult or high-maintenance or anything. So I took a long, hot bath and settled down to have the pitiful packet of beef jerky and a glass of milk for dinner, before MSN-ing some of my friends in Singapore (who were already missing my presence in their lives). So, yeah, that is about it- my first twenty-four hours in the United States of America.

Sh*t, I am almost finishing my packet of beef jerky- a constipation-inducing food. See, I was constipated for like the first few days I arrived and only unloaded my first pile of sh*t on American soil on the fourth day or something. Plus the food the club feed us is not helping my bowel movement at all. They American love meat, and I do mean LOVE. The only vegetable they eat on a daily basis is potatoes- how the f*ck is anything going to come out of anybody’s ass with only f*cking potatoes? Every single meal, there is filet mignon, lamp chop, chicken breast, and yes, baked potatoes (all leftovers from the event the night before). I am not complaining as it definitely beats army food, but I really need to have some greens and fruits in my diet.

Anyway, I got to go now- my laptop is dying! Anyway, I will continue my entry after I do my laundry and work out.

Later.

You know I need to go.

Finally, more than two weeks after I first embarked on Operation ABJ, I found the time to blog about my life here. There are so many things I wish to tell you, which is only natural since this is like a totally different environment and a whole new way of life that I am still getting used to. So, let me start with now.

It is a rainy Thursday afternoon and I need not work today, so I braved the rain (with this pitiful umbrella I borrowed from my Filipino roommate) and made my way to the Woodmere Library. Seriously, the roads in America are pretty f*cked up compared to Singapore. There are holes everywhere and the roads are never entirely flat, always slanting to the sides and forming countless puddles of water. And no, I am not speaking about those tiny little puddles you can jump over when you go jogging in Choa Chu Kang during a drizzle, but these big-ass puddles that are at least ankle deep and as wide as Shaquille O’Neal’s waist. Anyway, while I was on the way here, a motherf*cker Cadillac Escalade drove over one such Shaq-like puddle and if it was not for my Pepe Reina-like reflexes, I would now look like some wet, homeless Chinaman seeking refuge in the confines of a public library.

So, I am currently in a quiet corner listening to Augustana while typing away on my laptop. There is like this cute college girl sitting across me, studying for her SAT or something. But she is most definitely jailbait- allow me to explain. American chicks are way different from Asian chicks, besides the bigger cup sizes and everything. American girls are generally bigger, and their body develops earlier, but the main problem here is the way the young ones dress. I mean, fourteen-year-olds here possess the fashion sense of twenty-year-old slutty Singaporean university students. Remember the translucent top and black brassiere which Sheena wore? Yeah, girls my youngest sister’s age (fifteen) dress in exactly the same way on the streets. I mean, these girls know they have a hot body, and they know guys want to f*ck them but cannot, so they are taking pleasure in being the ultimate cock-tease their age allow them to be. And yes, I have checked, the legal age to have sex in New York (it varies from state to state) is seventeen, hetero or homo.

Therefore, in conclusion, girls in the States usually tend to look older than their age suggest due to the way they dress, and hence, eighty percent of them who catch my eyes on the streets are in reality jailbait- now you know what I mean. Anyway, I am currently shifting my attention away from this supposedly ‘college girl’ to this MILF librarian who has been bending down in front of me and arranging like these same four books for the past two hours- I heard they can be quite the cougar.

Okay, back to Woodmere. It is a quiet little town in Long Island, an hour’s train ride from Manhattan. It is right next to JFK and its population is mainly made up of Jews, filthy rich Jews at that. As observed from the photographs of the members’ cars I uploaded onto Facebook, these f*ckers are super duper rich, and my club is a private club where most of its members are old, wealthy, retired multi-millionaires (I heard from my colleagues that a number of them are victims of the Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, and we all know how rich you have to be for Madoff to want to cheat you of your money). Lunch at the club is like meal time at a mini Jewish retirement home, only difference being the one million-carat diamond rings on the fingers of the ladies and the car keys to SLK 550 which the men places on the tables.

The only Asians in this little town are the Indian owner of the local convenience store (which sells cheap booze and even cheaper international calling cards) and this handful of Chinese who run the local Chinese take-out (aptly named Chen’s Kitchen). Speaking of which, I have visited the restaurant like half dozen times already in the two weeks plus I have been in Woodmere- I surprise even myself at my attachment to Asian cuisine. And yes, here in Woodmere, I am totally made to feel like I belong to a minority group- just the other day while I was jogging, I got stared at so much I thought I was (a naked) Megan Fox. Anyway, work here is fine, weekdays are as quiet as the Emirates Stadium when their team is three-nil down to the English, European and World Champions, while weekends are as packed as the current Bernabéu dressing room. The waiters here are all Filipinos while the cooks and cleaners are mainly Hispanics (Mexicans, Ecuadorians, Chileans, Puerto Ricans and Hondurans). They are all generally friendly, and I am practising my Spanish on a daily basis with them.

There is hot water in the bathroom (especially useful on rainy nights where it can get below ten degree Celsius), free internet connection (though it disconnects as often as Best Agent Ever’s iPod), a refrigerator and we can use the club’s kitchen freely after work (an absolute heaven for a master chef like yours truly over here). The only not-so-good thing is my Virgin Mobile connection is kind of sh*tty in the room, so I have to climb out of the window (in the toilet) to get to the rooftop where the connection is slightly better. And oh, the lovely rooftop. I love hanging out alone there at night, making calls to friends and family in Singapore, watching planes fly by and admiring the stars (when the skies are clear). It is also the place where I spent most of time reflecting on my time in America.

My two roommates from Singapore (on the same work and travel programme) are not exactly the best (as compared to my roommates in Brunei), and living with them, I have learnt to become a ‘bigger’ person. As in, I learn to have a bigger heart, to be more tolerant of their selfish behaviour, their princely, pampered youngest-child-in-the-family attitude. They whine a lot, and they are so very MCP- I mean, I know I do have my MCP moments as well, but that is only because others mistake my independent nature for something else. Well, looking on the bright side, I am kind of glad I am forced to live with these sh*t-heads as this is the only way I will grow up and learn to be kind to people who do not deserve my kindness.

So, sixteen days into Operation ABJ, even though I have yet to achieved my primary objective (the blowjob), I have learnt a whole lot about America, about Americans and about myself. Another three more months of Americanisation beckons and I am whole-heartedly looking forward to it. Anyway, I got to go Chen’s Kitchen now for my bi-weekly dose of Chinese food, plus the cougar librarian is going to break her back with all the bending and squatting she has been doing if I do not give her some of my attention soon enough.

You know I am not quite the same from what I made myself out to be.

It is six in the morning and in another twenty-four hours I should be halfway across the Pacific Ocean, provided my plane does not get strike by lightning. See, the news is just in that Air France Flight 447 has gone missing halfway across the Atlantic Ocean. I was telling Ayu about it, and he was like all pussy and sh*t, telling me he never enjoyed flying and flying is equivalent to eating Indian Rojak. I taunted him by calling him Dennis Pussy-kamp, and he responded by questioning just what exactly do I fear. All right, the swine flu did pretty much nothing to dent my determination in getting that elusive American blowjob, and now even with this French jet and everything, I feel an even more urgent need to get blown by a blonde before my plane do an Oceanic Flight 815 and polar bears start f*cking appearing in tropical rainforest.

Well, I would be lying if I said I had no fears. For one, I am totally afraid of Liverpool winning the EPL in my lifetime. Okay, I am not afraid of death, what’s new? Like I have reiterated in my previous entry, death, like love, comes most unexpectedly, and there is absolutely no way it can be prevented- so my point is, why fear something you are can do nothing about? I do have my fears, say, I do fear leading an unfulfilled life, and I do fear not being remembered.

Like everyone else, I have my goals and my dreams, and I am afraid that I would be unable to achieve them before my time is up. And I am scared that when I am alive, I would not have done enough to love my family and friends, so much so that when I am gone, I will be forgotten, just another tombstone stuck in the ground. Most of all, I fear leading a life of mediocrity. With that, I am not referring to a lack of wealth or fame, but the sense of insignificance. When I want to close my eyes for the last time, I want to be able to tell myself I led a life full of meaning and purpose, and I was happy making those around me happy.

So, why am I still heading for New York among all the uncertainty? Well, I don’t exactly know, to be honest. A part of me just wants to be alone, as in “alone” alone, a place where the only person who knows me is me. I hope to find myself, to find my meaning in life- I am twenty-four now, coming to twenty-five soon, yet I find that with so much of time I have only achieved so little. All I have with me are just my life experiences, people I have known, places I have been, knowledge I have gathered, and that’s about it. I feel I am capable of so much more, yet where do I even start? I am not too sure, perhaps in New York I will find what I am looking for.

I just heard the national anthem go off on Class 95- the first time since my secondary school days, if my memory serves me right. Well, I need to go pack my sh*t now and to those who texted me with your well wishes, I appreciate them very much. See you when I get back, if I get back, that is.

You know I will be out of sight, but never out of mind.