Wherein I have a Family Meal and Meet an Idol

Despite my hair-loss problems (Take take heart) and my resolution to avoid any kind of outing in the next week, I was obliged to accompany the family to a steamboat meal in celebration of Mothers' Day. I consider it a bourgeois commercial venture to make people spend more, but mother considers it the least I could do to make up for nine months in the womb and twelve hours in the delivery ward. I think it's a good deal, considering even if I celebrate another 40 Mothers' Days exclusively with mother I still won't make up for more than two months.

Anyway we went to some awful steamboat place which was packed, and ended up playing the waiting game on some poor family trying to get their dinner in. Daddy is very good at staking out tables, although his offspring are more content to hide in the corner and be pushed around by the aunties and their voluminuous descendants. I think the price was the draw - about S$10 a person, plus the place was air-conditioned - a draw for any food establishment under twenty in Singapore (I believe it explains much of the success of fast food chains here). The food was decent enough, though the service tended to be in the form of grunts and "Si mi dai zi!?"

Said offspring went off to play pool after dinner, leaving mother and father to go home alone. It is strange to realize your siblings are already of an age where the age difference between you is less obvious, and you can shar ethe same interests now. I think I suffer from anachronistic elder-sibling superiority complex, with the assumption that somehow I wil always be wiser, more mature and more successful than my younger brother and sister, though in truth it's probably just an illusion brought about traditional chinese belief. It doesn't help that I'm male - freudian theory probably has me plotting to murder my father and take over the place as male figurehead.

Turns out that I'm not that bad. Being a physics major has the tiniest of perks, and having to mechanics is useful for improving spacial imagination, if nothing else. Oh, and having friends like Take who like to bounce balls, of course.

The irony of children abandoning their mother on Mothers' Day to go enjoy themselves will not be commented upon.

Brother dearest went off to Pasir Ris to do more of his cycling after pool, so sister and I went home together. The self-indulgant pig wanted cheesecake, so we went to a Coffee Bean, where this sister-indulgant pig bought her some. And...

We met Sylvester! Sylvester Sim, Singapore Idol runner-up, beloved of chao ah bengs all over Singapore and my sister's personal favourite Idol! (meaning she won't buy his album but feels a little guilt ripping it off from friends) I took a picture for my sister, but most unfortunately she blinked, and I got a bad shot. Sylvester looked rather impatient, so I was rather too flustered to ask for another shot, and by the time I noticed my sister's usually small eyes were smaller than usual in the picture it was too late - he had already grabbed his generic-ice-blended and rushed out.

Of course, I felt a little bad for ruining my sister's chance to take a picture with greatness, so I did the only thing I could - I photoshopped her eyes back on. The results:

Without eyes

With eyes added

Sister complained she looked ugly. I replied that it was due to the simple fact that my subject was, in fact, ugly. She failed to concur, which is unfortunate, because I think I did a pretty good job (not too difficult considering the image is so low in resolution). Could you tell if it was photoshopped, even if you were looking?

Anyway, I hardly thought about my hair the entire day. It's like being a recruit again after a while. You know people are looking, but you just don't care, really.