Do you people believe in ghosts?

Well I don’t… but something happened to me last night that made me kinda confused..

You see, Emily returned to her hometown yesterday and I was all alone. I went drinking with my friends and got home at about 1am. I then watched some TV and slept at around 2 – 3am.

But in between 3am – 5am, I was crudely awakened by some sound. It was a scratching sound. Something like a jagged fingernail scratching on my pillow… and it was right in front of where I was facing.

I then opened my eyes, and I saw slight movement on the surface of my pillow, as if somebody was repeatedly tucking it from the side. The scratching sound stopped as soon as I opened my eyes long enough.

Unsuspecting of anything, I went back into my sleep. As soon as I close my eyes back for about 10 – 20 seconds, the scratching started again. And I could feel movements on my pillow – SOMEBODY WAS INDEED SCRATCHING MY PILLOW!

I sat right up to look around, lest it was a burglar or something… and checked the pillow to see if I could make up any sense out of the mysterious scratching. Somehow at that groggy state of mind, it didn’t occur to me that it could be something paranormal… and I was looking for a velcro patch which might produce similar sound… or perhaps a curious rodent who thought my pillow was itchy…

I didn’t find anything and went back to sleep… still, unsuspecting of anything. But when I came to my senses this morning, only then I realized what had happened last night. I told my mom what happened, and she went to consult some religious medium about it.

After checking with the moon, stars and some cosmic force of unknown awesomeness, the religious medium managed to find out… that there was indeed something ‘dirty’ in my room last night. No it wasn’t a Norwegian stripper (not that kind of ‘dirty’). It’s a FUCKING GHOST! Apparently, some stray spirits took liking of me and followed me home, and that scratching that I heard? It was the boogeyman. Or woman. I don’t know.

Supposedly, the medium had activated a spell that SHOULD repel the ‘thing’ away – but he issued me a caution, asking me to be alert in case there’s anymore strange things that may happen tonight… and feedback to him if there’s any.

o_O

I am now in a fucking dilemma as I’m typing this. I told Charles on MSN a moment ago, that I finally understand how my friend Luis felt, when we abandoned him in a haunted hotel room at Singapore a few years ago…

Goddamn!

I hope it’s not going to be a very long night tonight…

You see, there is this electronically locked door that leads into my office. Every time an employee intends to access the office, he/she will have to scan it open using their electronic badge. I presume that it is there to keep out non-employees or unauthorized bums from entering the office unnecessarily.

But then, as always, such shallow measure is usually not as effective as the authority expected. Most of the time, these ‘outsiders’ would just wait around for someone with access to unlock the door, and they’ll just tag along to get into the office. It has always been like this and most employees don’t really give a damn about it.

This was exactly what happened yesterday. Encountered 2 Indian chicks waiting around by that door when I was returning from my coffee break. Like what I always do, I ignored them and scanned my badge against the scanner. Once the door was unlocked, I swung it wide open… so that it would not close too soon and lock those Indian girls out again (I’m a nice guy).

But just as the door swiveled to its furthest reach, I suddenly heard a loud yelp, suffixed with someone yelling “AMMAAA!!!!” (that’s “MOTHER!!!!” in Tamil). It was one of the Indian girls. Apparently, she was standing right behind the door when I swung it open, and it wedged her flat onto the wall like a steamrolled cicak.

I initially wanted to apologize, but changed my mind after a short while’s worth of consideration.

1) I was afraid that I’m gonna burst out laughing at her face instead of apologizing
2) She was too stupid to deserve an apology for standing behind an opening door
3) She was trying to enter my office illegally anyway.

I then decided that I couldn’t be bothered and walked back to my desk chuckling to myself.

I was at Charles’ place checking out his new Grand Turismo game, when I saw his husky maid came loping down from the upper floor. That was strange – I thought, as I recalled him saying that his maid had absconded from his house a couple days ago. Feeling that it’s appropriate to ask about that, I asked

“Eh dude, I thought you said your maid had gone AWOL a couple days ago?”
“Yes. Why?”
“I just saw her walk into your kitchen”

Charles turned his head to look and said

“That’s my sister lah!”
“Your sister?”

That’s right. His sister. Who used to be petite and slender, has now turned into something that resembled an amalgam between an Indonesian maid and a crude oil barrel.

“She’s pregnant and had horizontally grown in size. Scary isn’t it?”
“Sheesh! I thought she’s your Indonesian maid!”

Being a jackass as he always is, he the yelled out to his sister and said

“EIIYEERRRRRR [sis' name], look at Michael… he’s so bad.”
“What?”
“He said you looked like an Indonesian maid!”

FYI, if you haven’t already knew it, the last thing a female would ever want to hear is someone complimenting on her sheer size of terror. So, naturally, right at that very moment, I was kinda bracing for the worst… probably a few screamings or maybe even, flying objects towards my direction.

But fortunately, she didn’t go apeshit… just shook her head in disappointment and went back upstairs. Me and my lucky ass (and big mouth).

I can be a such a prick sometimes…

Note to my friend Charles: I hope your Grand Turismo CD would get corrupted and your PS2 console explodes, fucker.

Tell me people, how many times have you encountered situations where you flip open a menu in a Japanese restaurant, you have no frigging clue what they have to offer inside there? Just… what exactly does it mean when you see something like “Tempura Susihfuoishuidh Suhfduishjifdskj”? Is that a fish? Is that a chicken? Or is that some exotic cow’s pancreas that’s edible? You have no idea. That’s because, you ain’t a Japanese. (Or you’re a Japanese language illiterate like me)

That is when I would find those little descriptions in English under that litany of Japanese culinary jargons useful. If I want to eat raw salmon, I’ll just go look around for something in the descriptions that says “raw salmon”. That’s how it works for me. I won’t even bother to make any attempt to pronounce the name of the food I’m going to order. I’ll usually just point that thing out and let them take the order accordingly.

I was exactly doing that at a Japanese restaurant yesterday. After ordering my bento meal out of the menu, I sort of forgotten about what I’ve ordered after chatting with my colleagues. That wasn’t a problem for me until one of the waitress came over to our table holding a bento set … and asked me in a soft spoken voice:

“Sirrrrr… did you order SUhfuhfduhu JHuhuhdjdhkjshkj Bento?”

Shitttttt. I don’t know. How would I know? I tried to peek at the bento set if it’s looking any similar to that I’ve ordered, but… I couldn’t tell the difference (coz they looked so different from the pictures).

“I don’t know” — I replied.

She gave me a befuddled look, probably thought I was some disabled guy that couldn’t even remember what I ordered 5 fucking minutes ago… and then turned to the rest of the guys if they have any idea whose bento was that. Like me, the guys didn’t know either (almost all of them ordered a bento set). So, the situation was like, a few blokes productively looking at each other not knowing what they had ordered.

It wasn’t until a few seconds later, one of the guys finally figured that he ordered the first item on that bento page (which he had no idea what the name was) – only then, the waitress managed to cross reference it with her memory and delivered the bento set to the right guy. Fucking hell.

Having experienced that, I can’t help but wonder, why do we still pay for that 10% service charge if they can’t even work out what we have ordered? And what’s the rationale for them to confirm our order, again, by quoting the order’s name in, Japanese? Instead of taking the trouble to ask, can’t they just write it down in some way so that they fucking know who ordered what??

As if it’s not already bad enough, I had an upset stomach after consuming that box of bento and purged some slimy shits halfway through my important work. Goddamn. I ain’t going back that place anymore.

I experienced it AGAIN. The feeling of wearing a thong. I’ve blogged about my first accidental discovery before … and very well learnt the lesson not to wear a loose underwear to work ever again.

But this time, it didn’t happen at work. It happened out of sheer randomness. You know, when you’re very sure you’re not gonna make the same stupid boner you’ve been reminding yourself not to make ? Then WHAM – it just happens.

This time, the fault lies on my loose shorts. You see, I was in my casual attire – a pair of bermuda shorts and my flip flops. Was doing something fairly important when I realized that my shorts are shifting lower at the waistline. Well, that was because I had heaps of stuffs in my pockets, you know, keys and shits like that. The weight of those stuffs kept pulling my shorts lower mooning out my underwear-ed ass.

Because I do not fancy exhibiting my bum to the public like those ah lians, I took some effort to pull my shorts back up each time it slides down my ass. So it was kinda like a routine thingy, me pulling my shorts every few minutes or so. But there was this one time, I pulled the wrong part the whole thing. Instead of pulling the sliding shorts, I made a mistake and pulled MY UNDERWEAR!

And because I pulled too hard, it sort of created a nasty wedgie right in the center of my buttcrack. If you can imagine the situation, my underwear is now higher than my shorts and my buttcheeks felt cold like they were naked like that. If you remember Marky Mark and his infamous Calvin Klein underwear advert, yeah … it’s almost the same except, I’m fucking doing it with a wedgie !

My reflex was fast, I hopped to a secluded corner and even up the whole situation by doing some frantic tuck-in’s. In the process, I also surveyed if there was any reputation damage been done. Thank god, no. I couldn’t imagine if the entire blooper were to be witnessed by a kid … could probably scar that little guy’s childhood and turn him into a deranged serial killer or something.

I was unlucky for the indignity that happened, and a little bit lucky that nobody saw it.