Friday is Blood Donation Day

And today's Friday. Hence I am going to donate blood today. Haha crap title and crap first paragraph.

Let's start over. I'm feeling restless today - the good kind though. Like my mind's racing 100kms per hour and my body's just sitting in front of the computer, letting my mind be, knowing full well that it will come back when it's exhausted from all the racing. But in the meanwhile the mind's just darting in circles, dabbling a bit here and there, jumping from topic to topic in leaps and bounds.

OK there's this thing about learning a new language. Some time within the week I decided that I will take up an European language. I don't know where it came from but it came and it stuck and then I figured that I would do something about it. So I googled it and found out, to my utmost joy, that NTU actually has a language school that teaches some languages. I could choose from French, German or Spanish. So then I shot an email to the German coordinator, just for the heck of it, to ask if I could participate as a postgrad student. Turns out that NTU DISCRIMINATES POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS ACTIVELY. Yes you can quote me on that, in all its capitalized glory. We have no buses after 9pm though our classes end at 9:30 (so we have to walk), postgrad students are excepted from exchange programmes, we have to pay to use sports facilities while staff and undergrads don't, the list goes on.

So anyway. I have to get private lessons or join a group class. Private classes cost about $70 per hour, which is something I obviously can't afford - and group classes are held extremely far away so the commuting will be a killer (like 3 hours to and fro). I don't know. After taking into account Val's suggestions (and he doesn't have one ounce of national pride in him) maybe I'll take French instead and commute every Saturday afternoon. Kristy thinks I am nuts. Maybe I am but I am a cheerful and happy nut.

*break for a while to check through some group work*

I don't like it when people change my stuff. Fine if you're some editor who's good at what you do. But - oi - "confidential" is not equal to "confident" ok. And a series of other idiotic mistakes that I don't want to reproduce here. Thanks for doing something completely counterproductive, wasting more than 30 minutes of my time, weeding the questionnaire of spelling, grammatical and logical errors, basically restoring the whole thing to its original form except that yours is in Excel and mine is in Word, and yours has pretty little boxes that people put ticks in and mine didn't. Appearance does not surpass substance. Fuck you. RAGERAGERAGE.

I hate group work. Did I ever mention that I hate group work? I hate it with all my guts and intestines and - well, my entire digestive system. Anyway I sent him an email which was quite blunt and curt, i.e. "I hope you shrivel up and die" or something to that effect. Actually nothing to that effect lah. I'm too nice =_= . But blunt and curt nonetheless.

*back from the Blood Donation Drive*

So. After lunch I realized that I didn't bring my passport and hence would not be able to donate my blood. But since today's Friday and Friday's Blood Donation Day I decided to go back to the hostel to get my passport. Hence began my arduous journey of waiting for the bus for 20 minutes, getting my passport, waiting for the bus for 20 minutes again, getting on the bus, getting lost in the labyrinth of North Spine, finally finding the Blood Donation Drive place, realizing that the process would take "one hour plus plus plus", walking back to my office, getting some reading material, going back to the station again, and finally registering myself.

Then I waited. Then I queued. Then I waited. Then I queued again. Finally I got to the last station where the nurse would mark your vein. The nurse tried my left arm. Then my right. Then she took off the blood pressure thingy and told me that they. couldn't. take. my. blood.

......

I was like, wha..?

My veins were too soft, both the left and the right. If they took my blood, my vein would collapse half way and I'd be just wasting my blood. Maybe next year.

I walked out of the place feeling totally and utterly dejected. When I got back to the office Yuen and Kristy couldn't understand my utmost disappointment and proceeded to laugh at me. I was like, "I don't understand why you don't understand me," and they were like "it's just blood" and I was like "it's not just blood, it's my blood! Good AB positive blood!" And then they got tired talking about blood and talked about university applications instead.

It's just that... I really wanted to make a small difference somehow, outside my daily routine, that would help someone somewhere out there. And all the effort I put in - just wasted. I felt quite inconsolable. You get what I mean? OK fine noone understands me.

I shall stop here.