r - it's garcon, at heeren level 4. i don't know if they have any more of those carved belts though, because they said don't carry very many of each type of belt, and they're essentially a clothes boutique so not great for belts if you want variety = as far as i could tell, they had four colours in the belt we bought, and they had another braided belt. i might be wrong about the braided -- heeren's full of braided belts. oh there's another little shop near fourskin, in the annexe, with LOTS of belts. quite cheap i think, but nothing quite as gorgeous as the garcon belt.

*

I HAVE MY HARRY POTTER!
Woke up at 530am - miraculous, because I thought i'd be last to wake up, but as it turned out i woke up, showered, dressed, had breakfast and ended up waiting until almost 635 for my dad and brother to be ready. so dad dropped us off, finally, at 645. brother met his friend, i met daph. we stood in line excitedly. the line was all the way around the circular atrium in wheelock and out the door onto the side facing orchard mrt. we went and got purple balloons which said "I GOT MY HARRY POTTER AT BORDERS". we watched through the window as they did a countdown to 7am and then said nasty things about the people who got their books first and who walked away smirking. we plotted to kill them by hitting them over their heads with their own books (oh the poetic irony) and then grabbing their books. then daph's mom called to say there was a much shorter line at the counter inside, next to borders bistro. so we went there, got the books. i got the adult cover which i think is nice and mysterious looking, my brother got the kid cover. then of course my brother dashed off with his friend -- the only reason he'd stood in line with me is because i held The Pre-Order Form.

then went for breakfast at a prata place in river valley, with daph and her mom and brother. i've never had prata at a proper prata place before! haha i am such a sad case. (by the way by prata i mean the singaporean/malay type, not the type that i eat at home and at indian restaurants because that's actually very different. It's made of a different type of flour that my mom insists is much healthier, and it's made drier. and we call that 'roti', or 'chappathi', or 'paratha' if it's got stuffing.) actually i think i might've eaten prata at a prata place once. some place in malaysia when we went to visit some friends and we were hungry on the way to see some mountain, and i was really really young and it was the first time i'd eaten prata and it was very good but for a long time my mom refused to buy me prata because she was appalled at how oily and floury it was. then we occasionally bought those frozen prata things from the supermarket. and then i was older and could buy my own prata, but i probably never did buy my own prata before coming to RJC. then i've had a lot of prata at school, and there was prata at the resort in tioman as well. but never had any at a proper place that specialises in prata. and the prata this morning was v v good. wasn't hungry enough for more than one though. must try more prata places. (omg did i just devote an entire paragraph to the history of my prata consumption?)

after that it was raining cats and dogs. and my jeans were getting wet. my havaianas were comfy and pretty good for walking in rain but they didn't put much distance between jeans hem and ground. so the bottom of my jeans got nicely soaked. thank god i didn't wear the new jeans, because those still have to be altered because the legs are a little long. i should've just left them for alteration on sunday. now i'll have to go to taka to give them, and go back and collect them. or send my mom to collect them, to save myself the inevitable detours i will take during any trip to taka. thankfully this morning when i was in orchard everywhere else was closed or else i might have broken promises to myself regarding paul smith pencilcase etc.

then they dropped me off at the paragon taxi stand to get a cab, because i had to go to east coast park. why did i have to go to east coast park in the pouring rain, you ask? because of the straits time 160th anniversary thing, which involved a puzzle and a lucky draw for a mazda sports car. and my mom has been collecting the pieces and solving the puzzle over the past few weeks and she figured out it was east coast park. and she sent ME there because my parents had to go somewhere this morning. i obliged because i am such a nice person but i so shouldn't have. it was a nightmare. thankfully i went to the coffee bean at paragon and waited for a while for the rain to slow down, because ECP was a nightmare. the traffic was insanely unmoving so that after about 15 minutes in the jam i got out of the cab and walked the rest of the way to the macdonald's in the slight drizzle, and despite that the cab cost me about 18 bucks. and then the macdonald's area was disgustingly crowded because, of course, 1.3 million people read the straits times and of course a significant number are not going to give up the chance to win a car. so i found the car, and the stage where some guy from wkrz radio was playing stupid games with the audience like "if your IC has the numbers 6, 8, 2, and 5 bring it here and you win a prize!" and some semi-finalists from the Straits Time School of Rock contest were performing so there was a lot of amazingly noisy music.

so i had to go and put the lucky draw form in a box and then wait till noon for the lucky draw itself. along with a few thousand people. and there was NO place to sit, besides a few benches which were still wet from the rain. so i stood under a tent thingy, plugged in my iPod, turned the volume up high to drown out the sounds of the noisy bands, and tried to read my harry potter. and then walked around a bit because i was so pissed off and tired and hungry and did i mention PISSED OFF. so basically i was there, standing for about three hours straight because the lucky draw finally ended at 1230. didn't win, of course. 0then there was the inevitable exodus of people, so everyone was trying to get someplace where they could find some transport back. so i walked to the underpass, because there was no chance i was about to get a cab right there. and also, for some reason, my phone was refusing to send messages or connect phone calls. i think there must've been so many people there that networks got jammed. so everyone was walking to the underpass. it was quite funny looking at a few thousand people walking in the same direction. it really looked like refugees moving, or pilgrims, or something. of course, the whole thing was a bit of a pilgrimage wasn't it. equally hopeful and somewhat pointless.

the underpass was really scary. it was crammed to the hilt with all the people, and i briefly wondered if it wasn't just the perfect place to put a bomb that morning, and how would my parents feel if a bomb did go off there with me in the building, given that i'd already made my mom feel fully guilty for sending me to that nightmare place. anyway, got to other side, and was in hdb area that i could not identify. so like some sad little explorer i kept walking north (ie away from sea) and finally got to a road with a recognisable enough name - marine parade road.

and thankfully my phone was working. parents told me they'd pick me up although i just wanted to get into the first moving thing i could put my butt down in. that meant cab, because the buses were really full. but of course there were also tons of people waiting for cabs so i told my parents to pick me up. unwisely, because they said ten minutes and ended up taking half an hour, and i still couldn't sit down because the bus stop was full of people sitting, and i was waiting on the pavement. and i reckon i could've got half a dozen cabs in that half hour. but finally the parentals picked me up with profuse apologies. and i got home, had a shower again to get rid of the grime and ate lots of lunch. and slept till about 645. woke up to a mostly empty house because brother'd gone to play and parents disappeared off somewhere. so i ate a huge salad sandwich my maid made. she's lately gotten rather experimental with stuff.

and then i started writing this post. now it's almost 8. what a waste of time!

need to go off blogging again. and i need to figure out why i've had two such bad saturdays in a row. the long, undisturbed afternoon nap today was good though. my parents, out of remorse, fully condoned the wasting of time on sleep, whereas normally they'd be all "you're wasting your life sleeping! don't you want to get up and DO things? like study, for instance?!?!?!?!"

no, on saturdays i just want to sleep. the rain this morning would've been perfect for sitting in my room and reading my harry potter, or sleeping of course. given the events of this day, i've barely gotten through 80 pages of the book and i'm terribly afraid i'll get spoiled if i talk to anyone! ok am off to read and eat dinner now.