and solitaire's the only game in town
and every road that takes him takes him down
and by himself it's easy to pretend
he'll never love again


and keeping to himself he plays the game
without her love it always ends the same
while life goes on around him everywhere
he's playing solitaire

solitaire... the song by the carpenters, though many others will know it through clay aiken (i.e me) i recently am in love with the carpenters. her voice is like.. so pure =3 i wish i can sing like her sometimes.

i know the full song context is not true, but the chorus did remind me of 2 friends of mine. well... one of them is playing dota rather than solitaire actually =P but the song kinda hits me in the heart and made me reflect.

as if i didn't reflect enough last night.

went out with my buncha choir friends after church service to this place called cafe iguana at clarke quay. chin han... jing han... marcus... olivia (not a choir member, but we love her still =D) they haven't changed much. well, maybe chin han did, in a sense he became some crazy alcoholic XD then i found out that melanie and arthur are joining us as well.

it's been awhile since i saw them. i must admit that seeing arthur does bring back memories. but i'm really glad to see them still going on strong. and it also made me smile to know that arthur still remained the mad ol' geezer, and a friend.

sorry i don't have the pictures to indulge you all. when i get them from marcus and mel i'll post them on facebook i think =P

so anyway, what we did eh? XD all of us sat round the table, and since it was happy hour, we ordered in total 2 jugs of margaritas (lime, raspberry). i also ordered a shirley's temple (yes, non-alcoholic, i'm a good girl =D) marcus had proper food =P and chin han ordered 3 shots XD

may i say that i learnt a lot from this drinking session, so i want to share with everyone my minute increase in knowledge. =P i didn't take any pictures of his three shots. he ordered a 'la cucaracha', 'mars bar' and a '!muy picante!'. well, you know we can't type out the inverted "!", so i just put the exclamation mark for show. XD

la cucaracha is tequila and kahlua (a coffee liquer that is used in tiramisu) i reckoned that it really really does look like something i'll concoct in my chem laboratory. how should i describe it... brown precipitate in a yellow brown solution =D

mars bar is tequila with mars bar, duh. i was given the privilege to have a sip of it. so i did. it tasted like how bailey's would taste like (chocolatey =3) but because it's tequila (and my first time tasting it), the sensation is SO much different =\ i think i won't touch tequila unless i'm at home, where i can probably knock out immediately XD

finally... that ¡Muy Picante¡ (found out how to do the inverted "!" XD) everyone has so many interpretations of how to pronounce the inverted exclamation mark, i gave up XD it's tequila with chili. and we lost chin han to the toilet for a few minutes =P it's strong!!

the margaritas were served in a cup with salt on its rim, and two small straws. according to olivia, it's either i take it from the cup or i take it from the straw. so i tried straw, decided the one with the salt is better, and towards the end decided that straw is still better XD just a note, lime margaritas are still nicer than raspberry.

being in a family of wine barrels (i.e my family can down wine one after another), i wanted to see how much liquor i could hold. but i decided against it, it's too dangerous to get drunk outside, not when your friends promised that they'll dump me by the roadside should i get drunk XD so i only took a little bit more than 2 glasses and that miniscule sip of 'mars bar'.

no worries, all the time i made sure i behaved myself in public, so i lost no one/organisation/school's face. i told my eldest sister about the 2 glasses of margaritas and she said 'small case, man. gimme a jug' =P i shan't continue commenting about my family's high threshold for liquor, but at least they know when to stop and such. =)

still, this really reinforces that there's always a whole pool of knowledge behind every aspect of society. i really love to learn things, and i'm so with those people who say 'knowledge is a never-ending pursuit.'

speaking of which, i was sitting in the train after service to clarke quay, when a kid, maybe about 5-6 years old, sitting next to me asked his mum "what bird is that?"

i turned around and saw that it was the white crane-like bird that is sooo commmon in lakeside area. i don't know the name of the bird, but i can describe it as the one with the white plumage and the yelllow beak XD so anyway after a while the kid concluded that it was either a flamango or an ostrich. i really wanted to laugh =P

but i was still impressed at his observation and analysis skills that he related the bird's long neck, legs and white plumage to that of the "similar" traits of the flamango and ostrich. believe it or not, that's the first time i thought a kid was cute. 0.o i just hope that the kid will grow up knowing that it's not a flamango nor an ostrich XD

anyway, i searched it up and found out that the bird is called an egret. to be specific, it SHOULD be the intermediate egret. picture shown below.



my friend said this to me just a while ago,
"when you love someone,
you cannot bear to see him/her hurt."
sorry to disappoint all you gossipers out there,

but i didn't think about any guy at the moment XD
i thought about God...
how many times have I hurt God's feelings?

Words of the *~PaRaNoId QuEEn~*
amazing grace that saved a wretch like me.