Saturday, January 08, 2005
i'm currently watching some charity show from taiwan right now on azio for the tsunami victims.
yes, i did scream when jay appeared. he donated 1 million NT dollars!! which is around S$50,000. i am so proud of him. i remembered i was wondering(actually, pleading) whether will jay donated or not around a week ago and was really happy when he actually donated 1 million NT.
great job, jay!
he also auctioned off a black guitar which fetched around 1.2 million NT, which obviously will be donated to the tsunami victims too.
and guess what? after that, he acted as operator!! for you guys who are wondering what i am talking about, taiwan's charity donation system is actually quite different from singapore. while for singapore, we are giving a donation number, which basically means how much we donate depends on the number of calls we make. and everytime the call was answered, we get an automated 'thanks' from some star, right?
its WAY different in taiwan. over there, there are around 40-50 operators during the show who will answer your call personally, so you just state the amount of money you wanna donate (which can range from $1 to well over a few thousand to million dollars) and pay via your credit card number or other various ways.
so, jay became an operator for around 15 minutes. he was real damn busy and the phone never left his ear. i really envy the people who managed to hit the bulls-eye by getting jay as their operator.
i mean, you get to say your name and everything, and he will take everything down by WRITING them on a piece of paper. basically, he will write your name and repeat it out to avoid any errors.
i went nuts when i imagined him saying my name. my mother thought i was mad. well, i am..but imagine it! OMG!! but not that easy lah..1/40 chance leh.
but if i had called, i would have increased my inital donation doublefold if i managed to get him. haha.
i didn't call in the end. *sighs* well, i will donate no matter what. to the singapore organizations lah, obviously.
so, the taiwanese were talking how the world had donated generously when a devastating earthquake happened in their own country on the 21st Sept 1999.
i can vaugely remember that earthquake. and i tell ya, my mother was real damn lucky not to be in taiwan at that time as she was taking a holiday overseas. she worked in taiwan for a few years, you see, and only returned back to singapore around 1.5 years ago.
now come to the main point of my topic. as she was working in taiwan, i remembered flying to taiwan during the year 2000 and 2001 during the school holidays. i mean, got house, why not? haha.
so, during 2000, i was in sec 1 lah. it was fun, and i bought a hell lot of things. oh yah, and that was the first time i experienced rebonding.
so, basically, when i returned to singapore, i was one of the few people on the street with that damn straight hair, until the rebonding treatment caught on in singapore a few months later which ended up as a few people on the street
without rebonded hair.
i flew to taiwan myself, in case u people are wondering. well, it was boring. haha. thank goodness its SIA so i had lots of movies to watch and the air stewardesses were really friendly.
taiwanese have this really terrible misconception. they thought singaporeans can't speak chinese. basically, when i touched down, the first line they asked was 'can you speak mandarin?'
*rolls eyes* not the only time, mind you. my mother's friends were shocked when mandarin came out of my mouth. i usually talked english so they will not know what i am talking. hahahhahaah. its the same in America lah. i spoke chinese most of the time when i was there.
so, the 2nd time around, i went with my youngest brother. again, they asked that question. this time right, my mother was really busy with her work so it ended up as my bro and i sitting at home all day, watching cartoon characters speaking mandarin on cartoon network, and eating a hell lot of sushi because there was a japanese restaurant just below our house and they do delivery.
i slept on this sofa bed, which acted obviously as a mattress so i was sleeping real close to the floor. i was reading lots of manga the night before that i borrowed from a nearby manga shop so i slept in late the next morning. so basically, i was sleeping and then suddenly, i was jolted awake.
the whole room was shaking. and very violently too. it was basically, an earthquake. it was an earthquake around the magnitude of 6.3? 6.5? somewhere around there.
i totally freaked out because i didn't know what was happening. i immediately ran out to the living room and saw everybody standing damn still. my mother yelled for me to stop moving so i did. main reason: the shaking could get really violent that you can lose your balance if you are walking.
anyway, a nice sleep rudely awakened by nature. i will never forget that experience. oh yah, cracks appeared on the wall too.
it was definitely very, very interesting.
Written at 10:19 pm