A 3 Day Weekend

I had planned to spend Saturday at home most probably glued to the PS2 controller trying to finish up my already 150 plus hours of Final Fantasy XII. Fortunately for me, something else came up quite early in the morning. At around 9 am, my mum called up to tell me that my sister finally got an on-campus dorm after her successful appeal. Having started the new semester at college without on-campus living arrangement was quite a burden for her since she had to commute from my parents place in Selayang to Shah Alam every day. It was so dire that they actually had made plans for her to stay with me in Sunway should the university rejected her appeal for on-campus living quarters. For obvious reasons, that arrangement would seriously throw a monkey wrench in my living arrangements.

Fortunate for me, my sister got her room at the same dorms that she was in last semester and was moving in on that Saturday. Since they were heading my way, my mum called me up to see if I would be able to meet up with them for lunch and shopping that day. Since I didn’t really have anything else better planned, I agreed and the came to pick me up at around 11:30am. First stop was for lunch at Subang Parade since my youngest brother was also looking for a ready made suit for his convocation ceremony. We had lunch at Secret Recipe and catch up with the latest news of the family. We hit the stores after lunch to look for the suit that fit my brother.

My youngest brother is the tallest and the skinniest of all of us in the family. Shopping for clothes for him has always been an adventure as it’s hard to find something that fit him. In fact that’s a trait that everyone in the family shared, we would always have problems finding a particular item of clothing that fit us. For me it’s always been pants. Unless they are tailored, I could never find a pair of pants that fit me comfortably. Since he needed the suit in short notice and under a limited budget, getting one tailored for himself was out of the question. The first shop that we went didn’t have any suit small enough for his size. We then went to Subang Parade Parkson Grand where there were more suits but the closest that we found was too short in the sleeves.

From Subang Parade, we went to Sunway Pyramid in search of a suit that fit my brother. We finally found one at the one of the boutiques there at a fairly reasonable price of RM410 for suit and pants combo. My brother wanted to find a shirt for himself so he’s budgeting for another RM150 for that. I have to say that it was much cheaper than my first suit that I paid almost RM 1000 for but only wore twice before I got too fat to fit into it. Hopefully my brother will have better luck with his. I have to say that it was a bit surreal helping my youngest brother, who I remember having to change his diapers when he was a baby, pick out his first suit. It’s just one of those milestones that one would think you would only go through when you have children of your own. Guess I’m lucky that I will get to go through the experience twice in my life.

For Sunday morning, I had an inter alumni bowling tournament to go to at Sunway Pyramid. Since I suck at all sports including bowling, I was not taking part in the tournament but was then to lend my support to my alumni team. Learning my lesson from last time, I purposely went about ½ hour after it started so I can avoid having to explain why I could not be on their team if they were short of bowlers. I can hardly break 80 per game when I bowl for fun and there was no way I am going to embarrass myself bowling with people who have triple digit bowling averages in a competition setting. What I could do however was to show up and give me support to the team since it was close by to where I stayed.

Our team didn’t do so well considering they only had 1 practice game before while the other teams was sending people who bowled weekly as a hobby. Our team did however walked away with the most lucky draw winners having 5 out of 8 lucky draws going to the people to my alumni’s team. We joked that the reason for our alumni getting so many lucky draws was that it was ex-TKCian and STF alumni pulling out the slips for the lucky draw. Our school have long histories with those two all girls boarding schools ! I stayed around for the refreshment that was provided and talked a bit with the boys about our upcoming joint 3 boarding school 50 years celebration dinner next month. While we all agreed that the table price was quite steep, it was not something that we would miss since it was a once in a lifetime event.

The bowling tournament ended around 1 pm and I had my weekly groceries to pick up at the supermarket. Since I did my groceries there weekly, I didn’t really have a lot to buy and further more buying too much would be a bother to carry all the way home without a car. Having given up on heavy dinners nowadays, most of my groceries consist of yogurt and bread for the week anyway. I did pick up a fitted sheet for my sofa bed at home which I’m still trying to get used to even as I type this. I don’t really know what got over me but I somehow decided that it might be a good idea to cover up my maroon sofa bed with a banana green colored bed sheet! I now have this bright green thing in the middle of my cramped living room that it is really hard not to notice. I guessed it was better than my first choice of a canary yellow bed sheet.

Today was my monthly Monday off day. I always try to one get in once a month since I had to go and do my banking since they stopped opening banks during the weekend. Things has been much better since Hong Leong bank put in a cash deposit machine in their Sunway branch. It was much more convenient to use it and not have to queue up to pay my card bill at the counter. I also dropped by my Maybank branch to check on the status of my property bank loan which unfortunately is still under their legal department review. I’m getting quite worried with the slow progress but there is nothing that I could do other than wait for them to complete processing it.

The other thing that I went out looking for is the new Harry Potter book. I had decided not to reserve my copy at the Sunway MPH as they were selling them for RM109 per copy when you can get the same copy at Carrefour Subang for RM 69. The difference was large enough for me to get it from Carrefour instead. Unfortunately they told me that they sold out all their copies within 1 hour of opening their Harry Potter display on Saturday morning. They didn’t tell me when they were expecting fresh stocks for the book but they would have it eventually. As much as I’m dying to read the last book of the series, I guess I have to wait till they have it at Carrefour again. Even if I wanted to pay the RM 40 difference, I doubt that I could get a copy of the book in KL now. I wouldn’t be surprised that they sold out everywhere in KL.

Came back home thankful that it did not rained today since I had left my washing out to dry after getting drenched in yesterday’s rains. Messed around with the laptop for a while before working out for about 1 ½ hours today with the exercise machine at home. The diet and work outs have really helped me control my blood pressure. A recent check had me at 145/95 now from a high of 196/115 and this was just a result of diet with moderate exercise. I know my doctor would be so happy for me as he has long wondered how on earth I was able to walk around with that high a blood pressure I had before without bursting a blood vessel every time I sneezed. I’m still at borderline hypertension levels with the latest reading but at least I’m on the right road to beat it.

As you can see, my weekends are not at all exciting unlike some people’s weekend. Always been a homebody and I guess I will always be one.