MICHELLE'S 2ND VISIT

In which a best friend returns and a huge watermelon is presented.

The door bell rang, and I eagerly opened it. Standing there was a charming girl with a huge watermelon. She had bought a watermelon for me because she felt bad coming empty handed. How sweet is that? The melon itself was as sweet as her.

After exchanging greetings, I handed the melon to my mother who was wondering what to make of it. Anyway I brought her to my room. Seeing that nothing has changed in two days, she and I wasted no time and got down to do some serious work.

I started off by showing her the progress I made with her stuff. I do not know why but I tend to get all excited when I explain anything or show my progress to others.

Realizing I was in the way I did the gentleman thing and offered the computer for her own use. Well it takes about 5 seconds before anything registers in my head. You can call me slow, but I have this tendency to day dream even between conversations. My mind likes to drift.

But before we did anything, I need to have two missing video files converted. After copying over these files, I have converted them. And proceeded with the help of Michelle to replace all the avi files with the mpeg files.

Somehow I have a problem looking at long file names. Even if it’s clearly distinguishable, my eyes seem to created a sense of unworldly doubt.

After the tedious replacements, we exported a test video. While the video was being exported, I told my mother it’s was time for our lunch. I specifically told my mother to cook those dishes because Michelle loved them and also I need to eat as much good food as possible before my national service enlistment.

You can’t blame me; my grandmother and mother have spoiled me with great tasting food. My mother even says my tongue is like my granny’s, a cook’s tongue, able to detect even the slightest flaw in any dish. That’s the reason why I have had a hard time adapting to outside food.

Mainly because today’s cooks don’t know how to cook a proper tasty meal and most Singaporean’s have lousy taste buts. Funny but I oddly remember my good friend Yi Siang once said to me and I quote “The Chinese will eat anything that walks.” Please don’t take this remark as an offence; I was write honestly about everything that comes to my mind.

Back to the meal, I can see Michelle was trying her best to eat as much as she could. As a host I kept encouraging her to eat more.

She was in fact in my estimation looking more slim and fitter. It’s a real compliment to the time she spends in the gym working out. Another nice quality about Michelle is she pretty much speaks what’s on her mind. My mother used that to her advantage and bored her with my family story.

I just interrupted my mother to look at both sides of the story before passing any kind of judgment. I tend to stay natural in matters mainly because everyone has their own version of the story to say.

My mother often says I side with the other party and not pledge my allegiance to her. As Martian Luther King Jr. said wrong is wrong no matter who does it. So I simply follow it, it’s just they fail to see their own errors.

After the meal and the chat, we got back to the task at hand. The video export was complete but the file size was enormous. But the main problem was that I now had audio problems. Somehow my premiere screwed up the audio where they were cuts in the edit.

I was really disappointed. After trying various methods to solve the audio problems, I realized that my premiere itself could be the problem. Just a week before, I had cleared about 17,000 infected files in my pc manually and my virus scan came up with additional 997 files. The files were mainly dlls and there were even some .exe files.

So I quickly made a decision and asked Michelle to burn those converted mpegs home and try it out on her own computer. Luckily she only needed 4 cds to copy these new files. While the cds were burning I asked her to play Smackdown, Here Come the Pain on my brother’s PS2. Although she admits she isn’t a good gamer, I will tell you that she learns quickly.

We had fun playing the royal rumble and various matches. She was even dumbfounded by the aerobatic skills of a 450 pound man named AKU, which I incidentally created for the sake of cheap entertainment.

Later I asked her to create her own wrestler. She named BJ, after her idol and nicknamed this fellow as the heartbreaker. But the really funny moment was when she was creating the actual character appearance; she had accidentally selected female clothing’s for her male wrestler. I admit that male wrestlers do have big manly breasts but to wear bras, it just so funny.

Anyway I won’t be erasing this character as it reminds me of her. Although there's a lot more tweaking that needs to be done, I will keep Mr. BJ on the active roster. And by the way, her character actually won the royal rumble when my brother and I played together. He threw out the mighty Shade to win the rumble, my current world heavyweight champion.

As it was getting late, she decided to head home. I walked her to the door and I thanked her for coming. A while later I stood at the balcony until she left in the bus. Not sure why I do this, but I always see like to see friends return home safely.

Overall it was a very fun day, it fact it was more fun than her first visit. Please don’t mind the spelling and the bad grammar, I wrote this blog like in 13mins 12secs. And yes, I did time myself.

So till my next post ya, its bye from Ganz.

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