Murphy's Law : If anything can go wrong, it will.

My original planned title was simply 'Spring Clean Weekend'. But as I thought about it, why am I spring cleaning this weekend, it turned out to be the workings of Murphy's Law!

s

Can't remember who I told but I mentioned early this week that preparations for Chinese New Year for me come in 2 parts - spring cleaning the house and shopping for new clothes. Knowing Hubby will not 'encourage' me to kick off the former, I said I am likely to be doing the 2nd half of my CNY prep this weekend - shopping! (which I prefer to anyway)

d

Ironic, isn't it? Instead of jousling with the crowd at Orchard, I was clearing out my store room. Main reason was because the Prince fell sick during the week and secondly, Jess was supposed to come visit after lunch and someone was coming to deliver a CNY hamper between 2-6pm. Moreover, there's my Grandfather's birthday celebration in the evening so it's better for everyone to rest well before leaving in the evening for the dinner.

l

For once, it felt good throwing things away because we are quite tight with storage space at the moment as the Prince's 'assets' (a.k.a toys) grow over the months. Found a box of a VCD player, which both Hubby and I felt it's too outdated to own a VCD player nowadays and we should give it away... only to discover the box was empty! Honestly, cannot remember what happened to the player.

l

It was a good thing Jess couldn't make it in the end, because Hubby started having running nose, even before I started meddling with the dust on the items from the store room. So both of my boys are currently out of action, and hence I am going to make the final (and possibly the most accurate) Prediction for the Year of Chicken: Eliza is going to fall sick soon, likely before she hits the Year of the Dog on Jan 29th 2006.

j

As I thought about CNY of the past few years, I have vivid memories of me being sick during this period. There's a year where Hubby was travelling for work and I decided to 'rough it out' by cleaning all the glass windows at home before CNY came. (If you have been to my place, you know my entire side of living room is covered by glass). Fell ill and remembered I was wondering whether my bodyaches were due to the flu or the 'workout' I had.

ld

There's another year where we went to Haerbin with my parents for CNY. I was at the tail-end of my flu and was so afraid I'll catch pneumonia or bronchitis for visiting such a cold place (0 to -30 deg celsius). Then there's another memory of Hubby driving me to look for any doctor which was opened on the 2nd day of CNY. I had throat infection at his Granddad's home in Seremban and was clunging my throat on the 1st day of New Year. Found a non-chinese doctor back at P.Jaya who was working.

k

Ok, coming back to the topic of Spring-cleaning. We have 2 big bags of clothes and 1 scanner and 1 printer to donate. Question is, we lost the drivers for the equipments, so I am sort of feeling bad for donating equipments which cannot be used immediately because of missing software. Can someone please tell me whether most drivers can be downloaded from the Internet nowadays? (ok, this is presuming whoever got the scanner /the printer, is able to afford internet access).

s

I wanted to 'spring-clean' myself for the New Year as well. I may celebrate Christmas but my beliefs for CNY are still stronger. I believe the new year is a start for any change in luck and other elements. I believe that we shouldn't sweep our floors on the 1st day of CNY so as to keep the dust (fortune) in. I believe in staying up late into the night - 'shou shui' (watch age, if literally translated) for my parents as a symbol of preserving a longer life for them. I believe everyone in the family should at least have a set of new clothings to start the year with.

k

So, since I am unable to shop this weekend and I doubt I have a chance to step into any malls during the week, I thought it would be nice to have 'new looking' nails, i.e go for a mani and pedicure. Sadly, 2 places I have rang told me they are fully booked, the moment I mentioned "today or tomorrow?". (This experience actually reminded me of what my boss told me during my appraisal - "There are many different ways to say No" - but I shall touch on this another time.)

j

Nevertheless, I am still hopeful (am on the waiting list) for a chance to get my nails done. If no manicure by Wednesday, I promise I will cut my own nails. (If have time, will paint).

f

By the way, we didn't make it to Granddad's place in the end. The Prince napped late and we would have been late, plus we had another casualty in the house so we were 'excused' from attending. What's more, the hamper only arrived at 7.30pm due to "bad traffic" around Singapore.