Shut Up and Smile Pt. 1

It's been an incredibly exhausting week, and I'm beginning to feel the stress of taking 6 modules (5 of which are level 3000, and thus far, one of them has stunned me and left me gaping in horror at my sheer empty-headedness), being an editor for The Ridge and in-charge of lugging around brand new Ridge stands, and being NUS Choir Secretary and head of marketing for our upcoming concert.

I won't detail those here, and I feel what deserve a blog post are the bright sparks and good news of the past week.

Let's start with the most recent. Korinna's birthday on Monday cheered me up. 21 is a big step if you ask me (a scary one too), and I felt that this particular birthday deserved special attention. I don't usually give gifts to people (maybe because I can be a real cheapskate), but for Korinna I knew just what to give her, one that was free too.

See, Korinna is this pretty girl who performed for this NUS Rag Day 2005 for Kent Ridge Hall (Rag Day is a colorful event of big floats and costumes and dances), and this got her face plastered in the official NUS Centennial Roving Exhibition poster, among other Centennial celebrations publicity materials. In the Med Library where I frequently use the computers, I have, for the longest time, been eyeing this A3-size Centennial poster just above the PC terminals, and knew that Kor would want to have it. I never quite had the guts to ask the librarian for the poster, until last Sunday. I waited for the place to clear up when closing time that afternoon neared, and waited for a librarian to come by and tidy the PC cluster. Her first response was that sorry, she cannot give the poster because it was NUS, not the Med Lib, who installed the poster in the first place. It was an official NUS poster after all. I mentioned that I needed it for a friend, and she still refused, citing the same reason. I almost gave up but pressed on, saying that the poster was more than a year out-of-date, and my friend (I pointed to Korinna in her confident pose in the poster) was celebrating her birthday. She finally relented, and yahoo I went back with the poster in hand, never mind if the top and bottom parts were a bit spoilt by the masking tape used to stick it.

Anyway to make a long story short, I could tell Kor appreciated it, and even mentioned that her Dad would probably have it framed even. :) And, after reading Korinna's blog, I'm just mighty glad that I had some degree of participation in making a turnaround from what she initially thought was her "worst birthday ever". She's happy. I'm happy too for contributing to that. Plus I had free lunch too. Hehe.

* * *

OK, I'm suddenly busy again. I'll carry on with Part 2 of this post next time.

And oh, the title is this cool fun song by Bowling for Soup. Another line in the song goes, All we need is an ice cream and a hug. Well said you punk rockers.=)