"Good" Things Come in THREES

AHHHHHH I can't believe this!
For the 3rd time my phone has failed to wake me up in response to a recall!!! UTMOST 'SWAAY-NESS'! The first time was a comms check from the Ops room, but because my phone was set to silent mode i couldn't hear it, not even the vibrations. If not for my full bladder (thanks bladder), i would never had been able to pull myself out of bed close to an hour after the comms check initiated, and see my phone overloaded with dozens of miss calls. I got a warning. That was several weeks ago. Strike One!

Yesterday there was an activation 4am in the morning (Yes, Four Fucking a.m.), but i didn't even hear the vibrations. My phone's battery had become dead flat halfway through the night. Again, if not for my full bladder i would not spot the phone being battery flat, and i would not be conscious enough to charge it. I only saw the miss call timings after the phone is charged up, and by then it is already pass 6 hours. Strike TWOOO!

And now, Today. Yet another comms check from the Ops room, this time it was initiated at 8am, an hour earlier than the previous one weeks ago. Thanks to my full bladder (okay, this statement is starting to sound creepy) i woke up at 10am. Whoops - one hour too late. Strike THREEEE!
So what do you get for 'Strike Three'? A harsh, cold and short scolding from my OC, and the chance again to ... SIGN THE BOOK for THREE TIMES EXTRA!!!! *insert dramatic "dumm dummmm dumb" SFX*

Sigh.

Honestly i don't know what's the problem. My phone has, uncannily, failed to wake me 3 times in a row, intentional or not. I did try to rectify the problem after each 'strike'. After the first one i *made* myself switch the phone to 'sound' from 'silent' (i always have the 'bad' habit of leaving it 'silent' ...What's so bad about preventing noise pollution?). The second time remindered me to charge my phone before i sleep, and preferably with it on (Again. I like to charge it only when i is truly flat and switched off. Prolongs battery life. Well that's not important now, is it?) ..Now, the third one. My phone was in 'sound' mode before i slept, and after i woke up. Problem? The volume setting was at the lowest, (Probably doing my part to subconsciously prevent noise pollution, again) and i slept right through it. Like a dead log. Or pig.

Although it *always* has something to do with my phone, i can't blame it for everything gone wrong - the problem is really with me... perhaps my dependancy on having my bladder wake me up as well. (okay it is starting to sound gross.) Sigh...*A very loud one, as loud as my sneeze.* :(

Summer Nights from the Tropic of Cancer (Seafood Romance Remix)

it's been awhile since you heard me... had been running around in my head for a while. Like reading a lengthy comprehension and hi-lighting all the fancy sentences. And there's the clock. The train has to run on schedule even if it simply wants to run off the track, lie down on the green grass and rust. But it can't. It couldn't. Not now. No animals and children allowed on the tracks. Roadkills take time to be removed. Ring the bell. Please. Now.

Awhile ago i visited this small beachtown by the sea. It was deserted and abandoned: a once happy and bustling little settlement with palm trees aplenty, brimming with eternal sunshine & bliss. Where happy people dwell without worries of tomorrow. Now all that remains is the ghostly buildings on this town, lit only by the pale waning crescent moonlight. The moon gleams almost nonchalantly at this sun-forsaken town. The dead trunks of the palm trees swayed in the bone-chilling wind, like burnt-out birthday candles that were still stuck on the mouldy birthday cake. The sand from the beach had eroded into the streets, and the ocean has already taken what was once the outer half of the town. i walked along the sandy street, with only the wind whispering her curses into my ear. I continued to tread on the path until i realised that i am now wading knee-high through water. The road i was walking on had led me to the ocean. i looked around, and i saw a funny thatched housed rested high upon a few seemingly weak wooden poles, like a kelong, except it had a really round roof, like it was made of clay. I waded towards the house and found a ladder that leads to the house. It was made of small branches and twigs, tied carefully and patiently with strings of old hair.

It is dark inside, the smell of smoke, the ocean and musk, tinged with a bit of chlorine hanged in the still air. The house is stacked full of aquarium tanks and bowls of all sorts and sizes: from the wooden- boarded floor to the seemingly infinite top reaches of the house. The tanks covered most of the walls, each inhabited with a creature, or rather, a denizen. On the top corners of the tanks were illegible scribblings, probably the name, description and feeding details, and magical tales of each inhabitant. In the centre of the room is a frail old man sitting cross-legged by a small fire. The old man has a large headgear frilled with a long line of white feathers tipped black at the end, and holds a long smoking pipe, puffing small clouds of smoke out like an old engine. He lifted up his deeply carved and wrinkled face, illuminated only by the small fire and beckon me to join him by the fire. "Tea?" he pronounced with a gesture at a small teapot sitting on top of the small fire. Now that i'm sitting beside it did i realize that the small fire was actually burning off the wooden floor, but it did not matter to him. I looked around the room, and i see the glowing eyes of those who dwell in the tanks, probably reflected off by the small fire. Or not. Suddenly the old man lifted up his hand and pointed his long smoking pipe to a paricularly small tank at the side of the room, and spoke. And i hear David Attenborough.

In that small tank dwell not the tiniest humpback whale that ever existed, nor the outlandish grasshopper-fish adept at aqua-acrobatics displays, but a simple creature called an anemone. It is pink and shaped like a broccoli stalk, only that its top is covered with an umbrella of yellow feather-like tenticles. On a rather battered but beautiful seashell with the shades of the rainbow, the lone stalk of anemone resides, flipping its feathery tenticles in and out rapidly to pick up food. Every once in a while a strong ocean current sweeps through the tanks, and the seashell-attached anemone is swept violently up and around the tank, knocking on the glass. However this was not the case not so long ago. There was an inhabitant in the seashell, and that was the hermit crab. It was a shy, introverted and soft-shelled creature, and it was unprotected. On a quest for sanctuary, the hermit crab stumbled and fell as it transversed the ocean floor, and by the fates the crab found a comfortable rainbow-coloured seashell, which had just been tossed around by a previous ocean current: one that would provide shelter and in which it could call home, and came complete with a resident anemone. The anemone and the hermit crab worked together and depended upon each other: the anemone protects the crab from offensive denizens and stings them with paralysis, while the crab takes opportunity to consume the stung prey and feeds scraps to the anemone in return, and carries the anemone along, safe from the violent ocean currents. In this manner both anemone and crab lived, supporting each others' short-comings with their strengths, and they were happy.

However, one day after a harsh spell of ocean current the anemone found that the shell was empty. The hermit crab isn't there anymore. The Anemone recalled of the hermit crab's vulnerability and its depency on the shell, which it has now abandoned, and the anemone recalls (as if it has any organ remotely brain-like) of its careless stingings on the hermit crab. These careless stings are usually harmless, but to the hermit crab, being vulnerable with a soft shell, it was probably less than comfort. The anemone tries to seek out (again, as if it has any organ remotely eye-like) for traces of the hermit crab, but every attempt is discouraged by the merciless tossing of the ocean currents. Disorientated and despaired, the anemone sits on the seashell, hopefully awaiting the day when the hermit crab finds its way back to the shell, and tells the anemone that same thing that the anemone wants to tell the crab: "i can't live without you after all."