Jessica wrote home at 9:35 am

It's the new year! Currently I'm torn between updating on my New Year's Eve/Day celebrations and the first day of school. But I think New Year's sounds better, no?

Well, you just have to hand it to WH, who only told me about it past midnight on Wednesday morning. Thankfully, I'm nocturnal and had just spent, like, 2 hours doing some cloning research, so I managed to call back within 15 min. Admittedly, the prospect of a New Year's Eve buffet/steamboat wasn't really enticing, especially since it was too late to ask my parents, plus Cheryl wasn't going, so I took a long time deciding to go, making up my mind to finish my essay before I left for Tampines...err...later.

Anyway, at nearly 4.30 p.m. I reached Tampines, rushed to Times to buy the Career Guide 2004 (btw, if those are the only jobs Singapore has to offer, then I feel really sorry for myself), then dashed back to the MRT control station to meet up with everyone. Turned out that (including me) only six people were going (WH, WK, ZY, E, YQ). V and H would join us at Marina South.

When we got there, the place was just starting to fill up, so we started the steamboat immediately. The guys basically did all the cooking first while I tried to identify all the different meat. In the end I gave up and ate anything they gave. Of course, by the time THEY settled down to eat, YQ and I were already full so they didn't understand why we could only eat so little!

After that V and H came, H left, and a little past 9 p.m. (whereby we had spent some 4 hours eating!) we decided to finish the remaining food by playing that guess-the-number game. The second time I lost, I protested that the food looked totally inedible, so we all left instead. Haha. :P

To compensate for our looooooong dinner, we decided to walk from Marina South to Suntec City. Which sounds like no big deal, except it took us over an hour, making our way through a park (not without a few photos), then just as we had reached a dead end across the river from the CBD, someone remembered a staircase nearby leading up to the pedstrian part of Benjamin Sheares Bridge! Using our handphones as lights, we found the staircase fairly easily, then climbed up to feel the rush of wind as vehicles sped past us, and enjoy the Singapore skyline. The walk to the slope leading down was pretty long, so we had plenty of time to walk, talk, yell "Happy New Year!" at motorists (a la ZY), and stargaze (courtesy of me, duh).

When we finally got down the slope, we took a winding path that led to the Carrefour side of Suntec. After stops at the bathroom, we popped into the next door cinema to check out movie listings. Which started a looong debate on which movie to watch and when. Suggestions were Love Actually (V and WK had watched it already), LOTR: The Return Of The King (too long - argh!) and Scary Movie 3 (NC16!!! Considering I'm the oldest and still two-over weeks away to that age...). Thus leaving the final choices as Mona Lisa Smile, Ju-On 2 and School Of Rock.

A quick check for screenings revealed that School Of Rock would be shown past 2 a.m., so that was out. I was all pumped for Mona Lisa Smile, which would be at 12.15 a.m. along with Ju-On 2, but some wanted to catch the 10.50 p.m. screening of Ju-On 2. Finally WH, V and I convinced them it would be more worthwhile to countdown somewhere other than a cinema hall, so the final decision was only a coin toss away.

And Ju-On 2 won.

Sheesh. Since we were all divided, not everyone liked the idea, but we forked out $8.50 anyway. Since it was about 11 p.m. by then, we headed to the Fountain Of Wealth where there usually was a celebration every year.

Yeah, no mistake. I said usually, and we found out the hard way that there would be no countdown there that year. Dejected, we climbed up to open air and sat around the dark fountain. A guy came over with a megaphone announcing that the celebrations would be over at the Esplanade. We all groaned because surely we couldn't make it back in time for the movie. In the end we busied ourselves before the countdown (and that was quite some time to kill). WK read his book, I played FIFA 2003 on my GBA SP (with stupid WH telling me how much I sucked at it), the others walked around the fountain following the series of the Chinese zodiac.

By the time we were together again, it was 5 min to countdown and the place was significantly quieter. WK called his parents so we could countdown according to the live telecast time, and when we screamed, "1!!!", nothing was heard from the Esplanade side. WK, YQ and I sang Old Lang Syne until the fireworks started (along with cheers from far away). As everyone shook hands, YQ (as expected) wept at the beautiful sight. After two false alarms, the fireworks display finally ended and we sprinted back to the cinema, bought drinks and popcorn, and headed into the hall.

The movie really started at 12.30 p.m. or so because people kept streaming in after counting down. After A LOT of shuffling about, the seven of us settled down, ZY against the wall, me right in between, and V nearest to the aisle.

I'm not going into a lot of detail about the movie, except it was extremely confusing and lame at times. There seemed to be no plot, the ending seemed completely unrelated to me, but everyone agreed the second story scared the heck out of them. Unanimous at last. I'm still sorry I didn't cover my eyes that much during it, but maybe that was what the director planned because the first story was seriously not spooky (the audience screamed but I found it hilarious), which probably led all of us into a false sense of security. Also just my luck that during the interval between the first and second stories I told YQ I wasn't scared when she asked...

At 2-something, we emerged from the cinema still stunned by the stupidity and irrelevence of the ending. Everyone was still pretty shaken when ZY's dad fetched us home, so of all things they had to discuss REAL haunted houses. When I got home I was seriously freaking out; I took my bath (checking countless times there wasn't any little blue guy around) and went straight to my bedroom to sleep, hoping I wouldn't get nightmares.

Well, good news was I didn't, but I only slept for 3.5 hours. At 7 a.m. I woke up, and about 2-3 hours later spent some time yakking with Cheryl as we packed our bags over the phone. I remembered my incomplete essay (had to rush off the previous day), but was too tired already, and Cheryl wanted to come over to play.

In the end we played Pokemon Stadium II, tried the seesaw downstairs and listed to music on my computer. She stayed for dinner and only went home at nearly 10 p.m. After my bath I was waaaaaay too tired to finish my essay, so I packed it up and headed to bed at midnight.

Jessica wrote home at 5:11 pm