131101, 1230hr, illinois time.

it was my dad's birthday yesterday, but i couldn't call home, because i barely woke up early enough to drag my ass to work in the morning at 8. i called home today though, my dad confused me for a while, by going, "happy deepavali!" i mean, i knew it was deepavali, but hey, he pre-empted me again! damn. haha..

for the first time, my dad offered me some advice wrt alvin - you'd think a man would try to help another, but nnooo, my dad very kindly decided to teach me how to tame/train/change/manipulate alvin. gasp. you'd wonder where my niceness genes came from. bear in mind, the last time i called home, my mom was the one who taught me to punish alvin by using his money when he pisses me off. man, alvin should be glad he's with the kindest member of my khoo family, and that it's not them he really has to please. heh.

coincidentally, i finally developed the pictures i took in singapore over summer. [yes, summer as in may/june/july. ahem. yes, it took me that long.] i love the pictures i took for my birthday! with my family, that is. my camera officially died on my birthday taking these pictures. so you can think of them as being its last pictures. *shed a tear*

here are 3 of my favorites [click for bigger picture; and hold mouse over picture for a few seconds for description] :

both my parents, independently at one point or another, told me to remind alvin that the khoo family is not an easy family to please. though my dad did express some kind of joy that alvin likes liverpool too. aha, a weakness i see. my mom likes alvin for his efforts at re-teaching me teochew, though she corrected one of the terms alvin taught me, so he's apparently not that good at it himself. but generally, it's funny, my parents seem to be worried that i'll be too nice to him. they've not seen the worst of me, that's why. mwuahahaha.....