work. pets. sightseeing.

So it looks like my work schedule will include weekends as well since my mentor works sat-mon. Sounds like a huge bummer cos that means I might not be able to check out churches, or do anything on weekends in general :( Have no clue how I'm gonna get to and from work to my uncle's place as well... having no car is such a pain... got to rely on people whom I don't even know to hopefully give me lifts back and forth if not take a cab everyday. sigh.

We went to the Universal Studios on Saturday... photos will be up on facebook when I get to my uncle's place and can use his internet with my laptop... In a summary, we spent 90% of our time queuing up for rides and 10% actually on the ride itself. After the Universal Studios Florida part itself, my whole family was tired and the queues at Island of Adventure were even longer, so they weren't too keen on queueing up all over again and so we went home instead of enjoying some potentially fun looking rides. Such a pity... I was quite grumpy then cos of tiredness and just frustration of being there but not going on anymore rides.

Today mum and I went shopping at the factory outlet stores, Orlando Premium Outlets. There were about 100 stores there and gosh, we spent half an hour waiting for the tram to bring us there, stayed there from 12pm till 830pm, and went home with 6 items at the most. We tried on so many clothes and shoes but most things on discount were an L or XL or they didn't have shoes in our sizes. I saw a pair of really nice silver ballet flats for USD$40 (bit expensive for my liking but they were the best fit and really pretty) but they didn't have my size except for the display pair :( sadness... didn't get to check the Guess outlet properly as well (everything in there was in a mess by the time I got there anyway)... and also had a dilemma between buying a Liz Clairborne clutch or little bag.

Now moving onto my pets topic... we started talking about the pets we used to keep last time and my parents told of some details I never knew about them (of how and why they died) and gosh I have to say, my pets suffered.

First was the tortoise... it usually ate fresh greens but one day my brother and I didn't finish our pancakes with strawberry and jam and so my mum gave it to the tortoise and it gobbled the whole thing up. After that, it refused to eat greens and would eat our leftovers from dinner, usually consisting of rice plus dishes. It just grew fatter and fatter and wasn't able to retract its head into the shell anymore! The tortoise survived falling from our balcony and landing 3 floors down, but my parents think it was eventually obesity that killed it :(

Then was the mice who fought each other constantly and then one day I separated the bully from the victim and placed the bully into one of those pineapple containers and screwed the lid shut, thinking that it'd have enough air for sure. When I got back home I picked the container up and it just rolled from side to side.

Next was my dog, Candy, whom we'd taken as a stray my uncle had picked up. She was a gorgeous papillion cross terrier and was uncontrollable outside the house. Towards the end she was limping, having uncontrollable diarrhoea and couldn't stand or do anything anymore. My parents finally brought her to the vet and I didn't hear anything until one day after the exams my mum told me she'd died at the vets, even before my exams had started... That's all I knew, until last night they told me that the vet had told them that Candy had gotten the flu, which had affected her brain and so she couldn't control her body functions anymore, and all the while we'd thought she was just "being naughty". Felt really bad after knowing how much she'd suffered...

Finally it was Harriet, my guinea pig... we usually kept her cage in the bathroom before going out but this time we left it out cos I thought she had a shelter box thing in her cage. Well by the time we got back, ironically after church on a sunday afternoon again (as with the mice), she wasn't moving anymore, and when I tilted the cage, her body rolled towards the door. I always thought she's died from heatstroke and now she's buried in a corner in the garden at my singapore home. My dad added details to this last night and said that her water bottle had leaked, so she'd no water that afternoon, which was a really hot one as well... and she'd tried to get out of the cage, cos he'd found her with her teeth around the metal bars of the cage trying to bite her way out.

Trust me, I never knew all these little details till last night which made me aware of how much they'd suffered poor things... This all happened a bit less than 10 years ago and since then we haven't had any pets...So maybe that's why I should be a vet, or maybe why I shouldn't, cos all the animals I've been in personal contact with have died in such horrible ways :(