7 a.m., sharp.

I woke.

Just like that.

Initial and foremost reaction; snooze alarm, wait till the next ring 9 minutes later, get arse off the bed and prepare to spend the day in a boring stupor and render myself completely exhausted once again…

Only that I didn’t arm the alarm, and it was Saturday. Means no class by default, and no motivation to attend replacement class at 9 a.m.

Back to sleep I went. Woke up 3 hours later.

The lethargy took time to sink in. Halfway through the curry noodle breakfast I could feel the clawing, scuttling ascend of laziness creeping into the muscles and seeping into the bones. By midday I’ve subjected myself to curling up comfortably in my room, avoiding any dodge-able chores and complacently satiating my fan-boyism by downloading a buckload of anime wallpapers.

I deserved this break was vividly hovering in the mind, justifying my irresponsible loafing and lazing. Conscience made a futile tug to get me into working mode; the photo assignment’s not done, and I’m inches away from the finals without any revision whatsoever. But what the fuck? I’m tired out, thanks to the past 3 days, with yesterDAY doing most of the tormenting work.

But I did spend a considerably large amount of time alone with Michelle. That almost made it all worthwhile. Almost.

Well, it’s VERY worthwhile, if I’m being honest. Look at it this way; I get to spend hours upon hours, alone, with a hot and pretty gal that literally is so randomly bizarre it made her nonchalantly eccentric. Fun? Not even close. Bliss describes it with utmost precision.

We’re both supposed to do our photo essay on Pudu Prison, currently Hang Tuah Police Station, and we went miles around to know enough of the procedure that’ll get us in to do it. It’s actually simple in sound, as according to the beefy corporal at the prison, all we have to do is get a permission letter from the college, get it chopped, diced and verified at the Dang Wangi Police Headquarters, bring it back and Open Salami! Snap some pics, trade them with each other and home we go with the biggest pain in the ass gone and done for good.

So we got the letter, which was done on Thursday, and flitted down to the Dang Wangi Station, only to find that office hours are up and the head is back home to screw his wife or whatnot. Alright, nevermind, we have tomorrow. Go home, tired as an ass dragging his farmer’s obese aunty on a tow-cart, to rest up and head for college tomorrow.

The next day, we head down to the station once again to discover that we’ve made a mistake and that the headquarters, similarly named according to its area, is a few monorail stations away. Yeah, thanks police-lady at the counter, and if you’ll be kind for us again please tell the policewoman we met yesterday who oh so conveniently neglected to tell us that we were at the wrong station to go eat a boxful of stale doughnuts. Helps clear the bowels, you know, only painfully so.

So we head down to the Dang Wangi police headquarters, and was instructed to meet with the Chief Inspector. Only that the Chief Inspector decided to go have her morning mamak fix. Dia pergi minum. Mmhmm. Think of the impression that it gave.

Well, we were spared for waiting like a fool at the place by a portly, friendly policeman who told us that we need to get the authorisation at the Bukit Aman headquarters, since Dang Wangi is under it anyhow, and then bring it back here. Aw crap. But whatever. So we paid a taxi driver and he got us there in a jiffy.

Bukit Aman is huge. It reminded me of those royalty residential grounds, up in the hills amongst the thickest jungle growth you can find at the heart of the city, and you have to drive through some fancy winding road to get to its brazen gates boldly intimidating with gold and static bodyguards, so you’ll turn away and leave them be. To get to the department we were directed to go we had to walk down the path, past the armoury, police quarters, logistics building and criminal investigation department, into the tall building, change our visitor’s pass to Class 2 (or something like that) and wait for the clerk to buzz the department’s head. Michelle said this feels cool. I couldn’t agree more.

We couldn’t meet the department’s head in person (away to minum, I assume), but the authorisation got through in a matter of moments. We were just asked to sit at the waiting hall, approached by an officer asking us our purpose of the assignment and before we knew it the letter was signed and copped by someone. Good. Our prospects were growing better and great expectations were flaring up to maximum optimism. We returned back to the entrance gates, got our ID checked out for the 4^th time of the day and luckily enough managed to hail a cab the moment we walked down the main road.

We stopped by the Heritage Hotel to get Mich’s bus tickets back to her hometown, and headed back to the Dang Wangi headquarters. It was almost noon by then, and apparently the chief inspector wasn’t back yet, so we sat and waited for her return. Past noon, and we approached the office. Everything did seem fine when we were asked to sit by the chief inspector, a woman in her late 30s by my guess. I stared at the stars at her shoulder, pinned to her uniform. 3 stars. Chief Inspector, according to the chart on the wall, which showed which ranked are which based on the stars on the uniform.

I was too busy with the dazzling stars to be concerned with her face. Too late.

The face practically spells HEAD BITCH: I’M HERE BECAUSE I BITCH. GOT A PROBLEM WITH THAT?

Well, apparently we needed to submit the letter of permission at least 2 weeks prior, in order to get it properly authorised so that when we get decapitated by a madman criminal at the cells, the responsibilities can be sorted evenly.

1) No one told us that, not even Mr.

Beefy Corporal,

2) we needed authorisation from the District Head Police, who was on duty someplace else (no one told us that either) and

3) HEAD BITCH could be nicer when telling us that (while we can’t deny the fact that she’s HEAD BITCH), but instead she chose to make us feel like juvenile idiots that doesn’t know the ‘common’ in common sense.

So she flitted between being bitch and dastardly bitch, stern and intimidating, sounding angrily exasperated and slam-dunking a load of crap on our head as though it’s the most obvious thing to do. She then grabbed our letter, said that she’ll file it to her boss, not guaranteeing that he’ll see it, and then passed it to her secretary. I had the impression that it was the last of daylight our letter would ever see. It’ll stay moulding under some drawer somewhere until some cockroaches feast on it.

We had REJECTED slammed at our face. After all the stinking trouble. And by HEAD BITCH.

I’d chucked the stapler at her face if it wouldn’t get me pounced on by a dozen of roti-canai-and-teh-tarik-filled coppers and whisked into the lock-up cell where I’ll get my nuts under therapy of a very eager buzz-baton.

I didn’t mind the utter shittiness of it all, but disappointing Mich was the last thing I wanted to do. We came under a stunned dazed, and spoke little. I had the urge to punch every car at the parking lot, and Mich was buried so deeply into her cell phone that she was in danger of becoming car fodder without even realising so until she went to heaven. It took sometime for us to calm down and not drift off on our own. We took the monorail to Times Square and had KFC.

What happened after was a couple of unperformed ideas that we cooked up, a lot of ranting, a tonne of frustration-wallowing and enough sighs to fill a whole new planet with carbon dioxide. We stayed for an hour or more at KFC, where our discussions shifted from worry to love predicaments (funny how it went that way).

In the end, we couldn’t do anything about it at the moment, so we headed to Borders to grab 3 Neil Gaiman novels (it was on promotion). Then we went around looking for the boots that Mich had her eye on during our previous outing there. Things calmed down considerably there, and it was good to see Mich smiling again when she tried on the boots and looking at herself in the mirror. She looked good, but insisted that she wouldn’t know how well the boots will go until she’s wearing a skirt. Then to Sungei Wang to hunt for some DVDs, but piracy raids were on and the shops switched to their legitimate counterparts. So we just walked. And talked. It was great.

I watched Michelle board the train to the KL station, where the bus will take her back to Penang. She waved a small goodbye in the throng of passengers. I went home and got myself stuck in traffic. It rained like mad. I had to drive dad and bro to the restaurant for our dinner, in which I got nagged and accused of driving like a madman (which I do). Dinner wasn’t all that bad, nor was it any good.

I slept at 10 at night.

It’s Sunday morning now, and Arsenal is playing Liverpool in the FA Cup as I type this, wondering how to end this entry. I guess I better settle for the usual.

Goodnight people. Pardon the mess of it...