i'm feeling quite bad now 'cos my dad just told me that he was gonna charge me the excess of the ten-plus dollars for my last month's phone bill, and becoming immediately quite pissed and defensive that he was being so jin jin ji jiao and icky-picky about such nitty-gritty details, i went and dug up the textbooks that i had bought for this semester and listed down their costs one by one and told him that he could transfer the money back into my account after deducting the amount for the excess of my phone bill. he looked a bit shocked. upon that, i'm overcome by just-a-little-less-than-guilt-and-regret for having momentarily lost myself again to sudden impulse and anger. but it's a bit too late to take it back now, and it's a bit stupid to say i didn't mean to do that at all, and go take back my receipts now right? my family, maybe some leftover bits from the traditional conservative chinese/asian culture, doesn't very often say outright sorries and stuff like that... it does happen, but usually only for the far more serious stuff lah. so how now, brown cow?

in contrast to what some people might think, little as my allowance is/seems, i don't actually claim everything from my parents. well, i used to do that... in jc... when i had like... five bucks a day? but i haven't been doing it for a long time, after my a's, and especially after i started getting a bit of money for myself. except for extraordinary purchases. which means something like above fifty bucks... which happens only on average at most once every two months. and it's not like i feel like i'm wei qu-ing myself or anything to not "claim back" my expenses, it's just that i let my pissiness get the better of me this time. uh... so, although i do admit i'm possibly getting more than enough to keep myself going quite comfortably, don't think that i'm really that pampered... and maybe instead, start wondering if you (generic) could get by as comfortably as you might be now, with your current lifestyle but my current allowance (make a guess lah), including tenth-tithing, books, occassional splurges etc. seriously, except for my little-bit-of nike obsession, i'm a much lower-maintenance, lesser-spending person than most kids my age are.

okay, who begs to differ on my penultimate statement?