Dans mon île...

Nothingness

2009-03-23T22:50:00.002+08:00

I doubt many people come here nowadays. After all, this space has been vacant for a while.

Before you slam me for ingratitude, I'm not saying this out of arrogance. The past year since I last updated was a really busy year. In between my new job, GRE and fitting in time for JLPT, I had to apply for graduate school.

If any of you knew how tedious this process was, you will know exactly what I mean when I say "merely applying is a pain in the ass". If not, I'm telling you now... it was a pain in the ass.

And after a year of trudging through my busy activities, I suddenly found myself this year having comparatively almost nothing to do except for work, leisurely pursuing my studies in Japanese and flipping Jdrama after Jdrama and critiquing one after the after, and oh, of course, getting older. I turned 25 exactly a week ago, and let's just say it wasn't the best of days.

What has all the busyness done to create this space of nothingness?

Every day, I feel like I'm supposed to search for something to do but I don't know for sure what it is, and if I am even looking for something in the first place. A sense of deja-vu washes over me. Neo from The Matrix?

Perhaps.

Perhaps not.

I yearn to escape into the abyss of Japan once again, like last October. It was gratifying to know that I could communicate well with the native people. Maybe they were nice when they paid me compliments, but at least I knew the studying hasn't gone to waste and I would be sure to use the language yet again, thrilled even.

It sucks to know that you have to reevaluate your goals and relocate your motivation all over again. Is this what is known as the "quarter-life crisis"? Because I refuse to bow to it. Suddenly, 25 seems so much older than 24, and now I can't pinpoint what exactly I have achieved in those 25 years.

At my age, my mother had already gotten married and given birth to me two years earlier. Yup, she was a really young mother, but I can't imagine myself like her at all. Not in this sense anyway.

Before turning my age, Diana is going to wed her college sweetheart this Saturday. By the time she turns my age, she would have settled down comfortably in her new life, with new family and house.

Maybe I am overwhelmed by my age and tottering between how to move forward and how to enjoy being young again. I was never very good at the planning ahead part and nearly always stuck in the mood of retrogression.

In times like this, I wish there can be directions given to me.

I wish I could follow the white rabbit.

What can I say now?

2008-07-05T23:15:00.003+08:00

I know, I know, I've been missing in action for like what, two months?

God, that's really long.

Been really busy, so I took a self-proclaimed break.

What can I say now? New job. New kids. New image. Yup, lots of changes in my life.

Firstly, new job. Although I'm doing pretty much the same thing, the environment is totally different. Lots more independence, including moving around a lot and hanging out at Starbucks mostly to mark. Think Bohemian lifestyle, but with more pay. Ha voila. Not that I'm not busy, I'm very busy during work but I like busy, only that this time I can define the busy part.

New kids. Yup totally different ball game altogether. These are the kids I totally will not meet unless I were in the same league as them, which obviously explains why I am sometimes sympathetic to their lot in life. "Poor little rich smart kids" they are called.

New image. Don't worry, my hairstyle's still the same, or at least it was the last time I checked. Going to the hairdresser's next week but that's not the change in image.

Anyway, I digress.

I've taken to wearing long dresses as much as I can. They're just so feminine and I'm such a big sucker for them :p In the fashion world, they are called maxi dresses. I probably own about ten pieces of such dresses now lol, most of which have either especially flamboyant loud prints or colours or both. Talk about splurging.

So what can I say now?

I haven't had any inspiration to write lately. It might be the fatigue from the last GRE exam or maybe I just haven't been reading as avidly. Probably both.

As much as I'm growing to like working because I like what I do and it gives me some sense of self-worth, I think I still prefer studying more, for the sole purpose of the want of some intellectual stimulation, although the bad part about studying is being poor and struggling all the time. Hmm, which may be why I'm trying to enjoy myself now as much as I can before I get kicked back into studying again.

Scum of the earth read this: Fuck off man

2008-05-05T20:08:00.006+08:00

Omg I am in shock.

The scum of a man (note that this is really too polite a term) who blocked me on msn and "unfriended" me on facebook actually had the nerve to show up at my house to play with my pet, namely Misty.

And because I wasn't home, my mom out of good faith let him in without contacting me about it.

Hello, it is basic courtesy that you leave a person you do not want to contact for good alone.

I don't think I'm being unreasonable here, but I do think some form of privacy has to be respected on your arrogant selfish pathetic side. [CORRECTIONS] I don't care if you've just BEEN dumped BY your current girlfriend and can't move on properly and need a "friend" to talk to. Misty is not a comfort thing to make you feel better, neither is my place somewhere you can step into anytime you feel like it.

Look, I wasn't the one who blocked you, nor did I "unfriend" you like some petty ex-boyfriend who couldn't take the loss of a girlfriend who used to think the world of her boyfriend until she realised he was actually treating her like shit.

So what on earth actually made you think you will now be welcome at my place at all, much less see and play with my precious?

If she knew who you really were, she wouldn't even sniff the likes of you.

Please grow up (for your own sake) and quit being so emotionally stunted not to see that if you had the cheek to do what you did and then block off all contact from me, you cannot/should not/are not welcome to come and contact me in any way, even if it is to see my precious.

This is an invasion of personal privacy. If we haven't even been on talking terms since the last time, it is logical (at least to sane and normal people) that we mutually do not contact each other.

And even if you did want to come and see Misty, you must ask for my permission first, whether or not I give that permission, it's a separate issue altogether. Hello, remember it's my house, not yours? What right do you have to even step into my place at all?

You don't deserve this favour at all.

So why did I bother to expend my energies (even for a split second) just to write a lengthy post for the likes of you?

This is the real message here (no matter how dense or thick in the head you can be), the short cold hard truth that you have to or will have to accept:

We don't welcome you. Fuck off man.

"The Room"

2008-04-25T20:59:00.004+08:00

Interviews are just about the most ego-dipping thing in the world that makes you feel extremely despicable after they are over - whether or not it went well. If it did, then you can expect to feel horrid about expertly lying through your teeth and having said things that would usually make you sound highly superficial. If it didn't, then you would constantly berate yourself for not having been able to perform, no matter how superficial it might make you seem in the first place.

Of course, that just essentially means that no matter the outcome of the interview, just having to go through the entire process is itself an ordeal. The fact that you probably spent a lot of time and energy mentally preparing yourself for it and agonizing over it for a long time before the interview doesn't help to alleviate the repeated playback of several cringeworthy moments after the interview even the least bit. At most, you can revel in a split second of a glorious victory over the interviewers where you said something that you thought sounded smart.

I know, what a pain. Arghhh.

I'm now wondering if going for several interviews at one narrow frame in time would actually numb my senses enough to be ever ready for a firing squad any day, or will it actually enervate me instead?

Well, personally I wouldn't mind interviews that much if I didn't take everything so personally. If I went with a mindset to have a little chat with some strangers, perhaps the idea of an interview will not be as revolting. But of course, being me and being your typical suffering from some kind of paranoid syndrome sort of kid, this way of thinking is simply beyond me. What's worse is that I betray myself and my paranoia in all sense of the word by mumbling and rattling on and on nonstop, sometimes unconsciously slipping back into comfortable colloquial language. The horror of it all.

I am seriously considering using school as an outlet for all my idiosyncrasies and nonsense, so as to avoid having to pour them out in a moment of nervousness in a room with a board of people with high standing and embarrass myself to no end.

My own fear is that I will be so well-versed and comfortable in my own silliness that I will inevitably betray it in what I call "The Room".

Good luck to me and my fellow job-searching friends (and rivals).

Paraphernalia of life

2008-04-05T21:17:00.005+08:00

As the title suggests, lots of things actually, just that I haven't got enough time nor inspiration to fuel a full blown post.

Ah well, just as well. This just means I can finally fit in with the rest of the bloggers in lamenting their wonderful yet sad lives.

Trying to find proper time to actually concentrate on studying proves to be difficult among the constant distractions of work and the persistent need for therapy (it spells like S-H-O-P-P-I-N-G, a word on this a little later).

I'm just less than two months shy of taking the exam ugh. It really is a fight against time and money (175 USD is such a pain to fork out for a computer-based exam, maybe the part of the pain is to help shopaholics like me spend less and study more, and to spur me to study based on the mere fact that it is alot of money grr).

Shopping has taken a whole new light for me ever since I discovered major online shopping, which is relatively cheaper and a whole lot easier. You just click and click and voila! It will be sent to your place, no driving or parking or trying to get the darned piece of cloth. This is especially useful for presents I think, good way to save on transportation and travel time. In short, I'm just lazy.

Well, I must say the cons of online shopping has to be: I can't see where the hell my money goes, so there is the tendency to overspend without realising, and also it's terribly distracting when I have the computer switched on because I have this compulsive desire to click on the sites.. it's really sometimes too convenient.

Had my second dose of Pillowman today.

I'm sorry if this post seems so random, that's why the title more than makes up for it.

Hmm I have to admit that the first time round was so much more exciting to me. Well, the fact that I had to arrange some last minute ticketing changes and scramble to get the kids there on time didn't help, and what's more, I already knew what to expect prior to the performance, so that didn't help either. The cast and acting were still excellent no doubt, the set has changed very little but that's not quite it. Somehow the feelings, or rather my feelings, towards the performance itself have changed. Perhaps it's different because it's also a different crowd. This time round, the bulk of it were made of students, from two schools in fact, I really pity the people from the public who paid so much just to sit amongst them ha.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think watching something (anything) with someone who appreciates it more does make it more enjoyable. In fact, like Amelie, I do enjoy occasionally other people's reactions to the show. I wonder if this is one of those "there is a need of a spectator environment in order to truly enjoy the show" sort of thing we used to learn in film classes. Well obviously I don't think this only applies to film, it probably applies to all performances which include the visual element.

I know, I know, I used to dismiss it last time as some American film critic who wanted to have something to contribute to a film textbook so he wouldn't be out of a job. But lately, I've been thinking, it does make sense at times, well not all the time, but yes, sometimes it is more enjoyable to watch with good company, and I'm kind of missing that nowadays.

Because I could have

2008-03-02T17:39:00.003+08:00

I detest it when people use derogatory terms on other people and they do not mean it - or worse they do not know what the words mean (no thanks to the American media these days).

It just shows the serious lack of a wide range of vocabulary, or that they just aren't thinking very logically. Probably both.

And I don't mean like just swearing as a form of expression to no one in particular. I mean the kind of direct accusation that comes out too forceful and strong to take it back - well actually most things that come out of your mouth are hard to take back - I mean the kind that warrants no sense of (if I may dare to use the word) forgiveness. I mean especially the kind that attacks your weaknesses (even though these don't have any part to play in the action) intentionally and blackmails you emotionally to achieve a winning stance just by hitting you exactly where it's supposed to hurt the most.

Despicable, really.

Shouting at another person to express your discontentment is one thing. Shouting at that same person in all kinds of vulgarities and accusing him/her for shouting and making a big fuss out of things - precisely something you started out doing in the first place - is another. And this is where I draw the line between a healthy anger outlet and going overboard, after much evaluation of the entire situation.

You have crossed the line. You have insulted me and my pride in every way possible. And I content myself in thinking that I have not retaliated with the same disgusting words you have used, nor have I attacked your sorest points in order to agitate you or done anything that has compromised my entire self as a person.

Because I could have.

But I didn't. And because I haven't done any of these things, although I probably felt very tempted to initially, I can say that I'm not all the things you said I am and it's not my fault that you had this outburst. It was probably something that was sitting there waiting for someone to trigger it, and I happened to be that unfortunate person.

It's not my fault you feel depressed over a now ex-girlfriend who didn't take your feelings seriously. I shouldn't have to be made to bear the brunt of it. Nobody should, not even family members.

I feel utterly ashamed to be related to you.

Reflect

2008-01-28T21:51:00.000+08:00

The thing about working with kids is that it can be tiring and long, at times frustrating, but fun at the same time. Interacting with them makes me smile at their nonsense and makes me feel young (although that's not really an advantage but nevermind).

But then the lack of epiphanies of any sort in my life makes me feel rather stagnant, even though according to the date, the year passes so quickly and I know I'm older by the day. As much as I find joy in what I do now, I really dislike feeling like I haven't progressed at all these past few months.

I miss school.

I know it's ironic because the environment now is generally the same, but I kind of wished I was one of them - still studying something and getting excited at some newfound discovery that I never heard of before and yet struggling with the rest over a difficult theory like Pierre Nora's piece on Memory.

It's funny how when I was at school, like many of my classmates and my kids now, I used to wish that I would quickly graduate and start working life, but then now that I'm on the other side of the fence, things seem clearer to me than before: I really don't want to stop studying.

On hindsight, I also realised that maybe if I had started studying what I enjoyed studying from the start, maybe this realisation would have hit me much earlier. Perhaps fate has played a cruel joke on me and now I'm back where I missed out on the part of my education the most. Now I even look on at my kids in amazement, at how they refuse to be enthusiastic about Austen or the various poems that are in store for them, and I can't imagine myself being like them.

Didn't Literature start out as an indulgence for the upper classes back then in England? Isn't it a greater challenge when a play or poem cannot be easily understood such that students of Literature should strive to make the most meaning out of it? Where have all these values gone to today?

I can't explain where all this bemoaning originated from. Perhaps it's one of the withdrawal symptoms from Murakami's short stories, or the increasing lack of high level activity in the brain that is causing this. But mostly, it's probably the fear that if I stop thinking critically I will be brutally reduced to just anyone, a nobody.

Obviously my identity holds on to a lot more than I think, and it's time I think I should reflect.

Meet Natsumi

2008-01-20T21:47:00.000+08:00

Meet the girl whose going to revolutionise this tub of fats - Natsumi (Nat-chan for short).

Hopefully Nat-chan will become my best friend in the weeks to come and beyond, since I've somewhat spent a small fortune on her - to date, the most expensive footwear I've ever gotten.

Well at least contrary to popular belief, Asics does produce pretty sports shoes. And omg would you believe how comfortable it feels to run with her? I don't like running very much actually, but this is the first time I'm starting to think that maybe, just maybe, I have been wearing the wrong shoes all this while.

Hurrah to me for finally being able to figure this one out.

Anyway, Nat-chan is now my new inspiration to exercise more often (more often meaning actually exercising at all). Well, obviously having made some kind of investment, you don't expect me to leave her in the shoe cabinet to rot do you?

No, she's going to school with me, because that's where the track is. See... I'm absolutely determined not to collapse the next time someone asks me for a jog.

The last time someone asked me to jog a mere four rounds around the track and play pickleball with her, I almost died. Hmm no, actually I thought I was doing fairly okay not collapsing and ended up with a minor stitch on the side.

Well, or so I thought.

That was just before my ex-shoes protested violently and proceeded to cough out a part of his sole.

Omg, that was rather embarrassing. Imagine someone else picking up that little rubber bit and playing with it.

Ewwww.

This was last Thursday by the way. Enough motivation to get myself a new pair of shoes that might work better I thought. And considering how I haven't gotten one since JC days, I thought I ought to have saved (if I actually did, that is) enough money to get a pair of Asics (well, even if I didn't, I thought I deserved her, which suited me fine, really.)

And so in short, this is the story of how Nat-chan was born.

Oh and did I mention that I think she is gorgeous?

Gone Bunburying

2008-01-07T21:34:00.001+08:00

If you asked me where I've been the last three weeks, I would have to say I've gone Bunburying.

For the clueness ones, please either summon Wilde from the dead and ask him, or simply wiki the term, although the former seems a bit on the difficult side.

Anyway, what was I saying before I got rudely interrupted? Ah yes, Bunburying.

I assume you know its meaning by now, otherwise this is another warning: wiki it now now.

Right. Of course, thanks to my procrastinating skills (no doubt another excellent trait engineered and perfected by rote learning at NUS), Bunburying is the best term to describe my repulsion from updating this blog.

Woe to my loyal readers, I hope you find this post fodder for thought.

Now let's see... Bunburying has been highly exciting yet tiring, even though the reason for the latter beats me since I hardly had to use my brains very much, probably the physical energy spending have been taking a toll on my body.

Bunburying included fireworks on New Year's eve (yes including jostling with the crowd at midnight and part thereof), one cheenapop concert (my first! haha! Not to worry, my fans, I'm still me and have not transformed into a full-fledged ah lian), one local musical called Beauty World (oh the pain! I swear it's the worst musical I've ever been to in my entire life! And I've watched like so many already!), several escapades to dodgy (not all of them were of course!) Japanese restaurants (all in the name of searching for the most authentic Japanese cuisine of course! Please consult me should you need any advice in this field and I will be most happy to oblige), a few trips to chinatown (which is more than I've ever been in my entire life!), the giving of many many presents mostly for christmas (if you didn't already know, my secret ambition was to be Santa Claus. Nah, I'm only joking, I don't really enjoy being fat with a red face and white hair, moustache and beard. I just like giving out presents heh), and finally, this must be the best part: zero work done during the entire of the school holidays (well owing to the fact that they don't pay me at all during this duration, I didn't see any incentive to do any work.)

Of course, I couldn't have done them all without you.

I must say I haven't enjoyed myself so thoroughly and so truely for a long long time, and it will be memorable, even though I've been so busy enjoying that I couldn't manage to record them anywhere, even on film. Ah, you know me, I can't multi-task if I were to immerse myself fully in a single experience at any one time. Trying to do both will probably tantamount to like two-timing or something, and you know I can't do that.

So what happens after I'm back from Bunburying?

Well, obviously, there's work, work and more work. (Don't I just feel like a Primary school kid all over again? Yeah well, I still don't feel like I've graduated. Sometimes I go into these time lapses sort of thing and get temporary identity crises. You kids know what I mean right?)

Then there's the one-year-long mugging for Japanese.

Alright alright, I haven't gone into full speed yet.

Well, at least I'm trying to. I've bought the books at the last Kinokuniya sale!

Does... that count?

Work has been piling up these few days. I'm currently a part-time librarian cataloguing books which were thrown out but were saved by my colleagues (yeah, I know, our relationship with books is complicated), part-time student who needs to churn out essay plans, part-time typist to convert several essays in hard copies to soft copies, and part-time organiser to categorise past year papers into tables for easy reference (er, obviously not for me!)

Hmm where's the real work? Well it's coming, in a matter of one week's time.

Ah, I miss Bunburying...

Italy is every Japanese tourist's paradise

2007-12-18T10:58:00.000+08:00

It's true how they say that every time you go back to the same place for a visit, it changes.

No, I'm not talking about the surroundings itself (although there might have been a few changes no doubt). I'm talking about the feeling and atmosphere created for the visitor each time he/she sees the Colosseum in Rome, for example, albeit for the umpteenth time.

Yes, I know the Colosseum is such a cliché touristic site - even those who have not seen it in person have at least seen it in pictures once. I guess what struck me was that there was the Arc of Constantine next to it and a whole plain of ruined buildings (no doubt the remnants of the ancient Roman city) all this while and I hadn't even realised it until this time around. Maybe I did see it briefly but couldn't value it for what it's worth.

But I digress.

This time around, the entire trip to Italy was spent marvelling at how many Japanese tourists I've seen travelling through it, definitely much more than the tourists from other countries. In fact, Italy is completely catered for the Japanese: signs are handwritten in Italian, English and Japanese, instead of just Italian or English, the Italian vendors know how to greet in Japanese, even restaurant menus have Japanese in them!

In fact, one restaurant I went to in Pompei had their menus written in solely Italian and Japanese but no English!

Surely that is shocking, but perhaps if you look at it from another perspective, perhaps we have taken things for granted. Why is it mandatory for a menu in Italy to be written in English automatically after the main language of Italian? Unlike us here, Italy is not a country which has been anglicised, and its unannounced anti-American slogan resembles that of the French.

To prove the point, throughout the entire trip, I've only seen three MacDonald's at most, and even so only in the big cities or famously touristic sites like Venice and Milan. The rest of the restaurants are occupied by Italian cuisine a la pizza or pasta. Also, the prices of the various food and drinks vary greatly. At a local pizzeria, you could get a quarter of a pizza for under 2 euros, and for 1 euro and a bit, you could get a shot of espresso or a cup of cappuccino, in comparison to a can of coke for 2 euros minimum. Maybe it's the whole imported bit being more expensive, but I guess it does reflect the demand bit as well. A standard meal in MacDonald's is easily more than 6 euros but it's much cheaper for us here because of its popularity and of course, the exchange rate.

But I digress yet again.

Like us living in a cosmopolitan city, the Japanese too crave the old and unique structures of Italy. Of course, Italy being a Catholic country, its cathedrals make up most of the tourist attractions. In fact, it actually felt somewhat like a pilgrimage going to so many churches in just 9 days, but of course to the Italians we remain tourists, and that's okay as well, although I like to think of myself as something more.

For the artist or historian, Italy is really a dream come true. Merely breathing the air inspires one deeply. The scenery is breathtaking at every corner you turn to, and the old structures are amazing to see and touch because you also marvel at how they managed to build all that in the days where there were hardly any machinery. I could really understand why the Renaissance paintings flourished in Florence or why Shakespeare based so many of his works in Italy e.g. Julius Caesar in Rome, Othello/The Merchant of Venice in Venice and Romeo & Juliet in Verona or why the revolutionary fathers of Science emerged from there e.g. Leonardo da Vinci & Galileo Galilei.

The latter is deeply intriguing, especially if you consider that Italy was a strictly Catholic society. But then, I think it is precisely because it was so strict that Galileo emerged as a need to constantly develop the Catholic faith, although this was seen as necessary contradictory and heretic by those who wielded power over the people at that time for obvious personal reasons.

Perhaps this really is the main attraction of Italy: to understand the rise and fall of its religion through its history and architecture, but also through its artworks and literature.

Hmm. Every time I think about this, some of my thoughts will change as well.

I suddenly have the urge to develop this theory a bit more, but I need to study the photos a bit more and then I'll come back to this with them.

Before I leave

2007-12-06T17:52:00.000+08:00

I've been really busy prior to this trip, well not just the packing (although that can be a little stressful) but also studying for the JLPT exam was quite frustrating, mainly because I haven't studied that much in depth yet and was overestimating myself when I registered for it.

Oh well, now that it's over and done with, I feel a huge burden lifted off my shoulders plus a promise to pass next year. For those who don't know, if I pass this current level, it qualifies me to be a full-fledged translator and more career options will open to me.

Obviously I'm treading on very dangerous ground here, living on the edge, but I really don't want to sign up for a boring job that will probably earn me a relatively stable income of 2.8k a month writing financial reports (I know someone in my hons class who just landed this cushy job) or sign myself to NIE and be bonded for three years (I know the pay's good as well), but still...

Not that teaching isn't good, I just want to venture into pathways different from the mainstream and if I fail, well, I know that I've tried. At least I won't regret having done my best.

I guess the exam was a good experience for me. I understood the overwhelming frustration of not being able to do all the questions and I realised that this could either make one hate studying or propel one into studying harder.

Well, I was initially quite pissed with myself for studying (although little) and watch it come to naught. And then as I took the later two papers (there were three), I realised that this exam made me want to study harder because I couldn't accept defeat and because failing meant that I was wasting my time venturing into something new.

The only analogy I can think of is that I had died and was revived by heart shockers, so now I want to lead a changed life. Having said that, I'm definitely bringing my text and Japanese dramas to Italy with me. Ipod video version of course.

It'll be a good break to leave the comfort zone once in a while.

On another note, it is mandatory for all Japanese action (and I mean detective/law kind of action) flick fans to watch Hero. You must catch it!

The Pillowman

2007-11-19T19:47:00.000+08:00

Where do I even begin describing this extremely twisted and frightful yet delicious tale?

It's just not possible.

Nor is it possible for me to write something so brilliant in this lifetime, nor in the next, if there ever was a next.

It started out in a pretty cliche kind of detective questioning suspect sort of scenario, and yet the dialogue was more than all the swear words in it put together. We had to listen pretty closely for the wit in what the characters were saying, but I realised that half of it was wasted there and then because we only could understand the bulk of it after we had watched the entire play and backtracked to jog our memory a little i.e. "oh so that's why he said what he said."

Meeting the mentally retarded character was love at first sight. Well, not what you're thinking but I love his character and am totally convinced that the man is actually retarded. I know watching someone play a retarded character is usually related to something sad but I was really impressed. Hmm. Ok maybe I haven't watched that many people play retarded characters before.

Storytelling was one of the finer points of the play, and that's not just because I love stories, but I also loved the graphics they used to tell the stories instead of merely narrating, even if they were terribly gruesome. Yes, the stories were fiction containing grotesque scenarios which involved some slaughtering of children at one point.

And we enjoyed them very much.

Of course we did.

Who didn't?

Ok maybe except for certain individuals like the middle-aged couple next to me who couldn't stop groping each other during the play (I have no idea why since this is a psychological thriller kind of thing with absolutely no romance in it) and the bunch of "little" girls behind me who were complaining that it was too gruesome for them.

Anyway, yes we did enjoy the stories very much. It was the sort of thing you could read in some R-rated books or watch in some R-rated films or TV shows - the sort that could be so addictive it could get a lot of people into trouble, but well, that's exactly why we liked it.

As much as we hate to admit it, we're perverse people. The stories were what, I thought, kept the play going or kept it exciting so as to keep us on the edge of our seats. I really couldn't understand why the couple beside me left during the interval and never came back.

Perhaps they really were adverse to the "sickening" play.

Or perhaps they've decided (finally!!) to get it on at some cheap love motel nearby.

Not that I'm surprised. I mean, I've seen parents take their young ones to watch, of all things, The Dim Sum Dollies, and of all shows, it was the full-of-sex-and-sperms version. Obviously they didn't realise that by dim sum dollies, the creators didn't mean all dolls and playtime for little girls but for them to be highly sexualised objects.

Hmm.

Not that this is a fair comparison to the sex-crazed couple.

But I digress.

I loved the stories, down to the last footnote which never got published (in the play, I mean), especially The Pillowman. It's not that I'm biased because it is, incidentally, the name of the play I'm watching. In any case, nothing is incidental in that way. The Pillowman is the main story in the play, not just one of the few that got acted acted out in reality. It is the story of all stories, interweaved with all the 400 over stories that the main protagonist wrote, and with all the stories the playwright wrote.

For those of you who haven't got about to watching, The Pillowman is the story of this pillowman (literally a man made of pillows) and his job/function in this world is to cushion the blows of death for little children. He holds their hand and comforts them throughout the entire act. In case you're beginning to think what a complete insane and sick person I am, the pillowman does not "help" all little children die. He goes to the ones who are going to lead horrible lives and die horrible deaths and tells them of these details. Although he does prompt them to commit suicide to prevent these future horrors from happening, they still have the choice ultimately.

I know it's a story that isn't so easy to absorb - I took some time. It is frightening and yet it is somewhat comforting in that sense, which makes it difficult to decide whether or not such a pillowman should exist.

Well I haven't quite decided yet, even though I've already absorbed or are still absorbing the idea of a pillowman.

Wouldn't you like to have your own pillowman?

And I don't mean merely on the surface level of course.

Grickle time

2007-11-08T17:45:00.000+08:00

Accidentally chanced upon Grickle on youtube and I've been hooked ever since.

For those of you with a quirky, might I add sadistic, sense of humour or are drawn irresistibly to the dark side (no pun intended), this is for you. Enjoy :)

This is not for the faint-hearted.

I repeat, this is not for the faint-hearted.

Warning to Kim and others about to take the exams: This is addictive as hell. Think facebook heh.

Ok, that said, these are some of my favourites:

Been watching some good stuff

2007-11-05T19:23:00.000+08:00

Recently have been on a row watching unintended yet excellent shows.

Sat afternoon was spent with Kim watching Good People, a play written by Haresh Sharma. It was at The Necessary Stage Black Box, which is all the way in Marine Parade, in some godforsaken basement with no carpark and very visitor-unfriendly, but we made it nonetheless after frantically tearing coupons at some shabby HDB carpark and running (well not exactly) towards Marine Parade Community Centre while receiving two, not one, calls from the organisers demanding whether or not we were going for the play.

So we were only about five minutes late for the show but they made us wait another ten minutes for a suitable blackout to let us in. At this, Kim and I stared daggers at the lady holding on to the latch of the door. Kim even managed a weak and hopeful smile at her, in the hopes of letting us in.

Fat hope obviously.

The atmosphere could be described tense, maybe not as tense as the one inside, but we were getting slightly impatient already.

Anyway we went in to discover we didn't miss much, meaning we could still follow the story. Good People was intense alright, we had this angmo guy in front of us who kept sniffing and reclining his head back to keep the tears from falling (well he was in the front row after all). Kim and I, who were already slightly cranky from the being late part, were made moodier. It was slightly depressing watching a play about people wanting to die.

It felt a bit like Beckett's work, only in the local context and probably less extreme, but I had no doubt about how it mirrors reality, which possibly made us even more disturbed than we already were.

Today was dragged by Tammy to watch Molière, a French film which I've been wanting to watch for some time but didn't have the chance to (actually the greater reason was that I'd probably have to go by myself and I was kind of lazy), and coincidentally Tammy asked me to watch today so I went, despite a cold coming on and all.

Well, no regrets here of course, I would even watch it again by myself because I really thought it was very interesting, one of the better French films I've seen in months.

Of course, the other fun bit of sneaking off after work to town to catch a movie was well, the sneaking off bit.

Heh I know I can be a bit of a prick sometimes, but I really enjoy watching something with not so many people in the same theatre/room as me.

Molière consisted of a range of excellent actors, which was required because well, it's about the life of Molière, the famous 17th Century French playwright, and so there were a lot of the "play in the film" kind of thing. It also had a great sense of humour, seeing how Molière excelled at comedies.

So by the time it ended, I was gearing for more. Damn, I really must get the DVD (well, that's another one on my long list of wanted DVDs).

And did I mention that after Good People, Kim and I proudly emerged with not one, but two local plays each, one a collection of plays by Chong Tze Chien and the other, Off Centre by Haresh Sharma?

Well, I left thinking that we must be one of the few who can go to a play and still end up buying something one way or another.

And I'm not even talking about Phantom souvenirs here. Hur hur.

Facebook

2007-10-29T18:00:00.000+08:00

First of all, let me give my compliments to this yet-again-nifty little programme (oh pardon me, "program," as the Americans spell it) called "Facebook," which allows one to connect to various friends and acquaintances in this little network of sorts.

No, I am not being obtrusively rude here, I have just paid homage to the centre of americanisation. Of course, MacDonald's is another successful venture, possibly the most successful one spearheading America's colonisation of the world these days. What I'm trying to get at is this: the food at Macdonald's is not the attractive point; the point is that people think it is appealing, and that's all that matters, really.

Facebook is essentially no different from Friendster, which is nothing short of the former's predecessor, albeit a less courteous and less user-friendly programme. The difference is people's idealised image of Facebook. I'm sure the fact that it hailed from America had nothing whatsoever to do with its popularity.

Of course, this has got to be the main difference. How can you invent a programme and hope it to "catch on" when nobody wants to use it? If everybody wants to use it, it will definitely become part of mass consumption.

Surely I'm not looking down on Facebook and its networking pyrotechnics. In fact, I'm rather impressed at the influence it has been wielding on everyone, including those who don't use it - even they have heard about it.

To date, I have found enough long-lost friends on Facebook who have gotten married and even have kids to be able to count them so I can keep track. And that really is a feat. No, I'm not talking about my friends who are around my age now and who have certainly tied the knot in the last three years or so, although I do think that is quite a feat. I'm talking about how even these people are not too busy with their married lives to keep up with a supposedly juvenile programme like Facebook.

Let me defend myself, before I get shot at by people as young as my "kiddies" in school. I meant that Facebook must have gotten that tag here because people have grown up using Friendster in their younger days and think that Facebook is just another Friendster, only improved and is the "in-thing" right now. So because of this label, some people are naturally adamant about joining and I don't blame them. I joined Facebook because my American-Chinese cousin wants to keep in touch and she doesn't have MSN, neither do I have AIM.

Anyway my point is that everybody's on Facebook, possibly even that uncle you see sitting at the coffeeshop or that little toddler in his mother's arms, even people's pets are on Facebook. So the question is why is Facebook so accessible? It is not MacDonald's, which reason can be that food is the minimum requirement to survive, so everybody knows about it, even if they may not eat it.

Yes, it may not be a typical part of your diet but in this place and age, actually if you think about it, it is fodder for us in the internet world. Of course, you could argue that it is not a need in this world.

Perhaps not. But it is definitely a want in our society to stay "cool" and connected to it, as lame as it sounds.

Waraku photo moments

2007-10-14T17:18:00.000+08:00

Strangely, I have been visiting Waraku rather often this past few weeks so what else to group the photos in than Waraku. So enjoy the photos! Was a pain in the neck trying to load all these one by one. Grr..

Here we are celebrating Daniel's birthday! :)

Happy Birthday Daniel! We ordered him a chocolate ice cream cake flown in from Japan. He looks delighted.

Here's Daniel with his very cute and very pink zhu card! He so bravely held it up for all to see.

The beautiful girls: Me, Kim and Gracie. P.S. Gracie is the sotong lar! This is our birthday gift to Daniel HAHA

Here is me being made to impersonate Gracie because she couldn't get a picture by herself.

"What the *&#%!" Obviously Daniel said a lot more but let's not go there. Little boys and girls who aren't suppose to be here or see this, please do not tell mommy and daddy. No, do not ask them either. Just close your ears and mouth and go to bed. NOW. And no scrolling down either.

And here is Daniel impersonating Gracie.... Or was it the other way round?

Here's to you, reader. As the Japanese say, "Kan-pai!"

Ok, we never should have let him get hold of one and a half full bottles of Sake all by himself, except for the few cups I sneaked past him.

"Daniel, we are going home now. You can stop groping Gracie now. Psst! She's upside down!!"

Because I am such a lazy sot, I have decided to combine the two posts and make it into a photo post kind of thing, kinda like BBConline's photo articles hehe. You know, sometimes I think they should employ me.

Anyway here's the bit about our 'family'. You haven't forgotten the bimbos, have you?

I know we look like we're at some classy restaurant at the top of some CBD plaza but actually it's the same place as where the drunken Daniel had his sake. It's still a nice and pretty decent shot, isn't it?

Of course we do not forget Maggi's classic pose in every family outing of every photo album at any place and any time. No further comment.

I was snapping secret photos of Boo eating when she caught me and did this. Oh man, I am so gonna be dead now. On another note, poor Mags! Her so carefully measured smile got chopped off by Boo's errrr whatshallwecallit?

I know Boo will kill me for the previous photo so I very shrewdly strategised a L-O-V-E-L-Y and very P-R-E-T-T-Y photo of her here, hair down and all. Ha! Of course, this does not mean I can't be in the same picture as well :p

Mags is ostracised here because she refused to do the kneel-squat thingy I'm doing behind Boo and Mandy so we could take this lovely photo. Her reason: "I'm wearing a skirt!! Cannot crouch!!"

Boo has the very contented look - from the ice cream of course! Certainly not from Mr Chicken-tablet, Mr Shallow nor Mr bu-nan-kan LOL. Let's just say they are desperate creeps, shall we?

I'm holding Mandy's ice cream while she takes this shot haha, and she was like screaming for me not to drop it at any cost. Oh Mandy, the woe of being separated from your ice cream for a grand total of 3 seconds, oh!

And if you didn't know her personally (meaning she gets hungry every two hours and drags us for canteen breaks for half the day), you should know why now, judging from the photo. Mandy's trying to do the "ooh look! It's sooooo yummy!" look. Think she made it?

The three beauties getting high on Hokkaido Asabu Sabo ice cream - Look! Boo's even started on a dance!

Here we are, finally sleepy enough to go back home. This photo was taken much to the annoyance of the security guard in brown uniform, who was actively chasing people out of the mall when we stopped him.

A dedication

2007-09-22T00:00:00.000+08:00

Sweet and gentle, the embodiment of baby pink tender youthful love - all 49 of them.

Soft and graceful, they twirl like silk ballet shoes would. Delicate yet meekly ardent in desire, they proudly blossom to exude their once concealed emotions. Shyly but almost slightly impatient, awaiting a more than willing reciprocation.

At times weary, they lay to rest not on their graves but on their eternal devotion.

Despite their submissive fragility like sheer dancing crystals on a chandelier, they remain sensitively discerning in judgement. Always fervently responsive. Not hardened nor shrivelled into old age but resilient, especially in the face of adversity.

Like a wise woman, they grow old elegantly and beautifully - not apart but towards an intricately entwinement of the hearts.

This one is for you.

More shameless activities by the family of bimbos (actually there's just one)

2007-09-04T13:50:00.000+08:00

The family of bimbos welcomes all readers with strictly at least a tinge of bimboness in them. If not, kindly click on "next blog" and proceed on to the more mundane and boring blogs about blah, thank you. Or, if you would like to cultivate some sense of bimboness or humour or both, you're of course most welcome to stay.

Not that bimbos can tell the difference anyway.

Now, we originally wanted dinner but there have been minor mishaps right before the planned itself, including some temporary amnesia and miscommunication, but no matter, we got together for lunch anyway, with Mags (our little one) sacrificing her lunch hour (actually more than one, now that I think about it) and braving the heavy rain and grumpy taxi drivers just to get to where we were: International plaza.

Yes, you read that right, it is the dingy brown old building that was supposed (according to Mags) to house Delifrance, which we searched for by walking around in circles, only to find that when Mags said it was here the last time, "last time" meant some three to four years ago. And so out of desperation, we circled the second level as well, since Mags was absolutely clueless about food here (despite assuring me on the phone some fifteen minutes earlier that there was food to be found). I'm proud to say that my Japanese food radar picked up this humble-looking place which turned out to be a blessing in disguise, in spite of the fierce auntie who gave us random dagger stares in disagreement with our fussiness with food when she served us at the door.

So here we are with our fantastic identical sushi cha soba sets:

And if you were wondering, yes the food was fabulous. But no, it wasn't too expensive, about 16 bucks per person after adding in service charge and GST (which wasn't stated and which Mans claims to be because she prefers not to know, but I secretly think they charged it to the overall price anyway).

And if you were wondering some more, yes we had a dress code, and it was not black and white but that Mags can't tell green from black. It was..... *drumroll* DRESS! Yup that's it. We wanted to dupe Mandy into wearing one so we didn't specify the kind of dress, but I suppose Mags thought she wanted to stand out in green so... it wasn't that she thought green was the new black or something.

Mother-daughter photo: Actually we were just waiting to pounce on the food. Fast forward to next shot.

Ah-ha! Yes yes, I was so eyeing Boo's lot even though I haven't even started on mine yet and even though all four of us ordered identical sets.

Food glorious food! Of course, we shouldn't neglect our pretty model, Mans, decked in a black and white dress (a first for her! Or least for us to see her in one ha) and contacts! (welcome to the bimbo club with Mags spearheading it)

Speaking of bimbo club, our food conversation was on the recently aired Miss Teen USA 2007 pageant, complete with Boo's and Mans's decent imitations of Miss South Carolina and whatshername, which provoked us into spates of spasmic laughter.

For our not-yet-educated-on-bimbo-shows readers, here's the question and what she said in answer:

Question: Recent polls have shown a fifth of Americans can't locate the United States on a world map. Why do you think this is?

Miss Teen South Carolina: "I personally believe the U.S. Americans are unable to do so because, uh, some, uh...people out there in our nation don't have maps, and, uh, I believe that our education like such as South Africa and, uh, the Iraq everywhere like, such as and...I believe that they should, our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S., err, uh, should help South Africa and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries, so we will be able to build up our future for our..."

Dear reader, I know you can't make the connection now, but Miss Teen South Carolina is somewhat remotely relevant for later, just be patient in the meantime.

Anyway, on with our day, after our fulfilling lunch, Mags rushed back to the office and the rest went shopping:

Here we are, looking pretty in matching colours heh.

Here is Mans outside some random shop which Boo calls the "bling" shop. Well, we were bored and shameless (actually more of the latter than the former ha), so we decided it was time for some photowhoring.

And my turn! Ha. I think we got so rowdy (just the two of us 'cos Boo was busy inside the "Bling" shop) that the sales girl (auntie rather) came out and muttered something about "not allowed to take photos here" in mandarin.

But that's not all. The next morning (which was this morning), Mags very happily msned me to tell me that she bought a dress from This Fashion (we passed by before lunch and decided to look around after lunch but Mags had to rush off so she did it by herself.)

And so our morning conservation went something like this:

Mags: Yo! I bought a dress from This Fashion yesterday!

Me: So did Boo and me, but it wasn't from This Fashion. Was on sale for ten bucks.

Mags: Wah!!! Where?? Mine was 19, was the black version of that baby blue dress on the mannequin.

Me: HAHA that one. I tried the exact same black one but I didn't want to get 'cos I thought it was too slutty.

Mags: hahahahahaha! Thanks ah!! I thought I can wear it to work with jacket hahahaha!

(OMG. I immediately messaged Boo and Mans to tell them that Mags bought that dress and continued to dangle it in front of me despite me saying that I didn't buy because I found it too slutty.)

Me: No way man. Haha I just messaged the rest to tell them. Damn funny, they wanted me to buy somemore.

Mags: You messaged the rest what?

(And immediately after)

Mags: Hey where did you get your $10 dress from?

Me: Far east.

Censored (or rather cut off to make this abridged version of the dialogue more readable): (Lots of wailing went by in the background like "next time bring me leh!!" and "I want leh!!", and I thought I heard "why you guys go shopping without me!!" being implied somewhere hur hur.)

Mags: Not fair!! Good things must share!!

Me: Ya then treat us with your pay which is a third more than ours first. "Good things must share" mah.

Mags: HAHAHA!! Let me wear your dresses too!! Hahahahahaha!!

(There were definitely a lot more "haha"s than this, but it was so tedious just typing these already. She was growing more and more hysterical by the minute, I tell you.)

Me: Er, after we wear, I doubt you can wear it. It fits us just nice everywhere, so will be too loose for you.

(More scrambling at the back again)

Mags: GRRR. No loh!! Same loh!!

Me: Haha no way. Boo and I got different butt and boob sizes from you lah.

Mags: HA!!!!

(Now she gets it. To top it off, I was watching the original broadcast of Miss Teen South Carolina's answer on youtube whilst talking to her. And I was really really really trying my best not to draw comparisons.)

I'm really sorry but the dialogue has now come to an end. So has this post. I'm sure it was fun while it lasted. For more installments of the Bimbo Family Show, please check this space frequently for updates.

Disclaimer: All reporting is deemed true to the knowledge of the writer at the time of publishing. For any verification, please approach the victims, I mean, subjects directly.

The hunt for all things Japanese along the Singapore River

2007-08-27T20:06:00.001+08:00

No, you didn't read it wrongly. This is not a Primary school kid blogging about his/her first history walking tour along Clarke Quay nor is it a tourism site for visitors to Singapore because this is not a direction manual (although I can't believe I went on a walking tour along the Singapore River, must have been ages since then hur hur).

Anyway what better way to start this tour than to have Peiqi, my fellow historian Japanese language classmate, who incidentally also works at SAM (Singapore Art Museum), accompany me? (You know, sometimes I amaze myself with my lameness).

Anyway we didn't plan for it to be such a big thing. We originally planned for a simple ramen meal, but of course one thing led to another and we found ourselves planning to walk along the Singapore river, so we decided to walk from Central to the obscure ramen place and then

back the same way past Central to National Museum of Singapore to catch some old movie. Apparently they are screening old movies for free in the open, and we thought we could just check it out since we were in the vicinity anyway.

But things didn't go as well as we planned.

Instead it went like this: I met her (late of course) to catch the train to Clarke Quay and we ended up walking around Central because it was still too early and hot to venture along the foul-smelling river (not that I've tried smelling it, but anyway). After some shopping, we headed off towards the river and found ourselves irresistably drawn towards the smell of ice cream (not that we can smell ice cream from such a distance, but anyway), the signboard screaming "Hokkaido Asabu ice cream" was too disturbing to the stomach not to notice. So we decided to treat ourselves to a bit of ice cream before ramen. I mean, considering ramen was some twenty minutes away, I don't see the reason why not.

So we ended up like this:

This is the perfect picturesque painting (excuse the alliteration!) of greed I tell you.

And this is one of guilt. My fingers were practically running with matcha ice cream because I was trying to eat up both at the same time. Hur hur.

The very yummy custard-filled Hokkaido balls with even more delicious red bean paste smeared over them. Ooh la la!

And this is what happens when you're both desperate and greedy and try to eat too many things at one go. The poor statue had to endure our insults by tainting its leg with red bean balls.

This is some colourful bridge we came across while walking towards our destined ramen. Ah look! There's the Singapore River!

Here is Peiqi resting and fiddling with her handphone while we have become restless in between after walking quite a bit and waiting for our ramen.

Ah ha! The much desired ramen. I know it doesn't look like much here but it is very good! Peiqi even swore she would boycott Ajisen after this HA

And here we are finally with my Quest (or rather the Quest, since we planned to eat this for a whole month before finally settling here ha)

We had so much food that we decided to lengthen our walk to NMS by visiting the neighbouring places like Robertson Walk. Quaint little town-like thing here which almost convinced me that I was somewhere in Europe or something.

Look at this tower! I could have sworn I saw some building of similar structure in Italy or Eastern Europe or something. How I miss Europe, sigh (Sheds imaginary tear).

And from there we made our way to NMS and got distracted by some fair selling jewellery along the way. Sorry no pictures 'cos it started to rain a little and we panicked and walked even faster. We soon reached some dingy building, on top of which sits Peiqi's office, yes SAM, and then it started to pour, so obviously we couldn't go to the open-air show anymore. So we decided to seek shelter upstairs (hur hur, how convenient), and met her slightly eccentric colleague upstairs who half talks to us and half chats on msn to her "very cute" guy friend who is now in Arabia.

We ended up sitting upstairs (me getting traumatised of course by her colleague) for almost an hour and decided that it was way to far to walk back to Central, and so we heaved ourselves towards Bugis street as some small form of compensation for the oldie movie.

Which concludes the hunt for all things Japanese along the Singapore River. Well watch out for the Chinatown one the next time round LOL.

$1.20 of happiness

2007-08-07T22:20:00.000+08:00

It's ironic and somewhat disturbing to notice how $1.20 can buy you a strange but brief sense of happiness... especially after a chugging three-hour block period of going in and out of classes. And the curious thing is that it's just a cup of bubble green tea with yeast pearls. How nostalgic.

And yet, it isn't just a cup of bubble green tea with pearls. How cheaply can happiness be bought if it were so. It's the association of the thing to the giver and receiver i.e. it can be anything so long as it was given with a sincere heart, in this case, a kind colleague who went out for lunch and decided to bring back drinks for the few of us stuck in the neighbouring cubicles.

I suspect another reason is also because my table is perpetually in a huge mess and I never seem to be able to find my things even though I did manage finally to get files for the numerous pieces of paper lying around my desk but obviously have not ventured into using them yet... all these despite the fact that I only just moved in approximately slightly more than a month ago.

Anyway I digress yet again. The point is that there is never very many happy things on my table, excepting the twin foxes, sushi magnets and movable fish origami. Er by happy I mean, strictly speaking, food. Yes, the sad fact is that I can't leave any food on my table overnight. And I do not mean those unsealed food, because even my supposedly airtight mug emerges the next morning with ants triumphantly crawling in and out of it. Ugh, good grief, they must be my greatest enemy.

To cut things short, my area (and perhaps the entire office) is ants-infested, but my table especially because behind me sits a pregnant lady who has an entire minimart on her desk (I'm not exaggerating here!) So while she's happily chomping away completely oblivious of the even happier ants building their nest at her table, I, the little small fry who sits at the back with no source of electricity or internet cable and thus has to leech on her supply has to be contented with her lot by not trying to constantly eat at her desk, by pretending not to see occasional ants crawling by and by absolutely not leaving any food, packaged or not, on the table, at the risk of an ant colony internal conflict over which table is the best house, or rather, nest.

So the minute I see any remotely familiar alien species on my table, otherwise known as food, or also known as the thing that can give most (if not all) people happiness, I will indefinitely break out into a wide grin, only short of shrieking hysterically and dancing around my cramped quarters because the sound will give the rest minor heart attacks.

Hmm, then again, maybe not.

Empty dreams

2007-07-23T21:01:00.000+08:00

"Hello, test test."

"Er, hi... No I haven't died, not yet at least, I don't suppose you want it either lest nobody will be writing in this hole anymore. Er neither has this blog for that matter."

"It's probably weird reading a dialogue performed by the same writer here after a long hiatus, but no, in case you were wondering, I have not 1) gone bonkers, 2) fried my brains over work (though I'm quite I would eventually hur hur), or 3) decided that this is the best possible way to present my blog and therefore will do it in future entries."

"Ha! Scared you, didn't I?"

"I've been in a pretty limbo position these past few months (not too sure I'm completely out of it yet though, but I'm certainly trying). Depression was one of the symptoms."

"So was the will not to do anything that requires too much effort."

"... which was just about everything, I'm sure."

*nods* "Shopping was pretty much the main escape route, next to watching films/dramas and reading of course."

"It's quite scary because I didn't even know it was happening to me..."

"Until I realised recently that I didn't even recognise myself anymore."

"Ugh. Tell me about it. I absolutely hate identity crises."

"Well, at least you aren't a teenager anymore."

"Especially if I'm not a teenager anymore."

"But you were rather schizo then."

"I am still schizo now."

"Right."

Right, so that concludes my mini-dialogue session for today. Hope you enjoyed it and weren't too disturbed by its content or style.

On to bigger things... I've read in the papers that fresh graduates from the 2007 cohort (which is incidently my batch) are very highly paid these days, for example, a fresh graduate from Arts could start on a 3K pay (no less), which makes me wonder sometimes if I should be content with almost half of that.

But then again, I don't think it's really as rosy as it seems and their kind of jobs (those cited in the article anyway) don't exactly appeal to me. (Okay I can just hear my own mother screaming in my head asking: "Then what do you want lah!") I know big, permanent, high-paying jobs which spell "stability" all over are what I'm supposed to be looking out for now, but I'm just not ready for such a large full-time commitment yet. In fact, I wasn't even ready to graduate when I had to.

So now I'm (or I was) stuck in this limbo stage in which I was dreaming of all kinds of possibilities but was doing no such thing to advance any of these dreams... until I was kind of told off for it (which obviously was something I need and deserve). If truth be told, I was afraid of failure - the failure not able to fulfil these exact same dreams that I slogged through university for. Now, you tell me, isn't that just ironic?

What's more ironic is that I tell my kids the exact opposite: that they can do it if they dare to dream. So who is this coward that's dreaming big things and preaching to young kids that they should dream when she is doing nothing herself except dream? Now, without any kind of effort put into practice, those are merely empty dreams.

The last one to adjust to the new conditions in his/her surroundings will definitely lose out. And I'm definitely not someone who loses.

First day of work

2007-06-28T15:54:00.000+08:00

It really wasn't too tough, if you minus the waking up bit (which is practically everything because sleep is extremely important now that I realise I can't get much of it.)

So far, I'm just a trainee so had a series of nonstop workshops from fellow colleagues trying to sell their wares and recruit us into their various committees and also one from our department head training us on the updated syllabus.

Yes, I have a table, which is all the way to the back of the room and almost entirely hidden unless you walk a u-turn to get through to the other row, but that's really okay. My middle name is obscurity but my sense of fashion is loud (actually that depends, there are lowkey days) and people often use my hair as a topic to open up the conversation.

Right, back to the table.

It is practically empty but I have cleaned out the stack of newspapers under my desk (god knows what they are doing there) and shifted some leftover bags of junk food and miscellaneous to the other side where I try not to look at and also wiped the table and little shelves with wet tissues (the last skin allergy to dust has taught me not to give those dust-loving bacteria a chance).

So now my desk is practically empty, save for a few books, a Salvador Dali calendar (yup, an extra one I bought in Spain but didn't have a chance to use and nobody seems to appreciate him but me so finally there is an avenue for such an evangelising mission now), two tin cans worth of thumbtacks and metal clips (for fairly idealistic organising purposes, but will probably end up playing with them colourful little bits when the papers pale in comparison), one mini wastepaper-bin-turned-food-bin (where else could I fit my camomile tea bags and sweets and whatnot snacks? Of course I decided that as soon as I placed it on the table and decided that baby pink was too sweet a dustbin. Obviously my mother was pissed that I had kop-ed her bin used to hold my sister's nonsense lol), one pair of wooden twin foxes arm in arm (to cheer me up when I'm depressed in the near future and to start me thinking of nicer things in general other than work, not that they have been used for such purposes yet), a bright green mug with some other bright paints splashed on it, extra toiletries and a pair of bedroom slippers (in case the heels get too painful lol, although I think the larger reason lies in comfort for my poor feet).

Well, I realised that's quite alot to bring in for a first day, but I assure you that the things will eventually multiply and then I'm gonna have a dreadfully hard time lugging them all back by the time I leave.

Hmm.. maybe I should smuggle in some toys sometime, or some flowers ha (if I ever receive them lol.. er... oh well maybe not).

Several things during my short-lived freedom...

2007-06-15T13:58:00.000+08:00

Several things. This post has been long overdue. There were many things I went for and wanted to blog about but just didn't get down to doing it until now.

The GSS has seen me on several occasions, in several spates of money-spending/begging/lending. No, I'm only just kidding, I don't think it's that bad. At least not yet. Yup "shopping spree" is my current middle name but I have one main valid reason: I need working clothes. If you've seen my wardrobe, you will know that it's full of clothing that can be divided into two extreme categories: 1. Comfortable casual clothing meant for school and going out and sleeping in. 2. Formal clothing meant for dressy occasions. Obviously the latter category is seriously lacking in quantity since I seldom wear them, not to mention even sniff at them. Besides, most of it belongs to the dinner and dance sort of occasion and is hardly meant for the working environment, which explains part of the reason why I am "stocking up" on these utterly boring clothes (although I usually try my best not to buy such stuff). So let's not even go to the shoes and accessories bit.

Mandy and I (Cat couldn't come!) celebrated Maggi's birthday by expertly conning her, the latest and the second of the birthday surprise installments for this dysfunctional family. But I must say, this girl seriously has issues man. First she tries desperately hard to "remind" Mandy in several smses (I think we counted a total of 5 so far) that it was her birthday on the day we were meeting, and then she constantly chides us for totally forgetting about it and NOT doing anything about it. But perhaps, it was a blessing in disguise, since we pulled off the conning bit fairly easily and could even exchange frequent glances that said "I told you she would react this way" without her even suspecting a thing. Eventually, Mandy -the larger victim of the day- managed to produce the present we got her prior to meeting her in a rather crude way by casually pulling it out of her big bag and placing it on the table in front of Maggi, to her absolute horror and embarrassment. LOL.

In fact, the conversation went something like this after that:

Maggi slumped on the table after staring at the white paper bag and without touching it. So Mandy tried to prompt her.

Mandy: Eh, aren't you going to open your birthday present?

Maggi: OMG I just want to bury my head inside this table. SO PAI SEI!!!

Me: Errrrr... (and we both stare at her in half amusement and half puzzlement)

After about 15 mins, Maggi finally looked up and decided we should order our food (Mandy and I were practically starving but was too polite to interrupt her embarrassed moments).

Maggi: Ok, I think I should treat you guys to dim sum.

OMG Maggi has never (bold/italicise/underline) offered to treat us to anything before! This was like a one-off thing that we better grab before she changed her mind because we knew that we would never hear those words from the horse's mouth ever again lol. In fact, Mandy and I offered to pay for our share, I guess we couldn't quite believe our luck, even until after the food had been served.

Anyway, to cut the story short, she did open her present and found a baby blue crocheted bikini, to her utter surprise.

Maggi: Whose idea was this?

Me: Erm mine, I thought you could vary your chances of flaunting hur hur.

Maggi: (gasps) Do you know that I'm very conservative??

Mandy and me: Huh. (pause) Ya right.

And then we tried to smoke our way out of this one:

Mandy: Erm, did you know that Michelle wanted to look for your size at the kids' section?

Me: (immediately protesting) but the smallest adult size is 6!! And if she can't wear it, then I don't know what else she can wear seriously.

Maggi: Er, no lah, I think I can wear it.

Mandy: Ya, it's like a tie-on one, so we minimised the chances of not fitting.

Me: Ok, now can we have food??

So we had food and everybody was finally satisfied.

On another note, I went for my Godma's son's wedding together with my mom, who is also Godma's close friend. It was a grand affair at Four Seasons hotel with lavish food like Shark's fins and other luxurious exquisite food, and beautiful decorations like golden plates and fresh dark red roses, all meant to serve the paying wedding couple and their guests. Most of the guests (at least those at my end of the ballroom) were older and I started to wonder if holding such a dinner wasn't more for the friends and extended family of the newly weds' parents than for the main stars' own friends, especially if such a dinner cost an average of a 150 bucks per head. I was just lucky to be there because my dad, being the faithful TV junkie, gave up his seat for me because he didn't like long events like this, and of course needless to say, my mom was furious with him.

It was a good experience going for a wedding like this, probably to gear me up mentally for more such events in the near future (already! The horror!) Of course, personally I can't contemplate the idea myself, even though I have supposedly reached a marriageable age i.e. graduated from school hur hur. And like every woman gradually nearing her expiry date as each year passes, I dread the extended family gatherings like birthdays and Chinese New Year, where young-but-not-so-young ladies are stigmatised and promptly asked in the face if she: 1. Has a boyfriend aka a potential somebody to marry. If she does then 2. When is she getting married? Has the guy popped the question yet? If she fulfils 1. and 2. then 3. When are they having kids?

And I heard these questions are even more intensive after the age of 25, which (gulps) I'm arriving at pretty soon. Ok enough of the panic attack, at least my own mother agrees with me that it is not a good idea to get married too early. Being a partial feminist herself, she thinks a woman loses her freedom after she gets married and worse still if she stops working to look after the kids. So before I get any older, in the next couple of years, I have to squeeze in everything I want to do like travel and try new things while I'm unmarried and still can afford the time to run all over the world doing crazy things lol.

Oops, such a lengthy post heh, sorry guys. More food for thought :p

Heated conversations

2007-06-05T14:00:00.000+08:00

I must say I strongly felt like Verbinski had read my last rant about his undeniable flop and then went on to curse me with no less than what seems like voodoo doll tricks when I developed a raging fever which went on continuously for 4 nights.

Talk about retribution.

In fact, Sunday morning was the first time the fever subsided after what seemed like eternity but I taught myself not to be smug about it, especially after reading about scary symptoms of dengue fever with a possible second onset of fever after the first bout. There was a time, during my feverish state, in which I contemplated myself actually contracting dengue fever to the point of hallucinating that I had rashes that were invisible to everybody but myself.

Let me tell you that at a high of 39.6 degrees, my brains were practically fried, and to put it mildly, I was having conversations with myself nearly half the time. The other half of the time is of course spent mostly asleep when I'm knocked out by lots and lots of drugs. While my anti-bodies were fighting a war inside my body, my brain went delirious, frantically trying to save random bits of information that I had learnt and memorized since I was a child like maths equations out of nowhere, some words from a spelling test, English, Japanese, French... incidentally, I noticed that it didn't bother testing how to write in Chinese hur hur.

Basically, my brain was trying to test its sanity by attempting to recall things I've learnt before and should remember. So it wasn't really like a calm monologue in the manner of sitting quietly by the sea watching the waves roll by and reading poetry off Matthew Arnold... it was more like a frenzied argument between the brain's cells in the manner of:

Brain centre aka teacher: What is the derivative of the function f(x) at the point X0?

Rest of the brain cells run around frantically jumping up and down, not knowing what to do, having been ultra rusty at functions in approximately 5 years, finally shouting: "I don't know! I don't know!" And then they proceed to get a bit worried, thinking they have either lost their sanity or lost their intelligence, whichever is more comforting.

To be honest, the brain centre was equally as lost, having not gone through this feverish crisis in at least 10 years. In its heyday (when I was still a young child), it was actively shooting off various questions on anything I had learnt and that would drive the rest of the cells mad just searching for the answers. Of course, the questions then were infinitely easier like: cite the multiplication table of 9 or something.

Well thankfully for me (and unfortunately for some), my brain is still intact. No loss of memory or snide remarks I'm afraid, despite the heat.

At World's End

2007-05-28T15:28:00.000+08:00

Usually I would have to think of a humourous title for my post which matches it or at least attempt to capture its main gist, but I suppose in this case, lame movie titles perhaps more than fulfill the requirements.

As an unspoken rule, I usually try to avoid watching painfully lousy flops, especially on the big screen, but since I promised Aless (and then later Ben) to accompany them on this excruciating experience and since I usually uphold my word, I spent both money and time on this horrifying sequel to the first two Pirates of the Carribean flicks. Not that the money thing was a big deal, even though I am in a great need to tighten my belt, considering my current "unemployed" status. In fact, the time thing was a more crucial factor to consider.

As I was watching At World's End, I was trying to decide which was worse: watching Will Ferrell in Blades of Glory skate about in a skintight leotard and make typical American jokes in his usual screwball comedy offering or watching Johnny Depp exhaust his "savvy-licious" pirate jokes complete with unsatisfactory acting performances from the rest of the cast in sharp juxtaposition to the superb animation and set, which altogether failed to impress? Needless to say, the vote was unanimous for Ferrell's standup comedy performances, which I fondly remember in The Producers. That I could even contemplate watching Blades of Glory is probably the first of my attempts to break the ice in my love-hate relationship with Hollywood.

Obviously I have a lot of comments on the poor fare At World's End was offering for its fans, not that I am one, although I am a mediocre fan of Depp and I did enjoy the first film. Despite the brilliant computer graphics (no doubt already honed and perfected during the first two films) and the supposedly star-studded cast (complete with eye candy and even a competent actor like Depp), the only (and main) thing missing from the film was plot. Read: A lack of plot for Hollywood films equals to suicide, or rather homicide for their viewers hur hur.

As a rule, I try to avoid checking my phone while in the movie-watching process, since it is no doubt distracting and I'm usually too engrossed in the film anyway to bother. Yet, this time round, I was furiously checking my phone for both the time and messages/calls while secretly hoping for a tiny distraction from the eyesore of a film. In fact, I was even tempted (more than once mind you) to walk out of the theatre and a fully packed one at that. Of course, I couldn't even believe (while watching) that such a flop could stretch to almost three hours. Usually flops were short and could at least generate a few laughs, even if they had no meaning or were not worthy of a second viewing.

What was worse was that people were fighting for a seat to watch such a flop e.g. they probably had over 20 screenings of this film on the same day and 99% full or something. Of course, nothing can contend with my disgust for having sat through 3 hours of such nonsense, by which condition I now vaguely resemble these people. Nothing beats the association with people who sat through those agonising 3 hours and came out of it thinking the movie was "cool". Let me remind you again that I was not one of them.

To give Aless some credit, she was cringing during the entire movie, both voluntarily and involuntarily. Now now, I'm not being sarcastic. Her contact lenses were giving her trouble in the left eye, which made her cringe continuously even before the movie had started. Of course, the fact that the movie failed to impress gave her the excuse to go on frequent toilet trips.

At the end, I was just waiting for the credits to start rolling, at which, needless to say, I jumped out of my seat and headed straight for the exit. Actually I was also hoping against hope that, for the sakes of their fans and their cast and crew, there won't be any hints of any more sequels, not that I would actually watch it, (in fact, come to think of it, I don't think I've even watched the second film) just that I would prefer not to be bombarded by the rabid publicity (TV, radio, posters, merchandise) or the paranoia of crazy fans fighting to watch it in the first weekend.

If I could offer some plausibly sound advice to the filmmakers of the Pirates movies, it would be this: "At World's End" is an ominously significant title. Kindly let it remain as that.

Nerdy Pursuits

2007-05-20T23:22:00.000+08:00

This week was all about nerdy pursuits, or bookish fantasies to be exact.

On Monday, I went down to school to collect some stuff and passed by the co-op (er it's the NUS bookshop, if you didn't already know). But of course, me being me, I didn't exactly just pass by, I went right in and stopped short at a big (well maybe it wasn't so big after all on hindsight) red sign and felt arrested by the word "sale" in black bold letters. Hur hur. So that left me scurrying around the cramped area, quickly feasting on what kind of books were on sale. And mind you, these books were old new, new no doubt in terms of having not been used before, and old meaning the pages were definitely yellowed, like those books you put in the sun for too long and you realise at the end of some time that they have acquired a nasty old-ish yellow look. Nevertheless that didn't stop me. I mean, the books were like dirt cheap, and by that I mean the prices ranged from 1 buck to perhaps 10 bucks, but the average was around 3 to 5 bucks.

Oh the pain of not having a truck to hoard all of them and carry them safely back into my own nice brown bookshelves!

Anyway I stood there for what seemed like hours (er which I probably did and wouldn't be surprised LOL), no doubt attracting stares from the cashier at the comics counter adjacent to my precious stash of old new books. And finally, I emerged, rather triumphantly if I may add, with 4 nice fat books (3 sci-fi fiction and 1 non-fiction) totalling a *gasp* grand total of 15 bucks. I never thought I would be this good at saving money.

(Obviously, if you've managed to read until here and haven't already realised yet, I'm telling you this so you can have a go charging at those books as well)

Of course, I won't be able to keep this enthusiasm to myself for long, I mean, I had to resist the urge to like call a million other people whom I thought might be interested in the sci-fi books that I was picking up. Until I realised that maybe they would be too busy doing more important things like having jobs and studying than getting excited about buying books on sale.

So this is what happened on Friday, when I revisited the co-op: I nudged Mandy in the direction of the big red "sale" sign and of course, needless to say, she went bonkers. An example would be like: "Oh my God!" to the first book and then the addiction began, which proceeded with the obsessive flipping of every single book in the stash. And after that one round of flipping, there was a second and a third and a... well you get the gist right, I mean, do I have to go on spelling the numbers? Ok and after all that flipping, there was of course the selection. And by selection, I mean selecting the books that we would actually buy from a stack of books that we thought we could potentially buy LOL.

Nerdy pursuits generally are not just expensive, they are also physical hard labour you know. After this round of selection, there is what I call the "finer selection", in which we pick the nicest, most decent-looking paperback from the whole stack of nearly identical books bearing the same title. After this is the purchasing bit but of course, you never know when nerdy pursuits can become circular in nature. After all, just waiting for your friend to finish choosing can be a great tendency for your roving eyes to wander over to another book or books.

And so, Mandy managed to procure 3 fiction novels for a mere 11 bucks. She practically looked like she had won a prize or something.

Now we have come to the last of the nerdy pursuits: how else to end the week but with storewide discounts at a major leading bookstore like Kinokuniya? Yup, needless to say, I went in sniffing around the books. Oh for the love of their new-ish scent! Each time I go in there during a sale, I will emerge with a few books at hand and another few thousand to go on my mental list of "wanted books," with of course the frustration at my poor little purse not only because it was already bleeding red from the purchase, but more so because there just wasn't enough for "that other special book I've always wanted to get" (which of course is neverending, if you get the drift).

Nonetheless, I surfaced from the numerous books and rows of bookshelves victorious (again! Ah-ha!), having gotten 5 various books for 50 bucks. Even though it burnt a hole in my pocket, I was never more ready to part with my money. Nope, I'm not a fool, not even close. Books can't feed me physically but at least it can feed my soul.

Yes, I am proud of my bookish fantasies. Every time I saved some, albeit sometimes puny, amount of money, I would feel on top of the world, sometimes like I had conquered the world even, just a little short of punching my fist in the air and shouting "YES!!" In fact, I would even venture to boast about my purchases, like others do about discounts on clothes, except probably not everybody will understand this obsession when it comes to books. Like: "you mean that boring little rectangular thing with 500 odd pages that just goes on and on without any hints of pictures in them?" *Nods fervently with conviction*

My reply to such things?

"I would like to devour them as fast as I can so there will be time for other books."

Celebrity who?

2007-05-17T22:43:00.001+08:00

Stole this from Sexy's blog hur hur (obviously not her photo duh)

In which she plans to exorcise the evil green phlegm baddies...

2007-05-10T21:51:00.000+08:00

No wonder people hate being sick. Not only does your entire immune system break down, your usual rational stable mind disintegrates as well to give way to unwanted depressed emotions. It's even worse than PMS. Or is PMS worse?

The thing is, you'll feel extremely vulnerable and susceptible to attacks (in any forms) on yourself. Even your ego takes a step back and let your pessimistic emotions take over, in which you wallow in self-pity and self-disgust. As if your inability to exert yourself physically isn't derogatory enough, your emotions have to become unstable enough to affect everyone around you. At least PMS only affects the latter, unless of course you have menstrual cramps.

Ugh. I hate falling sick. Especially when I'm coughing my lungs and wheezing so badly I think I can understand at least half of what asthmatic patients feel when they can't get to sleep because they keep coughing the whole night. Sometimes it gets so bad i.e. coughing fit that I feel like tearing my chest or throat open and exorcise all the evil green phlegm baddies.

Of course then I realise that I only have myself to blame for not taking proper care of my body and letting them attack my immune system. But still. I hope they die a terrible death and never hope to multiply and attach themselves parasitically to my trachea again. Sore throats are the worst because they affect my speech, or worse, the fact that I'm unable to churn tunes at all.

Ok so here's the plan.

Although I try my best to spit my way (literally) out of this mess, I can't help noticing that their regenerative powers allow them to reproduce as quickly (or even more quickly) than my expulsion of their predecessors. Grrr.. remember this cartoon series we used to watch when we were younger? (I think it was called "Inside your Body" or something) The evil green phlegm baddies were depicted as short ugly fat green gnomes with menacing smiles on their faces carrying a devilish weapon, while the white blood cells were portrayed as tall muscular white soldiers in uniforms armed with weapons to fight back. The outcome of the battle depended on the population on each side, although I must say the number of green baddies was neverending. Lol. I used to love that cartoon when I was younger.

Oh well, I still have the external anti-bodies from medicine heh, except I can't remember what they looked like in the cartoon. Probably similar to the white blood cells ha. So you guys, please help me cheer the white guys on ya?

Graduate loh!

2007-05-06T23:24:00.000+08:00

I fear for times like these - not knowing what to do with your life, where life is going to take you... decisions, decisions and more decisions. It was like this during the window between secondary school and junior college. It was also like this in the long corridor between junior college and university. And as you get older, the decisions you make will indefinitely affect you for the rest of your life. Like er, "what are you going to do?"

And even though I bravely display my status at the top of the post, I still can't believe it's over already. In fact, I still answer "soon la" to the question "have you graduated already?" I mean, okay technically convocation is two months away but exams are over already so officially but unofficially I've graduated (yikes, feels so weird to type it in). I know the rest of my peers are thinking: "yay, graduate loh!" so they probably think it's nonsensical mourning for the end of student life.

It's probably more of a love-hate relationship for me. I grumble (or rather, grumble-d, sheesh this is damn weird) so much about studying but actually I like learning new things all the time. But then I also dislike being forced to learn certain things I'm not interested in and then I complain about it. Afterwhich I start to realise that I like procrastinating about it, so then I love hating it and at the same time, I hate loving it and subjecting myself to it all over again.

And when I get out of it and am able to look at it from a critical (hopefully objective) point of view, I realise that I'm addicted to the whole love-hate relationship thing with studying, which is highly disturbing of course. Like a workaholic who doesn't know he is one until he actually retires and catches himself attracted to the same thing he was repelled by years ago.

I feel exactly like that.

After my last paper, I practically stopped all reading for a few days, only to find myself reading all sorts of signs and posters and analytically evaluating them for the sake of evaluating them. Not that I don't already do that on a daily basis, just that I've only started to realise how obsessed I am with reading. And everytime I watch a film/drama/visual images out of leisure, I find myself using technical terms to describe them without knowing I do, until of course people who don't understand me ask.

So now my problem is that, my brain is still not used to slacking around so it's not learning how to rest. I still haven't learnt to sleep peacefully without thinking of random unrelated things despite it being after the exams. But then I also fear that it will turn to mush pretty soon (which it probably will if I continue existing in limbo), so I get worried but then I don't do anything about it so I end up making myself more worried about not doing anything.

And so I concluded that I'm definitely psychotic in these aspects. Maybe I should learn not to think so much and be easily satisfied with my lot, so please you guys, install some bimbo-ness into me sometimes. Come to think of it, it's probably a good lifesaving skill or something hur hur.

Back with a Vengeance

2007-04-30T14:45:00.000+08:00

The shameless family is back with correspondingly shameless photos which should never have to see daylight but they are now here. Enjoy our tremendous pre-exams trip to kbox, in which we engaged in cheenapok exercise like singing cheenapok songs (and ahem cheesy boyband 90s songs complete with secondary school nostalgia)

The first of the family photos! Warning: It's going to be alot of jumping around and funny things are about to happen.

(This plus the next two shots are part of a three-act play) Act One: Singing Superstar (S.H.E.)

Act Two: LOOK who is singing?! Lao Boo and Klutzy have started giggling lol.

Act Three: Now this definitely takes the cake. Lao Boo is not giving face anymore and Klutzy is forced to continue singing despite audience reponse... and Sexy... well, let's just say she's enjoying herself very much heh.

That's us lazing around after all that action. And I do mean action, Sexy stood up on the sofa during the very first song.

Erm Lao boo and I were trying (damn hard) to pull off this sultry look, which we probably succeeded in, don't you think? ha

We have gone M-A-D! Entertaining childhood dreams of flying more like. Hur hur.

Eh... stop pushing the mic to me, you girls.

And I thought this was one of the most decent photos around... until I realised that Sexy was swaying around on the right side of the photo background and indefinitely haunting our nice smiles heh.

Our star of the family heh nice photo, Lao Boo! You should totally manage her or something heh

Klutzy at her best - um-chio-ing :p

Here's me trying to a do a Sexy-cutesy pose hur hur.

Lao Boo: Don't think you can escape a solo picture just because you were holding the camera because I've got you! Ah-ha!

Ode to Lao Boo, who I caught stuffing herself with the buffet spread while the rest of us were busy singing. Now don't use food as an excuse not to sing!

Encore

2007-04-19T18:26:00.000+08:00

I'm suffering from an encore mix of jadedness, moodiness, sian-ness and aimlessness - symptoms related to resisting the exams - which ironically sets in when they are just around the corner.

I just feel so tired slugging away. I know it's the last lap, I should be chionging, like the sixth round of 2.4km run, the last chorus of a song, the last mouthful from a buffet dinner, the conclusion of an essay... Ugh, why couldn't it be like the last episode of a drama series? Maybe then I could feel some form of anxiety or eagerness even in finishing the last lap, but no... I just feel really emo about it.

I'm torn between looking forward to the future and backtracking into the past. As in, obviously I don't want to travel back in time, but while I want to go forth, I feel like something is holding me back, and that something lies in the past. And then I have doubts about my zeal for the future: if I really wanted to move on so much, why can I not let go of the past and move on? Again, I'm treading on ambiguous ground here.

In the past, whenever it came to the exams, I will feel the enormous urge to slack but at the same time knowing and hoping that the next semester will be better. This time, there is no next semester, whether I liked it or not. And maybe I'm not ready to accept reality yet, but time is not going to sit around and wait for me. Nevertheless I still can't move... I am what you call it - living in stagnant waters still trying to grapple with the fact that there will be rain and life will go on.

In short, what the hell am I doing? At least the essays gave me some kind of drive in trying to meet or beat deadlines, but there are no deadlines for the exams. I am just waiting passively for life to come and go past me. Maybe I'm afraid of the helplessness and aimlessness that the after-exam period is going to bring, because by then there would be decisions to make - those kind that will make or break my life. I thought I had it all planned out, but lately that has been accompanied by thoughts of possible failure... what if I fail? I don't want to...but... what?

Ironically, I haven't been sleeping well when all I wanted to do during the essay rush was sleep. And sleep I did. But now I've been having sleepless nights, and I attributed this to bouts of stomachache. Yet, my mother claims that stress is a contributing factor to the disorder as well, so is it the stomachache that is causing my insomnia or is stress really the main (and only) culprit? Which then begs the question of why stress? Which then brings the whole thing back into a circular argument altogether: exams = stomachache = stress = exams and so on.

Last lesson ever in NUS

2007-04-13T16:31:00.000+08:00

I didn't even realise until some of the other year 4s wanted to take a photo to commemorate our last lesson that it was really the last lesson. I mean, okay that felt somewhat strange to think about and to type... what the hell, I even feel a little emo and sad about it!

And this is coming from someone who couldn't wait to graduate in the very first semester of her year one. So I expect I should be carrying my camera around school soon, especially on the last day of exams. And it's really strange 'cos I don't feel the "last" thing yet. Maybe it's because I still have one essay and exams to write so I don't feel the pinch yet.

Reading Lao boo's last entry on "our future" was like damn weird la... it was like woah... slow down Lao boo... what job... what wedding... I couldn't see myself doing any of that so soon. Okay maybe the job thing isn't too far away, like a month or two or so, but huh?! Wedding?! Righttt.

The rest of you better not get hitched so fast okay? The angbao market has been increasing as the years go by, and poor people can't fork out so much every month. Imagine I have friends getting married every month or so... Omg. Please don't ha.

Er I mean eventually, but not so soon.

Despite all my complaints about drowning in essays and horrendous people in school, I actually still wanna study. Maybe it's 'cos I can't see myself doing anything else, like working. Or maybe it's because I feel I haven't learnt enough yet, and I feel emo that my education is just going to stop here. Whatever happened to "learning is a lifelong process"?

And maybe I also feel that I haven't studied as hard as I originally planned to when I first started out or as I think I should. But looking back, I probably wouldn't have done it any other way. I mean, it was a stepping stone for me and I learnt many lessons that I wouldn't have if things didn't happen. And all those things happened because of my own character, so I can't fault anybody or time or anything, and even if given a chance to go back into time, I probably would make the same mistakes over again, not because I want to, but because it's integrated in my character.

That is not to say that I couldn't have made choices that would have improved the situation a little or that I would never learn from my mistakes. But because I accept my own character, I know that it isn't perfect and so I make the mistakes that I made.

I shall perserve in the face of temptation

2007-04-10T14:07:00.000+08:00

Congrats to Laoboo, who has survived the essay crisis, and to the rest of the family by this time tomorrow. Ugh. I'm going to be about the only one whose left till Monday.

But nevermind. All these aside, I'm so looking forward to our next family outing where we will engage in several activities: shopping spree (like any old girl who has at least a bit of bimbotic tendencies in her), buffet (food, glorious food! Oh how we missed you thanks to the absence of the arts canteen. Pigging out is definitely therapeutic to gain back all the weight we've lost due to the essay rush), and lastly, kbox (cheenapok exercise which none of us will ever admit very proudly that we go to perform our narcissistic desires and subject our friends to the sound of killing chickens!) Muahahaha... You can tell I'm delirious by now.

With one presentation down and two more essays to go before I declare myself free from essays forever! Erm.. for a long time at least.

Now now, don't gloat, it's not very nice. Be more encouraging alright? I give you the privilege to scold/cajole me into doing work and being consistent about it.

What? Too late? No no, never too late. One day is considered alot of time to me as well, ask Mandy. She should know *evil laughter*

Why were we online?

2007-04-04T11:46:00.000+08:00

Why indeed?

And I thought I was one of the few struggling, trying to get along with the damn essay when out popped Mandy online. She started talking to me while we were both trudging along with our essays to be handed in the next day (and this was what 1am on the same day). No sooner was I thinking to myself: eh Mandy, you don't need to do essay ah... than I was promptly added to a chat with Janice and Cheryl, who were all stuck in the same crisis.

From there, we formed the XX Essays Procrastination Club.

Right.

And then I was mysteriously added on msn by a few others, who as I discovered, were also supposed to be doing their essays but were also online and had the status of "busy."

The members of the XX Essays Procrastination Club eventually stopped all talk to work on their essays, but from time to time, we cheered each other on by sending ditzy emoticons i.e. those with pom poms and cutesy animals. We were that desperate.

For those of you who had enough discipline not to come online which the rest of us hadn't *ahem* like Lao boo and Sexy, let's just say you missed all the fun heh.

So to answer my own question: why were we online?

Well being the poor, freedom-deprived, sadistic creatures that we are, let's just say that it was comforting to know that we weren't the only ones dying in the process of trying to complete that one essay for the night.

Drowning in essays

2007-03-31T00:05:00.000+08:00

Yup the time of the semester has arrived, much to my chagrin, even though I have been through it many many times already but still. And I am drowning in the tears of my crying essays.

This part is for me, and for those struggling with me, no doubt some sort of inspirational pyrotechnics to get me going: Live essays... Breathe, eat, sleep essays.

I think I'm losing my stamina. Last sem, I could go on for two whole weeks living essays (literally as well, because everything is done on my bed) and hardly sleeping. But this sem, after clocking like a total of one night's sleep in two nights, I feel like I can hardly function already. It's not just a matter of wanting sleep anymore... I need sleep. Ugh. Maybe I'm reliving my childhood again, where I usually need at least ten hours of quality sleep to maintain my day. Now I need approximately 9 hours every night so I can be the cheerful, non-ditzy self minus the eyebags and constant yawns and complaints for sleep. Erm, which is obviously not what I'm getting right now.

Not enough sleep equals to what I call the helium effect, first coined by Xiaohui I think, back in the narrative structures days ha. The brain is overworking and high on information, which the body transmits cheerfully and in a most ditzy fashion, often ending up in high-pitched, sonorous laughter that goes like: "eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee..." or something like that.

Er. And if you're about to say that I'm usually like this on normal days.... I AM SO NOT LAH. Heh.. I'll be prepared to defend myself on the grounds that I didn't have enough sleep (enough means 9 hours every night which is like never) so just you know. ;)

Hall of Shame

2007-03-20T21:07:00.000+08:00

//updated. To do justice to Miss Sexy, her side of the story can be found here. (Beware of the highly bimbotic intonations though, but check out the mispronounced French words... Ugh, did I mention that they are pronounced the ugly Singaporean way? Heh)

I shall try this thing (a special for this round, but also because I'm such a lazy sot) where a picture is worth a thousand words, and which showcases my "family" in school. Welcome to our hall of shame, in which there are pictures of us, us and more us! (thus a very apt title for this post, because we are probably utterly shameless photo whores :p)

Presenting... the daughters of the family (obviously lao boo, Cat, is holding the camera so she's not here). From left, Sexy aka Maggi, Klutzy aka Mandy, and me (er I'm called Funky ha)

Here's me praying hard that my dessert is not going to melt anytime soon and that my present is studded with diamonds (lol). Erm.. why is it served with a spoon anyway?!

"Oh joy! The laughter! The happiness!" Hmm.. Mandy's just jealous lah.

Bling bling... my utterly shameless family has given me something to maintain my utterly shameless image. Ah yes, now I can check my hair all the time whee!

"Nobody, and I mean nobody, shall take me away from my melting dessert any longer ha! YUM"

Our family! In front of the restaurant too heh. Don't we look glamourous? ;)

Our lovely lovely desserts! (Sexy's)

Lao boo's

Mine!

Background: this was the corner we sat in (thankfully). Our shrills and giggles surely produced much ripples throughout the restaurant and would probably terrorise everybody else if we weren't erm.. properly contained. Muahaha

In an attempt to look kawaii, lao boo has given in to indulging Sexy's act-cute moments.

Klutzy looking very contented with her dessert. Did I mention that she had TWO sets of desserts?

Our entertainment most of the time: I'm quite sure Sexy must have a thousand million act-cute poses. This is just one of them.

The highlight of the Hall of Shame. HEH. She will kill me if she finds out about this. Save me lao boo!

I embrace uncertainty, Keats and dreams

2007-03-11T00:31:00.000+08:00

In many aspects, I'm still a coward thinking that I'm progressing towards the brave. Or rather, I seem to indulge being in the hazy area between coward and brave, because it's safest for someone like me. Nebulous, uncertain, negative capability. It's a comfort zone and a space of undefined boundaries, and most importantly, a safe place which does not demand an explanation, elaboration or even an articulation.

And it's ironic how I like to ask questions when I hate answering them myself, not because I hate answering the questions per se, but because I hate trying to articulate myself in a logical way which somehow makes sense to others and even to myself. I especially like to ask questions which I can answer for others or at least have some inkling as to what is on their minds, because the ability to confirm these answers strangely makes me feel a bit more certain of myself. And yet, I can never have too many answers to the same question. Are all the answers parts of the whole big group of the answer? Or are some false and others true? Are the true ones really true or are they really lies which I tell myself become real? Are the false ones really actually true? Or is the question in suspect of allowing a freedom of openendedness? It has struck me, very uncomfortably or not, that I thrive on these kinds of questions and the possibilities of answers they offer. None of the answers are necessarily wrong, yet none are necessarily right either. The only time they are judged to be so depends on the context they are put in and how they are constructed, from whose point of view etc.

I embrace uncertainty, maybe because I'm a Literature student. Or am I a Literature student because I embrace uncertainty? Ironically, it is because I desire to seek some kind of answer or answers that I embrace uncertainty. But when I've decided on a kind of answer or when such an answer dawns on me, sometimes I prefer to revert back to uncertainty because of the promise it offers. As a child, I used to let my mind wander into imaginary spaces and one of these was life as a fairytale, and I used to wonder why nobody talks about what happens after "they lived happily ever after" and why after a film ends, the characters do not indulge in the happy endings? Is it because happy endings are just allusions to make the reader/viewer feel good momentarily about themselves? Is it because after "they lived happily ever after," they don't in fact live happily ever after but the stories don't tell you that because it's too depressing or confusing for the children? It's easier just being simple and a simple ending entails one straightforward and predictable non-complicated ending and avoids nebulous, multiple and unpleasant endings? Is it because when you have just one formula-for-all ending, everybody can be brainwashed into thinking that this is the case and we should all be satisfied with it?

It's so much easier to block out everything and live in a void of dreams. Unfortunately, this is not what happens in reality. Yet, I often mix dreams with reality. In fact, I often think they run like threads interweaving into one another. Yes, dreams are an important part of my life, as much as reality is something I face everyday. Just because dreams are not part of my waking life does not mean they aren't a part of my life, and I can't just dismiss them because in my dreams, I have seen, smelled, touched things, just as I do in reality, and they are as real to me as the experiences in reality.

So yes, I am comfortable living in ambiguous, free and undefined spaces. In fact, I probably am most comfortable straddling dreams and reality. And so, I embrace them as Keats did.

Cleaning out my closet

2007-02-26T20:42:00.000+08:00

I realised I have been missing for almost a month and that is quite a long time (maybe far too long to be on hiatus).

Well, to date, many things have happened (pleasant or unpleasant), which I was trying to cope with, or probably still trying to cope with, and which I have exhausted myself in narrating them to my peers, so it felt kind of repetitive and redundant to do it here as well.

I'm probably not the best person to solve problems on the spot, especially if they involve persons other than myself, hmm well even then I do have problems struggling with my schizoprenic self. So for now, especially with all the school work weighing me down, I think it's best not to think about them. Even though it's my last semester and even if I get straight Bs, my CAP is probably going to remain about the same, I still enjoy doing what I do and I want to strive for the best in what I take pride in.

Right now, I'm just taking things a day at a time: try to keep up with my readings, get to school on time, hand in assignments on time and with the spare time, do other things I like to keep myself happy. So while I'm in the process of cleaning out my own closet, I refuse to whine all day and grumble about why life has treated me the way it did and instead try to work out things which are more urgent at hand, like for example, graduation.

Which reminds me... I had three main recurring comments/questions during this Chinese new year:

First, comments on my gold-studded cropped short hair. Well most people liked it, at least I like to think so. The only person I think who was critical is of course my own mother, but then again, this is the same person who always complains that "if only I resembled her, I would have been sooooo pretty." Well not that I don't agree, I've just ceased to be resentful about it, especially if you were me and had a pretty Eurasian-looking petite mother who is just about everything I'm not in terms of physical appearance ha. Hmm my uncles tried to be funny about it, they called me a "jue dui superstar," hur hur... right.

Second, comments about me having lost so much weight, or at least some if I insisted that it was minimal. Perhaps it was my Chinese new year garb that made me look thinner and taller than usual. Perhaps I did lose too much weight over the things that have happened. Perhaps I decided once and for all not to eat as much as I did in the past and adopted a totally different eating habit. Naturally (or not), this comment was swiftly accompanied by another about me having grown prettier during the span of time which they have not seen me (equates roughly to a year I think). So I take it that the weight loss has done some good to me at least. I don't mean to boast but now I can fit into all my clothing, and not just that, I'm almost swimming in them, even those which used to fit me exactly. Then again, now I can finally wear a one-piece dress without thinking about how fat it would make me feel ha.

Third, questions, questions and more questions about what I am going to do after graduation. What exactly am I going to do indeed.. I think I need a short break i.e. travel and all that before plunging headlong into the wicked working world and become trapped in a neverending circle of complaining that work sucks because it is routine but that I can't not work either because I need the dough. If I had a choice, I would seriously not want to work (at least not yet) and just continue studying everything I have had wanted to learn... and I want to learn so many things arghhhh. Hmm.. but then again, maybe just to do that would take me an entire lifetime and at the end of it all, I probably won't be working or won't have the urge to work heh. That will be the life.

Ok enough of an update for now. Now on to the mugging bit for tomorrow's test :)

I swear this is worse than giving birth

2007-01-31T15:52:00.000+08:00

Not that I've tried giving birth yet.

Well it is an analogy to the pain I felt (and am still feeling) these few days. Ahhhhhhhhh the agony of food poisoning... Don't ask me what the hell I ate, I can't remember either. Perhaps my stomach has been severely weakened and cannot take the tiniest bits of bad bacteria.

I've been sleeping consecutively since Monday night and it feels like an eternity of sleep which I might not wake up from. Now that was scary, but I discovered only last night that I was possibly feverish for a whole day and night and did not know, which explains the dizzy spells and migraines.

Anyhow I suffered the pain of having stomach cramps (not the period kind, but probably worse than that, the girls would know), and having waves of urges to vomit simultaneously. Eventually I did vomit a few times before I decided that I couldn't endure one night on this, so I asked my dad to rush me to A & E.

Argh if I weren't writhing in pain, I would scolded them there and then for making me wait a full two hours just to give me the jabs (two) and my medicine so I could go home and sleep. I only realised the next day that the medicine wasn't really enough and that they and I both underestimated the seriousness of my condition. The difference between me and them is that they are trained professionals and are paid to do so whereas I'm this poor struggling student who just wants to bloody get treated so I can sleep properly. And they couldn't do a simple thing like tell me I have fever or something, god! Those incompetent nincompoops! (think Dr Eggman from "Sonic the Hedgehog" scolding here ha)

Now I'm left with the stomachache, which I really hope will go away soon. It's really irritating having to live a life of flatulence hur hur.

One hell of a sleepy semester

2007-01-27T17:04:00.000+08:00

I know my last semester has kicked off and I haven't been writing much as of late, but that's no excuse for slacking off. I apologise for my (serious) lack of posts. Ever since the spate of 9am classes (which is still ongoing now), my life has been governed by my bed. Yessss... my beautiful, comfortable, to-die-for bed and warm quilt, coupled with the rainy and grey skies, which gives me more reason to surrender wholeheartedly to them.

Ugh, I really detest 9am classes, mainly because I have to wake up at the unearthly hour of six-ish, when the sun is not even up yet, and then as I struggle through the 3-hour long seminars (groan), I have to be awake enough to connect what my ears hear to my brain to my mouth, and cross my fingers and hope that what I said made sense. I'm already slow to situational performances as it is, but with lethargy, I am completely unable to react to anything anyone darts at me.

So now I have become a zombie hungering for my much needed sleep, and if any of you see me around in school or anywhere and I don't say "Hi" or anything, it's because I'm still in dreamland. And if I have a sulky/angry look, it's because I really need sleep. Mandy has this theory that I look exactly the same when I'm sleepy/angry/bored/hungry, which probably translates to a lacklustre appearance I think. So if you're trying to read me, I'm probably suffering from one of the above, and chances are quite high that I'm sleepy most of the time.

On another note, live bands/music (or rather live theatre/musicals... live anything) are the best things in the world. And no, I'm not turning into a groupie or anything, but I have a tendency to temporarily heart the performer at a live gig, for as long as his/her song lasts. Obviously the pitch has to be of a certain standard, otherwise it turns into noise, which then becomes er.. not very tolerable.

And yes, back to the topic after digressing a bit, this is going to be one hell of a sleepy semester.

El Laberinto del Fauno

2007-01-14T20:21:00.000+08:00

"A long time ago, in the Underground Realm, there lived a princess who dreamt of the human world..."

I caught this film today (in English, the title is Pan's Labyrinth), it's a fantasy/thriller/drama type genre film in Spanish, and I was absoultely in awe of its interweaving storylines, the special effects like animation, the plot and intense suspenseful moments the film sometimes erupts into.

I was simply sucked into this fairytale world and couldn't tell the real from the supernatural. Well, of course it didn't help that the plot interweaved with the many fairytales we grew up with but in distorted versions. The protagonist was a girl of ten, so I became a girl of ten, looking and feeling through her eyes. I winced when the monster guarding the big feast came stomping after her and held my breath as she managed to escape through the roof without getting one of her legs pulled by it, as they do in horror films. I was worried when blood-like streaks suddenly appeared on the blank pages in her magic book, The Book of Crossroads, signalling something ominous.

The entire film was as its title suggests: a labyrinth of stories, interwoven, story within story, fairytale within fairytale, legend within legend, and then everything gets mixed up... stories within fairytales within legends. The order of which was first within which didn't matter already, because it had become a maze, or several mazes in fact, dictated by The Book of Crossroads. The question of "which came first, the chicken or the egg?" popped up in my head. Which came first? Ofelia or the Princess Moanna? Who dreamt of who first? Perhaps they were going in circles and continue to do so eternally.

Which is real? Life or fairytales? Are fairytales a part of life or is life a part of fairytales? As Ofelia's mother tells her agitatedly: "life is not like fairytales," but she doesn't believe. Neither do we, the viewers. How can we not believe, when we've seen Alice in Wonderland with The Princess and the Toad with Hansel and Gretel with The Moon Lady and many other fairytales and various folktales meshed into a few stories interwoven into one film?

The Book of Crossroads is wrong about something. It does not show Ofelia's future. It shows her the various paths she can take, but it doesn't decide what she does eventually. And ultimately, Ofelia gives up the book for the Faun's instructions but even so, she decides not to spill her brother's innocent blood in order to regain her title as Princess. She loses her fairytale status in a human act and yet she doesn't, because kindness and goodness exist especially at the fairytale level, therefore she forsakes her mortal anguished body for an eternal happy-ever-after soul in her fairy realm.

At the end, she gains her rightful place as Princess of the underground realm, yet the humans mourn for the loss of her mortal body in a highly intense emotional moment. Why I feel sad by the loss of her mortal life is something I myself cannot understand. Why does the knowledge that she has become Princess of her own world not soothe or completely comfort me in the loss of her mortal life? The end has such a mixed feeling that I end up mourning for her suffering human life instead of rejoicing for her eternal kind soul.

"To thine own self be true"

2007-01-10T01:00:00.000+08:00

From time to time, I experience a condition called "schizoprenia." And don't worry, I mean it in the sense that one of my lecturers gave: "a kind of dislocation of time-space consciousness, a failure of logic, a corresponding crisis of identity/consciousness."

This crisis doesn't come very often, perhaps once in a a few months? Few years? I don't know, I've lost track or can't seem to remember, but when it does come, I become unnaturally obsessed with one thing or another, like a new sport, new aspect of art, new drama or something like that... something that keeps me going and yet keeps me far from thinking logically about what I should be doing, should do instead of escaping so conveniently. And I hate to see it end, it's just too depressing.

If people start to tell me "to be true to yourself" or "just be yourself" or "just act naturally," I wonder what the hell that is all about. True to myself? Which self? Which of my many selves do you mean I should be true to? Doesn't the self evolve as one grows up? Does it stay continuous and permanent throughout my lifetime? In fact, sometimes I feel like I'm just going through the motions. Grow up, study, finish studying, time to work and the list goes on. What is this "me" I am seeking? Am I seeking it in the right direction? Is there a right direction for seeking the self? What does it really want? What do I really want from it?

Sure, there are times I think: this is so me. But how long can that moment last before I refute it and turn it 360 degrees around and protest that it isn't me? Perhaps I'm trying very hard to mould myself in somebody else for some reason or other, or perhaps I'm like chameleon, changeable and adaptable to my surroundings, but then how does that make me me? Or maybe being a chameleon means leaching onto other people's selves, that I try to define myself by the boundaries of my friends' selves. I don't know which is scarier - not having a fixed self or not having any at all.

Something is missing in my life, I just don't know what it is yet.

Feeling emo about my old girl of a car

2007-01-07T18:31:00.000+08:00

Everytime the day before the first of school comes, I suddenly realise I have a million and one things to do: room not packed, books not read, videos not watched, things I've-always-wanted-to-do-but-have-no-time-to-do not done... and as Pussy has reminded me, it's already 2 weeks since the Spain and Portugal trip and I have not uploaded the darn photos online. Ugh.. Can I please have more time?

Also, I've been feeling a little down about my old girl of a car. I thought the bang wasn't that bad, little did I know she was old and too expensive to fix already. In fact, her scrap value is worth more than her repair costs. MY CAR!!!! It has always been a part of me, only I hadn't realised until recently how much she meant to me. Yup, don't mind me, I'm just feeling a little emo about this old girl of mine. I never thought she won't wake from the deep sleep of hers, and I used to think that machines were just that, they would always get repaired and they will always work eventually.

But the thought of never being able to drive her again makes me rather depressed. She's the first car I had driven after I had gotten my licence and had taken all the hard knocks of abuse I had subjected her to. For three years, we worked together and shared grief from past accidents (no matter how minor) together, and I always thought of her as a strong sturdy car who will never let me down. In fact, she hasn't, but I guess that this time round, the bang was too harsh on her. It was instant death and she couldn't recuperate on the spot for me to drive her off. She had to be towed away. I didn't even watch her get towed away. I didn't think I would never see her again, but now there's a high possibility that I won't get to drive her again.

Of course, my mother's not very pleased about it. We could have used her for another good 3 or 4 more years before sending her to dumps, but now, it's like execution for a crime she never committed.

Perhaps as a consolation, not having the car for a while means I won't be obliged to drive anyone home (not that I resent it or anything), although it also means a good amount of inconvenience on my side as well. Taxis are a whole load waste of money plus the drivers are bad and hazardous.

My life is damn happening la

2007-01-02T16:26:00.000+08:00

The new year started with a bang - literally, on two separate accounts. But before that, I must narrate the pre-new year goodies I was bestowed with the minute I arrived back home.

"5k or bag?"

That was the question my mother posed to me the day after we landed at Changi airport and discovered lo and behold that my super heavy bright red luggage was not circulating around the baggage belt and was therefore deemed missing. Yes yes, you can just imagine me flustered holding the "WTF" sign in capital letters no less.

That was when my father discovered that the airline/airport was liable to pay up to 500 bucks for my missing luggage and what's more, the insurance claim was up to 5k for the same thing. So my answer to the question? I just wanted my bag and all my emotional attachments to it and the things inside it.

Of course, my mother was just teasing (at least for the second time she asked) because the luggage was already delivered to our house by the time she asked. As for the first time she asked, I really wasn't sure because we were on a different topic altogether on the phone: something about the petrol and stuff when she suddenly popped the question "5k or bag?" I was really taken aback and I thought she really meant it. But now on hindsight, perhaps she did ha, I could never be sure what goes on in her mind.

2007 started with two bangs

Right, let's move on to this year's stuff. I celebrated New Year's eve with the taitee gang I met during the Spain and Portugal tour, because it was a case of rendezvous. Everytime one of its members, Mr East side, wanted a countdown e.g. Christmas, Boxing Day, we never got to it. We were always too late or too distracted by taitee. I believe it's more of the latter than the former hur hur.

So this time, he suggested that we go to Mount Faber for a wonderful experience of snow and fireworks, to which the rest of us were like "huh?! Wth?!" Nevertheless we went and were caught in the car jam all the way to the top. Fortunately, we reached the top just as midnight struck and turned crazy. All of us got out of the car in less than 2 seconds just to watch the fireworks. It was breathtaking. I've never been this close to the moving lights, enough to breathe their exhaust, or to feel slightly threatened by the loud bangs made by them. In the end, even without the (fake) snow, we felt somewhat satisfied by the real fireworks.

The Second bang

Yup, this happened on the first day of the year again, after I had slept and woke up and for some reason, I shuddered at the thought of driving somewhere that day. It felt ominous, like I should not touch the car, at least for the day.

Of course, in the end I did, and nothing happened until I decided to pump petrol at the kiosk. And the minute I left, that's when the second bang occurred. It was loud and it hit me (hello, metaphorically la) immediately. The next few hours were a blur. Nobody was injured but I didn't want to do anything. I was just shocked.

Good thing my parents came and I recovered and could even make a joke out of it. "Go and buy 4D using my car number ha, sure zhong one." And so, the taitee gang commanded Pussy to buy 4D for us, the winnings will go to paying for our chilli crabs bill. Pussy obeyed our orders and bought 12 permutations of the 4 numbers. HAHA.

So I concluded that my life is damn happening la.

So the bogus site was true after all...

2006-12-27T19:25:00.000+08:00

Damn, what a play with the mind. I hoped it wasn´t true, but it was. And now our hearts are broken. Daniel and Kim, we will persevere! We have tried so hard to get to now.

Anyhow I am still in Europe, Portugal that is. And I´m using this very-difficult-to-use keyboard that can type all the symbols of the European language plus it is 2€ per 15 mins and since I have just crossed the 15-minute border after bidding for modules, I might as well use the remaining time to type my money´s worth here.

I´ll be heading for airport very soon and will be back on the 28th afternoon. Yes yes, your presents are with me and will be shortly with you.

I can´t wait to see misty!

Hola from Spain!

2006-12-24T07:02:00.000+08:00

They say Hola for hello here (pronounced as oh-la). About the only word I know, other than gracias ha. I know, I am pathetic. And most of them can't even speak much English. They keep greeting us by some common Japanese greetings, thinking that we're Japanese heh. All the Asians look the same to them.

Anyhow I've been here for quite some time already, but I still haven't gotten used to the weather. One day it's temperature cold plus sunny hot and another day it's raining cats and dogs and super windy and freezing cold. (And I do mean frostbite cold like today my hands and feet were so cold, they became numb after a while. But no, I didn't see snow, because it wasn't low enough but it sure wasn't high enough to be nice aircon coolness. Like not here not there, so it kind of sucked) Damn, can the weather decide what it wants to be? I feel kinda cheated by the weather reports. Even if they proclaim it'll will sunny without clouds, in Europe, there is still a high possibility that it will turn out to be the opposite like it did today. Grr and Brr.

Well, you can be sure that one thing stays constant: the humidity level, or should I say, the lack of humidity. It's so bloody dry here my skin keeps threatening to crack if I don't be super auntish and apply lots and lots of moisturiser.

Ok let's skip the complaints and go straight into the nice bits ha. The scenery is absolutely fabulous. You can never see the sun set as low, nor the sea as blue, nor plains and plains of grass and plantations over a vast area of land, nor as many cathedrals and basilicas to visit that you wonder if they were actually one and the same thing repeated several times.

Barcelona was an interesting city to visit, although I did expect a little bit more out of it. Don't ask me what but I think TV shows were exaggerating a little when they showcased it repeatedly, or perhaps I just didn't have much time to walk around more so I couldn't enjoy it properly. And you can't really blame this on me because the first day I arrived, I was made to walk several streets in the opposite direction of the square, which I wanted to visit, because my mother wanted to find her LV bags. Grr. Whatever happened to the fountain from which you could drink water from and which symbolised that you will again return to Barcelona next time? Barcelona lost much of its magic there and then for me. Fortunately, this was salvaged by the next day, in which we had more free time to walk the streets. Yet we suffered the horrible experience of having to eat cold dishes out in the cold, and I am quite sure those weren't the best Barcelona cuisine to be tasted. Perhaps that was what made me so vexed.

Madrid was simply beautiful. From what I had heard of it being a metropolitan city with alot of traffic, I really didn't expect it to be much, but I was pleasantly surprised by the number of old buildings which were restored and made into libraries, courts, museums etc. And mind you, these are really old palaces which are really big and spacious, and are still really pretty both on the outside and on the inside. Barcelona had a lot of old buildings are well, but Madrid kept its charm for me there. I can't figure out why still, but I was very sorry to leave Madrid for the next town.

After that, we visited a series of small and little but nice and quaint towns like Cordoba and Granada. I am currently in Torremolinos staying for the night but will be moving off to Gibraltar and Seville and finally to Lisbon in the remaining days. Not to worry guys, I took lots and lots of photos... there will also be a dogs in Spain exhibition here as well because I took many many photos of the dogs there. So just be patient and they will be up pretty soon after I come back ha.

And boy do I miss Misty! I hope she misses us too.

In case I don't get to say goodbye

2006-12-14T17:30:00.000+08:00

It's funny how nobody seems to have the time to blog anymore after the sem's come and gone. The idea of guilt-free blogging just doesn't quite cut it.

These days, I live in a nonstop action-packed world, which began shortly after my last paper only a week ago. A mix of various elements: shopping, Vivocity, alcohol, New Asia bar, sleep, wakeboarding, anime, ktv, more shopping, winter clothing, bbq, Japanese classes, Zouk, more alcohol, Jdramas, packing my suitcase, more sleep, Misty duties and much more to come!

And I'm here blogging now only because Kim got wasted last night at mambo, and she's suffering from the effects of alcohol, so our trip to Vivo was cancelled. I'm partially relieved because it means I can slack the day off, but half of me wants to go crawling back to Vivo and get high over the 2-bucks Japanese Daiso shop and the cute strawberry-themed Japanese store which sells things only for dogs and kids (of which I am neither but I fawn over the things anyway). I so heart Vivo for these two shops! I can't wait to go back and get that cute little pink strawberry dog bed for Misty when I return from Spain and Portugal.

Now now, don't be envious, I just happen to have a mom who loves exclusively Europe, which explains why I'm always going back to the continent without fail each year. Besides Europe is such a big continent, we will never be able to finish visiting all of it, but we try to do so by going by each of the individual countries and cities. Although I also want to visit the rest of Japan and practise the language there, I simply love going back to Europe. Beautiful cities and buildings await. I just love travelling.

The only thing I'm worried about right now is Misty. Kenny and David, please take good care of my baby girl. Kim, Daniel and Aless, please stop by to play with her as much as you can. I'll be really grateful. I'm afraid she'll be lonely and cry about it, she's really such a softie at heart and craves attention and love.

In case I don't get to say goodbye, everyone have a good Christmas ya? I'll be back real soon, don't miss me too much ha.

Our baby girl takes to the streets for the first time...

2006-12-06T00:20:00.000+08:00

(a) This string is choking me and I have no idea what it's for.

(b) Wee! I'm off to the roads!

(d) This is like the most reassuring thing so far.

(e) Whimpers... Save me from that big bad dog, I.just.can't.move.

(f) Say goodbye to the road, I just wanna go home.

So begins the adventures of Misty on the road. To be sure, we took half an hour just to walk a stretch of 100m (?? Was it more like 10m?), which will normally take about 2 minutes on human feet.

For a first, she was how reluctant to get out of the house. No matter how much we tugged at her leash, she refused to budge and planted herself firmly at the entrance. My sister had to carry her out of the gate. Apparently she thought something was definitely wrong the way we were trying so hard to get her out where she is normally not allowed. I secretly think that maybe she thought that we wanted to get rid of her or something. Of course the leash was uncomfortable, but initially she happily sat inside the house, not knowing what it was for.

We carried her to the road just outside my house, thinking she will immediately take to it, but she was furtive, frantically trying to smell for any signs of familiarity. So she stood there refusing to walk off with us again. And when we finally got around the bend after like 5 mins or so, the cars passing by frightened her so much that sometimes she just crouched somewhere and tried to hide or try to run away (run away meaning 5 steps forward). We had to coax her and reassure her that everything is alright.

Surprisingly, she took to the camera more than she did to the road. Usually, she hated the camera's flash more than anything, but on the dark road in very dim lights, I think she was grateful for something familiar, so there she is smiling at the camera! At last ha, you have no idea how hard it is to get a picture of her like that. No chance in the house at least, not with her running around nonstop.

When we finally almost neared what I had set as the end of our little walking trip, there is this big bad ugly dog from the house next to the pavement who rushed out to the fence and barked his life's worth. Poor misty just sat there (photo (e)), not knowing what to do, so scared that she actually didn't find the whole thing fun anymore. With fellow dogs, she was this stranger to her own kind. With humans, she was at home. When people passed by, she tried to kiss their feet and say hi, but other dogs scare her.

In the end, we had to half-carry and half-get-her-to-walk back home. I tried the catching game she liked to play but she was so distracted everytime a car passed by that she just wasn't interested anymore. The poor girl... by the time we took her back, she quickly looked for the entrance and joyfully ran to her safe haven.

She didn't even mind when my mother nagged at her for getting her hair all messed up with leaves and all stuck in it, not even when my mother wiped her all over with a wet cloth (which she usually resents from the everyday routine) before tucking her into bed. Misty is such a homely girl who likes very much to be loved.

When resolution is the only stimulant...

2006-12-03T21:56:00.001+08:00

It has happened again in a neverending cycle of work and more work. I am left hungering for the sleep that studying has deprived me of and will always deprive me of, no matter how many times I try to recover from this condition.

How do I keep myself awake when every minute I spend studying, another 3 minutes go into lusting after sleep?

Coffee? Believe or not (I know some people exclusively live off coffee), I have not touched this caffeine drink in years. To start now will be killing all resolution (if any) to study after barely a few hours of drinking it.

Kim recommends Red Bull, but I haven't brought myself to buy it yet. I've always thought that I should leave it as a last resort, not as a last resort but as an image of a last resort, something I can look forward to while slugging out in the mud. At least I can think: "If all else fails, I still have Red Bull."

Cans after cans of Coke, Mug or Sprite. Of course I get a sugar rush, but only for about an hour or so after drinking, practically useless for pulling an all-nighter.

Watch or read something totally unrelated to work for a while. Sometimes it helps to pull in the guilt factor. Because after I have spent a considerably large amount of time on something I am not supposed to be doing, the general impulse after that is to study. (Right, I can smell sniggers from you guys, yeah right.)

Supper? My stomachache has officially become food-intolerant at night, especially in the later part of the night. It's an all-or-nothing phenomenon for me and food at night. Either I eat food and don't sleep so early (roughly about 2 to 3 hours or more after I've eaten) or I don't eat and sleep normally. Besides, food does make me sleepy anyway, which defeats the purpose of keeping me awake.

These days, resolution is the only stimulant for me... even if it is only so very little. But what is left of my secondary school days is now enough for me to survive on. At least for the next few days. This is the last lap of the long-distance marathon.

What about the next semester? Let's not even go there.

Everything but study...

2006-11-29T01:12:00.000+08:00

I can just see the look on Daniel's shocked face now: "It's 200 bucks you know, no kidding!"

This is the exam period. For most, exams have already started. For some lucky (or unlucky) folks like me and Kim, exams begin very late but finish quickly in one blow.

Now this is also the exam period. Even for the most "muggerish" of the lot e.g. someone like Denis, he too tends to do something he'll never do during the school term like play computer games. So tell me why the rest of us should not deserve (for want of a much better word) to do everything but study?

This is the exam period. It is a time when people feel the most vulnerable even for on-the-spot performers like Daniel. Thus people tend to succumb to the little little things which they've always wanted to do during the sem but never got the chance to or felt guilty about doing it, however, because of the adrenaline rush exams gives them, they attempt to do all these little things at one shot.

You don't know what I'm talking about? Let me give you some examples to refresh your memory hur hur.

A LOT of sleep. You feel as if you're sleeping your sem's worth right now, who the hell cares about exams? Sleep is the most important thing on your agenda right now. Besides, how can you go into an exam hall and freak yourself out and still do the paper within 2 hours without getting that much deserved sleep?
Watching re-runs or episodes and episodes of some drama or anime like a maniac as if the discs were due tomorrow at the video rental store, when they really are going to be there all year/sem round anyway. This is the escapist mode. Transporting your mind to somewhere else all the time helps you not to think about the exams, true or not? Of course, deep in your mind, you know that "what the hell? Like TV is going to help me pass my exams," but you do it anyway to avoid thinking about it.
Play computer games at the same rate you normally do during the holidays. This is the serious gamer we're talking about: play eat play eat play sleep and the cycle repeats, mostly not in the same order.
Go shopping. Retail therapy works all the time, especially when your stress level is high or you're emotionally unstable. It makes you even more happy to see your pocket empty and your shopping bags pile up. This is just it man, now you can have another thing to worry about other than exams, now doesn't that make your life sound swell? Hur hur.
Hang out with friends, just so you guys can bitch about exams together! Now doesn't that console you that your friends are not studying as well? Besides you can do stuff that you seldom do even on a regular basis, like play mahjong and have sleepovers and all.
Start planning your after-exam activities. I'm not surprised if you had a whole itinery already mapped out for the rest of the holidays. Besides, it's never too early to plan for the holidays.
Makeover yourself. Get a hair cut, get a pedicure manicure whatever.. as long as you do something to make yourself different or make yourself try to do different things, then you will feel somewhat sane.
Start thinking of stupid things that you never thought about you were busy with school, but now that exams are here and there are no more lessons, it kinda frees up your time to think about other things.
Eat alot, especially junk food and things that you normally will only eat as a luxury, because why make yourself suffer more when you have to suffer already for the exams?
Start blogging like a maniac and blogsurf for all it's worth. Well you have broadband right?

And finally when you have satisfied enough of your needs here and there, you start panicking right before the paper itself. And this is what you will do in desperation:

Think of the least amount of studying you can do in the least number of days and scheme to try and deceive yourself that you have actually studied enough and studying more might not actually help in the on-the-spot performance itself.

And the funny thing is, even though you may think about all these things during the exam period, after it's finally over, you really don't remember all this stuff anymore, especially the holiday itinery that you painstakingly mapped out with the thought that you will really strictly follow it.

Now this is really the exam period. For sure. Get moving guys.

The day the easel went home...

2006-11-25T17:32:00.000+08:00

Yesterday was Mandy's birthday but the day before that, I tagged along with Kim, Benita and Aloysius to find Mandy's present while they shopped for a Crayola brand pen for their mutual friend's birthday present.

Kim was efficient, as usual (but only at shopping hur hur), and by the time I reached, they were already in the process of wrapping it up. Next, we wandered around Artfriend because I thought we could get something artyfarty for Mandy and we ended up getting one of those easels on their display. Being the blur nuts we were, the people behind the counter had to prompt us to check the wood, because the stuff came in a narrow but long box the length of a car, and had to be self-assembled.

And then he overheard our plan to surprise Mandy after class the next day on her birthday itself at school and he said:

"You are going to make your poor friend drag it home all by herself from there?"

uh.oh.

"KIM!!! What are we going to do?"

"I don't know!!"

Then came the voice of reason from someone not embroiled in the whole thing... Aloysius said:

"Why don't you just deliver it to her tonight la!"

oh.ya.hor.

And so we tried to trick Mandy but failed because I wasn't such a good liar. Neither was Kim. Hur hur.

And we caused a big commotion when we lugged it to her house. Thanks to Kim for her canoe polo strength, we might have not managed without her hur hur. Anyway back to the commotion... Mandy's mother went in Chinese:

"zhuo zhen merrrr!"

This was highly contrasted with Kim's high-pitched chirpy voice: "HI AUNTY!!"

And so we managed to convince her that it was not something we picked up from somewhere, nor was it as threatening and dubious as it looked. Because you could hardly tell it was an easel from its unassembled items in a narrow long box.

Shocked was the only word to describe her. Her sister was equally surprised sitting on the sofa gaping at us. Because it was like ten minutes to midnight at that point in time, I can hardly blame her sister and mom for reacting this way hur hur.

The next day, Mandy recounted to us how her father had the same reaction when he came home and poked at the box and asked if it was some electrical appliance her sister bought from the mega fair at Vivocity. The same explanation given to her mother was passed to her father. In the end, her parents were so surprised and pleased about it that they felt Mandy had to give us a treat hur hur.

At least our surprise didn't go to waste, even if the person we wanted to surprise saw right through our plan. Damn, I really need to brush up on my acting skills.

Mandy was so pleased with the easel because we helped her achieved part of her dreams for the future.

Hell hath no fury like an essay scorned

2006-11-22T23:14:00.000+08:00

Yup, you heard that right. It was a torturing 6 days. I couldn't even see the end, I thought it'll never come. I didn't even have time to think about it. After I was finished with one thing, I had to do the next one immediately.

The statistics: Every night I was sleeping at 5am. Of the 6 nights, I slept 3 hours each in 2 of them and 1 without any sleep. I could have died in my swarm of essays, but I didn't and for that I'm rejoicing now. (Well, let's not go to the exams yet alright, let me have my two minutes of victory.)

During this time, I have had no sense of time, day, date whatsoever. My sleeping hours were warped, so were my eating hours. I had an average of 1 to 2 meals per day at funny timings. And no, even though I was doing most of stuff on my bed, I did not fall asleep. How do you fall asleep when your bed is swarmed with papers and books all over it? (Actually I was secretly gloating inside that I had a queen-sized bed to hold all my stuff hur hur..)

What kept me going: I don't know. Panic I think. My plans for doing one thing on certain days failed because I was just too slow and so I had to multi-task. And no, I didn't rely on coffee, red bull or any adrenaline stimulants. When I got really really tired in the middle of the night, I relied on watching Japanese dramas (haha!) No kidding, I don't know why I picked it up, my usual stuff are anime, but due to a large amount of procrastination, I didn't I just wasn't going to reward myself properly if I only got 15 mins of enjoyment for all my hard work. And yes, I did go back to do my work after watching one episode. Hur hur, I don't know what it was, guilty conscience? Maybe.

The achieved: 25% film project plus report (we did a mini-animation, in which we drew and painted, filmed and then did major editing), 70% cold war essay (so much weightage, I know, groan..), 40+% Asia-moderns essay (why 40+%? Because it is my estimate, I really don't know how much it weighed)

Although I'm still feeling kind of zonked out from major lack of sleep still, I'm really glad it's over and hope the past will never repeat itself. Well, ok that's really hard to say with level 4 modules. Argh the pain.. Anyway I have reason to relax a bit (or at least get some sleep to nurture my brain cells) before mugging for the rest.

What I'm left with: 50% shakespeare & film exam, 30% cold war exam and JLPT 3 (this is an official proficiency exam to test your Japanese language skills)

Hehe, now now people, don't get too jealous. I have paid it off with all my 100% CA thing. It was painful but it was worth it :)

Rockapella rocked our world!

2006-11-16T01:11:00.000+08:00

Yes, I have a guilty confession to make: I secretly (well not so secret now anymore) went for the one-night only Rockapella concert and turned into a groupie, together with Kim, Faith, Mandy and Maggi.

After the group of five guys started singing in their wonderful wonderful voices, the five of us melted and started having recurring raging hormones from like teenhood or something.

Examples of rising oestrogen levels: "They were so goooooooooodddddddddddddddd..."

"omg they are so cutttttttttttteeeeeeeeeeee!!"

How the hell do they do it?! No instruments, no nothing, just them and their voices. The vocal percussionist, Jeff did all the instruments using his voice. I couldn't have believed it if I weren't there for myself, it sounded exactly like the real thing- the drums, the cymbals, everything. And according to Mandy, the pitch expert, they were pitch-perfect, despite the lead singer, Scott having some sort of sore throat.

When they sung, all my childhood dreams of becoming part of an acapella group just came back to me in a flood... I wanna sing like them damnit!! Girls, we should form a band man, there are five of us too, just nice... muahahahhaa... and you know, start small like they did on the streets of New York with a hat out for collecting money for dinner.

Yup it's true, I totally admit... the guilty pleasure of watching this right smack in the middle of all our deadlines made it more enticing. I am so gonna pay for one night of indulgence. To a geek, my actions would have seemed unfathomable, no, he/she would think I was mad. Just what the hell did I think I was doing going to a bloody concert when my deadlines (now let us not go to the exams bit first) are just around the corner.

No regrets nonetheless. Rockapella totally rocked our world! We did enjoy ourselves watching Rockapella and pigging out before and after the show. Really, we can just not stop eating, especially around the still-growing and ever-hungry Mandy and Faith. Never underestimate the power of their eating capability haha. Now they're just going to kill me for defaming them here hehe.

After the show, they had an autograph signing session, which being newbies to this sort of thing, we completely missed it, and by the time we came back to it, there was a long queue. So the closest we could come to Rockapella was behind a red tape. Kim was trying to strategise by casually walking past, but to no avail, since we ended up standing in front of them from afar like some voyeur hur hur. In the end, Mandy helped us make a resolution: "the next time we come here for their concert, we are so going to buy their cds (assuming that we should have started working by then and have relatively more spending capital) and then queue there from the start."

P.S. we took photos and I was going to post them up here but Faith and Maggi haven't uploaded them yet, so the photos will just have to wait.

Things you should not attempt to do for your HT or ISM...

2006-11-14T21:42:00.000+08:00

Yup learn from the absent-minded person who found out everything last minute.

What you should not attempt to do:

Not go for the damn talk. You know that talk in some vague email in the middle of the sem saying that students who intend to do ISM/HT should attend? If you have some vague desire to do, you should go. I'm not kidding, you must learn how to do all the bureaucratic stuff that is important to our conservative school.
Try to change your HT/ISM title 2 hours before it is due. Because I didn't go for the talk, I didn't know that a formal note is needed to inform the department, the honours coordinator and my supervisor about the change of my ISM title. Apparently when you hand the thing in, they will not only check against your name but the bogus title which you wrote in your contract at the beginning of the semester. So being me, I found out only the weekend before it was due, and naturally panicked.
Not be consistent. This is serious stuff. Because there are no lessons, you tend to push it aside and everything gets pushed to the very last minute. A month or so before it was due, I started to do intensive research. And because of lack of resources, I basically got most of the stuff from my head. Considering the final thing constitutes 100% of the grade, this is no joke.
Not see your supervisor often enough, which I'm glad I didn't do, but I didn't always prepare for our meeting sessions. I just had to see him to make me feel guilty about not doing any work and then hopefully I would start doing something.
Not draft your paper. Even though I only did one draft for my supervisor, I felt that I could have done at least two, just to secure my final paper which is worth all of the 100%. Well, at least one is better than none.
Not talk to your fellow working-on-ISM/HT people often. You should, to get all sorts of tips on like formats and binding and stuff, which I admit I didn't always do ha.
Attempt to hand your thesis/ISM to your supervisor. You cannot do that. All papers must go to the general office for policing the time and date of your submission.
Try to find out the format of the paper 2 days before it is due. This is very bad, it gets you into a frenzy trying to find at least one person who knows, and what more, pissing a higher authority with your no-knowledge.
Force yourself to study without any rest after handing in the final paper. Because I crashed at 3am last night, I found myself waking up at 11.30am when my class was at 12nn, all because I was so tired and set my alarm to 10+pm instead of am. Hur hur.

I can't wait for everything to be over

2006-11-11T15:43:00.000+08:00

Judging from how little I mention school in my entries (2.5 out of 10), I think I should start developing some guilt and pen down my impending deadlines, just so I won't forget.

13th November 12nn ISM final submission 100%

20th November 10am Shakespeare and Film creative project presentation and report 25%

Same day Cold War Texts final paper 70%

21st November 11am Asia-Moderns final paper 40+%

Looking at them in their entirety, I wouldn't dare forget.

I am so screwed next week.

In times like this, I badly need Mandy's essay-churning power, and I do mean fast and good essays ha, as well as alot of optimism to get me through (Daniel, please pester me to chiong my essays). Make that alot of redbull as well (under Kim's recommendation).

But after ISM submission and before D-Days, we still have reunion on Wed to look out for :)

I can't wait.

Notre Dame de Paris

2006-11-07T23:56:00.000+08:00

Wow. From the rich mise-en-scene to the powerhouse vocals of the main actors/actresses to the vigorous dancing of the ensemble. Notre Dame de Paris the musical was just wow.

It was all in French, something I think both held its magic for me as well as hindered it, but on the whole, I'd rather prick my ears and listen to the quick French singing pass me by than read the rather distracting subtitles at the side (even though my French has somewhat turned rusty and has remained stagnant). Given a choice, I would rather have it in French because the singing in the language was simply beautiful. English or any other language would have made the sentimental scenes lose their intended emotions and the raucous scenes their prowess and integrity.

The mise-en-scene was cleverly built such that the transitions between scenes were fantastically smooth from the creation of the effect of the church tower walls to men hanging from the bells to the jail scene. I especially liked the moving gargoyles on tall pillars around the stage. The mise-en-scene was so rich there was always something else to look at other than the actor/actress singing in the spotlight simultaneously, either something in the background or another character's action in the foreground or the intense lighting effect when Esmeralda was singing solo whilst standing on one of the church pillars. And I know this is something most people would miss but I thought it was superbly done: the makeup and costumes. If sitting in front has advantages, it would be to be able to see the characters' faces too clearly. I could see Quasimodo's painted face to look like he had only one good eye and his humped back on one shoulder, as well as Esmeralda's sparkles on her eyelashes which matched her gypsy dress, and Phoebus's and Gringoire's very distinctly drawn eyebrows.

The powerhouse vocals of the actors/actresses captivated my entire attention, so much so that I wanted to just stare at them sing instead of flitting from their faces to the right or left boards for subtitles. And it got to a point that I didn't want to even know what they were singing about anymore, even though throughout Act 1, I was quite focussed on what they were singing and the lyrics were incredibly sentimental to the extent that I felt it was memorialising Victor Hugo's work. I heart the soundtrack, not just because of its meaningful lyrics (in fact there was a strong opinion given on revolution and anti-establishment that I recalled from Romanticism in them I thought, something reminiscent of the book), but also because of the music itself. The delivery was so beautiful and the music even more beautiful, I felt I was floating through another realm altogether.

And even before the end of Act 1, I felt the compelling need to buy the soundtrack during the 20-minute interval, which I did and I heart :) I bought the two-cd compilation of the original first cast from Paris, complete with a pretty packaging and a mini hardcover book containing the lyrics (in French of course) and some pictures of the scenes.

This gets even better when my friend realised he bought the wrong category of tickets and got Cat 2 instead of Cat 4 (and he was nice enough to sponsor the difference on the account of my birthday hur hur) and plus the fact that there were not many people on a weekday night, we were upgraded to about 7 rows from the stage. We also saw MP and Defence Minister Teo Chee Hean with a few other distinguished guests seated in the front row, and their bodyguards at the side (the freeloaders! ha)

On another note, the cathedral Notre Dame is every bit as dark as it is portrayed in the musical. I have been there and I could just imagine Hugo's fictionary Quasimodo hanging around the tower up there and all the incestuous relationships centering the cathedral in the middle ages. I especially loved the rose windows and gothic-style architecture, although it probably needs a little painting up of the exterior, because when I last went there about two years ago, it was almost black and they were doing some construction on the left side which made my photos look different from the poster kind of images. Yup I would definitely go back again soon, and will also take the chance to visit the neighbouring sacre-coeur cathedral as well. And this time, I will brush up my French and give the parisien snobs something to take home to tell their children hur hur.

In my mother's eyes, I am 10 years old

2006-11-07T00:34:00.000+08:00

Yup, the perks of having a ten-year-old sister: having the chance of reliving your childhood, especially getting presents from my mother which are similar to what she buys for my sister.

Let me give you an example: the egg-shaped My Melody clock that has a little character inside which swirls with the fluid inside, complete with glitter, when you shake it.

Or: the My Melody plastic file which I now carry to school, thanks to the poor state of those free NUS files co-op gave out some time ago.

When I was ten, I never had things like My Melody, Hello Kitty or other Sanrio characters stuff... in fact, I didn't know what was the difference among the pink characters (which I now know) like Little Twin Stars (the vaguest memory were the sweets) and My Melody and Hello Kitty (ah yes, I recognise this quite distinctly from the Macdonald's fuss). We didn't have enough money for me to indulge in all these girlie stuff, so now my mother is unknowingly compensating for this lost section of my childhood by buying my sister and me similar things.

Today I got stickers! And not just any kind of stickers but those pop-up kind of stickers that consist of very colourful butterflies and bumblebees, complete with flowers and grass. Hur hur. I think my mother is very funny.

My mother was like: "Nah, take take take. Before your sister sees them and gets jealous." (Even though she bought for my sister exactly the same set of stickers)

Now I'm wondering where on earth can I stick those stickers? On my black and white notes? On my water bottle? On my notebook? (Wait, I don't have a notebook!)

If any of you want cutesy stickers, come and ask me. Hur hur.

The fourth child

2006-11-05T23:44:00.000+08:00

Misty is the fourth child in my family. (I didn't mean to start my composition with a primary school writing style but oh well) My sister and brother play with her like she were their little kid sister. My father laughs at her for doing silly things like he does at my sister and my brother and I when we were younger. Sometimes he gets scolded by my mother for 'encouraging misbehaviour'. And my mother, of course, being the head of discipline in the house, teaches Misty manners, such as not jumping around/along with us when we are walking, not biting us and basically anything that irritates me mother (almost everything Misty does can irritate my mother).

Everyone treats Misty like a baby, and she is the baby of the family after all. At four months, she was teething pretty badly. At five months, which is now, her milk teeth are starting to fall one by one. Being nearly a first-time parent to animals, we didn't know what to do so we called the petshop and the lady advised us to get teething gel meant for babies at the pharmacy. Of course, she eats up all her teething gel that we apply on her teeth that we are never quite sure if it worked at all. I have since collected two of her teeth, after preventing her from eating them (yes, to our horror, puppies do swallow their own milk teeth). Like a proud parent, I have sealed her two milk teeth in little ziplop bags, saving them for a space in a scrapbook for her (which I am thinking of creating later on).

My daily routine with her includes: brushing her hair and moustache, cleaning her eyes, cleaning her ears, brushing her teeth and training her to do tricks. My mother's daily routine with her includes: feeding her twice a day together with three different types of multi-vitamins for who-knows-what purposes. The normal hygiene conditions still apply: cleaning and replacing her pee and poo tray. Last of all, she needs alot of attention such as patting, talking to her, playing with her etc, because this would be good for her overall well-being and her physical body condition with some exercise. So you see, she is really more troublesome to manage than a human baby, although they probably share a similar kind of environment at the initial stage.

After we got Misty, we had to be really careful of what lies on the floor since like babies, puppies tend to eat whatever they get their paws on. Basically we had to puppy-proof the place for a safer living environment for her. And if any of us fell sick, we were firmly instructed by my mother not to spread the germs to her.

Like a princess, Misty whines when she gets hungry and wants food or when she feels sad or pain. She doesn't bark, in fact many people who have seen her think that she doesn't know how. I have seen her bark in the petshop with the other puppies during mealtime, but somehow in our house, she knows that she doesn't need to because she is the only one here. I mean, who else will eat dog food but her, it's only a matter of time. So for that, she whines. She also whines to get your attention, sometimes almost excessively. But she is an independent dog, we have trained her to sleep in her own room (which used to be a study room before it was taken over by her), she recognises her own room and is comfortable going back to it.

Recently she has gotten used to my lap and when i sit on the floor cross-legged, she will come to me and snuggle on my lap. Such a sweet girl she is. In the initial stages of her puppyhood, she was never satisfied to sit or stand at one place for long. She was often restless, highly excited and hyperactive, likely to run around between the hall and her room nonstop, so much so that we were worried she might get heart palpitations for the constant adrenaline rush. Now, she has learnt how to rest after some time, although she is still as hyper as ever and even has a high jump record to prove it.

To end it all, this smart fourth child knows who can be bullied in the household and who can't, which she uses to her advantage. With my mother, she keeps her behaviour in check, sometimes not even daring to move or only so much as to crawl and lower her head in obedience towards her. With my sister, she jumps on her and licks her face on the lips or she jumps on her from the back and bites her hair. Even though we adopted her from the petshop, Misty has grown very comfortably into the fourth child and sixth member of our family, so much so that we now treat her like one of us.

25 years and still going...

2006-10-30T23:51:00.000+08:00

I came home today to find a bouquet of dozen ruby red roses on the table. There was a small card inside which read:

"For my wife, Happy 25th Anniversary. Love always, your husband."

Wah... I am damn proud of my father la.

Every year he sends my mother flowers on their wedding anniversary. And by send I mean get someone to deliver to her personally. Because my mother (as she says) had no flowers to hold on their wedding day, my father has been paying for it ever since.

Usually on this day, they also go to pak tor at some expensive restaurant of my mother's choice. However, my father will be flying off tomorrow for a business trip, so I guess that is why the flowers are sitting on the table one day early.

The exact same thing happens on Valentine's day: the flowers and the candlelit dinner. For an unromantic man who doesn't show his feelings outwardly and a thrifty man of few words, I think my father has done very well in these aspects.

Of course I didn't get to see my mother's reaction but I'm sure she was happy that he remembered and that he did something to show that he remembered, even though I'm pretty sure she didn't show it either.

On another note, if I didn't already mention before in previous years, these three days are like a festive season for my family, because for three consecutive days we have: my father's birthday, followed by my parents' wedding anniversary, followed by my sister's birthday. Why they coincide a day after the other, I have no idea, but it sure means hell for my pocket.

And November is not a very friendly month either. I have so many presents to buy! Why why!! I mean, it's not that I don't like buying people presents or what, actually I do love to shop for presents for other people, sometimes more than I do for myself, but I don't really enjoy shopping when I have to keep thinking of budget and whether or not the price matches the worth of the present and such. I like buying nice expensive presents with big budgets, but the emphasis is on the big.

Anyway I realised that at the end of the day, even though everybody in my family (except my mother and Misty) plus David and other November baby-friends create such a big hole in my wallet during this time, I still heart you guys very much.

You know you're a geek when you...

2006-10-28T23:02:00.000+08:00

Get super excited when you see an advertisement regarding store-wide discounts at a mega book store. And then you march on down to the sale on the first day despite the fact that there are two days and despite the fact that you're feeling drowsy and feverish still from cold and sore throat. Yet your cells jostle inside of you excitedly when you see a large crowd browsing books all over the store and you wished you had saved up during the past few weeks just so you can finally splurge to your heart's content. And then when you're finally queueing up to pay after you've spent such a long time deciding what to get, you suddenly feel like buying somemore but remember too that the amount you have in your pocket can barely suffice the rest of the week/month after spending on what you're already going to buy.

Then at last when you have finally left the store, you feel damn good carrying a big bag of heavy books and feeling all empty in both your pockets, knowing that you have to eat books for the rest of the month.

And then you think to yourself in true blue geek fashion:

THIS IS WHAT A DAMN GEEK SHOULD FEEL.

Yup and if you replace all the 'you's with 'I's, that is me, the geek.

Oh and I forgot to add that the sale is today and tomorrow, 20% off at Kinokuniya for members only. And I am a member. Hehe.

Considering I have already spent so much on tickets to Notre Dame de Paris and Rockapella, I am almost sucked dry. But I just couldn't resist it. 20% off leh. Buy one book also shuang.

Anyway this is what I came back with:

1x Japanese-English Kodansha dictionary

1x Neil Gaiman's Sandman the Absolute Volume 1 (for David's birthday)

I am amazed that I did not touch the manga collection. Maybe cos I knew that Gaiman's book would not allow me to buy anymore, not that I'm complaining.. cos I get to read it too hehe.

I also went to Marks & Spencer on the way to collect the car and came back with:

1x light blue short-sleeved shirt with very light stripes (for the dad's birthday tomorrow)

And now you can see why I'm really gonna be eating books for the rest of the month. Hur hur. All you people who owe me money, pay me back now! Haha, I'm just kidding. Just buy me teh once in a while will be fine :p

Natural painter

2006-10-27T23:38:00.000+08:00

After a few years of not having touched the palette, paintbrushes, water and poster colours whathaveyou, other than the occasional help to my kid sister on her art homework, I have relinquished my painter dream in just two days of intensive painting.

Instead of filming actual people acting for our theatre studies creative project, Celina, Mandy and I decided that we weren't natural actresses and therefore should not attempt any form of appearing before a camera by all means. Hence we decided to create our own primitive form of animation. And to do that, first we have to draw, next we have to colour (and being the lazy sot I am, I of course volunteered painting) and then we have to outline, and then... finally... we get to film. As you can guess, we're still at the first and second stages of this ambitious plan.

I think I am a natural painter. At least painting comes as natural to me more than drawing does. I rediscover this everytime I pick up the paintbrush. It's a painstaking process... painting, but I don't seem to mind how time gets whiled away so easily during that process. I actually enjoy mulling over one piece of work. I like mixing the colours and remixing them if I find that the desired colour is not yet achieved. I also like choosing the brushes, which to use for which. And then I also like the actual painting process, how to paint it, which direction of brushstrokes to use, if I should colour it in more than one tones, how to improvise.

One thing I like about painting is that you can always improvise, even after you realised you've made a mistake. And you can always improvise, even after the paints have dried on the paper. I guess it's a bit like how I like shading and making those uncertain lines when I draw. It makes me feel like I can change what I've drawn as and when I like.

I also like how I can not think when I paint, as in not think about other things when I'm painting and just concentrate on what I'm painting alone. It gives me a space to articulate myself in ways speaking and writing cannot, not that I dislike speaking or writing, just that I feel like spoken and written words have to undergo this thought process which filters out some parts and leaves some parts to be said/written, whereas painting is purely me. As cheesy as it sounds, I think it's true that painting/drawing gives you a peaceful sense of mind.

Maybe it's the stress from school or the physical stress on my ailing body or emotional stress or something or maybe it's me, I just felt like for the entire time I was painting, I could release myself temporarily from all these. There would be many things to paint, each sheet just came and came, but I felt like I was devouring them all, just so I didn't have to think about myself or anything concerning myself or anybody for once in a long long time.

And even though Mandy and Celina were there, each doing their own drawing/painting, it didn't feel like they were there at all. It didn't feel like we were doing a project at all. In fact, we hardly talked the whole time, because if we did, it would certainly be hard to concentrate on what we were doing. Of course, during the breaks we did chat and all and it was really nice to talk about things other than school.

Mandy and I have this secret desire that when and if we get a place of our own, we would invest in an easel and nice sets of paints and paintbrushes. Mandy even said she wanted her apartment or flat to face a nice scenery so she could sit there and paint it. If I ever do get an easel, I hope I actually will have time to paint instead of being busy making money the whole time. Bearing in mind that we're both amateurs in this profession, our works will probably be of no value to anyone whatsoever and probably will be kept at home where they rightfully belong. However this doesn't stop us from doing what we like, either.

On an entirely different note, the torrents of rain which have arrived to give respite to the haze have made me drowsy and feverish these two days. It made me quite resentful of rain nowadays. While a dripping nose is still fine, a very sore throat is not. I have twice lost my voice in the past because of extremely bad sore throat. By losing my voice, I don't mean the you-can-still-talk-softly-but-it-hurts kinda thing, I meant being reduced to croaks (in fact even croaking was extremely painful to force out of my throat) and having to carry a small notebook and pen around in order to communicate with others. It WAS seriously bad for someone who can't keep her mouth shut all the time and I do not want to experience it again as much as possible.

Spongebob Monopoly - the ultimate challenge

2006-10-24T23:38:00.000+08:00

The ultimate challenge: A total of 3 Spongebob monopoly games were played in a span of 14 hours over two days. Plankton version of course.

First game: Everyone (Elaine, Amos, Kim, Daniel, me and my sister) were gathered on the sleeping bag on the floor of my room excitedly awaiting the Spongebob monopoly and geared with almost zero knowledge of what it is, granted with a few hints and there from the rule *ahem geek* book. Questions were thrown in the air:

"Is the Spongebob monopoly any different from the normal monopoly board games?"

"What is the plankton doing there? Is it one of the counters?"

These were followed by "oohs" and "aahs" over the little pineapple houses and the metal counters moulded by the various characters from the cartoon.

Finally the first round began, with many explanations on what you should or should not do in such an event and such by the experts, Elaine and Amos (kind of feels like most of us do not know how to play a simple game like this here).

Kiasu-ism was a must to grab everything your counter lands on and is available for buying. Hence everybody bought everything possible, not thinking of their respective poverty, which resulted in a nobody-can-build-pineapple-houses state because it was hard enough just getting round the board without stepping on somebody's land and having to pay rent all the time, what more collect two or three lands of the same colour.

With much luck, the winner emerged.... ME! haha.. I swear I haven't been playing monopoly since I don't know when. And while I was rolling in spongebob cash, Daniel and Kim were bickering over the one-dollar notes. Their aim? How many times they can pay rent using solely one-buck notes to each other.

After a long rest, we finally started the second game with much exhaustion, because, how can we have a Spongebob Monopoly challenge cum marathon with only one miserable game?

So the second game started with a we-don't-know-what-the-hell-we-are-doing attitude and all we really wanted was to get the damn plankton round three bends just so we could all crash for the night. With much speed and efficiency despite our exhaustion, we rolled the dice quickly and moved the counters twice as fast, letting Amos do all the counting for us lazy Arts bummers.

With different sitting positions and with high (well not that high) hopes that our luck will change, we played, moving our counters little by little.

This time our landlord (or rather, landlady) emerged... Elaine! Her trick? Make us eat her glutinous rice just so we can all be sluggish and her luck will change. Daniel became her permanent tenant, having eaten the most of her glutinous rice, and even wanted to pay for season parking all year round.

So one lesson learnt from round two: Never eat something offered by your competitor, especially in a game of serious spongebob monopoly or worse, Mahjong!

After we crashed for 6 hours or so, we were awoken, or rather Daniel was coerced by my monster of a sister to wake up just so he could play round three with her.

So round three started with the rest of us still half awake and with two miserable counters on the board. Daniel now fully awake and faced with a serious competitor, placed all his wits in this gamble of spongebob lands. In just a few rounds, he had wiped out the utilities and the railways, of course not forgetting the Sally Spitoon which he always buys just to collect the usual ten dollars of rent. However, my sister was making him pay rent for her lands and nobody could determine the outcome yet.

Unfortunately Daniel could not witness the end of the game since he had to leave halfway. Nevertheless Amos took over and turned his title deeds into winning ones. From then on, they fought over who built the most pineapple houses and after a while it was a matter of who had to pay who first for visiting whose hotels. Inevitably, discounts were given to each other.

Despite this, my sister suffered a bout of near bankruptcy and surrendered her troops. Thus Amos emerged the winner of round three, with a smug look on his face. At which, Elaine remarked: "you can only win against a small little girl who is not even half your age."

So the lesson learnt from round three is: Always pick someone not your size.... And then you surely can win!

And thus the ultimate challenge closes here with more promises to hold another one in the near future, preferably one that is guilt-free of course.

Two days to Spongebob Monopoly

2006-10-21T22:42:00.000+08:00

What is Spongebob Monopoly?

It is a game played by two or more persons in which Spongebob Squarepants and Patrick get to be the lead actors in taking over Bikini Bottom and building up hotels in order to make the rest pay rent.

What is a Spongebob Monopoly opening ceremony?

It is the first time whereby a Spongebob Monopoly is played by the person(s) who bought it with his/her friends of course. This includes ardent Spongebob fans all around. No actually, just in Serangoon.

Why a Spongebob Monopoly opening ceremony?

It happened one fine day when Elaine and I were out shopping and we stopped at the children's section and saw.... lo and behold! The Spongebob Squarepants Monopoly board game for sale! A true monopoly enthusiast, Elaine decided there and then that she will buy it. A true blue friend to a true Spongebob enthusiast, I decided we could organise a monopoly marathon cum sleepover to "open" the game, and therefore promptly invited the true Spongebob enthusiast, Kim to join in this endeavour. Elaine decided we needed some more people to form the losing squad so she conned her boyfriend, Amos into going, and I invited Daniel to come and shake leg.

What you've just read is totally excellently written bullshit, or rather, slanted truth.

Now this is the real truth: Amos excitedly volunteered to come after Elaine gently asked if he wanted to play monopoly. His reason? He was damn sure he would trash us all. Daniel was asked to come and he was excited because he wanted to see misty and my walk-in wardrobe... and later on, he wanted to memorise the monopoly board game rules (like a true blue geek) to make sure he would trash us all later.

Now tell me which one of them does not spell "male ego" all over their faces.

And the question remains: who will become the real king/queen of Spongebob monopoly?

Is it:

(a) Elaine aka the monopoly enthusiast, owner and thus connoisseuse of a few monopoly board games?

or (b) Kim aka the Spongebob enthusiast, who knows all the deep dark secrets lurking in his mind and also at the bottom of the Bikini Bottom?

or (c) Me aka the host of the ceremony who is adept at planting a few very secret moves under the parquet floor of my room (which is incidentally the site of the competition)?

or (d) Amos aka self-proclaimed winner of all previous monopoly board games and thus monopolizer of human beings?

or (e) Daniel aka 'old dry' as well as Masters-holder-of-Strategic-studies wannabe, also currently being educated in that expertise via t the swarm of History of Strategic Thought readings?

Stay tuned to find out who will emerge champion of the Spongebob Squarepants Monopoly! A full exclusive of the events will be brought to you live on MSN webcam (msn me on Monday night to find out) and also on a repeated telecast (or rather typecast) here!

I need to become a geek... too!

2006-10-19T22:32:00.000+08:00

Damn. No, Daniel Chin, I am NOT letting you get away with my 200 bucks.

I need to become a nerd too!

Yeah right. Easier said than done.

I am sitting on my bed trying to type finish my first draft for ISM and I'm at 2,463 words, about halfway to 5000 words, swarmed with papers all over my bed.

And I am stuck. I am stuck and I am kaypoh-ing all the blogs and decided to write something here for other people to kaypoh when they feel like procrastinating for a few seconds too.

Kim and Faith are on the other side of their laptops trying to finish up their presentations/essays too, while complaining about them.

On another note, I think I should worry more about making myself happy than making other people feel happy. I think I should be happier like that.

My baby girl's all grown up!

2006-10-17T23:06:00.000+08:00

Yup Misty is a big girl now, about 5 and a half months. She has gone through one grooming session, in which she screamed at the groomer repeatedly while she was trying to cut her nails. The pictures are a result of her haircut.

In the 3 months that we've gotten her, Misty has learnt several tricks:
(a) Sit down
(b) Roll over (but only half way cos the silly girl is afraid she can't get up after that)
(c) Go into her cage
(d) Shake hands (she has mastered both hands)
(e) Fetch her teddy bear and ball (of course not both at the same time)
(f) Let go of her teddy bear
(g) Differentiate her teddy bear from her yellow squeaky ball ( this one is still in the process cos I'm not sure it'll work either ha)

Everyday she has revision lessons for all these tricks at least once a day, in which she gets treats for doing them correctly and gets none for not doing them.

In the meantime, my mother has given her her share of what kind of manners dogs should have. The one Misty violates the most is being rude, like stepping on other people's toes, coming up behind people to lick them etc. Don't ask me how to assess this rudeness, I don't know too. Misty gets scolded just like the rest of us in this family.

Her character I have analysed thus far:
(a) Friendly. Ok, very friendly. She doesn't bark, even at strangers and even goes up to her new friends to lick them as a sign of saying "hello".
(b) Playful. Still a kid so that's ok. What I don't get is why she runs around the hall at top speed from one end to the other.
(c) Wants attention. Yup even if you let her roam free, she sometimes comes back to crawl on your lap and almost seems to say "play with me, please.."
(d) Loves her teddy bear out of all her toys. Probably can be accounted for the fact that it was her first toy (in fact we took it from the pet shop so yup it definitely has her puppy smell).
(e) Very affectionate. See photo number 2? Yes she does like to give you kisses, as many as you allow her to. Alternatively, you can also hug her. She likes her ears and chest to be rubbed.
(f) She is afraid of loud noises like the nasty buses and cars outside. She gets super freaked out when I bring her out even for only a while.

There is no title for this one

2006-10-17T01:50:00.000+08:00

I hope I can at least express what I feel here.

And I don't want to mask it, because I don't have one anymore.

I feel as if someone has torn out my insides.

It hurts like fuck.

Living on the edge

2006-10-15T21:47:00.000+08:00

To deal with problems I just couldn't deal with properly, I have chosen a new hobby. It's called "living on the edge".

Call me escapist if you like, maybe it's contagious I don't know, but recently, faced with a spate of problems and deadlines, I have chosen to arm myself with a sense of euphoria and hangovers. I know it doesn't help to solve the problems eventually because in the end, when the show's over, people get brought back to reality and realise that the problems are still there.

Argh. What a pain in the ass. I know, but I have been doing that in order to distract myself from thinking. Of course even that is not possible because I think too even when I'm out and also talk to my friends about it.

Of course it's not helping that it's sucking dry my money. Retail therapy is kinda expensive you know, and I've only done it a few times this sem. Maybe I've tried about anything except the food therapy, not because I'm afraid of what I will become but really because I can't stomach food very well these few days. I get really hungry but after eating, I just don't feel all that good anymore. I prefer my usual coke or teh. But sometimes even those don't seem to satisfy anymore. Once it's finished, the effect is no longer there.

Perhaps it's more than material. Something is lost from my life and I miss it. Something even living on the edge does not and cannot replace.

Enough reason

2006-10-08T20:38:00.000+08:00

Lately, something has been weighing heavily on my mind.

It has affected my well-being, unconsciously sacrificed my sleep, and directly or indirectly, this has greatly decreased the speed of my work rate.

This is not supposed to happen. At least, if I could plan it, it wasn't supposed to.

I don't suppose anybody was at fault. If anybody were at fault, it would be me.

I had put in too much effort. So much effort that I had expected something, not everything but at least something, in return.

And, like a spoilt child, I couldn't afford to lose. I really didn't want to lose.

It really hurts to think that all this time, I could done something to prevent it. Of course, it hurts the most to know that I have already lost something, and if I weren't more careful the next time round, I might lose it again.

Through this, I realised that hoping too much can cause serious emotional damage. Maybe I'm just stubborn.

I just don't want to let go.

I don't want to lose without running the race.

Truly I had forgotten that in true Christian fashion, when we give something to someone with all our heart, we should not ask, not even expect, for anything in return, no matter how much effort we have spent on it.

And because I have forgotten this value, I am now paying for my mistake.

And I cry in the end, not because I pay dearly, but because I am nostalgic about the past, the past that I wish I could go back to.

But when the fond memories become inscribed in various sites of memory, they're not even worth half the value of the real lived memories. But even those are imagined to be much better than the present.

If I need to explain myself for writing this, I'm doing so because I hope to account to myself as to why I am still in the race.

I know for some people, "because I've invested too much" or "because I don't want to lose" are not good enough reasons to continue the race, and maybe there are even better reasons to quit, but for me, I have chosen the path of a person with very strong emotional attachments.

And that's enough reason for me.

Just slightly peeved...

2006-10-02T21:16:00.000+08:00

To the couple sitting at my one O'clock on the sixth level of the library: Puh-lease get a room for your honeymoon!

I'm just slightly peeved because:

(a) in the first place, I'm not exactly pleased that I'm down at the library (still in school at night) trying to do my readings so I can start doing my take-home test which is due on Friday.

(b) you are making a hell of a noise giggling and touching each other and what not (mostly either I do not want to see or want to narrate here)

and therefore... the library is no longer quiet but a not quiet library is an oxymoron. I mean, can you just sit somewhere not so open (I mean you are just directly next to the door for goodness's sake!), or quietly do things so the rest of us won't have to notice as long as we don't look up.

(c) I have been shooting daggers at you since I first sat down, which is not a very long time ago after dinner, but not only do you not get the hint, you continue flirting like nobody's business. I mean, it's not my business (neither do I want to make it mine), but since you made it public, this domain can officially be narrated by me (ha!)

Disclaimer: Just in case you think I'm jealous and therefore writing an angsty note of one, I am not jealous because I do not fancy being a public spectacle, neither would I choose a library (and a school library at that) to do god-knows-what-you do.

There. I hope you revel in each other's company and miss the Dean's list at that.

I.am.evil.ha.

I'll go on...

2006-10-01T18:47:00.000+08:00

The end is in the beginning and yet you go on.

Perhaps I could go with my story, end it and begin another.

(Beckett, Endgame)

We've had a good week of studying, comparatively to the rest at least.

I'll go on because there is still a goal to be reached. And we have proven that in the last week that we might just be able to attain that.

I'll go on because there are stories to be told. My stories, his stories, her stories, their stories. I'd like to tell as many as I can before I die.

I'll go on because love keeps people alive, although the opposite is true as well. Love is a double-edged dagger, but the dagger itself is not dangerous. It can be made dangerous by a person's heart.

Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life... You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love. (Neil Gaiman)

Neil Gaiman's words (thanks to Cat for the quote) strike a note with us, but so what? We'll go on just so we can mess our insides up or mess other people's insides up again. Our life then proceeds in a series of stories. You end one and you begin another. Or some people might have multiple threads going on at the same time overlapping one another, so that it is difficult to tell which story has ended and which has just begun. Even as you do it systematically by ending one and beginning another, you wonder if the end is really the end or the beginning is really the beginning. And you'll never stop wondering but that doesn't stop you from going on either.

I'll go on because I cannot not go on. In the end, we all have to go on, no matter what Beckett writes or Gaiman says. Time doesn't allow for that to happen. It doesn't allow us not to go on.

It will be the end and there I'll be, wondering what can have brought it on and wondering what can have...

... why it was so long coming.

(Beckett, Endgame)

Day 6 is macs breakfast day

2006-09-30T13:27:00.000+08:00

Before I go on to Day 6, I should explain briefly why Day 5 is missing.

Day 5 was Daniel's birthday and we didn't do much because:

(a) it was Daniel's birthday

(b) because it was Daniel's birthday, we slept very late

(c) because we slept very late, we woke up very late

(d) because we woke up very late, we reached school late

(e) because we reach school late, we had lunch very late and therefore we started studying very late, not to mention very little.

Day 6 was the earliest of all the days we had so far. We woke up at freaking 9am in the morning on a saturday of our holidays, and rushed to Queensway macs only to realise that Daniel meant the Commonwealth macs so we rushed all the way to the pond and turtle macs, reaching just 5 mins short of 11am (the end of breakfast).

So we had a nice breakfast with the turtles and Kim discovered she swallowed her tongue stud again, so we ended up at Queensway eventually to buy more supplies for her. Of course we were also buying time so we won't have to go back to school to start studying.

But here we are again in the YIH study room on a rainy afternoon... and surprise surprise, there are fewer people than expected. Ok enough crapping for now, it's back to the books.

Day 4 is a slow struggle to the top

2006-09-28T19:46:00.000+08:00

Yup, especially after lunch/dinner when everything seems to be moving rather slowly and sleepily. Yet the sixth floor is still about half full and people are steadily mugging away the last few hours. Feels just like a normal school day instead of a holiday.

As each day passes, I find it harder to wake up, especially if I know the rest are not up yet. Woke up to find a message from Kim sitting in my phone: "Do you mind if I not go to school with you guys today? Sorry."

Huh. Does that mean I can sleep more? Yes. No. So I called her to clarify and she said she was suffering from a major hangover from clubbing and drinking too much last night. Ok so no quick transport to school except on my own two legs. Goes back to sleep.

Oh ya, what about Daniel? Checks phone to discover, much to my delight, that no message/call has appeared yet. Conclusion: Daniel the pig is still sleeping soundly in his dorm. Gleefully goes back to sleep.

Woke up to play with Misty for a while. A while took half an hour or more. Went to shower and waited to be contacted. Nothing.

Do nothing and stone.

Nothing still.

Daniel messages me: "Hey are you in school already?"

Er. "Er no I'm still at home. Hehe." As I typed that, I could almost hear Daniel cursing me all the way from old KR.

"And Kim is not coming. She's hungover." I thought I heard Daniel start to curse Kim as well.

So eventually I took the bus(es) to school. Had laksa again for lunch, and again Daniel forgot about his sweet sauce.

Settled down and camped on the sixth floor the whole afternoon.

Dinner time came. Again Daniel had laksa, and again he forgot about his sweet sauce. Could imagine Daniel silently cursing his sweet sauce.

With so many curses, it is sure to be a slow struggling day for us.

But since Daniel's birthday is coming up very soon, in a few hours as we speak, we have something to look forward to. And Kim is coming to school as part of our plan to surprise Daniel, although he is probably not surprised already since we used the same trick on Kim the last time.
But before we get to that and hasten the pace, today is generally a very slow day for us.

//updated 29th September 3am.

At exactly 12 midnight, Kim drove into school to pick us up, after making us wait some two hours, by which time, Daniel was getting a bit impatient and hungry, and wondering whether Kim will come at all.

When we came out to find her little black Hyundai, we found her driving in the opposite direction i.e. away from and not towards us. So we had to walk towards her car. We saw her getting out of the car and leaning into the passenger seat. Hmm.. what is she up to this time?

And then she appeared with a little cake in her hand, no doubt with a lighted candle sticking out of it and she screamed: "DANIEL!! Surprise!"

To which Daniel replied: "No! I'm not 23! No! It's 11:59!" Of course he was in denial all the while 'cos it was already midnight. At last, we sang him a birthday song and he made such a long wish that we thought he was silently cursing all his enemies.

And then off we went to Crystal Jade, just so Daniel could have his braised sharks fin's soup (they still do not have chicken soup by the way), and his third meal, this time not laksa thank goodness but beef brisket noodles.

Happy Birthday Daniel!

You are not:

(a) old (even though in comparison to Kim whose just turned 21, you are slightly older, but just think of all the old men in their 40s!)

(b) suffering from a quarter life crisis (because quarter life means being 25, which you are exactly 2 years shy of!)

So don't worry 'cos you don't look like your actual age. In fact neither of us look like our actual age anyway. We will forever be called xiaodi and xiaomei at hawker centres. Well, not forever but at least for quite some time anyway heh.

Day 3 is plain denial

2006-09-28T01:27:00.000+08:00

Dreams of being a shopaholic, liquor representative or worse, mugging representative just goes to show how deranged we have become and how we're living in a state of denial.

To have a change of air, I went over to Marianne's place near Sixth Avenue to study. Her room is full of stuffed toys, bags, cupboards full of clothes and accessories, not only that it's mighty pink with lots of flowers and other girlie stuff. I secretly think she can open a Marianne boutique if she wants, considering the fact that alot of her stuff are still in their plastic wrappings and are still unused and untouched. Basically she collects alot of stuff from stationery to accessories to I-don't-know-what. In short, she's like me in that aspect multiplied by ten or so. Anyway her room is like a little quaint attic-like room with the windows overlooking the road and can be elongated by opening the sliding doors to the study room. And if she wanted to access the rest of the house, she has to walk through the study room first, which effectively means that the study room is hers.

Her room reminds me of an artist's/a writer's studio from which you get inspiration by looking out of the window. Maybe it was precisely this reason that I got distracted from the studying. And all her stuff just made me inspired to go shopping more. I know, I'm just in a state of denial. Anything to get away from work and the all the stress of knowing I have to do work.

After that I was off to Mizusaki's world. Er, that's what my sensei calls her classes. In her world, anybody can be asked to say anything at any time. So you can imagine it's like an interrogation session all in Japanese and where the subject changes in a few seconds, so if you think you can blank out or stone in her class, it is plainly suicidal. Of course I was a bit distracted, thinking of my last minute decision to go shopping after class heh.

8pm was never more welcomed than today. I rushed over to the welcoming embraces of the shops. The lights never looked warmer, nor the clothes more delightful to see. Why can't studying be like shopping? (Granted, I sound like an ultra bimbo right now) Well, to rephrase my question: why can't studying be so much easier and brainless? (of course then this sounds contradictory and rather like an oxymoron)

I met Elaine for late dinner and she convinced me, much to my horror, that it was such a good idea to meet every week to shop. And next week, she wants to buy her much-awaited un-auntish bag. When I heard that, the danger bells just started banging in my head. Every week?? Of course, the fact that I didn't say yes doesn't help.

But I didn't say no either. Hmmm...

Day 2 is just pushing too hard

2006-09-27T01:00:00.000+08:00

Yes, even though our intentions, or rather ambitions were great (perhaps greater than we had imagined), we found ourselves exhausted around 10pm (already).

Of course, Daniel tried to wake up early, and he did at 8am so we must applaud him for trying, even though he fell asleep again only to wake up some two hours later.

As for myself, I unashamedly knocked out from 2+am all the way to 12nn, which was why Kim, who tried to contact me, couldn't get through. The poor girl, don't be too upset ya? We promise to burn that certain someone for you.

Anyway back to Day 2, after lunch and all that, Daniel and I finally started studying at 3+pm in the YIH study room. In case you're wondering, yes it's crowded, just like in the library and full of geeks who have been camping there since morning I would expect. Which reminds me, we've officially turned into one of them.

The studying went on until about 5+pm when we got a call from Kim, informing us that she had reached. So we immediately took a somewhat-not-much-deserved break to drink teh with her and listened to her outpouring of anger over that not-to-be-mentioned or not-deserving-mention someone. After which, we joined in the act of condemning him and her friend, Siting suggested we burn him.

About 6+pm, Kim and Siting went off for training, which they were reluctant to go (granted, of course our company was much more wanted). This was followed by dinner for the professional geeks and then back to the books.

I have to confess that I got distracted about 8+pm and got lost in ebay, looking for Ruan Ling Yu (for your info, she's a 1930s Chinese silent film diva). And then.. Oh man, I have to buy the DVD la, it's so much more affordable than HMV! Plus the fact that yesterday when I scoured HMV for the aforementioned DVD, not only was it out of stock, it was out of production already. Darn, I would give anything to be kiasu this once.

About 9+pm, Daniel fell asleep so silently I didn't realise until I discovered that he was not moving. Hur hur.

We tried calling Kim at 10+pm to see if training had finished, but ended up calling Day 2 a day and walking over to the pool to look for her. Of course we saw her canoe wading in the pool and decided that she was still busy, and promptly went back, mostly because Daniel said he was pushing too hard.

So you see, Day 2 wasn't so bad after all. We're just training our stamina for even more hours of studying.

Day 1 of Intensive Studying

2006-09-26T01:21:00.000+08:00

Yeah right. More like Day 1 of intensive entertainment.

Alright alright, so it was a flop.

This is exactly what happened:

8am. Woke up, looked outside my window, discovered it was raining much to my dismay and thus put my alarm on snooze and returned to dreamland for 5 mins.

8.10am. Oh shit. I'm going to be so late for class. Yes, I had a stupid makeup class on an early Monday morning. Who the hell wanted it during this time anyway?

9.00am. Caught the bus at last. Mandy called to check where I was (we often do that in a bid to race to school, well not who gets there first, but rather, who gets there last). Of course, as usual, I was still around Serangoon and she around Toa Payoh.

10.25am. Yup, 25 mins late for class. Stepped in to find myself surrounded by less than 10 people. Huh?! What the hell?! Where's like half the class? Darn, the cold weather was so nice to sleep in.

12nn. Half-drifting off to dreamland. I want food. I want food! When is this lesson going to be over? Hmm... I feel like shopping. Messaged Daniel: "eh what's the plan? I feel like shopping today ha."

1pm. Please just stop talking already.

1.25pm. Oh yay! Class dismissed! Hmm... I really feel like shopping!

2pm. Had lunch with Celina and Mandy. Our project discussion came to a conclusion without having started, er because we didn't have any samples of drawings to compare with because we didn't draw any. So teamwork falls apart when the team doesn't do any work.

2.10pm. Called the pig-of-Daniel who just woke up not too long ago...

Me: I want to go shopping, so how? What's the plan?

Daniel: Er, I need to borrow a book from Jurong Library and then I can go anywhere.

Me: Ok!

2.20pm. Told Mandy I was going to go shopping and she said she felt like shopping too. And then I remembered something...

Me: er when are we supposed to watch that Chinese adaptation of The Banquet (Ye Yan) huh? Was it today?

Mandy: er was it? Oh anything. Actually I'm free today.

Me: Hmm I wonder if Daniel wants to watch it too.

2.30pm. Called Daniel to suggest...

Me: Daniel, you want to watch The Banquet?

Daniel: Huh? What's that?

Me: er that kungfu Chinese film thingy... don't know how to describe

Daniel: Orh that Zhang Ziyi flick ah, say so earlier la!

Me: Ya, so you want to watch?

Daniel: Today? What?! You want to shop then you also want to watch movie?! (in a very incredulous tone) Wah lao!

Me: hehe ya, does this mean we can't get any work done?

Daniel: er, I don't suppose so.

5pm. On the way to town, Daniel and Mandy were playing the angel and devil figures respectively.

Daniel: Oh my god, I can't believe I'm giving in to temptation so easily. AH! You're making go shopping and watch movie with you, it's all your fault! (Obviously trying to guilt me for his own desire to want to go out and break free from his repressed geek-ified surroundings)

Mandy: You must buy more clothing! Yes yes, spend all your money! (And if you hear hard enough, you might even hear her witch cackles go: hehehehehe)

6.20pm. We caught the movie and found it to be worth our time. Thought it was quite an interesting adaptation of Hamlet actually. Of course we laughed at the discrepancies.

9pm. Continued with shopping.

Daniel: Let's buy the Lamy pencil for Eric now!

Me: Ok.

Note: The Lamy pencil story traces its roots from just a few days back when Daniel himself bought a brand new transparent Lamy pencil. Eric was with him and teased him like hell about buying a pricey pencil which cost ten times that of a normal mechanical pencil. Fed up with all that teasing, Daniel decided it was time for revenge. *Ahem* of course you can now, dear readers, see that I was the innocent victim-made-accomplice here. Here I was just trying to buy Eric a much belated birthday present and discovered myself caught in this struggle for who-gets-the-last-laugh game.

11pm. Presented Eric with the by now famous Lamy pencil. Eric's reactions were mixed at first, like he didn't know what to make of it.

It went from: "This box looks familiar" to denial of his present by refusing to open it. And after I pestered him to open it, he exclaimed: "Eh this looks exactly like the one Daniel bought la!"

And then... "I know! This is Daniel's idea! Why are you in this with him too?! Wah lao!" To which, of course I protested and reminded him that I was the one with the good will.

And then after some time of staring at the pencil, as if it was able to change in shape, size or colour, Eric said: "OH! I know what Daniel is trying to do already! He's trying to get back at me for suaning him la! Darn..." To which, he excitedly went on and on about what Daniel would do and how he would use the Lamy as a strategy to get back at him, which of course is too long to narrate and half of which I can't remember anyway. But the main point is that, Daniel will never get away with this and neither will Eric, and this is just the beginning of a neverending game.

Well, I guess that's enough entertainment for a day, don't you think? According to Daniel, he will start studying at 10am in the morning on Day 2. According to me, that's bullshit.

Who says girls can't have toys?

2006-09-22T01:10:00.000+08:00

I'm a person who gets slightly peeved when someone (usually a guy) comments that "girls can't drive". Well, of course he usually says it quite matter-of-factly, which makes it even more annoying. I don't which is worse, to have some guy sniggering at you for not knowing how to use your newly bought electronics like computers and such, or to have him look upon you patronisingly with the "just let me handle this" mentality.

May I remind you that the next time you open your big fat mouth and protest against a lady driver or take control of all the toys in her possession, please bear in mind that up to now, it is the boys who have made a mess competing with each other to see whose toy is bigger and better. If you take a trip down memory lane, the boys in Europe have no doubt created a big mess of a world with their mega guns and tanks, while those in America have had an even better playtime blowing up islands with the A bombs, not to mention mechanising humans with the C³I and computers.

And perhaps we don't know how the girls would have fared if they were to handle the toys instead, but at least we know the boys have had their failures, and does that mean the girls are definitely going to doom the earth just because the boys are nearly done destroying it? Maybe they just need to be given a chance to play with the toys for a change. And who knows, they might just make the world feel better. So who says girls can't have toys?

And you know what irritates me the most? The fact that I myself sometimes make remarks that some girls just can't handle toys. Why has society conditioned me to think in that way? I mean, some boys can't handle toys as well right? But why don't we make jokes out of that, at the expense of the boys who can't play with toys? Or of those who can play with toys for that matter?

And girls, don't let the boys patronise you or worse admit to their single conclusion about girls with conviction, like: "I'm a computer idiot" or "I can't drive." Because you can handle toys and much more if you, like the boys, have spent as much time on computers and cars as you have on shopping and clothes.

Daniel Chin, you sloth

2006-09-16T12:52:00.000+08:00

From Kim and I:

Daniel Chin you sloth!

all you do is sleep!

and sleep!

and oversleep!

and wakeup!

and sleep more!

I'm such a piece of shit

2006-09-07T02:47:00.001+08:00

I just can't do anything right this week.

You know one of those days when nothing functions? I'm having such a fantastic, delightful week of it. Wonderful.

And when those days happen, I'm such a stupid piece of shit.

I'm just not made for working life

2006-09-01T01:20:00.000+08:00

Yes, that's what I gathered from several symptoms. You would think so too if you:

Were taking fourth year, whilst barging into honours knowing you actually just scraped through, just so you can buy time away from the woes of suddenly being thrown into the I-STILL-can't-find-a-job state (granted, of course, a year's time of procrastinating makes a hell lot of a difference to you).
Actually tried to work part-time while studying and found yourself exhausted trying to juggling school (of which you already were mediocre in the first place) and more stress-filled work which included having to please an eccentric cum temperamental boss, and trying to shuffle from one place to another, which meant having to sacrifice some meals. I know weight loss is a pretty great thing for most girls, but having eyebags and gaunt looks suddenly appear does not exactly complement your stick-thin figure in the best way, does it?
Were learning two languages at the same time (or same period of time) and were counting on using them to value-add yourself when you start work (IF you start work), but haven't yet gotten a decent proficiency certificate in either one or both of them. Well granted you do need time to learn, you also need time to take those tests, especially they only occur once every half a year or every year.
Get the same questions from your relatives every year regarding your current occupational status, and every year they get the same answer: still studying. And only recently, your uncle joked: "Why don't you just continue studying forever? Then you don't have to work!" and you actually considered his suggestion very seriously (of course he meant going on to do graduate studies, not staying on as an undergraduate forever).
Hear horror stories from friends who have already graduated about how horrible work is and how they just want to return to being a student. Or worse, hear about how they are still currently jobless and how nobody bothers to even reply to their job applications.
Knew you would miss all the concessions/promotions being offered to students only, especially since it'll make you feel young straddling adulthood and teenhood yet still enjoying the benefits of a student.
Hang around with people (much) younger than you are, only to realise the age gap when you start thinking of what you want to do when you graduate when it suddenly dawns on you that it is actually much much sooner than you expect.
Realise you probably will spend more than you earn, which is really not so unfamiliar from what you're doing now, thanks to the generous contributions of your father and his mighty supplementary cards. Of course, what you should be doing is really to be astonished at your own spending power at such a young age, especially when you're technically unable to support yourself fully. And then, horror of all horrors, you discover, to your ultimate disbelief, that you cannot (read: unable, incapable, impossible, life-threatening situation) save (money) to save your own life.
Were lying to yourself when you said you wanted to get out of the hell-hole as soon as possible. Of course, it's a lie. What else can it be... I mean, which is the ultimate hell-hole?
Absolutely loathe the idea of sitting around in an office, taking on a regular 9-to-5 job and collecting a measly paycheck every month so you can start looking for a wife/husband + family to support.

And the diagnosis is: I'm suffering from a (mild?) bout of work life withdrawal symptoms, even before I actually start to work full-time.

Love at first sight

2006-08-05T18:08:00.000+08:00

Meet our new baby girl... Misty.

Yup it was love at first sight alright, ever since I spotted her at the pet store and cooed "so cute! So cute!" Of course my sister, with her mighty persuading power and constant whining, managed to cajole my father into getting her a new "toy".

Even though she's already four months old, she's still a tiny little thing. Yet don’t you think you can bully her because this feisty smart girl knows just what to do when you're about to smack her for biting your fingers or for peeing all over the floor: cower in fear and give you that poor dear puppy look that says "I’m innocent" all over her usually mischievous face. (see the first photo of her face) Occasionally she will whine and try to cry her way out of the spanking, so the disciplining is obviously not for the softhearted.

Of course at the end of it all, you realize she is a baby girl and babies get to be forgiven quite easily, especially if she loves her teddy bear and rubber duckie so much. Yes she has a brown teddy bear which she both hugs and bites (which approximately translates to "play with" in her vocabulary) and a yellow rubber duckie which she both bites and uses her paws to squeeze the poor fella to get a high squeaky sound that she apparently seems to be very much attracted to. We got her teddy bear from the pet shop that we bought her from, so she won't feel so lonely when she came home. Needless to say, like all babies, this teddy bear had her musty smell all over it, so she probably likes it more than any of her toys. As for her rubber duckie, don't be surprised but I bought it together with a small pink baby pillow off the baby section of a supermarket, courtesy of Aless's recommendation for her own schnauzer.

Some things she does:

Peer inquisitively into the camera when you try to take a photo of her. That of course applies for the more traditional sort of camera where the lens is protruding. (see photo no. 2) Daniel, that's your camera by the way. Don't worry, we prevented her from gnawing at it.
Cock her head to one side whenever she sees someone she recognises or hears her name being called.
Lay her head on her pillow or her teddy bear (basically anything soft) when she sleeps. In addition, she likes to lie on her back and sometimes on her side. (see photo no. 3, where I caught her just as she woke up and was stretching herself.)
Do the rubber duckie dance. Don't know what that is? I'll explain. The first step involves clutching the rubber duck with her teeth. Next, she gnaws at it furiously as if she were angry with it. (see the last photo) Lastly she holds it in her mouth and goes galloping off (usually in circles) around the room where she is enclosed for the moment to toilet-train her.
Yes, you read that right, she gallops. In fact, she does anything but walk nicely like a usual dog does. She normally runs around like she was in a big hurry and jumps at us tirelessly.

Everything's just not the same without you guys

2006-07-13T11:55:00.000+08:00

I know I haven't been updating much, and the number one reason is laziness. Number two is procrastination and lack of something to blog, which equals to, I haven't really been thinking a lot (as in intellectual thoughts, obviously my brain thinks she might need a rest over the holidays too).

Thanks to the graduation ceremonies and start of school (for some universities), I've started thinking a little, about how everything coincided. For some reason or other, I've had the feeling of people leaving the comfort zone (in which I reside), and of course leaving me, to venture elsewhere. While I genuinely feel happy for them, I feel at the same time a sense of loss. It's just not the same without you guys, is it?

And strangely enough, I've made a list here (although am I supposed to make a list out of these things?)

10 July: Convocation for graduating Arts students. The first real loss is of course my fellow Lit classmates, Faith, Xiaohui, Barney, Dawn... I can just imagine how different classes will be without you girls to be there with me to bitch about everything related to them, and also how empty the already-small class will be without you girls. The rest will be fellow arts people I've met doing the same modules together. You guys have made my modules rock (both positively and negatively of course) On the other hand, I'm really glad all of you have gotten out of this hell-hole and congratulations on having made it to the working world!

11 July: One of my best friends (also one of the longest best friends as far as I can remember) has gone to Melbourne to further his studies. Although he should be back in the holidays, I've never known Kenny to be out of the country for this long. What oh what will happen to my anime supply, not forgetting how will I burn my dvds? No, I'm just kidding. I actually mean, what will I do without Kenny to have supper with and to make hell of a noise with? What will Elaine do without an aunt agony like Kenny? It's only two days but we miss you already!

End July: My newfound french-learning friends, Gemma and Jacob, will be off to France for exchange in Paris (lucky people!) Although we've only met at the start of this long holiday, it's been fun having french lessons with you guys. Remember to come back speaking French like a pro!

End August: David is leaving for exchange in Canada (again lucky!) I know you'll love it there, take it as a break away from school. I'll miss you lots!

As much as I hate farewells, I'm happy for all of you. Although many are leaving, there are yet many who remain with me in the comfort zone, like Druce, Sherina, Kim, Daniel.. you guys know who you are. Buck up you guys! We won't stay in this hell-hole forever!

I have internet... finally!

2006-07-02T01:15:00.000+08:00

I had alot of things to blog about initially... especially during the internet-less world I lived in for a week. Yup that's 7 days of no internet. No anime. No msn. No surfing. No music. No blogging. And then when I finally got it back, I can't remember most of what I wanted to blog but couldn't blog back then.

Don't ask me how I survived it but I did. Basically I went back to being primitive: reading books. Also I tried to be practical by unpacking some of my stuff so that I might (I hope) just finish unpacking and settle in comfortably before the next semester starts. And then in the middle of the week, I gave up and started going out.

Obviously shopping didn't help to reduce the number of boxes I had (or still have), but it did help me settle into my new room, well only if you consider the new hangers and bathroom stuff. I think that's my favourite section to visit in any departmental store. You know how you have the ladies sections (usually first and second floors, obviously to take advantage of the large population of lady shoppers), followed by the men's section together with the kids' section on the same floor, and then the home section is usually above everything and below everything else. Well, I really like the home section for some mysterious reason or other.

No, I'm serious.

No, I'm not trying to nurture motherly instincts or whathaveyou. This is serious shopping. You don't just look at the ladies' fashion, where most people tend to go to. You have to go to all the sections: the ladies', the men's, the kids' and of course toys, not to mention the home one, as well as the supermarket! (if there is one)

And they are interesting, really.

Right I can almost hear the guys groaning with exasperation: "As if the ladies' fashion is not enough, this woman here wants to go to all the sections and check out every corner of the store."

The boxes have arrived!

2006-06-19T11:34:00.000+08:00

The boxes have arrived... again. This is the second time we're moving in one and a half years. But I think this time is better 'cos in the first round we had already filtered and thrown away most of the stuff that were rendered junk, thus during this second round, we have fewer things to pack. And this time is easier for me too, 'cos I found it easier to be heartless with my stuff. I usually get very nostalgic when I pack my room, even during spring cleaning, and won't bear to throw away things.

That's the main reason why I hate to pack. I have so many things I used to collect as a kid that I can't bear to throw because they contain memories for me. I'm like an old junkie who collects everything and anything. From stickers to stamps to letters to postcards to phone cards to wine bottle corks to one-cent coins. (Is there anything I don't collect?) I also still keep my chemistry and biology test tubes from JC, and my primary school diaries (haha!), yup complete with that ugly primary school kid scrawling and bad spelling. I also have my art and craft stuff i.e. paintbrushes, paints, pencils, from secondary school. The only things I found easiest to pack were my books. I'll never have to throw them away because I can still read them, so in that sense they have some value and such.

I have at least 5 boxes of letters, which I'm going to sieve through and get rid of half at least. I don't want to but I can't think of anywhere I can put them plus I don't think I will read them again, especially those little notes from secondary school days that go: "Hi Mitch, Physics is boring me. What are you doing? Love, XXX." or "Hi! Just wanna write to give you a hug :) Love, XXX." Well, we were bored in secondary school, and Valentine's day were days when people went out giving little notes of love and gifts (usually candy or chocolate) to classmates, close friends etc. It made you feel like you were important even if you didn't have a date on that day. *Note: I was in an all-girls school. Maybe that will explain something.

I guess that kind of was lost in JC, at least in my old boring JC (ha!), and in NUS, Valentine's day became a commercialised place to sell flowers at exorbitant prices, and for both the girls and guys to show off: the guys by buying expensive flowers for their girlfriends, and the girls by holding their expensive flowers like umbrellas. You know how you normally raise your umbrella slightly above your shoulder to shelter you from the rain? Yup it certainly looked like that, except they were holding it with both hands. And I guess it didn't help that some faculties *ahemartsahem* tried to heighten the atmosphere by sticking red and white heart-shaped balloons at the corridor, where most people will walk past.

Anyway to bring it back to the main topic, so pretty much after secondary school, the number of letters I received every year declined and it went down to almost nothing in NUS, because people have stopped writing letters altogether. I mean, SMSes and emails were much faster and electronic, which means you can save space and also save money. I think it's sad that we have somehow lost it because the tradition of letter writing is enjoyable for both the giver and the receiver. Or perhaps I should say that it's so rare nowadays to be receiving letters that when you actually get a handwritten letter from someone, it's almost like striking 4D. Hmm.. or maybe one of those consolation wins, a few tens kind.

The last lap

2006-06-13T21:25:00.000+08:00

It's the last lap... only a few days more but I'm feeling so so tired, from two consecutive semesters non-stop. Now that all the term papers are handed in and exams are only a few days away, I should be studying furiously for the finals. Instead right now, all I wanna do is get a good night's sleep without worrying about grades. Napping feels good but only for approximately 15 minutes at most, after that, my guilty conscience sets in and then I feel so bad for sleeping so little.

Damn, whatever happened to all my motivation to study? I'm more drained now than I was last semester this time in the sem, except that now there's no reading week to recover from the essays and actually start studying for the exams. The most efficient students would have started studying a month before the exams or at least as soon as the term papers were all handed in. But I am not the most efficient student, so I normally need a break off studying for a little while before actual studying sets in.

Argh what is this? A stretching of my patience and a wearing off of my stamina? At times like this, I really wish I can be a camel, except that water is replaced by sleep, so I can store energy and stay awake for a few days (I only need that much), and then when I'm done, sleep for the next few days to restore all energy.

Only if you're free or if you love to irritate people: please call/message/msn me to bug me to study anytime before Friday.

Everything is going to be over soon..

2006-06-08T17:08:00.000+08:00

Just when I thought everything is going to be over soon, I discovered quite a few things:

There's a section of the Science canteen which I never buy food from because of its inedible characteristic. That's why only recently did I find out that there is a mini-spinelli's franchise at the extreme end that sells cakes that look like they're fun to eat. Darn... did I just spend 5 weeks in Science only to discover this at the end?

Because the semester is largely condensed, there is now no reading week to study for the exams, which roughly equates to almost no time i.e. a few days to mug for the finals. But strangely enough, my own timing has been condensed too. If time is proportional in that sense, a few days to mug is actually ok, which means I'm not panicking... yet. Because Daniel just asked me about exams and I said, oh it's only next week. Haha...

This is strange but I think I will miss grumbling about lectures with Candy and our Science module teaching assistant, who we nicknamed 'himbo' because of his bimbo-like personality. I will also miss coming late for lectures with Aless, because we can never reach school on time. Blame it on the morning lectures, I say.

Of course, the other part of me is just yearning for special term to be over so I can have my long-lusted-after holidays and of course alot more beauty sleep.

Actually I will still be quite busy after special term because I have no choice but to pack my room... well actually I have to pack up and out everything because we're moving to our new permanent place. My mom's already nagging at me to start because I have about a week from the end of exams to the actual moving date. Hmm... isn't that enough I say?

Only because the picture looks good...

2006-06-02T18:23:00.000+08:00

Got this quiz off Kim's blog and of course it is here now only because the picture looks good...

Which One of The 7 Main Arts Are You? (Beautiful Pictures -- FIXED!)

You are ~Story Writing~
Take this quiz!

Strictly for Muggers only

2006-05-30T17:09:00.000+08:00

I just couldn't resist posting this. Found this snipplet on muggers at the UCC museum while visiting one of the exhibitions for my Jap Society module:

Unlike their mean street namesakes, these are non-violent library types. First in queue for "red spot books" (high usage, required reading), you can spot a mugger fifty yards away by the bulge in his/her pocket caused by 20 cent coins for xeroxing red spot books. Today's industrial strength photocopiers owe their development to rigorous testing by our mugging fraternity.

Muggers are almost always sunlight averse and rarely surface for air, preferring the company of books to the company of men (or women). They can be found in the deepest and darkest recesses of the library, mugging away. Not surprisingly, most muggers have milky white complexions, the kind which even Snow White would envy. An extreme variety of muggers known as "power muggers" have skins so fair they glow in the dark.

Muggers have gone through several mutations through the years and a contemporary second cousin is the nerd. Muggers are not "kia-su" by nature, they are just addicted to mugging. They are not mean-spirited and have been known to be generous, lending 20 cent coins to their last-minute mugging, Union House-hanging, lecture-notes borrowing counterparts.

Andrew Liew, taken from Raffles College: A Souvenir Publication (1997)

Guess things weren't that bad after all..

2006-05-27T16:50:00.000+08:00

Yup, no prizes for guessing, my worst grade was given (naturally) by Wally, who probably dislikes me as much I do him and his modules, which I will solemnly boycott from now on.

On the other end of the scale, I'm absolutely astonished and speechless with an A+ for Narrative, considering it's the first 4000 module I've taken and I've never gotten such a high grade before! Woohoo... looks like all the hard work of camping in the honours room day and night to rush our project was paid off, not forgetting the late nights and weekends burnt for the essay. Other than that, I'm ashamed to say I started to slack off while studying for the final paper and thought I had screwed it up.

Hmmm... I guess even though I studied more for Wally's paper, it really wasn't wholeheartedly done, but Narrative was always interesting to me. So I guess interest makes a hell lot of difference.

Anyway contrary to my expectations, Kim, Dan and I didn't meet to check our results because of many hiccups again, unfortunately. But we finally made it to her place at 1 am in the morning, and results was just one of the many topics on our agenda. This is approximately what we did in this order: drink beer and coke while watching nickelodeon and doing some catching up and bitching at the same time, start on a tub of ice cream, watch various episodes of the hard gay series and decided that Kim's network at home was faster than in school, thus we made her place our official base for leeching things off the net. So thus ended our fellowship at 3 in the morning.

In the end, we figured our results weren't as drastic as we expected so there was reason to rejoice and hope that next semester will be better.

"I want my holiday!!!"

2006-05-24T21:49:00.000+08:00

This is the little brat in me screaming: "I WANT MY HOLIDAY!!!"

And you notice it's in the singular form only because I'm that desperate.

My 9-year-old sister started her holidays only this morning. Of course she was busy singing while playing with her toys all morning, after which, she went shopping with my mom and bought herself new things (as usual and of course they're free). And during dinner time, she hogged the tv with her cartoons. Not that I wasn't watching along, but the fact that she's allowed to watch tv struck me as she's having her holidays.

Argh. Just three more weeks... Come to me. Come... *chants in a trance-like manner repetitively*

Before that, of course, there are the results, which of course I know since everybody has been busy reminding me about it. And no, I'm not checking tomorrow. I'm going to lao niang aka Kim's place on Friday to check with her and Dan. Imagine a peek-a-boo mouse-clicking situation where we click for each other and scream just before the results are announced by the 'clicker': "No!!! Don't tell me!!" Followed by: "Oh alright, let me see."

And then...

AHHHHHHHH!!!! OMG!!!

or

OH NO!!!!! ARGHHHHH

nah.. that was just a preview. Or maybe not. *cross fingers*

Anyway the respective responses will be revealed hopefully in the next post, that is, if I'm not too upset or still mourning for my results.

P.S. Lao niang, if you read this on time, CALL US to arrange for Friday.

The big day... finally!

2006-05-17T17:45:00.000+08:00

No, I'm not getting married, contrary to what most of you think i.e. that I'll secretly get attached/engaged/married without telling any of you. To those I promised you would be the first to know, I'm still keeping that promise, so don't panic and don't worry. Right, now then.

Dan, Kim and I finally launched our little group on Monday after much hiccups and in between the very busy special term, tkd and driving lessons. Kim was craving for Japanese food so we ended up at Sakae, obviously the most convenient since Borders was just downstairs, which makes a rather good waiting place *winks*.

Alright, I confess! I was ten minutes late and made Dan and Kim starve in the most terrible way: by sitting in Sakae whilst watching their (potential) go pass in front of them. But they waited for me still despite the temptation, so sweet!

So then we said grace and started the ritual to our CSS 2, followed by plate after plate of sushi plus 3 plates of tofu, all except 2 pieces of it was eaten by Daniel alone. After we had stuffed ourselves of rice and miscellaneous, Kim and I decided we were full. However, Daniel was only half full so he suggested going over to Ice Cube for ice cream. But before that, we had to have our chicken-ginseng broth look alike so Daniel ordered this soup thing which arrived in a tea pot. From the tea pot, Daniel extracted almost magically a little cup (like those meant to drink sake). For the very first time in order to mark our opening ceremony, we each drank from the same cup of soup.

Of course, this would have been explained so much easily using pictures, but they are currently in Kim's phone, Edward. (Yes, the phone is named Edward!) And our dear Kim has gone to Bangkok, so effectively, the photos are unavailable because Edward is in Bangkok right now.

So off we went to Ice Cube... Once Daniel sat down, he refused to budge and occupied the whole sofa by himself like a king ha. Apparently it was addictive because after some time, Kim started to put her thunder thighs on the wall, like she always do at home. So we sat there for a couple of hours eating ice cream and thrashing our nonsense around. Poor Daniel who was then suffering from his anxiety-filled mind for a certain issue concerning a certain fairytale character, and we had to make it worse by asking about it every 10 minutes when he checks his phone every 5 mins. Despite that, he bravely survived the night, thanks to the fellowship of CSS 2 of course.

Because we had to distract Daniel from his anxious mind, we started to make future plans for CSS 2. Our next fellowship will be the day the results come out and of course the day of Kim's driving test. (Good luck girl! You can do it!) We intend to sit in Kim's room and comfort ourselves with beer and crackers should our results come out like shit, which we're crossing our fingers for it not to.

Daniel suggested a way we could motivate ourselves to study next semester: by placing 200 bucks on the table for the person with the best grades of the sem. That's roughly about 60 plus bucks to fork out per person. Damn. Well, may the best CSS 2 member win!

Japanese floral arrangement & bottle wrapping workshop

2006-05-11T15:58:00.000+08:00

//updated

I managed to take a photo of the two objects instead, because my phone and laptop just couldn't get along. So here they are!

Went for this workshop as part of my lessons for one of my special term modules, Japanese Society, and I suppose it turned out rather well considering how disastrous it was.

List of things to bring:

Empty wine bottle (or a bottle shaped like a wine bottle)
Floral nipper (or make do with scissors) What is a floral nipper??
Tape
Stapler
Scissors

Obviously we couldn't reproduce this list if it was given to us only the night before.

So this is what I brought instead:

Empty vodka bottle (which was a third the size of a wine bottle I assure you)
Scissors
Tape
Stapler

Don't laugh at the little vodka bottle just yet, there's a story to it. Because I couldn't find an empty wine bottle in my house (though I'm quite sure I kept a few before we moved, but after that, things just got lost very easily), nor did Aless have an extra one, so I had to go to 7-11 to get something that resembled a wine bottle. Right, that shouldn't be too hard right, I mean I'm sure 7-11 had plenty of this kind of stuff.

When I went to the liquor section, I had no idea what was what. The only drinks I had were usually wine or those already mixed by friends or at a club and that does not include beer. And considering this was at 5+ in the late afternoon and the class was at 7, I couldn't possibly get myself high before it started right. So I got the disgusting vodka premixed with berry. Actually it kind of tasted like F&N cherryade.

Anyway I brought it to the cashier, who stared at me and said: "Can I check your IC please?"

Huh? Hmm. Oh. I was stunned for 3 seconds before I registered what she was saying and mumbled an "okay". Wait a minute... SHE WANTS TO CHECK MY IC FOR BUYING A LOUSY BOTTLE OF SODA AND VODKA!!! I mean, it's not even real vodka.

When I fumbled out my driving licence (!!!) to give to her. She looked at it for 2 seconds and said: "Hey, you're older than me!"

ERRRRRRR....

"But you look so... young."

Right, now I don't know if that's a good thing or not. When I related this to Aless, she patted me on the back and said: "Don't worry, I know exactly how you feel."

And then she had to add: "I knew something like that would happen." Hur hur...

We ended up finishing most of the disgusting vodka-wannabe thing before the workshop. Actually it got so bad we had to mix it with rootbeer before drinking. Aless said it tasted like medicine. Poor Aless, who shared in my sorrow of drinking that lousy thing when she couldn't drink... all this and I paid six bucks for it, just to get the stupid bottle.

By the time we reached the place, we were already half-sleepy from dinner and gassy drinks. Little did we know that things will get so much harder later.

We started very painfully and slowly with floral arrangement first. Our sensei was a very soft-spoken Japanese lady who spoke little English. Fortunately for us, we had a translator. Although I could catch bits and pieces of what sensei was saying, most of the time she sounded too soft to be audible. However, there were still times that what she said was untranslatable and she had to show us how to do it.

Everything was going smoothly (slowly but still okay) before the flowers and what not were added. I never knew there were these many steps to floral arrangement! And I thought arranging the flowers was the hardest step. Now I think sticking the thick stalk of tulips in was one of the greatest chore. A few of us, including myself broke a tulip or two in the process. Poor Aless broke many things, and she felt so bad about it.

Because Mother's Day was arriving, we were supposed to be doing this for our mothers. And I emphasise "supposed" because many of us actually thought our floral arrangements couldn't make it.

The guy next to Weikai: "I think my mother will faint when she sees this."

And Weikai stuck so many plants and fruits in his pot, it reminded me of a jungle.

Good thing sensei was very kind and nice about it, saying that we should just have fun, which of course we did, amongst the complaining.

And just when we thought the nightmare was over, there was still bottle wrapping. Now, bottle wrapping sounds terribly easy and the final product looked terribly easy to make, because all it looked like was a nicely (not too elaborately) wrapped up wine bottle. BUT the wrapping was a killer.

The instructions were fairly simple: 3 folds on the right, another 3 on the left. Repeat for the back.

However, when we started attempting to fold the paper, it was difficult enough just trying to fold and hold the folds at the same time. It got so frustrating that I just wanted to give up. Eventually sensei had to go around to help us with it. And somehow we managed to make a shabby representation of the model example in front, and that was after exceeding an hour of the stipulated time for the workshop mind you.

Still, Aless and I were quite proud of ourselves for making something out of nothing, even if we did make a big mess out of it and hope still that our mothers will love our imperfect creations. We even took a photo of our products, which is currently in my phone and if I succeed in getting it uploaded, I might post it up. I guess we looked like we were the receivers of some award or prize with us holding the wrapped bottle and flowers and all.

Of course, things weren't as sunny for some of the guys who just wanted to go home. Weikai kept asking us what the point of this workshop was. Erm, actually I had no idea, neither did Aless. We were just happy to be there to have fun and waste the school's funds while at it (obviously the school was sponsoring it for us). In the end, we told him to use his newfound skills to impress his girlfriend or something. Hur hur.

Happy Birthday Kim!

2006-05-08T16:35:00.000+08:00

Our dearest, loveliest and beautiful Kim has turned 21 today *in the manner of a fond parent who has discovered the start of adulthood for his/her child.*

Happy Birthday to you, girl!

To celebrate it, Daniel voluntarily acted the part of a depressed and suicidal friend who called Kim, yes sniffing and all, to lure her out to the bus stop at her block. Of course Kim did not suspect anything odd but was genuinely worried and also genuinely deceived by our prank. She also called me after Daniel had called her to come with her to comfort Daniel. And of course I was already at that bus stop but had to trick her into believing that I was busy dating (in accordance to Daniel's story of course).

So eventually when she reached the bus stop at 12 plus on the morning of her birthday, the commotion went something like this:

Kim in a very concerned voice, holding a packet of Bursting Bees gummies: "Daniel... Daniel, are you ok?"

Daniel turned from being crouched on the seat to: "SURPRISE!!!"

Kim: "AHHHHHHHH!!!!"

And then I came out from behind.

Kim in a whole long string of mutterings and screamings which came out something like this in random order: "AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!! You tricked me! You tricked me! Daniel!! I thought you were really depressed.. see I even brought Bursting Bees for you... Mitch!! I thought you were out dating... AHHHHHHH!!! I can't believe I fell for it!!" Muahahaha

And then she related how she was tricked into going for a surprise party yesterday by her teammates and boyfriend. And needless to say, she fell for that too.

To think that we almost couldn't get her on the phone and were worried that we had to abandon our plans. Poor Daniel had to go to his friend's house nearby to squat for so long. But it was worth it since we did manage to get Kim out in the end, all thanks to Daniel's acting ha.

***

On another note, lectures started today for me. I was ever so reluctant to drag myself out of bed for a 2pm lecture in Science. It certainly didn't help that the lecture theatre was in some unknown corner of an unfamiliar faculty. It also didn't help that the lecturer went on and on in a droning voice on Physics and the Life Sciences.

I think we got more than what we bargained for in this module though. It's supposed to be a Physics module but there are biological and chemical elements involved so... we have to be somewhat familiar with all three subjects. And why is that even remotely familiar to me? Terms like ultra centrifugation and gel electrophoresis or even, magnetoencephalography. And I thought the nightmare was over the moment I entered Arts.

I now forsee a repercussion of my longtime repressed nightmare which started 5 years ago. hur hur

Here we go again...

2006-05-06T12:56:00.000+08:00

IVLE announcement: "Please be reminded that our first lecture will be on Monday May 8."

Groans. Special term. Groans. I'm not particularly keen on going back barely a week after my last paper. And considering how distrastrously well the studying for last sem's exams went, I'm not exactly too thrilled with doing it again in a month or so.

Yes, yes snigger snigger all you want. Gloat over my misery, especially the NIE-bound folks... But when I'm finished with special term, you guys are gonna start school heh. And to the people who are graduating, good luck with finding a job because I'm not too keen on being in that position either, even though the thought of leaving NUS once and for all is rather tempting I must admit. However the thought of being thrown out into the wilderness with no direction makes me hesitate a lot on graduating.

And that is precisely why I'm still buying time.

In fact, I'm so adverse to working now that I'm too lazy to look for internships. Perhaps the next holiday huh.. While I'm still a student, I would like to remain one. Studying and slacking are part of my job, until I graduate that is, and by then will have to join the rest of the jobless graduates in moaning about the lack of jobs or brutal interviewers. But until then, I have absolutely no interest in a job as for now. Perhaps I might get a little worried this time next year, we'll see.

In the meantime, things are going to get busy on the education bit. Other than special term, I have signed up for both French and Japanese classes. Talk about an infusion of languages. But it's worth it I expect, in a bid to value-add myself so I can have an easier time in finding a job next time. No, I'm kidding. My ambition is to become a multi-linguist. Muahahaha. Right.

No, actually I have different reasons for taking both languages. I'm taking, or should I say continuing with, French because I started taking it in the first semester of NUS and it would be a waste to give it up now, not when I have the time to study still. I'm taking Japanese out of pure interest and because I enjoy reading manga and watching anime.

On the whole, I'm taking languages because I enjoy learning them, much more than I would say other subjects and perhaps as fun as literature is but much easier to grasp than lit is I think. Languages (at least French and Japanese) allow me to absorb no matter how scatterbrain my mind is sometimes or how short my attention span is. And I also enjoy travelling to other countries and be able to understand what the native people are saying without having to wildly employ hand gestures, because that can be quite irritating sometimes.

Well, who knows, if all else fails in the media industry, I can always put my skills to use.

Kim, STUDY!

2006-05-04T22:29:00.000+08:00

Daniel on sms: "KIMBERLY DON'T THINK YOU CAN SLACK WHEN I'M NOT AROUND. GET BACK TO WORK."

So screams the coach of operation make-Kim-study after he had left for a sushi buffet.

The night before I had called her at 9 to spot check on her, only to find our dear Kim who had two papers today watching cartoons. And so motivated our make-Kim-study operation. We were there from slightly after her morning paper to before her evening paper to force, coerce, coax her into studying. Of course, coaxing didn't help so Daniel had to order her to study, complete with threats (I did suggest her paying for our next Crystal Jade bill if she didn't).

Unfortunately Daniel left too early, about 2-ish for his sushi buffet, leaving Kim reading only for a while, because about 3 plus Kim promptly gave up and declared that she could not study anymore, with the logic that you can't possibly squeeze anything into your head 2 hours before the exam.

And so we sat there munching Daniel's strawberry yoghurt sandwich cookies, which is of course pink in colour (the box that is), until Kim's fellow exam-taker, Benita came along and then they started discussing the abstract concepts of the module.

At 4pm, Daniel's sms came. Muahahaha...

Kim's reply: "I'M CONDEMNED!!! IF I MAKE IT, YOU'LL SEE ME ON FRIDAY."

Next Friday was supposed to be our CSS 2 launch day, but now we have to postpone it because we're even busier after the exams, which is ironic.

Of course, we made to the exam hall. Or rather, Kim made it to the exam hall and I followed her there and saw other friends who were taking the same exam, and who of course, promptly accused me of gloating over their misery by simply being there. Hmpf. What an ungrateful lot, when I offered chocolates to them to cheer them on. Hahaha...

It's not as if I went into the library sniggering at people who are still mugging right... hmmm.. actually I did go to the library. But that's only because Daniel wanted to snigger at people who haven't yet finished their exams.

***

To make right the wrong... regarding Xiaohui's cynical remarks on the '10 ways you know a guy is crushing on you' type of article, we did ask her a whole string of questions because by some *ahem* mysterious ways, we could remember some of the 'typical' ways. So here goes:

"What if the guy keeps staring at you?"

XH: "He's looking at my pretty friend, whose next to me."

"What if the guy said 'I love you'?"

XH: "He's only taking me as a substitute for his mother, who can cook, clean and tidy up for him."

Hmm there were many others, which I can't remember at that time, basically because er... I wasn't really listening. Actually I was fighting to keep awake after lunch so Xiaohui had to ask me if I was still there every 5 minutes. Well I heard little bits and pieces, enough to respond sometimes but most of the time stoning or far away in dreamland.

Where number two is first...

2006-05-03T14:18:00.000+08:00

The end is the start of something new.

Daniel has rightly reminded me that we are not starting a faction, we're revolting: "Where number two is first." So hurry up, you two slow pokes and finish the exams so we can officially launch our revolution, albeit with dim sum and chocolate buffets and real chicken-ginseng-tonic soup, and more bitching and trashing of long-repressed issues of the heart, and not be smothered by them *ahem*

Of course not forgetting that pink is the hot colour of our revolution. Yes you read it right, hot-screaming pink. Even Daniel has converted to our pink-ness, well considering he was the one who made the logo. Kim and I are of course well immersed in the bright pink, orange, yellow what have you... but now we shall concentrate on pink. And Eric, pink is definitely not a gay colour... you are. Muahahaha...

***

That aside, I just realised that I was beginning to get used to my way of taking exams when it ended this morning. Since this semester I had the luck of having all 9am papers, I shall use a specific time frame to describe:

9am. Right, the paper just started. There's no need to start writing furiously... let's take a look at the questions hmm... okay... okay... turn page... okay... what to write what to write... doodles on paper and think about which question I can crap the most...

9.15am. Oh shit 9.15 already?? Okay start writing something at least... that's it, I'll start on the introduction, that's surely needed right?

9.30am. Oh shit. I'm only at the intro and still am not done with it yet... panic mode to start on essay. Wait a minute, what's my point exactly? Starts to revise point and starts swiftly on essay.

10.00am. AHHHHHH!!! 10!!! I still have another essay to do and am not done with this one yet... hmm okay, I need a conclusion now... concludes in 1 or 2 mins.

10.05am. Ok no time to do any planning, just choose the first question that catches my attention and sounds good. Now go, full steam ahead! Of course the handwriting looks so distorted I have to keep going back to correct my 'a's and 'e's... why do they look the same?

10.50am. Hey you know what.. I'm at the conclusion now hehe, so much for rushing like mad. Stares at the impossibly scrawled squiggles on my paper. What are those things doing on my paper?? Shit no time to change, I sincerely hope Prof XX can read my handwriting. I solemnly promise to remove any poxes on them should I have given them any and not give them anymore until the day I get my grades back.

In conclusion, I realise I'm quite a bad performer if I relax at the beginning of every exam thinking that 2 hours is a lot of time and rushing full steam ahead in the second half of the paper. Then again, it's worse if I panic at the beginning of the paper like I did a few sems back... In the end I get like two horribly perhaps half-written chunks that somewhat resemble an essay.

So perhaps the revolution will do me some good like pass me some of the great performing stunts of Kim and Daniel through diffusion or something... heh pretty please?

***

On another note, I also realised that when one lacks sleep, one can notice things very sharply and yet not be bright enough to understand why, for instance...

Nicholas's hair looks weird today... in fact it looks kinda flat... why? "It grew."

Sianying's wearing a skirt today... I've never seen her wear a skirt before!! Why? "I'm going out later."

Dawn looks much fairer today... why? Er I didn't ask her because I forgot all about it when she and Barney started chatting animatedly about their dating agency during lunch. But upon reflection, I suppose she got fairer from staying indoors 'cos of studying for the exams.

Xiaohui's so cynical about the '10 ways you know a guy is crushing on you' type of article... She'll flatly reject any one of the 10 ways immediately after you throw it at her, like:

"What if the guy said 'I love you'?"

XH: "He's probably treating you as a substitute for his mother." ERRRR....

why? I wasn't able to figure out why then but now that I thought about it, perhaps it's the lack of sleep, or maybe it was always innate in her but I just didn't realise it.

Barney said she loves her Baleno black t-shirt. Erm.. why? "I don't like Baleno... I just like the shirt."

Not to worry, the rest of you escaped my sleepy helium-high of an eye today, which is rather fortunate of you I must say. Hopefully there aren't so many of this so I won't have to worry about asking funny pointed questions like: "what happened to your face?"

Nah, I probably just need more sleep, that's all.

The spirit was willing but the flesh weak...

2006-05-01T22:52:00.000+08:00

Quote of the day from Kim: "The spirit was willing but the flesh weak."

Yup that was pretty much our motto for today. Yesterday Kim and I discovered, to our horror, that the weekend was over and we hadn't done much studying, so I made quick panic emergency call to her... and discovered that I had just woke her up from a 3-hour nap at 9pm. So we decided very resolutely that we shall study the next day despite it being a public holiday ya-dah ya-dah. At 10 plus that same night, I spotted her online when we were supposed to do a bit of studying before mugging the next day and of course we procrastinated and screeched at each other for not having done anything yet. And then we saw Daniel online and decided to ask him along to suffer with us the next day. Right, so today was planned to be strictly no nonsense studying at 10am.

However... things turned out rather er... weird. This is something like what happened:

10am. Kim called me and said that she was forced to have lunch with her folks so I should go meet Daniel to study first and that she'll join us later about 2... and did I not received her message last night at 2 am? Huh? What message?

10.30am. Messaged Daniel, while still deliberating whether I should go back to sleep or drag myself to school: "Hey are you awake yet?" Hmm.. no reply. Ok and picked up Neil Gaiman's Stardust to read.

11.15am. Logged online and saw Daniel online. Said hello and he said he just woke up. So we agreed to meet for lunch at 12 to nourish the body first before torturing the mind.

12nn. Drove to Eusoff Hall and called Daniel, only to hear him say: "Hey I'll meet you at Crystal Jade ok?" Huh? What Crystal Jade? I thought I was supposed to pick him up? After a few sentences exchanged, we realised that we were on completely different subjects. Rapid rethink. Ok, where are you? "Science bus stop, I just got off 95" Ok stay there, I'll come pick you up.

12.15pm. Drove to Holland V. It started pouring heavily. No free parking lots. We drove round a few times. NO parking lots. We drove past Crystal Jade, which looked very crowded. There was a queue, despite the rain. Where can we go to eat? "Let's try Sixth Avenue."

12.35pm. Drove to Sixth Avenue. Nothing. "Let's try Serene Centre." Drove on and realised we were heading in the wrong direction i.e. towards school. Saw Macdonald's and shuddered. "No Macs." No Macs. What about that dingy brown building over there? "I see Pizza Hut." Ok. Bukit Timah Plaza it is. What the hell are we doing here when we were supposed to be studying since 10am?

1-ish. "This place looks like J.B." Er.. yeah, it looks like Parkway Parade before it was renovated. Walked around the building. Er.. doesn't seem like there's much to eat here. "Yeah, let's go upstairs." After much circling around... PIZZA HUT!!! "Ok, let's go in if you don't mind." Ordered food and sat down to wait for it. Daniel admits that he wanted to go to Crystal Jade because he was craving for the chicken-ginseng-tonic kind of soup there.

1.30pm. Kim messaged: "Hey I'm on my way to school now. Where are you guys?" Called her and confessed that we were still having lunch and probably will only be back about 2-ish. She said she will stop at Clementi to get kopi first so she'll probably reach around the same time.

2pm. Where is the bloody auto-pay machine??!! Asked this man after some searching for it. "There is no auto-pay machine, just pay on your way out." (Note: there is no cashcard or I.U. carpark payment by the way) Drove the car to the exit. Manual payment!!! And in cash!! What is this old system??

2-ish. Drove back to school. Stopped initially at arts to find a nice studying spot. Decided we should become snails at Law (Note: SNAIL= Students Not Actually In Law). Drove to Law. Kim called: "Where are you guys?" We'll meet you at Law.

2.30pm. Met Kim and settled at Law. Daniel suggested this system: "Let's study from now till 9pm and then we'll go to Crystal Jade to have tonic soup. For every 45 mins of studying and no talking, we have 15 mins of break. How about that?" Sounds good. Ok. "Hmm.. since it's not yet 3, let's start only at 3." Erm... yeah ok... Ended up chatting until 3.

3pm. Started studying and was very hard to get Kim to not talk initially.

3.50pm. BREAK TIME!!! "Ok, we're doing quite good." More chat and resumed at 4pm.

4.30pm. Oh God... we're dying... help... Started chatting. AHHH!!! What happened to our system?? From then on it pretty much went downhill with unofficial breaks in between.

6.15pm. "Mitch, let's go for a drink break." Er ok... Hence we went in search for vending machines. Daniel was dismayed at the proximity of it: "Let's walk to the arts one ok..." Kim: "Yah, I want my Kopi near the library." Ok... But when we got there, the vending machine which dispensed bottled drinks had a situation. The bottles which were supposed to have been bought were lying at the bottom of the machine inside the glass screen. The poor souls who had their money cheated. Looked like some 20 bottles there. Daniel: "The machine's spoilt." Thus back to the Law vending machine which dispenses the same bottled drinks. Duhhhh...

6.45pm. Kim: "Hey can we leave earlier, please... 8.30??" Ermmmm.... Daniel tries to implement some law and order but is unsuccessful.. Frustrated, he says: "Ok if I speak from now till 7.30, I will foot for the Crystal Jade bill later!" Muahahaha... Kim desperately tries to make him speak but is unsuccessful.

7.30pm. Daniel: "Break time!!!!" He and Kim starts chatting.

7.45pm. Daniel: "Let's leave at 8." Wait a minute, isn't that in like 15 mins?? Started chatting about brothers who can't go out with the family to have dinner but have to dabao food for them.

8.25pm. "Let's leave for Crystal Jade." Packed and drove to Holland V. once again...

9-ish. We reach Crystal Jade only to find the most essential chicken-ginseng-tonic soup missing from the menu. ERRRRRRRR...... Kim: "Daniel!!!!!!! I thought you said there was chicken soup??!!" Daniel: "Er.. well I wasn't sure. I knew they had soup..." So we ended up ordering dinner and Daniel's chicken-turned-beef soup.

9-ish. Brainchild of Daniel: to start a faction of our own. Members by invite only. Then we can start discussing our own nonsense online, or rather issues that we really want to bring up like how Kim makes vulgarities sound good and how the '87 generation of brothers wind up as the dabao generation and gay and lesbianism censored topics.

10pm. Drove Daniel back to school. Daniel: "Yup I'm going start on our logo now." As I was driving off, Kim: "Hey I think today's studying was not too bad, if you compare it to me staying at home by myself." So optimistic, aren't we? Drove her and myself back.

So that was how we had a classic illustration of Kim's quote.

The Aftermath of Wally's paper

2006-04-28T15:29:00.000+08:00

I just learnt that Wally is quite a derogatory American term for someone's stupid or dumb... Thanks to Kim's aunt and uncle who braved the bad weather and heavy traffic to get us down to our 9am paper. It was such a long ride (about an hour) that we started chit-chatting and singing to Gold 90.5 fm just to make ourselves feel better. At about 8:50-ish, we were still crawling through Clementi... and it's strange but we saw this guy running along the road towards school in the rain. Was he really going to run all the way to school? I was so relieved I wasn't stranded at a bus stop or something, nor stuck in some traffic jam and be the one driving because by the time I reach school, I wouldn't have been fit enough to sit for the paper.

Anyway if you were wondering, yes Kim and I did reach school on time... actually we were a few minutes late but when we ran into the lecture hall, we found Wally standing there looking at the clock. Oh. So he waited for five minutes for the latecomers. That's strange of Wally isn't it? He gave extra time to those who came in late because of traffic and weather conditions.

Back to Wally before I forget... hmm who the hell came up with that nickname for him? *Stares questionably at Faith* When I first heard it, I thought it sounded a little intimate, like someone's favourite pet or something. Then again, it also sounds like a penguin or maybe the big fat hamtaro on Kim's bed.

After having had a few hours of sleep the night before the paper, Kim and I were so braindead we had a long chit-chat session which started in the Arts canteen all the way to her room, and eventually we were sitting on her bed. Thus I found out the reason for her inability to study at home. Talk about not having a proper table... Her bed is glued to her table which is probably not the size of a proper table and is semi-converted into a mini-altar and half-dresser, which is stuck to her mini TV, on top of which sits her cable TV box. And of course her TV is right next to her computer. Actually it sounds kind of like my room. My table is so cluttered I sit on my bed half the time when I'm home and my bed faces the TV (complete with cable TV box, DVD player, VCR) and the table which my laptop sits on most of the time. Talk about distractions.

From time to time she has to help her nine-year-old sister google information for her project, which is exactly what I would be doing if I were home. My mother and sister have no qualms about entering my room like it was a common hallway... then the slavehood begins... as if nobody else was computer-literate in the family. And then sometimes, my mother would take my sister on shopping trips and if I were home, they would tempt me to go along. Well, usually the answer would be positive, even though I knew I would end up carrying all the bags.

Pretty much everything after Wally's paper got deconstructed.. my plans to study that afternoon were whiled away chatting with Kim. Eventually, talking became slurring and we almost fell asleep on the sofa (er yes we moved out of her room 'cos her air-con was making us feel sleepy). Of course we made plans to study at least one day before our last papers, just so we would feel good about ourselves I suspect.

Save me

2006-04-24T20:46:00.000+08:00

It has begun... the exams... though I don't remember it being as tiring as it is now. My collapse into fatigue has finally started, though a tad bit too early considering I'm not even halfway across my papers. Last semester my collapse came only after the second last paper, which was Sci-fi, so I'm quite surprised to find my energy largely drained just after one paper this semester. Talk about getting old.

I'm so tired I'm not even writing what I came here to write. I wanted to write about our narcissistic lecturers who gave us mediocre grades for our essays just because we did not plaglarise their lecture notes, in short, we did not write what they liked most to read i.e. their most precious opinions and comments which they value more than anything else in the world, including the students' interesting and differing perspectives. So how are we to make up for the rest of the percentage in the exams? Memorise their bloody notes! Talk about being silenced. I wanted also to give these lecturers poxes, so did Faith who was equally pissed about her essay.

I also wanted to write about the paradise of books I accidentally found while studying in the new (well not so new now) national library and the breathtaking view the reference sections gave to the city and most of all, Saint Joseph's gothic church. I also wanted to give poxes to the rules which forbid us to bring in personal belongings into these sections of the library.

I also wanted to write about Donne and my intolerance for his violent imagery expressing his anxieties about his faith. Perhaps if he didn't doubt so much and write so many poems regarding the matter, he might have had the chance to sit down and think about the contrary. I also want to give a pox to the only non-open book exam I have for making me memorise quotes from the Donnian poems which I have since developed low tolerance for.

So what did I not want to write about?

Please save me from this wretched fatigue soon...

The river runs and the river hides
Out to the ocean and under the sky
I promise you, the answer will come
Hold on to patience and watch for the sign
Everything in its time.

Herstory

2006-04-15T21:53:00.000+08:00

I'm writing this partly as a response to the bloggers' Feminist Movement pioneered by Xiaohui and reinforced by Faith. Well, there has to be some blog-to-blog interaction, right?

I guess the main reason why I react so strongly to Feminist writings and remarks has to do with my mother. The first lesson she taught me ever since I was old enough to talk and walk by myself was (and probably is still doing so, if not constantly reminding me): if I fell, I should pick myself up. And later on, she emphasised that especially since I was female, it was all the more important for me to take extra care of myself because she couldn't be there to protect me forever.

However, despite saying this, my mother, who taught me the art of self-defence and now my sister, looks for chivalry in a man. Her type is the man who is able to provide for her and the family and also (well for the younger people here who are not considering marriage yet) the kind who is proactive in chasing the woman he loves i.e. pull out chairs, calls her instead of her calling him, drives her around, pampers her by buying little gifts or just taking her out etc. Of course, needless to say, she found most of the criteria in my father.

Anyway back to the topic, there is a counter-argument to that: women want to be equals of men yet they want all the benefits of chivalry. Now, ladies, please don't get worked up yet. I am not endorsing this, though I think it's an important point to bring up. This is what some men in our society think and they think that it is unfair that on the one hand, women want to be treated as equals yet on the other, they also want to be pampered and be treated to all the niceties that chivalry brings. So I can understand why it's a bit of a conflict for them to straddle both sides of the fence (talk about guys not being able to multi-task! but that's besides the point), so some men differentiate between the ladies they would like to date by treating them chivalrously and those they don't by treating them equally. And by equally, I mean they treat them as if they were their male friends.

Now this is where the problem arises. The women want to be treated as equals but not in the way the men perceive equality i.e. equals as in being on par with the men in terms of intellect and the potential to excel, yet the women do not want to be treated by the men like how they would treat their male friends... you know with vulgarities and stuff. So basically, the real chivalrous man emerges when he treats all ladies as his equals and yet with care as if they all matter alot to him. Of course this is the ideal chivalrous man and any man remotely similar to him will somewhat stand out already from your average guy on the street.

So why have men lost this chivalry of the medieval ages when men used to ride horses? Either they're intentionally trying hard to be male chauvinists (which I strongly doubt with the exception of a stubborn few)... or as I've mentioned earlier, they probably don't know how to differentiate how to treat a lady equally and yet treat her like a lady. In other words, they are not so well-informed and probably need a bit of boosting from his lady friends (which is why I think men should have good lady friends who will give good advice such as: be a gentleman).

So what is the moral of herstory? If you are a good lady friend of any of your lost male friends, please kindly give them a tip or two. It will be very helpful in the long run, seriously.

(Too) Close to the Sun

2006-04-08T18:26:00.000+08:00

I am just this close to getting burnt... very soon and in fact, I'm actually quite afraid of it. Depression has sunken into my psyche, I have a compulsive-obsessive behaviour towards my school work and not going to school for one day feels weird for me.. I think I even dream of school in my sleep! Last night was the only time I slept so much in days and isn't it weird that I feel even more sleeply when I woke up? But I keep thinking about school and how much work i still have despite (almost) nearing the end of deadlines, so effectively I can't sleep properly.

It's not enough to recognise that I am stressed, I think I need to acknowledge that I am actually near burnt out. You know, it's the you-will-feel-better-if-you-let-it-out thing. And I don't know if I will feel better but at least I'm finding an outlet for it, which I think should be good right? And the funny thing about being (too) close to the sun is that I'm still very much attracted to it and yet repelled by it because it's too hot and will burn me. Even though I can still joke about it and stuff, I think school has effected a very large change on me. My friends have started asking if I lost weight and I shrug it off by saying: it's school. And it doesn't help that I have become quite lethargic and have lost (well most of) my appetite, and as another friend puts it: I've been relegated to eating grass. Am I? I think it's okay by me, actually.

To tell the truth I feel quite tired but still have another lap to run, like those JC days where you have the 2.4km run and it's the end of the 5th round and you're just starting on the 6th round but you feel quite tired already from sprinting the first five. And I dread to think that after completing the 6th round, I still have another few more rounds to go. It's like an neverending thing... people are graduating but I'm stuck here another year. Not I don't choose to, but it's so physically energy-draining that I feel quite tempted to just graduate anyway. Wait, I take that back. Working is another headache altogether. No... I wish to buy more time.

Reminds me of those instant order things in fastfood restaurants...

"More time, please."

"Time order coming up rightaway," as the cashier hands me the brown dingy package called "time".

"Thank you," I mumbled and opened it only to discover a little yellow flame which even moths won't be attracted to. And I get more dismayed than before at finding that this is what I've strived for so hard and for so long and have only gotten so much as this tiny a flame. I mean, what's this compared to the sun? Here I am striving so hard for the sun but have only gotten this little spark that can either (a) quickly die off or (b) amount into a sun after years of hard work.

It's just too depressing to even think about, I have to get back to reading again.