moderate patriotism

547

2008-01-02T06:10:00.000+08:00

i wish, for your sake, that i could be happier in this silence.

in these moments of weakness, i keep remembering things that have long gone. i dream of them, and everything that was there. everything that was not there. everything that could, or could not, have been. i wish that i could say i was stronger. maybe tomorrow i will forget about it, but it will always be there, somewhere deep inside my memories. and it will always, always resurface, somehow, when my concentration lapses and i am arrogant enough to think that i can overcome it.

but in the end...

546

2007-11-28T01:38:00.000+08:00

my ceiling is no longer leaking, but other things are dripping down. my whole bathroom area appears to have been hacked, and i only found out about it when i got home tonight.

ordinarily one doesn't feel any sense of loss - from losing things that don't appear meaningful, things you just use and throw away. but now there is a sinking feeling as i realise what all this means. that things are getting old, crumbling, something is falling apart. maybe it's the house, or everything it represents.

like a bad apple.

my exam is in less than 48 hours. i don't know if i can remember enough. i don't know if what i do will be enough. i never know, and when i look back i'll always know i could have done it another way, though i wouldn't have done it any other way, because i'm who i am. and every time i regret it and tell myself, this is not the end, i realise that therein lies the problem - it is not the end. it never will be. and so when will i find the urge and drive to push myself hard enough because i think, it will all be over by then? there are only so many times you can fool yourself into thinking that one last spurt is enough.

my heart needs to settle down, and stop wandering.

i feel so - empty - there's no other way to describe it. it's a sinking feeling, down into that abyss, and whether it's from fear or loathing, no one knows.

545

2007-11-13T02:50:00.000+08:00

all these scrabble games played recently have reminded me of one thing; which is that when i am brilliant, i am absolutely brilliant. when i fail, i fail spectacularly. all the other times, i just seek to get by on an average existence. in other words, i am mediocre.

i remember a few months ago, somebody asked me whether i would ever feel intimidated by working with so many guys. and i thought about it but could not think of a reason why i should. i may be female, yes, but i am not handicapped. if there is anything that going to school (RGS) taught me, it is that nothing should limit me at all. nothing, beyond what you can control - and if you cannot control it, there must be some way to fight yourself out of it. so of all things, why men? why especially men? men are not mystical creatures, and they cannot do everything. and this sounds feminist, but it is not. it is just another way of recognizing that sexuality is really not so big of a deal, and people should stop making it sound like it is.

i know there are societies in which this is not the case, but sexuality, if anything, can be the most and least of our problems.

#

just now we talked, mostly while i was half-asleep because i was so tired. strange now that i am awake again, mostly because i had to find the energy to get up and write this down before it went away.

my feelings are mixed. they are there and they are not there, and part of me yearns to settle down into a comfortable routine because it is there. that sounds hurtful, but it was not meant to be, and i don't know how to explain it.

#

j k rowling says dumbledore is gay. david yates says he knew for a long time, but he never thought it was an issue. and it isn't, though talking about it makes it somewhat of an issue. and so out of so many adjectives to describe a kind, loving, grandfatherly figure, why choose gay? why characterize somebody by his sexuality? (we've gone down this road too many times) so it was a smart move, maybe it was a strategic move, and i welcomed it, just like any other hp slash fan. and yet, now that i come to think about it, dumbledore may not have been so gay after all. yes, he did love grindelwald. but i'm inclined to think that was because grindelwald happened to be a boy, and not otherwise. and again, grindelwald's gender is not paramount. can you ever really fall for someone's character? you can't fuck a brain, that's true, but it's not just all about sex.

my two cents.

#

exams are coming. my CLT paper is in 4 days, and i have no idea what is going on. i hate these newfangled computerized ways of examination. what's wrong with pen and paper? and since when is a "take-home" examination only 2 hours long? that's ridiculous. it's more like a "take your exam at home" paper. maybe that's what it means. i am annoyed.

544

2007-11-12T04:28:00.000+08:00

this is for you, because you think, after all this while, that you can harm me with your easy words.

over these few years, i have learnt to be stronger. nowhere chronicles my maturation through adolescence as well as this place, with all its memories and ramblings and half-baked teenage loves. things i thought i remembered feeling, but don't. things i would rather forget. everything else is somewhere else, on a page that no longer exists. sometimes this is for the better.

as it seems, i'm never strong enough. something will always get me down, and it's always the same thing. hurtful words, a little jab here and there, things that shouldn't matter, but do, and end up hurting the most of all. it's those snatches and whispers that i overhear through the door, over the television, murmurs and grumbles over the heat of the kitchen and the hiss of the steam. a word, or two, or nothing, on a blog that you think i don't read. those gurgles above the water i hear when you think i'm swimming, but no, i'm just pretending i don't exist, so you can continue talking. i have made a habit of pretending not to know anything, because it seems easier for everyone involved, but it never seems enough to deal with it all.

and the question i ask myself is, why do i bother? why do i have to? it is not even my fault, my inner childish heart cries, but the answer is that i don't. i don't have to. none of this is necessary, but it is essential. there is a technical difference between the two. consideration may be nominal, but it must also be substantial. when i first came into law school i did not understand the difference. how could something be nominal and substantial at the same time? how can something not be neccessary but be essential? and now i know - that it is unnecessary because you will not die without it. it is essential because you cannot live without it. and so i shut it out because there is no way else i can continue living my own life, without its shadow hanging over my head. this may sound self-indulgent, and objectively it does, but come down to the root of it i realise that yes, perhaps it is really a childish stubbornness to admit that families do not last forever.

they don't. nobody tells you what happens after the fairytale ends.

maybe some'd argue that i should learn to live with it. but no, i am a kid. i am a child, and i am their child. my job on earth as their child is not to learn how to live with it. this is one truth i will never accept, even if i already objectively acknowledge it as the truth. i stubbornly cling on to my own blind faith that somehow things will work out and i will never have to face the prospect of explaining to my kid why mummy's parents don't stay together anymore - and will i ever leave daddy?

no.

why am i so honest here where i could not be elsewhere? and i know the answer - it is not that i am writing for an audience, but this place reminds me that those who know this place are those who have grown up with me, who have read my writing, who have known my troubles since the day it started. to post elsewhere would invite unnecessary questions, from people who do not understand, from people who require explaining to, all over again.

and so, to borrow a phrase that used to mean much more, we have come full circle.

543 fight for freedom and for pleasure/ nothing ever lasts forever

2006-07-19T03:11:00.000+08:00

i could write a sad and lengthy farewell post, but i won't. instead i'll consider whether i should move all my archives over, or to just let it stay here. in any case, four years is a long time. and it's funny to think i've been blogging since i was 14, and how much five years can change. you'll find me at supermango.wordpress.com.

supermango, incidentally, is also a word in aldous huxley's island. random trivia, i know. but it caught me the first time i ever read it, which is a long time ago.

541

2006-07-16T11:52:00.000+08:00

my mum just took away my last remaining source of money!!! i'm condemned to be broke now for the period that is the next month before school starts. argh? dead broke = not funny. maybe i shouldn't have spent so much on friday.. hmph.

yesterday was pretty funny though. but i was majorly majorly tired. >_<

540

2006-07-14T23:19:00.000+08:00

met up with K. today and had a long, long chat at jurong point after school. honestly walking from the interchange to law fac is damn not fun, especially in the rain carrying a bright red umbrella, with some macho guy walking next to me on the way to temasek hall blatantly without an umbrella. i didn't know whether to offer to shelter him or not, but he looked like the strong sportsman kind that needed to prove something to himself so i just let him be. :D it's been a long time since i had crystal jade, and i just spent about like 100 bucks today, which is kind of amazing, i realised. but i haven't bought stuff from sports shops in a damn long time, and now i have new shorts to wear that are not ratty fbts! cheer!!!

i haven't taken photos in a damn long while. maybe i should start again, but i need to find my damn camera.. oops. :x

539

2006-07-10T22:29:00.000+08:00

everyone, regardless of past lives, has a life to lead. and we go on into the present without looking at ourselves in the past for fear we find something we don't wish to see. you meet people and first impressions always are the same after awhile. everybody's nice and happy till they actually find the time and energy to piss you off. and everyone has secrets, everyone hides something. it's something we don't talk about, the little things that we do without (when that whole mad season comes around) - but somehow those who know know. and when you dig deeper beneath the surface, you find that everybody is similarly fucked up. i talk as if i know what i'm talking about, as usual, but as usual i don't.

it's been a hectic week. it's going to be a hectic week. i don't know what the hell zidane was doing, but in any case i lost most of my interest in the world cup after italy kicked germany out. by the time south africa rolls around, i'd probably have one last year of uni to go while everyone else around me graduates...

i keep having things to say that i don't remember. argh!

538

2006-07-05T19:33:00.000+08:00

in a minute there is time
for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse. /t s eliot

i don't have much to say that's actually been going well these past few days. first my head is in a mess, then brazil got kicked out, and germany was two minutes away from being in the finals. there's nothing really worse than seeing people you like leaving all at the same time. which reminds me that that's going to happen soon, in september, while i wave everyone happily off. maybe leaving would have been better, but now that's too late. it used to be a cause of regret, but i've sort of come to terms with it. and you make the best of life as you can.

so what happens now? it's not something staying up late or surrounding yourself with people will help. things could change for so much worse or better, and i don't even really know what the hell i'm talking about. remember that line - ? - "not better or worse, just - different"? things have changed, imperceptibly, and they may be things we can't control.

after last night's horrific and traumatic encounter P. and i managed to get two hours of sleep before we woke up to go to school - and i think of it as school already - to go practise for rag day which was actually pretty fun, except we snuck off with the rest of the og to go find ducky who was working at isetan. JQ and i paired up and did funny stunts which included him spinning me 360degrees - abit like riding a rollercoaster - and it was fun except for the part where i accidentally sat on his head. but it's funny how the days seem so empty now.

i've got to go out again -

537

2006-07-02T23:28:00.000+08:00

life's probably never been as fucked up as it is now - it's been a pretty long time since i had to go through stuff like this. i could have said alot of things, but i chose not to in the end. it's a bit like how it is with my mum. i need a time-out.

slow dancing on the boulevard in the quiet moments while the city's still dark
sleepwalking through the summer rain in the tired spaces you could hear her name
when she was warm and tender and you held her arms around you
there was nothing but her love and affection
she was crazy for you now she's part of something that you lost

and for all you know
this could be the difference between what you need and what you wanna be

night swimming in her diamond dress making small circles move across the surface
stand watching on the steady shore feeling wide open and waiting for
something warm and tender now she's moving further form you
there was nothing that could make it easy on you
every step you take reminds you that she's walking on

and for all you know
this could be the difference between what you need and what you wanna be

every word you never said
echoes down your empty hallway
everything that was your world just came down

day breaking on the boulevard feel the sun warming up your second hand heart
light swimming right across your face and you think maybe someday yeah maybe someday

for all you know this could be
the difference between what you need and what you want

536 i put a million miles under my heels

2006-07-01T03:49:00.000+08:00

tonight's conversation with kenny and joel in the car was ... illuminating, to say the least. there are really alot of possibilities, heh. after we got kicked out of alleybar because JY wasn't wearing shoes, we decided to go to timbre. and then it was too late, since friday nights are disgustingly crowded. so we ended up back in joel's house watching the game. talk about heart attack!!! argh. jens lehmann is probably germany's new hero.. and today's game just reconfirmed the fact that ballack is useless. omg! seriously.

don't you find it funny how people appear and disappear on my blog by way of initials? it's like as i get to know more people, they just appear when i feel like it but it feels weird when you don't know who i'm talking about. and then it goes back to the whole debate on whether blogging is a personal or public thing, which i have no energy to go through now. eugh.

my og is seriously super fun. see!

okay the second one is a re-enaction of what transpired during one of the games. she had to shampoo his hair and both of them had to make orgasmic noises the whole time. it was better than mine at least.. which was highly embarrassing. :x i only have pictures from the formal dinner because everything before that was all physical and we were too tired. after that we were too whacked up. the first is.. ducky's hard gay impersonation, which i failed to catch at the exact moment he thrust his hips forward. ahahahhaah :x

there was a whole blind date thing going on with everybody, even with the total guy/girl imbalance. and so here's ann darrow and king kong! hahah (:

the og 7 girls! without elaine. hmmm

and our table without the blind dates - but dumb seniors at the back

og 7 and councillors and ogls (:

and the obligatory brokeback mountain picture, kindly brought to you by ducky and pat! hahah (:

okay i'm going to crash again zzzz. more soccer tomorrow! 4-2 baby (:

535 law camp

2006-06-30T11:05:00.000+08:00

there've been lots of things. failed attempts to eat cup noodles, sleeping with unlocked doors, always rushing to be the first in the toilet, getting dirty, getting blindfolded, getting sunburnt, getting hit on, hitting on people, getting injured, getting soaped up and egged on. crawling through the mud, playing captain's ball, always drinking water. the waterbombs, the gang fights, the showdowns and the bridge games, watching south park and hard gay in the middle of the night. going without sleep the whole day, having blind dates and formal dinners that weren't really formal. getting jacked by councillors, being lied to, getting wet in the pool, doing dumb forfeits, always losing, trannies, dirty jokes, clubbing the whole night through without having to pay a single cent, getting lifts from og mates. it was pretty damn fun.

it really helps to know powerful people :x 20 people got into MOS free last night, the guys paid for drinks, and ducky's attempt to make me drunk didn't really work, even though i kept losing at dumb drinking games. the VIP lounge was fun, as well as dancing in like some great big circle and moving from hiphop to retro. luckily it wasn't too crowded, and it was pretty relaxing, even though my feet hurt like shit at the end. but that was the most fun i've had clubbing in a damn long while. law people are crazy >_<

and because we didn't get any sleep last night, i'm going to crash now. soccer tonight!

534

2006-06-21T03:03:00.000+08:00

i've just realised the actual amount of work i have to do to get a double degree. it looks really, really daunting ... and now i have to go see what courses are good to do and choose for myself once i get there. argh why didn't i just stick to law? and then, orientation is next week. i don't particularly feel like going, but i know i'll change my mind when i get there. it's just that the prospect of spending another 5 days sleeping there is a bit sian - and people wonder why i don't want to stay in the hostel. eeeek.

also, i need to get my hands on lost girls by alan moore. looks like a potentially interesting read.

533 imagine all this flapping over your head

2006-06-19T16:02:00.000+08:00

as with all boredom-filled posts, i'm here with what is euphemistically known as a journey of self-discovery. this always happens when i'm bored, and it always seems endless, the number of questions that can be thrown at you that range from random and pointless to even vaguely poignant. anyway this picture was taken just outside my hotel. mongkok is a really interesting place; the hotel almost seems out of place there, and its adjoining mall. it's a bit like staying in a posh hotel in the middle of shibuya. there are a million kids dressed in weird outfits around, there's loud music blaring everywhere, and in between the ubiquitous 'massage parlours' there are pockets of tradition around, like the medicinal shop selling herbs right outside the entrance to the MTR. there are gangsters, fast cars, crowded pedestrian streets, which turn off into dark quiet alleys with a neon 7-11 sign sticking out. i think sometimes the problem with singapore is that it's too small. there aren't enough places to explore, though it certainly could be colourful if you tried. but everything, even on the surface, is so clean and organised and there's no riotous mess for you to get thrown in. singapore isn't confusing. it wasn't made to be, it's one of those cities in which you can find your way home safely in the middle of the night. there's not much to worry about by way of a seedy underbelly. singapore's not dangerous, or thrilling, or individual. every shopping mall is the same, and there aren't people on the streets living on the edge of the law. big cities always have too many people, though our country is one big city, it's not the same. from colony to colony, it's funny how differently things have developed.

anyway.

How many keys are on your keychain? four. one for the small door in my gate, one for the grill/gate thing in front of my door, one for my front door, one for the boy's front door.
What curse word do you use the most? fuck? i don't think damn really counts as a swear word these days anymore..
Do you own an iPod? yes. and on a sidenote, because i thought it was interesting - i went to the apple store with my mum on saturday to upgrade my laptop RAM and she stood in front of the ipods considering if she should get one. she turned to me and said, should i get the nano or the shuffle? but the nano looks cooler right? i want to look cool! and while i was still stunned by her apparent coolness (which mum buys herself an ipod?! then again, my dad has one too.. but he uses it as a hard disk, sheesh) she continued, it's so irritating to keep changing the cds in the car. aha, my friends, cure your parents of technophobia. it most probably will benefit you.
What time is your alarm clock set for? it was set for 9am this morning, but i didn't wake up till 11.25. heehee.
How many suitcases do you own? one. i'm not an obsessive packer like my mum, who never fails to over-bring clothes.
Do you wear flip-flops even when it's cold outside? i wear flip-flops as much as is humanly endurable. allow me to declare my undying love for them now. they're so casual and comfortable, and even though i confess to wearing heels on occasion nowadays (because my mother forces me to) nothing beats walking around/shopping in slippers. i mean, it's even easier to try on shoes and stuff, right?!
Where do you buy your groceries from? cold storage? NTUC? my mum buys from like, everywhere..
Would you rather take the picture or be in the picture? hum. depends on whether the picture should even have people in it!
What was the last movie you watched? silent hill, hahahaha. and i watched half of ray on HBO yesterday
Do any of your friends have children? erm, thankfully no
If you won the lottery, what's the first thing you would buy? dinner (:
Has anyone ever called you lazy? *coughs*
Do you ever take medication to help you fall asleep faster? once, during exams.
What CD is currently in your CD player? i haven't used it in like a million years. but i love it anyway ♥
Do you prefer regular or chocolate milk? regular
Has anyone told you a secret this week? probably not
When was the last time someone hit on you? quite awhile back i think. i mean, the boy didn't even hit on me... haha :x it was probably when i was out with D. last month and some waiter asked for my number at the pool table
What did you have for dinner? last night it was swensen's!
Do you wear hoodies often? not really. i only have one, but that's like a ski jacket :x
Can you whistle? *coughs*
Have you ever participated in a protest? not really
Who was the last person to call you? the boy
What is your favorite ride at an amusement park? the octopus/monster/thing that spins around really fast and assures you at least once that you'll die whilst riding it. :D the roller coasters, especially the ones that loop. i love this shit
Do you think people talk about you behind your back? of course. who doesn't?
What area code are you in right now? 53. i don't know which district it is though.. ahahah
Did you watch cartoons as a child? are you kidding? the magic school bus! the answer to all your biological problems!
How big is your local mall? i do not think i have one.
How many siblings do you have? none!
Are you shy around the opposite sex? not really, i guess. guys are more frank, and full of shit, and funny. not to say i haven't met females who met all 3 Fs (ahaha to be Female and Frank and Full of shit and Funny! 4 Fs! win) but those inevitably have some masculine quality in them, by which i mean, they, like me, think most women are somewhat dumb. sorry :x
What is your biggest regret? right now? you know what it is right now. maybe something will come along and change my mind.
When was the last time you laughed so hard your sides hurt? during CAP when B. was trying to speak chinese while our nerves were all frazzled by the damn copier. "ni see ni see, zhe ge thing bu ke yi work!!!" i think i nearly choked.
What movie do you know every line to? the hours. ahahahha that's cos i have the screenplay. HAHHA and the sound of music. but i also have the screenplay for that. me = nerd.
Do you own any band t-shirts? i have a beatles t-shirt! and a rolling stones one, which i never wear cos it's too transparent
When was your last plane ride? last wednesday! a flight which we nearly couldn't get on, even. blah.
How many chairs are at your dining room table? six
Do you read for fun? and laughter, and peace and joy
Can you speak any languages other than English? mandarin? my chinese has improved significantly since i went to mongolia, and started driving. when everyone around you speaks almost exclusively chinese, you better learn how to communicate or you lose majorly.
Do you do your own dishes? no :x
What color is your bedroom painted? pale yellow
Have you ever cried in public? yes and it's embarrassing
Do you have a desktop computer or a laptop? both
Which do you make, wishes or plans? both.
Are you always trying to learn new things? hrm. due to my laziness i would say i'm a person who learns due to circumstance and not voluntarily :x
Do you shower on a daily basis? errr.
Are you currently wanting any piercings or tattoos? i want to reopen my earhole, dammit.
Do you believe that the guy should pay on the first date? aha, this is a trick question. of course you should pay on the first date. or at least offer to. it's only right, since you don't even really know each other yet. but of course he should insist, and then when he does, graciously give in and LET HIM PAY AHAHAH!
Can you skip rocks? noo. me = loser.
Have you ever been to Jamaica? no.
What to snack on at the movie theaters? hotdogs, or nuggets. nothing crunchy. i like salty popcorn, but i hate the sound it makes in the cinema, it annoys me like crazy. like let me hear the damn movie!!! argh.
Who was your favorite teacher? Teacher or prof? mr miles. (:
Have you ever dated someone out of your race? i think i might have dated an alien once, but that was it. (and now he's going to kill me because i insulted him)
What is the weather like? SUNNY!
Would you ever date someone covered in tattoos? err, no. i mean, it's just unnerving. it's like he has skin disease or something. or if none of his natural skin showed, he'd be what, GREEN? >_<
Do you have an online journal? uh, no. not at all.
What was your favorite class in high school? literature and social studies.
Do you enjoy traveling via airplanes? yes, until i'm in the sky and start thinking about the 34645 ways we could crash.
What personality trait is a must-have in your preferred gender? humour, music, not narrow-minded.
Have you ever been attracted to someone physically unattractive? that is a highly subjective question, no?
When was the last time you slept on the floor? quite a long time ago, haha
What is your favorite alcoholic drink? don't know.. i just drink whatever tastes good
Does your closest Starbucks have a drive-thru? nope.
Do you like your living arrangement? it's okay.
What is your mother's hometown? err. geylang?
How many hours of sleep do you need to function? i can usually survive with three or four.
Do you eat breakfast daily? nope.
What was the last thing to scare you? random unpeoply things?
Are your days full and fast-paced? not really hahaha
Did you ever get in trouble for talking in class? haha you can add eating and sleeping to the list too! i never got caught for smsing though
What is your favorite fruit? seedless green grapes. they must be seedless because i'm lazy (same reason i don't eat oranges or anything that has seeds in it) and green because they're tangy and sharp. the red variety is too sweet for me.. but in contrast, i hate sour strawberries. strawberries are great if they're fresh and eaten with cream/sugar. omg. heaven :O
Do you pay attention to calories on the back of packages? er no i only pay attention to the ingredients
How old will you be turning on your next birthday? 20. eek
Are you picky about spelling and grammar? quite
Do you believe in life on other planets? not really. but there are some people here i strongly believe should belong on another planet...
Have you ever been to Six Flags? no.
Who was the last person to piss you off? good question.
Do you believe that God has a gender? no.
What was the last thing you ate? those meiji peach-flavoured gummies covered in yoghurt and chocolate. MMMM
Do you get along better with the same or opposite sex? wasn't this question asked already?
What did you dress up as for your first Halloween? thankfully i was spared this experience...
How did your parents pick your name? they came across in a baby book. haha
Do you like mustard? it's okay.
What do you tell yourself when times get hard? OMG WE LOSE!
Would you ever sky dive? well, in theory, yes. but i'm the kind that will agree on impulse and then regret it all the way up into the sky while in the helicopter asking myself, why the fuck did you agree to this?! and then, seeing the rest of them jump over like they really want to be dead and floating from the sky, i'll decide, ah heck, let's not think about it and down i go. like the rain. floating over the sky. how poetic.
Do you sleep on your side, tummy, or back? back and side. i find sleeping on your tummy really weird. how does anyone breathe?! oh but i can sleep pretty well bent over and cross-legged. my flexibility usually sucks but i can manage to do this comfortably, with my head on the floor while my butt is sitting cross-legged on the ground. it's how i managed to get through 4 years of wednesday assemblies :D
What character from a movie most reminds you of yourself? i don't know. i rarely do the process of self-identification with a single character.
Have you ever bid for something on ebay? no because i don't have a credit card. but zat's changing too, heh!
What do you think of Angelina Jolie being pregnant? what sort of name is nouvel? but shiloh is quite nice.
Do you enjoy giving hugs? depends on who you are, obviously.
Would you consider yourself to be fashionable? i wear what i like, which is most of the time not fashionable but okay-looking. i mean, how can you go out of fashion wearing t-shirts and jeans?! i haven't bought anything cropped yet, though. i guess that's a good thing. i like classic things, that look timeless. like well-cut jackets and things. i mean, if you're going to spend money, you might as well make sure it lasts, no? buy less, but buy better!
Do you own a digital camera? yes
If someone you had no interest in dating expressed interest in dating you, how would you feel? guilty.
What celebrities have you been compared to? aha! one. some chinese singaporean singer, whose name i know, but i shan't tell you.
Who is your favorite Star Wars character? C3PO :D
Does it annoy you when someone says they'll call but never do? YES.
What books, if any, have made you cry? mostly trashy romance novels. i tend to cry at most admissions of love. i'm soppy like that.
Do you think you're attractive? when i'm drunk. and when the boyfriend tells me so.
What are you allergic to? dust, sweat, sun. that's like everything.
Are you a jealous person? it doth mock the meat it feeds on. :D SHAKESPEARE!
What's your opinion on sex without emotional commitment? not advisable. just make sure both sides enter (haha) with the same expectations.
Do you ever feel guilty after eating meat? no?
If you were born the opposite sex, what would your name have been? eugene. don't you agree i'm better off being female? (stop laughing.)

532 hongkong a dingdong

2006-06-16T12:24:00.000+08:00

so, i'm back. actually i've been back for two days. and i had internet access all the way through in hongkong but somehow i was just too lazy to blog. in any case it was a fun time had by all, which included sneaking out with my dad at night to creep down to the club lounge two floors down to swipe (more) free drinks unbeknownst to my mother, who would skin us both alive if she found out. ah, the wonders of alcohol. i think mongkok at night is really quite interesting, though i didn't have much chance to explore it fully. portland street, as always, is haunted by the ghosts of gangsters and their phantom cars or something. nobody dares to stop or their windshields (screens? what do you call those? i suddenly forgot) get whumped. woooo.

the weather was abominable, tragically, as i was telling HZ last night. places were flooding, trees were getting blown down, and when you walk in town the neon lights and signs flap and flutter about above your head as if they're going to drop on you anytime. naturally, i spent most of the time holed up in some shopping mall or another, which really was the point of this trip anyway (besides spending time with my dad, who actually didn't have much time at all, since he was holed up in tai koo having some silly company workshop which lasted two full days). so, the loot was pretty good. and i've probably spent enough to justify not shopping for the next 6 months, which is kinda bad to come to think about it, but it's not really my money, so ha. and my scholarship monthly allowance shall be trickling in soon, though it's probably going towards paying my car instalments, hohoho. but i still want to buy things! like pretty earrings and nice tops and stuff. i realised hongkong has great variety but all their tops look like they've come out straight of a japanese wardrobe. they're all cutesy and lacey and/or have great big holes in them and are loose and paired with funny seams and crazy hair and knee-length shorts and, um, not my style, no. whee.

i think i have this thing for white. i have like 348769846 white shirts, more white t-shirts, now i've just bought two white blazers, and a vaguely white bag. (it's gotten dirrrrty.) and i have new jeans!!!! (a triumph.) my life, i dare say, is somewhat complete. hrmmmz.

oh and, the heineken bottles are different. they're made of aluminium. like a sigg bottle :O not those dinky glass bottles we get here! i brought one back just for keepsakes. (do you smell swakoo+++) it's like i'll never see them again in my life. ah, happy souvenir. i brought back a postcard for N., but i couldn't find a rock for SQ. not that there weren't rocks there, but since i spent most of my time indoors and the time i spent on the amazingly rock-free streets was minimal (not that i didn't actually look) and where there were rocks, i was sitting in the car (ie on the hills next to the highway).

also i think i've had enough wanton mee to last me a long, long while.

i scrambled to the library yesterday and borrowed three books, so now i'm happily entertained till the boy books out of camp. he's doing something in some other camp today (i don't know if i'm supposed to know this/ say it out so i should shut up about it) - speaking of him we watched silent hill last night, which made absolutely no sense to me whatsoever. and it wasn't really scary per se, it was just gross, and we all know how i shy away from gross things. strangely enough i have no problem with blood, or gore, i just find people who don't look human slightly disturbing... which may explain why i wanted to be a doctor once upon a time (thankfully neekypuff has decided to take that route so... FREE CONSULTATION IN FUTURE! lots of money saved pls :D) and i neither wanted to watch alien or predator or alien vs predator etcetcetc. i think i even got slightly spooked out by signs, which had joaquin phoenix (yaye) but random black weird alien-y type things which were so disturbing. the boy spent about 15 minutes explaining the ending to me after the movie, and thanks to my overactive imagination, i actually tried to pee as fast as possible while in the toilet alone at 11.30pm just so i could get out before the place could start burning up and there were random un-peopley things chasing after me. this is probably not the first time. i distinctly remember running up the stairs in my house as fast as possible in the night so the (imaginary) t-rex wouldn't get to me....

that was after watching jurassic park. haha. i get spooked out by the weirdest shit, which includes LOTR: the first instalment, which i tremblingly told J. about a few years back, and he just laughed at me. grrrr. see what i mean? orcs are random un-peopley things too!!! hrrrrmph.

rawr.

531

2006-06-07T10:42:00.000+08:00

i think that Life has something against me. it's clearly not in anybody's plan to let me get fit, since i twisted my ankle - twice - yesterday while playing badminton. i just can't land properly on my feet for some reason, since i clearly remember the first time i encountered the horrible injury that is the wonky ankle when i was 12 trying to land after catching a rebound on court. which level of retardation have i possibly reached? it didn't hurt so much yesterday, but today it's been a bitch to walk around. every time i step on it i feel like i never want to walk ever again. plehh. :( maybe i should just stick to swimming. but i could sprain my back! maybe Life has really condemned me to a perpetual state of unfit-ness in which i slowly vegetate and become a blob of white pap.

530 so i disconnect

2006-06-06T22:28:00.000+08:00

529 060606

2006-06-06T00:17:00.000+08:00

so the pictures are here! well a bunch of us went for production two saturdays ago, and it was pretty good. funny, the set was good, actors wonderful, but maybe a little obscure. and a bit of jokes were lost because the audience didn't stop laughing yet - aha, the things you learn working with drama people - but anyway. not too bad (:

and this is what happened at cap:
all the workshops,

the stupid sai kang shit,

the stuff that kept us going,

and the people who made it all worthwhile,

and lastly, the dinner!

and also this, which made me seriously want to smack them, but i have to admit it was pretty funny:

also, i think the guy who stayed in this room wasn't even from hwachong - haha.

on saturday my cousin got married. naturally it was a time of photowhoring:

and here i am with various cousins

and this is my family!

horrendously dorky, as you can see.

and that concludes my horrendously huge picture post! hahahhahaa. the joys of digital cameras.

528

2006-06-04T02:36:00.000+08:00

this is my first post in blogger on my new laptop! and it looks swellll (:

remember the sleepless nights. the nights where we stayed up, staying together, trying to force other people apart. the days where we woke up an unearthly times, if we evere slept at all, waiting to shout at people. to lead people like lost sheep here and there, to look for people as if we'd lost them forever. 14 little bo peeps, all over the place. there was a time when all this didn't exist, when everything was normal and we were normal people. and then everything changes within a day or two, when nice people become cranky, who snap at each other and everything else. frantic typing on various laptops trying to save the day, to dish out everyone's daily sustenance before we got to go to bed, after a day's worth of complaints and advice, and preparation for the next day - the loss of thumb drives, the paper cuts. the machines that screamed 'misfeed in copier', the way three of us stood there and nearly burst into tears. random gabbled chinese because B. was panicking like crazy, eating chocolate to keep him awake. always waiting half an hour for the bus to arrive, my blood on somebody else's paper. screwing up a sorting sequence, having to do it manually, alone, with people screaming at you and a deadline to stand on the right side of. remember the signs everywhere, the things we had to do. the late night breakdowns, eating instant noodles with a styrofoam cup for a spoon. writing, always writing, always trying not to sleep. lining up four chairs in a row to lie down, where the teachers see you and don't care. sleeping right under the professor's nose. the way the world outside forgot to exist, and suddenly this became all there was, all there was to worry about and forget about. the world shrank to such a small size. so much paperwork, so little sleep. getting stuff written on your hand because you made a decision you'd probably regret forever. telling everyone here was where you were going to be. getting ready, getting geared up, then getting tired again. you lose people only to find them where they were. you wake up to find you never went to sleep. you cry to find out you were never upset. and you realise the 14 people you spent 5 days with are more than just councillors.

this whole week's been hell. i have about 350 pictures (250 throughout the week, since i was always either 1 running around frantically or 2 sleeping. my life seems to consist of alternately panicking and slacking...) anyway the past week was spent in CAP with various exciting times and several upsetting incidents, and random bits of stolen sleep here and there, since most of us slept less than 3 hours every night. it's not easy, really. the reason why i'm not posting the pictures up yet is because i'm still trying to get used to the new OS. yes i bought a mac!!! omg it looks so cool - but my dad uses a macbook pro and he's been giving me tutorials... haha! yes my dad is back!

so after that fascinatingly long week which ended in a standing ovation for prof patke while B. nodded off - poor boy's been dying of lack of sleep - my cousin's wedding was today. which saw me waking up at an unearthly time (again) to help out, since i was angbao i/c. i was really really tempted to run off with the money, but i decided that was just really mean... haha. after the church wedding was over, we had some time before the wedding dinner (which had fantabulous food by the way) so we went laptop-scouting, since there was a PC fair on at suntec or something... but i got converted by my daddy (and popagandhi's various advertisements.. haha A.!) anyway my mac's been great so far. (: but my ipod is #@%(#&^^-ing empty due to some stupid mistake i made, and now i can't get my files back :(

i'm going to hongkong next week! it's been a long time since i had a holiday with my family. like, three of us together. so even if it's nearby, i don't mind. i realised my schedule is horrifyingly tight to fit in anything longer than a week - i just realised i have a shitload of scholarship rubbish to settle, including asking NUS if they'll sponsor me for the 5th year - and my dad's is even worse. oh well. at least there's shopping (: it doesn't really take very much to satisfy me these days, i realised. and i go to hongkong too often. argh.

anyway i'm really sleepy. i've been running around the whole of 6 days, surviving on minimal sleep, so i'll go catch up now.

527

2006-06-02T03:07:00.000+08:00

i've just about reached the end of that string. i don't know how i'm going to continue doing anything tomorrow or on saturday, even for my cousin's wedding, because i'm just so tired of being on the receiving end of things that haven't been conceived with enough thought, things that just go wrong without people intending them to be that way. so many things are blown out of proportion, and the feeling seriously sucks. somehow it just feels like the straw that broke the camel's back--things are changing, things have changed. sometimes you feel as if you want to get close to someone, that certain relationships must be maintained, but then something happens and you get disappointed in things all over again. arghhhh. this was something i believed in.

526 simple things satisfy simple minds

2006-05-27T00:55:00.000+08:00

one good thing about the end of may - the sales are here! sad to say there was a fruitless shopping trip with my mum on thursday even though she was very willing to buy me stuff, we went back empty-handed anyway. but the rest of the shops in town are vaguely on sale and that makes me happy! and CK is 50% off till 28 may so everyone should go see! even though it was pretty messed up by the time i got there... and i'm desperately waiting for ninewest to go on sale because i'm going to get that pair of heels somehow - even if it isn't in time for my cousin's wedding. it's now my mission to find a cheaper version of that design so i don't have to pay so much for it in case i can't convince my mum to get it for me. i don't even know if i can walk in them. ha. though it was pretty funny standing in them and trying to see if i was taller than the boy (evidently not) and realising that he's actually taller than i thought he was. oops.

i'm running my bank account to a new low. i just divested myself of quite a tidy sum of money because of J.'s return from the US with my things, i bought two new tops, and i just spent $50 bucks on a drama serial vcd. oh yes. i never thought i'd fall into this trap - buying the entire vcd series! and it's not even a japanese or korean drama - it's taiwanese! everyone faint now - it's one of those ou xiang ju! - but ohh, the main actor is seriously yummy. and the storyline is pretty weird but the characters are quirky and the actors have hilarious expressions. it makes me laugh alot (: and it's pretty sweet, which appeals to stupid people like me, who giggle at this sort of thing. i'm even watching it a second time after finishing all 20 episodes over 2 nights. and yes, i am aware of how uncool i just made myself sound.

all rational thought flies out the window when the great singapore sale is here!

***
in other news, and because i know everyone is just hanging on my decision wrt university (hoho), i'm not going to london after all. i will probably forever regret it, but there are other reasons better left unsaid holding me back. but business/law isn't such a bad combination yes? (comfort me!) which explains my frantic buying spree recently just to convince myself that staying here is a good idea in the end. but i always believe - when god closes the door, somewhere he opens the window. and i can be satisfied knowing i'll be doing what i want to be doing with the rest of my life.

525

2006-05-25T14:34:00.000+08:00

i walked around for hours, two ten-pence pieces in my hand
i was alone and freezing, still trying hard to understand you
i left the others knowing, i had to work this by myself
but now the feeling's growing, i would be better off with their help

so baby, what we've got
has lately not been enough, not been enough

i wish i had your scarf still, that once embraced and kept me warm
i wish you could be with me, in these last days when i am hopelessly poor

stay out of trouble, stay in touch
try not to think about me too much

/kings of convenience

524

2006-05-22T23:48:00.000+08:00

my mum just bought me a new watch! not that i actually need one since i haven't really worn a watch seriously since.. forever. mainly because i wear it on my right hand and that's not really convenient when you're right-handed and are trying to take notes furiously. but anyway! there's no school now, and when i start school hopefully there'll be minimal writing! whatever. i like it (:

there ends my random and pointless post of the day.

p/s: NUS finally replies, and it's time to think really really hard! it probably works out better in the long run, especially with what they're offering - which is more than favourable. so i should stop thinking about the stigma that local graduates have and just stay. or not? argh.

523 stuck in a moment you can't get out of

2006-05-20T02:20:00.000+08:00

i don't remember what it was like to cram segments of my life, my day, into one anecdotal paragraph. it's all degenerated into random recounting, and i resent that.

in any case i finally got my hands on new books, courtesy of my mum a few days ago, strangely after we had about the greatest fight in our combined existences. i didn't think it was possible to fight with your mum so much, especially about the same few things we always talk about, but then again it seems that between kids and their parents there is always going to be that limited number of topics we can touch on. and it was one hell of a fight. she's excited; i'm excited - we're going off on two different tangents. she's getting sick of me being indecisive; in fact so am i. and i'm getting very sick of certain organisations refusing to make up their minds.

i was reading michael cunningham on the train today, after braving the afternoon sun across that wide field i always walk across as a shortcut to the MRT station. it was dry, unusually dry - or perhaps i should say surprisingly dry, since the field has been damp and slushy in certain places for the past few weeks despite the sun being its usual cheery and sunny (haha) self. since it's not always been like that, the slushiness should've been a temporary syndrome, but in any case it was abnormally dry today. it's probably not wise to assume things are always going to be this way from now on.

- where was i? oh, michael cunningham. specimen days is an intriguing novel. i'm not through with it yet, considering the pace at which i read nowadays - i continue to read in large chunks, but i don't do it very often and i never get anything read during the day. when i was younger i used to spend my holidays (those days where i didn't go out, anyway) reading away; and when school started my reading got pushed back into the hours of the night when i'd finished my work, finished my chats with people, finished surfing the internet - took a back seat to everything else, really, that wasn't half as important as i made it out to be. and i missed out on alot of reading time that way. now that i'm on holiday virtually everyday and all i do is loaf around (it's true), my reading time is still saved for these times of the night when it's all dark and everyone is sleeping and nobody is going to be there to open the door to my room suddenly and demand why the hell i'm huddled under my comforter in bright daylight when it's so bloody hot reading a book while i'm lying down, since that's the only way i read when i'm not on a moving vehicle, in which case i take up both seats with my massive presence and lean against the window with the book hitting the sunlight. and it seems i've been sidetracked again, but then again i've really not much to tell you about the book, except that certain things are falling into place and the similarities are startling in the most basic and unnerving of ways.

i've realised that commuting in singapore these days has taken on craptastic proportions. the crowds at peak hour are amazing, as are their attitudes. it's never so easy to see the ugly sides of people when they're all in a rush, all desperate to get ahead, get inside. i swear you can virtually see a half-smile hanging of the lips of the people in the train when the train doors close in on those who are too slow to get in. i thought about alot of things as i was moving along, as i usually do when i'm travelling alone surrounded by people. it always amazes me the way independent thought works, the way thoughts are running through every person's head, though they're right next to each other, their minds are so far away. it was peak hour and the doors were closing, the train moving off. it kept going west, going further away, as if running from the darkness, towards the setting sun. some days i imagine the sun is just like a squid. it tries so hard to escape but it can't, and the only way it does that is squirt out ink so you can't see anything and then it can run away. and i think of the train and the way we were trying to escape from it, running away before the darkness caught up with us. when i reached, it was still bright; the sun wouldn't have set for another 15 minutes.

i watched saving private ryan today. it must've been a good ten years since that movie came out, maybe slightly less. it was a good movie, though i couldn't really hear 1/4 of what was being said. but it was good. it was the boy's virgin drive home today. it wasn't too bad considering all things, and he did manage to get me home alive. i think driving at night is therapeutic.

522

2006-05-18T22:30:00.000+08:00

stop asking me where i'm going! i don't know and i refuse to repeat the details of my dilemma to people who don't already know, eeek.

anyway i'm sort of happy. i saw this pair of gorgeous orange-red brocade flats which i really wanted but passed up on, but i landed myself with a bright red pair of heels, which look fantabulous from one side and so-so on the other. (don't ask why i bought it - i couldn't resist the colour) also managed to get myself new underwear, which will constitute having all seven colours of the rainbow in my wardrobe (once J. comes back from NY with my things) - i don't know if that's really gay or not. let's not speculate. in other matters of housekeeping my mother also bought me two fluffy new towels! i realised i have a thing for red accessories. if i stay here my car is going to be red too! - if you can call that an accessory, ahahaha.

my cousin's wedding is coming, and once again i need to foray into that big scary world that is make-up. i wonder if i should just go to someone to do it just for the day or actually buy the damn things so i can use it myself for longer. the thing is, me = total make-up n00b. someone needs to teach me these things. i don't even know what colour looks nice on me. and i refuse to spend money experimenting! pretty make-up is so expensive. :(

i realised i'm turning into such a random shallow bimbo. arghhhhh >_<

521 you can't always be torn in two, sam

2006-05-16T13:03:00.000+08:00

so, i have about one more week to make a decision. i'll always remember may 2006 as the time where my life changed. this is a really important and difficult decision... i really don't mind staying, but just want to go. but going, then again, has so many other things to consider. why on earth did i tell them i didn't want to do econs? sigh. life's bleak, it really is.

520

2006-05-13T14:43:00.000+08:00

i love weekends, they make me happy (: not to mention the fact that i've been eating loads and loads of food - me and I. finally caught up on our xiaolongbao date over lunch on thursday, and i was seriously and disgustingly full after that eating the 346098508 dumplings and drinking lots of tea. went for CAP briefing afterwards, managed to turn myself into a sai kang slave slotting certificates into envelopes. urgh. ran off after that and for dinner i stuffed myself again eating lasagna! eeek.

saturday's a slow, lazy day for me. it's been awhile since i've spent the whole day at home, though i have to go to church later. the weather's been pretty nice and cooperative and it's good to just snuggle into the sheets and feel happy (: though i'm seriously feeling very very stoned and my expression the whole day has been like this, which i know seriously annoys RM hahaha:

yesterday was fun, though the boy and i pretty much did nothing except wake up late and call each other to wake up, searching all over town for a silly computer game and realising that over the hedge doesn't open till next week. after skipping lunch and stumbling into toys 'r' us, we descended on a cafe right below and ate!

you see the thing about the boy is that he can't smile in pictures unless he laughs before that, so the smile is genuine. and hence this picture opportunity came at a wonderful time:

the later part of the night was spent with D.! where we bumped into HX at cafe iguana, where the whole world seems to go just because the drinks are cheap during happy hour. but it was good fun, we talked about alot of rubbish, and took obligatory drunken-disaster pictures along the bridge while sitting there:

HAPPY CAMPERS!

518 crazy little thing called love

2006-05-08T21:36:00.000+08:00

it cries, in a cradle all night
it swings, it jives
it shakes all over like a jellyfish
i kinda like it
/queen

they say the first sign that you're crazy is when you start believing in things you shouldn't be seeing. or knowing, or hearing about. it's a hypothetical vase of roses that remind you, very clearly, of the way your dead wife used to smell, sitting right outside there in your living room. you hide in your room because you can smell it and you don't want to. you'd think, maybe you should go out and get rid of the roses, so you can be a normal person and use your damn living room. but to go out means you acknowledge the roses are there, that your wife is dead, and the million other things you try to forget - and the roses, very clearly, don't exist except in your head. it's the way someone knocks on your door, very insistently, but you never answer it even though that person screams at you to let her in, because you know who it is and in a world where you are sane, this person would never talk to you within an inch of your life, or be interested in the slightest bit - and hence could not possibly be hammering away on your door as if she cared at all. but things get easier. you know you can’t possibly be sane when you admit you’re crazy. when you're crazy you get used to hallucinations, to things that go wrong, that are not normal, that aren't the way you think they should be. and the first sign a crazy person is becoming sane again is when he begins to accept that not everything that happens to him is out of the ordinary and therefore impossible, because to believe something is impossible and yet have it occur right in front of your eyes is bound to drive anyone crazy. things get easier when you get used to them. and slowly - it becomes easy to forget. and the pain of loss morphs into something else. first you forget the little things. you forget what she used to drink for breakfast, what kind of cereal she used to eat. you forget if she's allergic to milk, you forget how hot the water should be when she runs a bath. you forget the way she reads newspapers back to front, the way she takes off her ring to shower, what kind of underwear she wore, what size shirt she liked. you forget whether she preferred slacks to skirts, whether she liked them short or long, did she like heels, could she walk in them, did she have flat feet, was she up early in the morning? then you begin to forget the way she held you, or kissed you, or sang. you begin to forget how her hands feel like, how her laughter rings out. you begin to forget how she tastes like, how she smells like. then you forget the important things, the things that are a part of you - your body forgets the way it responds to her. your body forgets what it felt like to be near her. you begin to forget the jump in your heart when she smiles, the way you smile when you see her. you begin to forget how you cried when she was not here, you begin to forget how you've been hurt. and slowly you remember less. slowly you are moved by less. slowly you are used to less. and when you remember this is what you thought at the beginning was impossible and out of the ordinary, you know you've come out of that dreamworld.

forget everything. forget the laughter, forget the pain. when you first meet you remember everything - the hair, the smell, the face, the smile, those small little actions that distinguish one human being from another, the quirk, the self-conscious look away, the shy downcast eyes. you remember the adrenaline rush, what it means to be happy, how it feels to be loved, the exact point where two people meet and feel a spark. you remember colours and sounds and sights and smells, as if the other person were a holiday spot and you were there for the first time. exploring, like a tourist, the underbelly, i might say, pardon the pun. subtle jibes, poking around to see if we find anything new, anything familiar, anything similar, anything comforting. more often we look for similarities so we make ourselves feel better. it blossoms into something else. accompanied by a sense of wonder, the exploration takes on massive proportions. some part of it is where no one else can go, places in your brain, places in your body, places where everything and nothing is private, places you've never let people into before - your mind, your heart, your body, your presence. some part of it is so special and treasured it takes awhile to get in. it becomes a place where good things grow, clearly it's not all a bed of roses - things don't get better, neither do they get worse, but the road is always - easier, more manageable, easier to overcome, to cross, to get over, easier to cherish, to let go of, easier to remember, much easier to forget.

517

2006-05-08T18:21:00.000+08:00

since i'm clearly really bored, this is going on my wedding finger next time (:

yesyes, it's probably not even shiny, and it's gold and obiang, but eh, gold is underrated okay.

516 the freedom bell for peace of mind

2006-05-07T21:02:00.000+08:00

take me to the magic of the moment
on a glory night
where the children of tomorrow dream away
in the winds of change
/scorpions

it's not fun. it's not a matter of fun. you vote for something because you believe in it, because you feel as if it means something. it's not because it's fashionable to throw in your lot with the anti-establishment as a rock in the face for the ruling party. today i attended the victory parade for marine parade GRC (okay i didn't really, since i had to leave before it even started) which hardly seemed victorious because, you know, it was a walkover. in any case i still find it hard to identify with the lightning people; maybe it's not done anything for me, or i still find myself disenchanted, or god forbid, because it's uncool to like them, maybe because i think it's stupid to hold a little flag and go 'whee PAP' whenever they go by. they've won again, but things are changing. and i take back what i said about this elections not being news - it really was pretty exciting. luckily (or not) for me, the aljunied side was heavily contested and so what i told my law interviewers wasn't too inaccurate a prediction. so once again i am saved by the invisible hand! so adam smith.

anyway, i still think the PAP logo looks like harry potter's scar.

515

2006-05-07T02:18:00.000+08:00

you know i don't know how to solve alot of things. the time in which i have to wait for this page to load is already enough time to make me forget half the things i've wanted to say. and then it goes on and on, and some things change. while i was half-stoned on a couch lying there with D. in silence somewhere in rochalie drive i was thinking about my life. how many things have i forgotten? and how many things will i forget? someday i'll remember what it was like to be the old me, the lonely me - and lonely is such a vague word, it's got too many different meanings for us - when i was walking around all alone by myself. silence - you know there's a place in your head no one can touch, where you can go by yourself and pace all alone, that space that is all yours. in between thinking and more thinking there is a void in which people just feel empty, so empty, so dishearteningly unfilled.

there're so many people, and their lives move on without you, as if you don't matter at all. you bump into each other once in awhile and you repeat the same few topics of conversation as you have been with every other person, and always specific to the time of day and time of year, till you wonder if there really isn't anything else you can talk about. in past years there were times when i stayed up in the night not knowing what time it was, drinking myself crazy just because i felt like it, hoping desperately i'd have the guts to pick up the phone and call somebody. in past years there were times when i felt the need to talk to someone so badly but there really was no one. there really is no punishment like feeling totally isolated, totally alone without anyone to depend on or call on for help when you need to, when you feel like it. but to do so is to take those people for granted, as if they owe you something, as if they owe it to you to be there when you want them to be. and everyone's got their own lives to lead. and slowly i learnt to let go of alot of things, things about other people and myself, things that shouldn't matter. in past years where schooltime pleasantries ended when the bell rang - i lived alone. and now when i've got everything i possibly need - something is missing. i can't explain it, and i don't know what it is, and somehow that emptiness is back as my life looms before me with all the decisions i have to make, decisions that matter so greatly to me but mean nothing to others, how my troubles are magnified a thousand times in my memory but are of no paramount importance? i think about the choices i have to make and while i'm lucky to have these choices, my indecision seems so insignificant.

in HY's house today D. commented how every year people go to HY's house and people change. people slim down, people grow taller, look better, have different haircuts, next year people go overseas, no one will be here, and god knows when the next party will be. and everyone goes there by association - so-and-so's girlfriend, friend of friend, OCS mate, GEP, somewhere related. it's funny how it can be totally fulfilling, having three birthday cakes when people have none, and yet it can be totally empty - because you know these people less than you want to, or even more than you want to. maybe i'm thinking too much.

as usual i always have a more coherent and elegiac post in my head than what comes out here, but i'm just too tired to write it so that people don't know what i'm talking about.

514 quote of the day

2006-05-06T11:36:00.000+08:00

"Repression, Sir is a habit that grows. I am told it is like making love - it is always easier the second time! The first time there may be pangs of conscience, a sense of guilt. But once embarked on this course with constant repetition you get more and more brazen in the attack. All you have to do is to dissolve organizations and societies and banish and detain the key political workers in these societies. Then miraculously everything is tranquil on the surface. Then an intimidated press and the government-controlled radio together can regularly sing your praises, and slowly and steadily the people are made to forget the evil things that have already been done, or if these things are referred to again they're conveniently distorted and distorted with impunity, because there will be no opposition to contradict."

- Lee Kuan Yew as an opposition PAP member speaking to David Marshall, Singapore Legislative Assembly, Debates, 4 October, 1956

513 i'll edit this some other time

2006-05-05T22:30:00.000+08:00

in a miraculous feat i've not been able to accomplish all of this year (and the last, and maybe the year before last), i've managed to vaguely make two people upset today. right now my response to that is whatever. i'm sure i'll get over thinking about myself first one day.

i have pictures, but maybe later.

512 my weekend

2006-05-02T00:14:00.000+08:00

i don't remember what i did on saturday.

sunday's law test was pretty good. then we spent 5 hours at bedok jetty talking rubbish and eating lots and lots of food as usual:

monday was spent getting a haircut (finally heh), having lunch with the family and watching election 2 as well as mirrormask back-to-back. both were pretty good; but mirrormask seemed abit drowsy - apt, i guess, and totally graphic-novelish, and election 2 was mind-bendingly violent though i kept making random and irrelevant comments during those scenes.

511 guys are weird

2006-04-29T21:18:00.000+08:00

if you're offended by alot of swear words, what could be construed as racism, homosexuality, vice and debauchery, i suggest you not read the following.

***
D says:
wanna sell me a brick?

R says:
BRICK?

D says:
i'd need a brick when (name omitted to protect the innocent) comes over
HEEHEEHEE

R says:
oh
dude
just use like
um
something LESS hard to find
or you could just go some construction site and pick up a brick
mmm

D says:
it'd look really weird though
HEY WHAT'S HE DOING STEALING OUR BRICKS
OMG STOP HIM

R says:
HAHAHA

D says:
hello dear bangla worker-slave
i just need this brick to get myself some anal secks
as my friend isn't a bangla
and isn't going to willingly spread his legs for me

R says:
dude they'd just be like
wtf he's crazy
let's just rape this guy
then you'd get ASSRAPED

D says:
then i'd SMASH HIM WITH A BRICK
AND SELL HIS ORGANS FOR MUCHO MULA

R says:
wtf

D says:
i'm sure they all hang out at gay bars
oh btw
i'm going to a gay bar later
yum

R says:
right
which one!

D says:
i dunno, my friend's going to bring me
I DON'T KNOW OF ANY GAY BARS PLZ

R says:
is it called.. HAPPY CLUB
i heard happy club is pretty damn gay

D says:
maybe
wanna come!
wtf
there's really
a fucking
happy club!?
are you serious

R says:
YES

D says:
LOL
it's probably gay in the
massive underage swarm gay
just like CLUB HOME
omg there was a baby outside

R says:
i'm sure there'd be millions of guys going MMMM UNDERAGE SEX
wtf baby

D says:
... taken into context
that's some PRETTY FUCKED UP underaged sex

R says:
omg no
that is like CHILD ABUSE PLZ
being a baby = LOSE

510 oh yes oh yes they both reached for the gun

2006-04-28T16:58:00.000+08:00

all is not lost, yo. interview was pretty good, they seemed nice and interested and we had several arguments over elections/politics, which was pretty fun, drove off to have icecream with mum and bumped into samyeo along the way. and i got an email from NUS today (: (: which means, oh yes, oh yes. if all this goes the way i hope it will, i might actually stay.

***
i know i ripped this off ickleoriental, but i like good lyrics, and it's been awhile since i've heard anything from this decade that's in this vein.

dear mr president, come take a walk with me - let's just pretend we're two people and you're not better than me; i'd like to ask you some questions, if we can speak honestly - what do you feel when you see the homeless on the street? who do you pray for at night before you go to sleep? what do you feel when you look in the mirror? are you proud? how do you sleep when the rest of us cry? how do you dream when a mother has no chance to say goodbye? how do you walk with your head held high? can you even look me in the eye? and tell me why, dear mr president, were you a lonely boy? are you a lonely boy? are you a lonely boy? how can you say, no child is left behind - we're not dumb and we're not blind, they're all sitting in your cells while you pave the road to hell. what kind of father would take his own daughter's rights away? and what kind of father might hate his own daughter if she were gay? i can only imagine what the first lady has to say; you've come a long way from whiskey and cocaine. let me tell you about hard work: minimum wage with a baby on the way, let me tell you about hard work: rebuilding your house after the bombs took them away, let me tell you about hard work: building a bed out of a cardboard box, let me tell you about hard work, you don't know nothing about hard work. how do you sleep at night? how do you walk with your head held high? dear mr president, you'd never take a walk with me ... would you?

/pink

509 by grace chua

2006-04-27T20:14:00.000+08:00

came across this years ago and it holds true now as it did then.
by someone who, throughout the most pressurising years of my life, has managed to write about these things with amazing clarity.

the litany:
(excuses my twentysomething colleagues give)
singapore's so banal and boring
nothing of significance ever happens here
most singaporeans are stupid
this organisation is paying me peanuts

the real reason:
(size matters)
when you're small the world is huge. the world is larger than your eyes can hold, and rounder: full of surprises as a grape. and when you grow up, get older, taller, wider (i said wider, not wiser), the world shrinks in comparison. your peripheral field of vision is no longer a field of dreams. you hit eighteen or twenty, and realise you'll never be an astronaut. you hit twenty-five, and realise you'll never start your own business, hell, you're so chained down you'll never move overseas, pull up roots and flee. you hit thirty, and realise you'll never write the great singaporean novel. you see your dreams diminished, becoming much much smaller than you ever thought they'd be.

that's why they're so disillusioned.

507 i can see the red tail-lights headed for spain

2006-04-26T03:41:00.000+08:00

a little announcement:

UBLUES LAST REUNION
29, 30 april & 1 may
timbre music bar & bistro, 45 armenian st
the night's settling in and i feel oddly verbose these few days. i'm rarely in this mood since school ended so i figure let's milk it for all it's worth (actually i know why - it's because i just changed my layout and i like seeing new things appear on screen; trust me, it's been done before). it's been awhile since i stayed up this late on my own, with no one to talk to, not really feeling like talking to anyone, etc etc. my cousin returns from canada in a few hours, which is a long long time from last february when she cancelled the wedding (ref: this post, which i bet everyone thought was referring to somebody else) because her father-in-law-to-be (her husband is canadian) suffered some debilitating heart condition that forced his (only) child to run back to canada disregarding everything else - it's been awhile since i've seen them, naturally. it's good to have family back from overseas, from anywhere really, funny how i think about it being me who's going to be the one everyone waits for to come back and go out to have nice happy family lunches with. it seems surreal, the way things happen when you're not around and only when you're not around. in a way it brings the family closer together, these long periods apart and the distances that lie between us, bring us closer than if we all stayed here cosy in our terrace houses. the thing about going overseas is (and you can tell i've been thinking about it alot lately) is that it reinforces the feeling that you're alone, and yet not, all at the same time.

the cousin in question is the one in the middle, and the baby is me, if you can even see the resemblance
i think about staying, and then i think about going, and up till now i still really can't make up my mind at all. is it worth it sending me all the way there, is it worth it spending time away from people i love who are all here? is it worth the days where i have to eat bread everyday to save money, all the while working my ass off to not get a lousy honours degree so i can actually come back and be something useful? i've got to make this decision soon, and quickly, lest i wind up with lousy accomodation and whatnot, but NUS doesn't even give me a firm answer till god-knows-when, meaning i can't even decide whether i should stay when i have no place here, no place to stay, no reason worth staying. my family is overcrowded with too many damn lawyers and everybody tells me a different thing. in the end it's all about listening to your heart, where it wants to take you, i know that, but it's just so hard to put it into practice. my cousin JX told me the other day, just flip a coin - yes, what we do with most important life decisions; since you're going to regret it either way, you might as well leave it to luck. i've realised that in the course of my life i've never really been very good at knowing what i want. some people, like F., know it right from the start and work towards it; whereas i just sort of blunder along and get swept with the current and am happy to be washed up wherever it takes me, just so long as it isn't too seedy and a decent and livable place. i don't Plan. i have zero long-term plans, and now that i'm being forced to think long-term, it looks like my options are severely limited and despite wanting to go overseas for god-knows-how-long, staying here is actually looking like a better and better prospect even though,

i have places overseas, and none here
i can afford to go without a scholarship, but i can't spend like i do here, which can really range from eating bread everyday to save money or simply just cutting back on watching concerts/plays/musicals, all the traps of london i am bound to fall into
meeting new people is always fun. if i stay here, i'm likely to be stuck somewhere where i actually know half the faculty
london is really my favourite city in the world; and my friends are there
all those wonderful plans we made to travel on weekends to various parts of europe

but,

that, obviously, costs money. and so in order to save for that i might really have to eat bread everyday
i want to practice when i get back, meaning taking a scholarship is not a feasible option unless PSC decides to be charitable, and even then, if i don't get posted to legal service, what the hell am i going to do?
i have to get first-class or second-upper from overseas! and singaporeans can practice even with second-lower
with the money i save my parents by not going overseas, they might actually be persuaded to buy me a car and i can go on extended holidays twice a year
i can still do my masters overseas
my loved ones are here!

AARGHHH!!! decisions, decisions. what the hell am i going to do? haha notice the irony in me complaining about people being irritating due to apocalyptic fits of hysteria and here i go off on my own. but yes, i am clairvoyant like that. my mum just tells me, i know it's a pretty hard decision, but you have to make it yourself, which is true i know but zero help at all. and even though generations upon generations of hapless students have faced this selfsame dilemma over and over again, i ask the million-dollar question: HOW??!

in other news, my job just got extended. i can't decide whether it's because i'm incredibly lucky or maybe (ahem) i'm just a good worker so they want to keep me, even though they just hired two new staff, ostensibly to replace me once i'm gone. it was supposed to be my last week this week, but my boss decided to talk to the GM after she called me a 'hun2 dan4' (bastard, for the uninitiated) and now i can continue working and still get paid! so i have nice colleagues, a nice boss, the GM who is actually nice to me, engagements next weekend, and things in my immediate and everyday life are looking better. yaye (:

506

2006-04-25T13:32:00.000+08:00

on the night of the election
ancient stars will fall into the sea
and the ocean floor sings her sympathy
/bic runga, election night

in between watching singapore rebel late last night after RM pointed me towards it, i remembered sunday night's train ride home, talking amongst ourselves while listening to the bunch of teenagers next to us talking about the elections. i told RM about it and frankly thought it was amazing, that suddenly everyone is so politically aware. that a good thing much? i flip channels and land on CNA, and already there exists a neverending stream of commercials reminding me to tune in to follow, step-by-step, the process of the election. i watch the news and listen to the newscasters read off their happily prepared scripts about rallies and demands for SDP apologies. and why my vote matters, though like shoojee says it really is pretty obvious that having such a programme is a bit like throwing pebbles in an attempt to knock down a cliff. at that point in time i was wondering to myself whether it was even staged or not (in my oft-occurring moments of cynicism) as LKY responded to a barb that the PAP was said to be arrogant - well it wasn't really a barb, it wasn't subtle - with a if the PAP were arrogant, would we be having this talk? with that faint chuckle and the knowledge that he will always outclass, outrank and outwit you. sometimes you wonder if it isn't really just an attempt to make LKY look even smarter than he already is, not that he needs much help, by putting together a panel of inept journalists and undergraduates to question him with neither finesse nor subtlety. and i say this as if i'm qualified enough to go on the show, as if all of us here are brilliant enough to sidestep all his subtle points and pitholes when you remember he did 'make a career out of cross-examination', but to admit what i just said as true requires a huge, huge leap of faith and subscribes even less intelligence to the panel than i originally thought possible. in all honesty i don't think they're really that stupid; maybe they asked the wrong questions, or maybe they asked it the wrong way. a lot of it was meant to be directly provocative, hard-hitting and in all honesty, for an experienced evader of questions as the de facto head of our government seems to be, very easy to refute - and he's done it with far more experienced people.

i think it's vaguely funny how these panelists are already getting slammed by the more conservative, who are saying these people don't have a modicum of respect in their bones, and how can they speak like that to the man who has essentially built up our country from nothing? which really is completely missing the point that they are trying to make, and yet perhaps this is precisely the reaction certain people have calculated and expected - and engineered. in every level of government there's a certain level of defensiveness that's really quite obvious no matter where you turn to look. in the way people avoid questions in interviews, in the way they screen your personality and psychology, in the way they ask you about politics and religion, to the way everybody secretly thinks the same thing but is afraid to voice it out. the only thing i remember from singapore rebel is CSJ saying, the purpose of the rally was just to show the PAP that singaporeans, when gathered in a big group to listen to political speeches, did not automatically degenerate into chaos like the PAP said they would ... and we did that, we accomplished that. CSJ may be an idiot, but not everything he says is nonsense.

i didn't know whether i should be feeling disturbed by the fact that CNA is making such a big deal out of it. it's probably their job as newsmakers, but really ... this isn't news. it's not news in the way that people are going to be glued to their tv screens waiting for the latest vote count or even the final outcome. it's not like the election between bush and gore where victory hangs by less than 2%, nor even the british elections where even though everyone expects gordon brown to take over, there still is an element of uncertainty in which people are free to voice that uncertainty, to raise their doubts in public. here there is no such contest, and for all the excitement and the hype, the outcome is no secret. statistically it's not even possible not to win. it's not even a matter of whether it's the PAP or the SDP or the WP, and it's not a question of who i'd rather see in parliament, i'm just saying that above all that, the fight for governance in singapore is really just quite a lopsided one.

and of course, i just know that whatever scholarship i'm applying for is bound to stumble across this and decide to send me a letter that says we regret to inform you that you are unsuited for the public service**. in other news, i can expect PSC to reject me in the near future since i've heard nothing from them yet. but whatever. you can't keep my mouth shut with $300,000. even though it might seem a wise decision at this point in time, but if you do it once, you'll end up doing it forever.

** ignoring the fact that even without this post it is quite a terrifying and real prospect, and it just seems to come together, you know? elections, and what you want the government to do for you, and what the government wants you to do for them - when there's money involved, things get bitter. and frankly you know it's pretty demoralising, even though i'm not the kiasu type and out of the 3 scholarships i bothered to apply for, 2 have already replied with fairly good prospects. so maybe i should be counting my blessings - i amend that, i should be, already. how many people in this life have come as far as we have in order that we are able to make the choices that we make now? for every person that has debated going to HC or RJ as if it were a life-and-death situation, there is someone who has already dropped out of secondary school. for every person who chooses between yale or cambridge, oxford or UCL, between RGS and NYGH, there is someone who is struggling to put themselves through university. for every person who has more than one scholarship offer, thereby ensuring they have to reject at least one, there is somebody out there who doesn't have the privilege of tertiary education. how many people in this life qualify to apply in the first place? at these points in time i keep telling myself that i have come far enough and it's always good to be happy with what you have, since it's not like you don't already have enough on your plate. things that come and go are out of your control and if you get it, then good. but it's easy to say that when you have a backup plan, when you already have a university place, when you know you have the means to get there. for those who don't, Getting There is a long and arduous process. like chue said a long long time ago, we're pretty lucky to be bastards who have a choice, and it's a choice among the best shit around. so maybe we should all take life with a pinch of salt, and it's really not the end of the world if things don't go the way you envisaged***. like i always say!, when God closes the door, somewhere He opens the window. (:

***you know i'm saying this because some people are beginning to irritate me with their apocalyptic fits of hysteria.

505 this will not degenerate into self-pity

2006-04-25T02:01:00.000+08:00

funny how you read things from the past that were written so long ago... things that were honest, things that were private, things that were never meant to be found. things that you know you caused yourself, and for all the shit that's happened, most of it is really your fault. not saying it doesn't hurt, not saying i've never hurt people, maybe it's on a better track now... but knowing things and that your life (and other people's lives) takes a beating because of it is weird. who's to say nobody thinks like that now? for everything that has happened, it just feels surreal. and how to make amends? i don't know how to be a real person, i don't know how to be a good person; to have faith, to have courage, to give people what they want. to change in a positive way that make people remember how the old me used to be like, before i went through all this, before i made myself go through all this and dragged other people through the shit with me for no good reason at all and scarring them for life in the process. the thing is, i don't even remember myself, how i used to be like. there are times when your past comes back to slap you in your face and you think to yourself whether one can ever have people around you that tell you the truth, but you realise that everyone, no i mean everyone including me, has got that whole routine down - the one where people dance around each other and say nice things but think different things in their heads. it's funny how it's at these times i feel so ashamed at myself and the way i do things and handle people, having friends i alternately don't mind and dislike all at the same time, and i think about not bitching to people about things i can't stand, but funny how shoving it to the back of your head is not going to work particularly if the feelings are genuine. it's funny how, in order to be honest, one must write as if no one will read it; yet is pretty ironic how most honest things cannot be said when other people are around. does this reaffirm our flagging faith in human nature or is it a reminder of how screwed up we all are? i think there must be a time where everyone sits down to be honest with each other and thrashes things out. and i think i need to be more honest, with myself, with my family, my friends, with other people, with knowing what i want and not hurting people. in being a better friend, being less hypocritical, in trying to stop bitching (really hard for me heh), trying to be a better catholic. and honestly, right now, i feel like rubbish and it shows. i am not a victim; i'm not trying to be. what everyone needs to do is sit down for an entire day in a quiet place and think about all the things they've done and regretted and not, think about things as they are, with neither excuses nor apologies nor various attempts at shoving the blame at somebody else. what everyone needs to do is admit their mistakes and move on and stop feeling antagonistic towards certain people. you know when i say we i really mean i. and every time i see these people who have been hurt by me, annoyed with me, wanted to kill me at some point in time, i feel as if i've been lying to myself all this while. and trust me on this: you can lie to everyone else, but one thing you should never do is lie to yourself - it'll explode in your face, one of these days.

504 come on baby light my fire

2006-04-24T00:30:00.000+08:00

so we all trooped down to suntec to watch burn the floor. personally i think the second half was better than the first half, but anyway... the boys ran off straight after, so we had no time to take pictures. but here are the rest!

the girls, who were all in black tops, and wenyu

then it was a girls' night out where we finally had our long-awaited marche dinner! i was really really hungry so there weren't any pictures of food; anyway everyone knows what marche sells right?! haha this is HZ being very hungry indeed.

after lots of talking and food, we got really bored and decided to take pictures. in between trying to drape SQ's black cape thingy over HZ for a highly suggestive picture (which i will not post up there), TW looked distinctly unimpressed when SQ insisted it looked nice! so we pestered TW to attempt to be one of those japanese sellavision type people to try and promote SQ's wonderful black cape with SQ as the model:

and this was our reaction:

after which we decided it was fun to try and act cute! i never knew acting cute was such a tiring business, proving that to some people it just comes naturally...

... and for the rest of us, we just fail.

so we decided to make words! ten points to you if you figure out what they are!

in the end we gave up. TW refused to be part of this picture. twenty points to you if you guess correctly the inspiration of this picture!

503

2006-04-23T02:26:00.000+08:00

in between having great colleagues and hectic schedules, i've discovered i don't really want to leave this job. but i made a decision so i will stick with it. in any case, it's one week more till the boy comes back :D and then it'll be labour day which is a public holiday, and he'll have one whole week of off! (: (: (: i'll be a happy happy girl.

i suddenly have this urge to do a random and pointless survey (as if i haven't done enough of those in my entire blogging life already) so i will search around for a satisfactory one, which is funny seeing as my answers probably haven't changed much over the years but i insist on doing them even though nobody is going to read them. such is life.

do you remember when my posts used to be all random and cryptic and seriously irritating to read? i've been wondering why i can't write like that anymore. as evidenced by the multitude of photos that have suddenly bombarded this place, it seems an uncontrollable passion (hm i sound like a romance novel blurb!) to share the extent of my happiness with everyone! or, in other words, i'm just a photowhore. the thing is, though, there isn't much now by way of subterfuge (oh god how i remember this word, first encountered it in p4 during an english exam which i will never forget -- all those in RGPS with me under ms paulose/mrs nathan say AYE!) anyway i'm thinking i should again make it my life's work to irritate the shit out of everyone with cryptic rubbish. in the very least, even if people get annoyed with me, it sounds vaguely poetic and worth preserving for posterity instead of this crap i'm writing now, which i will look back on in about ten years' time and go, oh my god what is this crap i was writing then?!?! which would not bode well for my sanity. but then again everything i wrote back then is now cringe-worthy, so i guess hindsight isn't really a benefit but a curse because it gives you a Heart Attack.

anyway. i digress.

haha while i was flipping through the archives to dig up an old survey i could do i came across this, so you can start imagining the bright lights and the ****DRAMATIC IRONY**** and everything right about now:

august 23, 2003: was feeling kindof aldsgf;dkfjgh last night about everything and nothing at all, i realised these moods like to come on a weekly basis, and it always comes at the end of the week. alas such unhappy times are short-lived due to the fact that i seem to be accosted by insanity at every turn, and when you are surrounded by such people your spirits cannot stay down for long. it is probably a good thing everyone close to me is some sort of weirdo. heh. thank you. you help more than you realise, i'm not lying just to make you happy.

i don't understand how love can sometimes border on obsession. it scares me utterly. and i pray that i will never have to face this sort of thing in my lifetime, ever.

it's funny how i remember stages of my life by the people who played a significant role in it. so in every part of my life there is a before, after and during. once in awhile there'll be gaps, and then those are really the years that are me-time, and not anybody else's. sometimes i don't mind, sometimes i like it, other times i regret it, but it happens.

1. Name: clarisse
2. Do you like it?: i didn't use to, but now i do - except when people spell it wrongly
3. Nick-names: risse, geps, stupid girl
4. Screen names: ._. luciene
5. Age: 19
6. Birthday: march 25
7. Sign: aries
8. Location: singapore
9. Job: student, relief teacher, waitress, exploited labour, etc etc
10. Status: it's complicated

FAMILY:
1. Parents: doesn't everyone have two parents? i mean whatever happens to them later is one thing, but everyone has two parents to start with anyway right?
2. Siblings: none
3. Live with: family
4. Favorite relatives: JX, my grandma

FAVORITES:
1. Number: 25
2. Color: white
3. Day: everyday's pretty much the same to me now, so i'll say wednesday cos it's a cool name to give your kid
4. Month: november (:
6. Movie: the sound of music, the hours
7. Food: any carb thingy (:
8. Band: dire straits! but no one else close to me likes them :(
9. Sport: figure skating cos it's fun to watch!
10. Class: still 412 (:
11. Teacher: mr miles! and miss ting!
12. Drink: bailey's! tastes like icecream haha
13. Veggie: celery lol everyone's going to hate me now
14. TV station: channel 55! for all the hongkong tv serials that stupid channel U gets only after a year!
15. Radio station: 90.5
16. Store: oh this is hard. it used to be bookstores, but now i'm just another random shopaholic >_<
17. Expression: gay! although 'nabei' is quickly being incorporated into my vocabulary thanks to my happy hokkien-swearing colleagues :x
18. Animal: yorkies (:
19. Flower: i think yellow roses are pretty (: i've discovered white roses are really really nice but they dry horrendously because they lose their colour and turn all brown. but yellow roses dry pretty well! and yes i keep all the flowers that have been given to me by someone i value in my life!

PICK ONE
1. Me or you: us (:
2. Coke or pepsi: coke! pepsi has this funny taste...
3. Day or night: night
4. AOL or AIM: americans :x
5. CD or cassette? CD
6. DVD or VHS: DVD, even though my computer sucks and can't play DVDs
7. Jeans or khakis: jeans
8. Car or truck: i can't drive a truck hahahahha though the boy assures me that if you can drive a truck, you can drive anything
9. Tall or short: tall
10. Lunch or dinner: dinner
11. N*sync or BSB?: BSB, the * irritates me!
12. Gap or Old Navy: gap!
13. Lipstick or lipgloss: gloss.
14. Silver or gold: white gold =p
15. Alcohol or weed: alcohol, anytime.

LOVE & RELATIONSHIPS
1. Do you have a bf/gf?: yup (:
2. Do you have a crush?: possibly :D
3. How long have you liked him/her: oh this is funny! since christmas eve (:
4. Why do you like this person?: he makes me want to be a better person
5. If you're single, why are you single?: freedom is underrated
6. How long was your longest relationship?: a few months over a year
7. How long was your shortest relationship?: three months i guess
8. Who was your 1st love?: someone who is now a treasured friend and very, very easy to get along with
9. What do you miss about them?: i'm not really sure; he's always been pretty much constant in my life

THE PAST:
1. What is the one thing you would change about your past?: making bad decisions
2. What is the biggest mistake you've made in your life?: something on impulse, something i regretted
3. Last thing you heard: knockin' on heaven's door, by a live band
5. Last thing you said: i don't remember, i was talking to my mum before this
6. What is the last TV show you saw?: it's been awhile (:
7. What is the last song you heard?: see above

THE PRESENT:
1. What are you wearing?: a very long tshirt
2. What are you doing?: answering this survey, dumb question
3. Who are you talking to?: D., whom i seem to be talking to more and more lately. we have a strange relationship
4. What song are you listening to?: nothing
5. Where are you?: my study
6. Who are you with?: no one
7. Are you online?: yes
8. How are you feeling?: slightly tired, slightly sticky
9. Are you in a chatroom?: no.

FUTURE:
1. What day is it tomorrow?: sunday
2. What are you going to do after this?: sleep
3. Who are you going to talk to?: my homies!
4. Where are you going to go?: out (:
5. How old will you be when you graduate?: 22
6. What do you wanna be?: a lawyer, i guess, since i've already come this far
7. What is one of your dreams?: to marry a rich man and not worry about money for the rest of my life hahahaha - but it's a dream for a reason seeing as there aren't many rich men around who'd fancy someone like me
8. Where will you be in 25 years?: enjoying life with kickass kids and being a kickass mum with a kickass husband (:

OTHER:
1. Do you write in cursive or print?: cursive
2. Are you a lefty or a a righty?: righty.
3. What piercings do you have?: 2
4. Do you drive?: yeah (:
5. Do you have glasses or braces: i used to have both lol.

last cigarette: cigarettes are evil. aside from the fact that a guy with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth does look cool on occasion, i can't stand the smell and neither can i breathe properly when there's smoke around, hence.
last car ride: back home
last kiss: it's been awhile (:
last good cry: hm a few weeks ago?
last library book checked out: it's been a long long time
last movie seen: the producers? rent? i don't remember; it was just a lot of musical movies in a row
last book read: ender's game, for the 34086786th time
last cuss word uttered: i don't remember
last beverage drank: soya milk
last food consumed: beef noodle soup!
last phone call: to my mum - i have no life
last tv show watched: it's been awhile
last time showered: just!
last shoes worn: my colleague's shoes :x
last cd played: all my CDs are with WK!!!!
last item bought: a red hairband (:
last annoyance: alot of things annoy me.
last disappointment: i haven't been disappointed by life in awhile
last soda drank: coke
last thing written: probably some guy's order
last key used: house key
last words spoken: uh. ..
last sleep: 2-5pm this afternooon
last im: i don't IM
last sexual fantasy: hm that shouldn't be something i should be telling you ;p
last weird encounter: some random nsf on friday night
last ice cream eaten: probably gelatissimo's mint-choc! that was a few weeks ago
last time amused: i'm amused almost all of the time lol
last time wanting to die: no idea
last time in love: last time would be the last time i filled this in
last time hugged: the 3 other random crazy people
last time scolded: awhile back
last time resentful: lol i don't remember
last chair sat in: this one.
last underwear worn: haha erm it was red and had elephants on it
last shirt worn: my work shirt?
last time dancing: wah at some club ages and ages ago
last poster looked at: erm some REM poster
last show attended: some gay play at esplanade

502

2006-04-20T00:26:00.000+08:00

it's always amazing to me how annoying some people can be without even having to try. it's like, they just exude this aura that screams I AM IRRITATING! BE IRRITATED! after every action they complete. maybe i'm just pms-ing. but man, what an annoying bitch

also, WHAT? in any case, i love the fact that you can read between the lines and find the famous uppity air that the british are so famous for. we are not amused, with a wave of the hand, indeed. you can just feel them scoffing already. george bush = monkey.

501 what falls away is always, and is near

2006-04-18T01:52:00.000+08:00

i've been trying to finish sense and sensibility for over a month to no avail. this is getting annoying, since i just can't get through it. i haven't read a work of fiction that's managed to sufficiently hold my interest in a long time, the last being, well, ironically, pride and prejudice -- which was all the way in may last year on the bumpy coach rides in england in between supermarket pit-stops and toilet breaks and numerous naps with my head against the window and/or curled up in my seat with my shoes off and my hand-carry sliding all over the floor. and that just turned into an extended description of my trip to england, which wasn't supposed to happen.

when he's around i don't feel it much; yet when he's gone i feel it acutely. it feels a bit like a throwback to the past, when everyone's operating on their own time and working takes up so much of your energy you couldn't do anything else even if you wanted to. i really wish he'd come home soon. i say this as if he's gone off to fight a war in a random jungle. which is really quite funny if you think about it, which of course leads to more melancholy, and the cycle never ends. the thing is, i'm not actually as miserable as i thought i would be, though the enormity of it tends to hit me at the most random of times (i.e. just before he was going to leave), but life now just feels randomly empty, as if there was nothing to look forward to, nothing to come home to, nothing to worry about; there's no work, no worry, no thoughts, no dreams (no money as well). that said, i never thought i'd miss anybody this badly. so score one to whoever made me admit that publicly...

so we celebrated C.'s birthday over the weekend with a lot of pool-playing. both of us got caught in the disaster that was the friday afternoon rain, after which i rushed to work and had a surprisingly great time. sometimes when i'm there i just forget about the fact that i'm supposed to be earning money. it's a bit like collecting donations, having to smile and be nice and all that, but it's slightly more challenging. it's funny how i allow myself to be exploited by the same person all the time. but it's all good ;D saturday night was spent trying to squeeze through a whole horde of people at work and then going off to play pool and eat curry chicken noodles. so basically i was on my feet from 6.30 in the morning to 3 the next morning. argh. i went half-stoned when i partnered P. in pool, and i just couldn't be bothered anymore after i partnered C., who kept blaming me for his ridiculous shots because apparently i make everyone around me do stupid things out of the blue! >_<

oh well. have to work for the rest of the week. got an interview on thursday. argh. i need to seriously decide what to do with my life - where i want to go and what i want to do and how i should do it, etc etc. it's getting on my nerves, so much uncertainty and indecision. but sometimes you know you just can't help it, there's just so many other things you'd rather think about.

500 happy birthday clement

2006-04-16T15:00:00.000+08:00

it's been a long week. working, interviews, exercises, briefings, camps, waking up at ungodly hours of the morning and sleeping at ungodly hours in the night, eating instant noodles for dinner when i actually remember to eat dinner, the list goes on. mainly i'm just glad sunday is here, because then i don't have to do anything besides being my usual slothly self.

yesterday's ipho camp was vaguely fun even though i didn't go for the chinatown thing in the end because i had to work. met lots of familiar faces and a few new ones, and it again reaffirmed the fact that the world is indeed very very very small.

this is group 7, who got split up after that because the person who was supposed to bring us around sprained her ankle or something >_< was abit surreal, really.

went to work and nearly died because there were so many people and i had a runaway customer, which wasn't even my fault, so i had to pay money for nothing. (get your chicks for free!) in any case after a long shift we went to celebrate what was left of C.'s birthday by playing pool and generally doing stupid stuff. it was fun (:

499

2006-04-13T12:57:00.000+08:00

working is not fun. it's interesting, you learn alot, but it's really tiring, and the hours suck. needless to say i'm already thinking about when i should be quitting and what excuse i should give. luckily i'm not doing it for the money; it'd be rather gay >_<

my ex is in OCS right now
maybe i should seriously be thinking about what i should be doing with my life.
i love many things, and many people. not that i really know what love is, or how it can be defined: for example, how deep must an emotion be before like becomes love becomes hate? love is just a word you use.
i don’t understand the level of fucked-up-ness in the army. i've learned to accept it, but i still don't understand it. and it irks me on behalf of everyone i know who is suffering there right now :(
i lose things on a regular basis, only to have them resurface years later by some miraculous stroke of luck.
people say i’m a pervert, overly corrupt, way too emotional, completely stupid, silly, on crack half the time
love is a boy doing everybody else's work overnight for nights on end in taiwan right now
somewhere, someone is holding her baby and thinking what a great gift it is (:
i will always think too much.
forever is something that comes and goes.
i never want to hurt anybody i love.
i think the current US president is stupid. but that's been said so often it doesn't mean anything anymore. and i think it's funny how this question pops up in the middle of a slew of personal questions
when i wake up in the morning i usually hit the snooze button and go right back to sleep.
my past was great and terrible at the same time, but i wouldn't trade it for anything
i get annoyed when people sleep too much >_< style="font-weight: bold;">
parties are for those days where you can not think about what's going to happen in the morning
my dog is dead >_<
my cat is non-existent
kisses are the best when they're the first thing you get when you wake up (:
tomorrow, i have to work :(
i really want to quit when the boy comes back :x
i have low tolerance for stupid people.

498 long live dreams

2006-04-10T02:14:00.000+08:00

after groggily being woken up at an absurd time of 3.54am to answer a call from the boy, i've been decidedly zombie-like for most of today. went to church at 8.30 this morning, and rushed around for random family gatherings that made me realise just how absurdly large my extended family is, even without all those who are overseas or just simply absent. every year we do this and remember our dead grandfathers and granduncles (perspective, please) just before easter, in some way it keeps the family together though we really see each other quite often. it's amazing for such a large family, the way everyone stays together and prays together and generally does christian-y things together. today reciting one of the five glorious mysteries i felt a pang of guilt thinking about how unholy (substitute with whatever word you want) i've been these past years, the way my uncle said all the third generation are god-fearing, god-loving catholics with such confidence - i couldn't help but think i deserved to be excluded.

but anyway, by the time we reached home from all that jazz it was late afternoon, and i spent the rest of the afternoon (or what was left of it) talking to C. about random things and birthdays and the boy, who flew off this morning to taiwan on a military exercise for three weeks, hence the sad and weepy post down below. (i apologise.) in any case it was awhile before i had to run off to do something else again, and we had ourselves some great prata and a nice long talk. it's great catching up with old friends, since all we ever do is catch up (everything else is an excuse for gossiping!) because nothing we ever plan comes to fruition. just like how k-boxing took about 3464577 attempts before we actually got down to doing it, and playing pool today just never materialised. aside from taking retarded photos of ourselves for keepsakes (and laughing hysterically in between as we tried to pout to no avail), we talked about the things we wanted to do, together and individually, things we wanted to do while we were still here, when we're in england, and before we die. aside from making lists (NJ's favourite hobby) we mostly talked about stuff we're going to do when we get there -- and it sounds like such a certainty already -- it sounds exciting already (: is warwick really 45 minutes away from london or is somebody out there lying to us?

we ended at 11+ and rushed to take the train home. it's not as far as it seems, though the journey seemed endless because we were all sleepy and stoned at the prospect of having to work the next day. i think i'm beginning to get to know the west quite well - hmm. i managed to catch the last bus home and i've just spent the last hour trying to cobble together a coherent 5-minute long presentation for firefly, since i figured my question is completely stupid and they'll be too uninterested to listen, so i shall keep within the time limit rather than ramble on about some economic point i know nothing about, since economics has never been my strong point even though my results say otherwise. trust me, it was a long and uphill battle to get that A. i have no idea how to justify myself in order for them to give me money, and i don't see how law even comes into the picture, though i managed to make something up during the interview offhand. besides, i have half a day to do it tomorrow, since i'm working tomorrow night and it's at 8.30 on tuesday morning. aha, the world laughs in my face for procrastinating till now and whiling away my entire weekend on relatively idle pursuits. i think i shall wake up early to try and redeem myself. long live dreams, indeed.

496 the battle of pasir panjang

2006-04-06T16:31:00.000+08:00

so my mum went for an op yesterday while i had my interview.

but it all turned out good!

then i went for a heritage trail today. it was pretty fun, though it was mind-numbingly hot and took twice as much time as estimated, meaning it took four hours instead of two. and there were alot of plants and a happy history lesson along the way, so it was pretty enjoyable. though, as i said, it was terribly hot. i'm just so glad to be home, non-sweaty and all.

495 interviews

2006-04-04T23:13:00.000+08:00

firefly tomorrow at an ungodly hour with no transport, alot of ERP, dreaded CBD traffic, an unironed white shirt and pants that are too long. hope i ace, but if not i'll comfort myself by telling my brain it was because i tripped on my own pants teetering precariously on heels walking through the front door of the office and looking terribly unprofessional, not to mention getting lost because raffles city tower is just - not that easy to find. (excuses.) hah, don't you love it when you can just not care? it makes life that much easier.

494

2006-04-03T23:59:00.000+08:00

i think the last of the presents have trickled in, with a package that arrived from melbourne today! yay! (: and because i have a shiny new camera and i finally figured out a way to post my pictures, i shall be a showoff and let you see all the pretty things i got (: think this is the first time i've gotten so many presents in my life.. haha >_<

so, in order: cards from N., chew and SF; flowers from K., N. and SF; hugeass poster from SJ; bookmark from chew; earrings from neek; figurine from P.; silly scribblings from SJ; bouquet from SF; vodka from P.; lots of concert tickets; horsey and the elizabethtown ost from the boy; t-shirt from SJ; a key from the boy; and fairly typical things that i buy for myself, a new skirt; a journal; a polo shirt (: there was a jigsaw puzzle given to me too (500 pieces, from K. and N., but considering the one they gave me when i was 17 is still lying on my table completed but unframed, i don't see how finishing the next one is going to be possible since i have no space...), but that's at the boy's house so i don't have a picture of it. but yaye! i'm a happy girl (:

oh and happy belated birthday S.! you're 19 now too! :D

i shall end with one of my favourite quotes ever...

493 for D.

2006-04-03T01:29:00.000+08:00

"he doesn't lead me around - i want to know where he goes. it's not the same thing."

a voice like lust, like trust, like love. things happen in the night and phone calls are misleading. what do you do when the time comes to an end? love is not an equation where you add two things together and you get the answer you want. it doesn't exist for you to ask questions. it's so scary to think that it's so easy for life to go on without you; everyone else's lives. you bump into someone and your path is altered slightly, but you keep on going, as you always have. sometimes you go forward, sometimes you go back, but almost all the time you get knocked off course. when you have been through so many things something changes inside you that lets you know that it's just not so easy to trust people anymore; nothing is ever constant. relationships can't be picked up and then thrown away; people can't be blamed. forgiveness is not easy when you have never experienced how horrible the alternative can be. it's so easy to make mistakes and forget about them when you're young. it's so easy to side with the one who didn't have to make the decision. it's so easy to remember what could have been. it's as easy for someone to turn back, to apologise, to save it. no, it's really not easy at all; and at the end of the day, the only one who has stayed with you throughout all of this shit is yourself.

492 not a very good april fool's entry

2006-04-01T01:08:00.000+08:00

apologies, i think, are overrated. yesterday's play proved that. i imagine one day that if people say sorry too many times it will lose its meaning. just like the word nice, the word honourable, the word honest - just like the word fine. i'm fine. funny how one word loses its meaning so easily, just by repeating it. and then some.

things change so quickly. there are many things that i, would like to say to you, but i don't know how; funny how things can pass between strangers and some others just remain across a road nobody dares to cross. it's a bit like clothes, really - there are some you buy and wear into the next three weeks or so, and then there are those where the only time you put them on is in the fitting room. girls should know; every girl must have at least one. not everyone is like faded jeans where you just love them more with age. some people come and some people go, in the end the ones who stay aren't always the ones who actually matter, just like the big fish that got away. you know as well as i do that the length of time you know somebody has zero bearing on how well you know a person.

what does it mean to lose yourself in a crowd of people? to be someone, to become someone, to turn into somebody else, to forget you actually ever existed. life becomes a movie, a timeline, a history book, where there is always a Before and an After. pre-war, post-war, circa 1870, pre-secession, post-independence, post-breaking up, post-love, post-you. before you, after you, when you were here. it's so easy to categorise love, put people into boxes, cart them away in memories as if they never existed, real people become vague outlines, first loves are forgotten. lovers become friends, and friends disappear. anyone who has ever been in love knows that pain, somewhat acute, somehow dull, somehow always there - when people you have shared your life with suddenly become people you call for a movie, a coffee, a drink, a play. people you know as letters on a screen or faces in a photograph. are you who you are? are you what you say you are, are you the things you like, the things you do, the people you see, the person you love? are you the person you love? are you his fancies, his moods, his whims, his laughter, his smile, his sorrow? are you his nemesis, are you your nemesis, are you his enemy, are you his friend, is he your friend, is he for real, are you him, or is he you? and does everyone else really not matter in the process?

are you looking for a lover, or a fan?
are you looking for a lover, or a sign?
are you looking for a lover or is it really worth the bother?
is it really worth the bother to be mine?

there are times when i wish i could talk honestly, like all those who bare their souls in places they know people will not read. to be completely honest one must write as if nobody is reading. when all this falls over my head and my life crashes down on me i know there is somebody waiting at the end of the tunnel who says, i told you so. in any case it's always a challenge to be oblique. maybe i have said too little; or maybe i have already said too much.

491 vodka makes me happy

2006-03-31T00:51:00.000+08:00

because i feel this need to have a huge smile on wherever i'm at:

excuse our horrible-looking selves! at that time we just ran through 234556 miles of rain and got all wet, causing me to have to return home to change to watch a language of their own at esplanade, quite a wise decision considering i would've underdressed if i didn't go back to change. not that i really was dressed for the occasion since my shoes were horribly mismatched (never ever listen to your mum's fashion choices. NEVER) and RM wore her pretty dress. no pictures because i somehow forgot, and i was kinda sleepy (which i am obviously not now). i had alot of thoughts about the play which i somehow forgot on the way home talking to the boy. i'm sure i'll remember most of it by tomorrow. anyway the whole point of this post, as you must have guessed, was to show you that huge bottle of vodka. which apparently was meant to make its way to me on my 18th birthday ie last year but never did but is finally in my grubby liddle hands :D and because my aim is to own all the absolut vodka bottles there are (what a poseur hobby eh, go on say it I KNOW YOU WANT TO) this is step #1 to nirvana! everyone cheer with me! VOD-KA, VOD-KA, LOOKS LIKE WATER, KILLS YOUR DAUGHTER! VOD-KAAAAAAA! (whatever. that didn't really make sense; it just rhymed that was all)

PLEH. i keep sneezing. AM I DOWN WITH A COLD?! :O has the rain conquered me?!?!! I AM LOST! oh, woe. woe is me. :( :( :(

seriously though, i've been sneezing nonstop. it's getting rather irritating not just because i have to keep reaching for tissue, but preparation for sneezing requires you to sort of sit up and raise your head so you can whoosh your head down for dramatic effect as your sneeze produces a downward movement of the head. yes, it is that violent. or maybe i'm just being melodramatic. the point was that this action is tiring. and i am sick of it. NOSE! I AM GOING TO REBEL! >:|!!!! my ankle is killing me :O it keeps hurting like #%&)#(&(@&$@@ for god-knows-what-#%&#)*&^*#^-reason and I AM CLEARLY A REPOSITORY OF ACHES AND PAINS! i am dying soon. someone save me :(

i'm clearly on crack. this is because i'm hungry and it's surprisingly cold because i am crazy and not switching on the fan as i have been pwned by the rain. :O as a remedy i am going to run off and cook myself something. COOK! not maggi mee, as you might postulate. but real food! i lie, it is probably only pasta. which is like maggi mee but longer. clearly i cheat with every foodstuff there is possible. kill me. HAH.

enough of this. I RUN TO THE KITCHEN!

490 advice is a form of nostalgia

2006-03-29T22:57:00.000+08:00

ladies and gentlemen of the class of ’99: if i could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. the long term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience... i will dispense this advice now.

enjoy the power and beauty of your youth; oh nevermind; you will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they have faded. but trust me, in 20 years you’ll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. you’re not as fat as you imagine.

don’t worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum. the real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind; the kind that blindside you at 4pm on some idle tuesday.

do one thing everyday that scares you. sing. don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts, don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours. floss. don’t waste your time on jealousy; sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind... the race is long, and in the end, it’s only with yourself. remember the compliments you receive, forget the insults; if you succeed in doing this, tell me how. keep your old love letters, throw away your old bank statements. stretch. don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your life; the most interesting people i know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives, some of the most interesting 40 year olds i know still don’t. get plenty of calcium. be kind to your knees, you’ll miss them when they’re gone.

maybe you’ll marry, maybe you won’t, maybe you’ll have children, maybe you won’t, maybe you’ll divorce at 40, maybe you’ll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary...what ever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much or berate yourself either – your choices are half chance, so are everybody else’s. enjoy your body, use it every way you can. don’t be afraid of it, or what other people think of it, it’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever own. dance - even if you have nowhere to do it but in your own living room. read the directions, even if you don’t follow them. do not read beauty magazines - they will only make you feel ugly.

get to know your parents, you never know when they’ll be gone for good. be nice to your siblings; they are the best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future. understand that friends come and go, but for the precious few you should hold on. work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle because the older you get, the more you need the people you knew when you were young. live in new york city once, but leave before it makes you hard; live in northern california once, but leave before it makes you soft. travel.

accept certain inalienable truths: prices will rise, politicians will philander, you too will get old, and when you do you’ll fantasize that when you were young prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders. respect your elders. don’t expect anyone else to support you. maybe you have a trust fund, maybe you have a wealthy spouse; but you never know when either one might run out. don’t mess too much with your hair, or by the time you're 40, it will look 85.

be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth.

but trust me on the sunscreen.

489

2006-03-29T00:30:00.000+08:00

it's funny how this place is filling up, huh? this marks my 970th post since i started blogging on blogspot, and 489th since i closed down the previous archives. anyway now they're all back up because memories being memories, they don't run away just because you pretend they don't exist. so now that that part of my life is over and it's a chapter in a closed book, it's back up because i don't feel any more pain. hence all is good. it's funny how angsty i used to be, though. angsty meaning really publicly angsty, with random 'don't talk to me's and 'fuck off's and general public outbursts of anger. not that i don't do it now, but it's less, but then again maybe there's less to be unhappy about. cause and effect, sort of. don't you hate it when i think too much?

i have nice birthday presents! i'm happy (:
although certain people are taking rather long.. hmmm ;p

i've been writing alot by hand lately. filled up 45 pages (yes i counted) from when i bought it, till now. it's been what, ten days? i intended to bring this book with me if and when i was leaving for england, but it seems i might run out quite fast. in any case, paperchase is from UK, so if i run out there are still millions of lovely journals there for me to get my happy little hands on! awyeah. the reason i mentioned this is because bristol finally replied today. so now i have replies from 5 universities except the one i potentially really might end up going to, which does not bode well at all, considering it is the 28th and they told me replies should come by end march ie NOW. well, we have two more days -- we'll see how it goes.

SHOPPING IS FUN! :D

488 too many funny conversations prz

2006-03-27T11:45:00.000+08:00

R says:
i remember you going on about some marines gay porn show!

S. says:
omg! WHEN.

R. says:
start of last year?

S. says:
oh, right.
that was ages ago!
like in 2003!
when i watched it and was disturbed

R. says:
you were DISTURBED
not horny? :O

S. says:
no.
i think i might be an android : (

R. says:
you disappoint me.

S. says:
i greatly apologise.

R. says:
gay porn is so weird

S. says:
it depends on how it's architectured i guess.
sometimes it can be aesthetically (Y)(Y)(Y)!

R. says:
i see you have great experience! :O

S. says:
no!
only two porn videos ever!
but they contrast deeply : (
marine hardcore vs B.'s gay porn is pretty eyllow light.
*in pretty yellow light
it is like wrestler vs fairy sex

R. says:
i need to get my hands on B.'s gay porn! :O

S. says:
don't you already have enouhg! :0

R. says:
i do not watch gay porn >_<

S. says:
denial : (

487

2006-03-26T23:39:00.000+08:00

because i am suddenly a photowhore, this is what we did today:

after playing lots of tennis and eating dinner and getting thrashed in pool by A. who seems to know what to do all the time, we were all tired happy bunnies and headed back home to nua in our happy comfortable homes. whee (:

486

2006-03-26T01:59:00.000+08:00

i hate, hate, hate the word 'whatever'. i hate it so much i want to die.

485 BIRTHDAY POST

2006-03-26T00:52:00.000+08:00

we watched the lamest chinese show ever yesterday (but not lamer than a chinese tall story, which really takes the cake) and today we just walked around forever and ever and ate till C. came to play pool with us, and then we went off again to kino and back again and ate some more. it's really as boring as it sounds, but i leave you with pictures of random moments of humour:

aside from the fact that he has bigger eyes, he's also better at looking surprised:

and because i looked like this for most of the day,

he did stupid things to make me laugh:

here is him attempting to snatch my camera but looking like a boyband singer!

do you want to guess how long we took to take one good picture in a dark cabseat and shaky bumpy rides? haha (: it was a good day.

484 potentially incriminating conversation

2006-03-25T01:31:00.000+08:00

R says:
i think guys underwear is damn boring

U says:
no what
they have damn cool boxers
like, mad cow ones

R says:
boxers are so

U says:
and superman ones

R says:
hard to stuff into pants

U says:
and i bought (name of boyfriend) dinosaur and nba ones before
how cool is that hahahah

R says:
hm i should buy him boxers too eh

U says:
thats why they shouldn't wear pants
yes!

R says:
but he won't wear them
then wear what?!?!

U says:
but its v ex to buy here
wear boxers
XD and nothing else
MUAHAHAH

483

2006-03-25T00:12:00.000+08:00

being 19 sounds so old... think this will be the first good birthday i've had in a long time (:

482

2006-03-23T23:41:00.000+08:00

"these things have neither followed us into the world, nor will they follow us out; nor do they matter supremely while we are here"

you've got to know that at some point in your life you need to stop and sit down on a ledge pondering what the hell you're going to do next with your life. then you need to realise that you, in the midst of so many other human beings all with their own little lives and worlds, are supremely insignificant in the big picture. what are you compared to millions who are dying? what are you when wars are being fought? where you will be on history's timeline? so many things have gone on, and can go on without you.

much as i hated studying it when i was studying it, i think 20th century short stories might have been the best book i have ever done; which explains why i still remember the quotes when i have forgotten most of the rest. it's become like a private joke now, when i put it on my msn nicks, when A. sees it and groans in memory of the work we had to do, and everyone else who has done it before nods in recognition. strangely enough it speaks to me the way no other book has really done, and i spent so much time thinking about the stories and the issues they covered and raised that maybe, somehow, it became a part of me. see what i mean? those were the best days of my life (:

new cameras rock

2006-03-23T12:03:00.000+08:00

SF, R. and RM all sporting maniacal grins (i lie, actually it's just me) from friday night's class outing/birthday party/madness

then i've been having fun with my camera yaye!

my new journal, so amazingly girly :O

remnants of scholarship deadlines!!!

if you see carefully i think you can still spot neek's 'GOOD LUCK FOR As' card

chapters from my dark past; including old pictures, old camera, old angbao, old pens, old pencils, and conspicuously, used tissue.

480: life 1 - 0 me

2006-03-21T20:37:00.000+08:00

i've just discovered how life is going fantastically for me at this moment. so my camera finally arrives, and i've had loads of fun charging up the battery and discovering swish new functions and stuff and getting really excited about all the pretty pictures i'm going to take with it. then i dig into the box and remember that i have to install a CD-ROM to take advantage of all the photo-editing whatever things that come with it. except, of course, my CD drive doesn't even work!! someone say JACK and kill me now please. >_<

2006-03-20T14:02:00.000+08:00

for memories long gone; the movie, the pain, the person, the postcard, the blood, the sweat, the tears.

2006-03-20T13:34:00.000+08:00

it's been a happy weekend. friday's class outing ended favourably with almost everybody watching v for vendetta at assorted times, though we played pool before that. normally i wouldn't give blow by blow accounts of the day, but i have to since i really wanted to show you guys this photo, which illustrates the supremacy of N.'s pool over K.'s, and then he is going to run away and hide his face in shame now. after J. broke for everyone (since none of us can break at all), N. went to play. and this is what happened:

so K. was naturally all neeneenee-ish and "omg i'm getting pwned":

and this is N. looking very happy indeed:

saturday and sunday afternoon was spent at the boy's house lazing about watching TV. we would have gone to the park, but the weather seemed grossly uncooperative. it's been scorchingly hot these few days, for some reason. hrmph. in any case dinner on both days was great. saturday was spent blowing the remaining parts of my birthday money from my mum on dinner at spageddies with H., yanj, I. and the boy, which H. happily miscalculated making us all pay ten bucks more than necessary (!!!! the travesty). H. is useful to have around because he gets up and literally serves food up on a plate for everybody. cuts the pizza, divides the spaghetti, slathers sauce on your lasagne, oh, what a happy family man. because the original plan to eat at pete's place backfired since we waited an extra hour for I. to finish his "uni apps" (though when i called him at 7 he said "can you hold on i'm at the arcade in the middle of a game" >:|) hence ending up with no reservation (something which got H. nearly writhing in agony from the loss of his beloved risotto), we retreated to tanglin mall but refused to give up our pete's place dream. so we all trooped there for dessert. whee! (: after numerous hassles and missing ATMs and stupid staff sergeants who refuse to return money, i am now very very very broke. but mmmmmmmmm, very happy. pats stomach no pictures, sorry, because we were 1) too busy eating and 2) neither of us (yanj and i) brought a camera hah.

to compensate here is a picture of us on saturday night at newton after H. kept teasing yanj about certain parts of her face:

and this is from our happy shopping trip ages and ages ago:

sunday evening was spent traipsing about jurong east through the pasar malam ("boon lay power" nasi lemak) with yanj, K. and the boy, which would've been enjoyable minus the smell of "taiwan doufu", which was, in fact, not taiwanese but just smelly (but the sign neglected to mention that bit). we finally ended up at IMM eating japanese food and the ensuing conversation about certain members of our social circle (aha, how misleading) was highly amusing, as was the walk through GIANT, which was indeed giant.

notice aside from yanj the other 3 of us look like we shouldn't belong in the picture with the cake at all (:

also while searching through my files for pictures to make up this post, i found this:

just to make you see how everyone must have had a wicked childhood, and must have had a miserable youthhhh, but somewhere in their wicked miserable paaaaast, they must have done something goooooood:

nothing comes from nothing, indeed.

2006-03-19T03:51:00.000+08:00

because birthday presents are wonderful - this year i bought myself a new journal. new notebooks always brim with so much potential, though you realise after awhile you keep writing about the same few things. like how i just wrote 11 pages about the same thing. but after a month without a journal i'm glad to have one again. borders late at night is a good place to be. good company. sometimes i don't know what i'd do. so many things i don't feel like doing, so many things i feel like doing, so many things i'd rather not do, so many things i'd rather do. things like lying on a bed facing the afternoon sun wasting away. i would like to do that again.

i'm so tired, but i can't sleep; i'm standing on the edge of something much too deep. it's funny how we feel so much but cannot say a word; and we're screaming inside but we can't be heard. and i will remember you, will you remember me? don't let your life pass you by, weep not for the memories.

2006-03-18T11:25:00.000+08:00

king's college finally says yes! ;D

2006-03-18T02:44:00.000+08:00

i wish sometimes that you were as understanding as people made you out to be. sometimes i wish it weren't so easy to lie, that it wasn't so difficult to tell the truth. sometimes i wish you would make it easier for me to trust you so you can trust me. i can't trust people that don't trust me. you know this. you must know it so badly that it hurts.

anyway, today was a good day. v for vendetta, wonderful. am too tired to post anything intellectual, anyway he just laughs at me and tells me he bets i don't know what's going on the whole time. perhaps i didn't, but i enjoy these movies all the same; all the ones that make you think too much.

2006-03-17T12:44:00.003+08:00

from a conversation with W., my partner-in-crime for viewing WTF webcomics (meaning, webcomics that make you go WTF), who always provides illuminating insights on random things, which we always seem to talk about and stumble upon in the midst of discussing how i am an important river in the world he is creating and shaping to his satisfaction, or talking about random hypothetical and therefore impossible situations.

R:
oh, the hassle of unrequited love

W:
....
it's not quite what you want to do with someone, is it
i hate people who say this kind of things
hi, i think i like (insert person here), but i'm not sure if i really do. i'll see what i'll do about her. maybe if i like her i'll go after her.

R:
it's like, as if you have the authority to 'do' something about someone

W:
yes
and who's liking you anyway?

R:
owch.

W:
no but it's true you see
i mean
between i like her and what shall we do there is always she likes me
and to jump from the first to the conclusion is incredibly egotistic and presumptuous
and makes me feel like punching someone in the face
baaaah
people like that just piss me off
it's not humble
it's not what liking someone ought to be

2006-03-16T00:09:00.000+08:00

when i want to feel happy i'll look for you (:

ETA, 12.32pm:
i've to rush to the post office now because i don't want to make another trip down tomorrow (TOMORROW! CLASS OUTING YAYE) to mail all my silly things in so i shall do it today, despite waking up at 11.28 (life 1 - 0 me), getting an sms to go for lunch at 11.35 (life 2 - 0 me), having to rush to stamp and address all my envelopes (life 3 - 0 me), having to bathe (life 4 - 0 me), deciding to call a cab to save time to get to lunch at 1.30 while going to the post office in between (life 4 - 0 me), having driving at 3.45 (life 5 - 0 me), ending at 5.15 and meeting P. at 6 for dinner (life 6 - 0 me), and kings of convenience at 7.30 (life 6 - 1 me), and meeting the boy (YAYE) after a long, long parentally-imposed absence from his life (and mine) after that (life 6 - 2 me).

so, despite the two things i have going for me today, i have been pwned by Life. AGAIN. LIRB? never thought i'd use that after As, but here you go. ah, but i have a Sense of Humour. and i am going ICESKATING tomorrow. let us go then, you and i! hand in hand into the ice where we fall and slip and generally make Fools of ourselves! so this is how i spend my last days of being 18. but overall, it's been pretty good. oh yes indeed (:

2006-03-14T11:21:00.000+08:00

warning -- it's time to stop, it's time to stop, take a time-out, let it be. it's time to look at a person and see someone else, someone better, someone different, someone who's changed. up, up, up, up that ladder, up the stairs, always going up so much we never come down, and it's painful when you fall, it's shameful when you fall. hiding in some corner never gets you anywhere. somewhere in the world there must be a file on everything you've done in your life, yours, mine and ours, a great big library of sins, a great big library of mistakes. then we'll see, then we'll see, whose is worse, whose is thicker. does it matter? things are things are gone and past and maybe things have changed. maybe things don't matter the way they used to. going up to find something you don't want to see, going down to hear your life torn apart, going lengthways sideways diagonally everywhere everywhere here and there -- i'm a little scared, a little worried, tell me how it's like, tell me you want to stay here, tell me how you want to get away, tell me how i want to get away. tell me why it's easy to say you don't know, tell me it's easier than telling you everything. tell me why there are always empty words, why you don't trust us the way you don't trust anything, the way you refuse to believe anything good can happen. you know after all these years all this tension was bound to come to a head. then we lie to ourselves, we forget about it, and life goes on the way it always was.

***
it's clearly been a bad patch i'm going through, of late. for me the good and the bad always come together, it seems like my life is a continual war of elemental forces on either side of the fence. when nothing happens it's so quiet you can hear a pin drop. then it rains and pours like you couldn't believe on those days where you just want to run to your room and hide under the covers forever and forever, waiting for someone to come hug you and tell you everything's all right. it's how the best years of my teenage life i will always also remember the pain of studying for exams, the mental torture, that last six months. but enough angst. there's really not much to be unhappy about, and alot of things i have, i should be thankful for. but irrational surges of temper and irritation and jealousy are often hard to control, and lest i forget, it has to go down somewhere, and it might as well be here. you know it's not like it makes me look like a better person if i just store all my angst-filled subjects away somewhere else. this, especially, has always been a sensitive topic. maybe it's better to be honest. maybe it's easier than changing your viewpoint. maybe it's possible to do both. but we'll see. no regrets, remember?

2006-03-13T19:31:00.000+08:00

i'm trying not to show it but my heart is thumping crazily and secretly my mind is going round in circles thinking what could have happened. i don't know why i don't just pick up the phone and call. maybe it's because i'm scared that i'll hear something i don't want to hear, a brush-off, a change of tone. all i do is think and think to no avail and hope that nothing is wrong. good god.

470

2006-03-12T23:33:00.000+08:00

i don't think i've ever wanted something bad enough to try to get it. if it takes effort, it's not worth getting. if it comes by luck, well and good. if someone gives it, even better. everything in my life so far has not come about because i wanted it to happen. this is what happens when you walk about without an aim in life. this is what happens when you are the kind of person who tells yourself you don't need it until you actually believe it's true. then you forget about it. and life goes on the way it always was.

so in keeping with my philosophy i shall put up a list for my own reference. of course if you wish to take it as a broad hint all is well and good, keeping in mind most of this stuff has been on my wishlist for years and every time i put it up nobody takes any notice of it and it returns with a vengeance every other celebratory, gift-giving season because i'm too much of a cheapskate to part with my money (on occasion) for the things that i want, ref: above statement. not to mention the fact that i bought two dvds on the same day which bankrupted me of 100$ straightaway. i am such a loser.

sultans of swing dvd
live 8 2005 dvd
eagles farewell 1 tour, live in melbourne dvd
steppenwolf by hermann hesse
black zara miniskirt (clothing vouchers very welcome!)
a new pair of jeans which i am likely never to get
a scholarship (o PSC, feel my agony and TAKE ME!)
a university place
a 1:12 die-cast model of the BMW Z8, which i am likely never to get because it's 600$
a chicago/the hours/v for vendetta movie poster
canon digital ixus 60 (hah mission accomplished because i actually paid for it)
a driving licence (24 march! here i come!)
a nice dress
a nice blazer

2006-03-12T01:03:00.000+08:00

sometimes people become other people by lying to others then believing it themselves. something that starts off as a lie but becomes the truth as they tell it to more and more people and eventually they have to be the lie or risk being found out. sometimes you know you don't just die when you lie to yourself.

when your eyelids are closing in on you and the world is spinning while your vision is turning white, there are only so many things you think about. they always say your life flashes before you and people always wonder what, in essence, is that life, the life we cannot help but remember, the life that flashes before you, all those tv commercial moments of your life, the good the bad the ugly, go on, i know you know it, you can just hear the commercial jingle in the background. we say background as if sound were a place. as if it was easy enough to pinpoint its location, from the background, the foreground, when it's all just in your head, that imaginary stage where all the sounds come out, something invisible, something unforgettable. like the air that you breathe. that unnoticed and that necessary. margaret atwood. so mrs-who in a wrinkle in time.

you get the feeling i don't exactly know what i'm talking about. i get the feeling i don't exactly know what i'm talking about. most of the time it's just ramblings of a deranged mind that need to be put down somewhere in words so they stop clogging up the pipes in her head. he always says there are too many thoughts in my small little head and i get all messed up because of it. it's easy for him to say. but it's not like there's alot of empty space for me to transfer my thoughts to him either. sometimes i just write on and on while the music plays on and on because i know we will read on and on. it happens to the best of us. sometimes some things are just a whole load of crap and so bad for you, but like C. says the more you don't know the more you decide to try, the more you try the more you realise it's bad for you, but the more you try the more you need it. cuts like a knife, but it feels so right. then it feels like a drug that's going through somewhere you don't want to know and comes out in a different place. not always a better place. change, while always constant, is not always good. but we knew that already.

so you realised alot of me is stream-of-consciousness. half the time i don't even know what i'm saying. but it sounds vaguely intelligent because it's just alot of words with nothing actually being said, and alot of words confuses alot of people which includes alot of us. i'm sitting here typing all this while my mind is dying and my hands are tired. then i had this really cool line to put in but i forgot it while i was yawning. i could try to remember it but i chose to spend the time saying i forgot. and in the midst of typing a sentence i forget the next part.

rereading raise the roof beam, carpenter. what a mindfuck for five bucks. i'm still amazed at the fact that i got taken in by it, that i thought it was a real person, when it actually isn't. everything seems so real, so conversational, so autobiographical, but you know the way authors cheat you and cheat everything in the process, they take all your feelings and throw you out in the cold after that. i felt like that after reading marquez too. love in the time of cholera. in the time of cholera, indeed. but it's my favourite book and for all the wrong reasons. not why you'd think it is, though, because those who know keep thinking that that's the wrong reason but it's not. the wrong reason is that because it was a present. and the very obvious logical spinoff from the previous question, ah, that could be the wrong reason, but it's also not, though it would be a correct guess as to what people thought was the wrong reason. (but that doesn't mean it's the right reason.) and i bet you don't know what the hell i'm talking about.

goodnight.

2006-03-11T01:10:00.000+08:00

i regret not getting that stuffed horse :( :( :(

the wonders of PMS

2006-03-10T00:31:00.000+08:00

funny how someone like me can go from this

to this

to this

all in one day.

2006-03-07T22:36:00.000+08:00

so on saturday my grandfather had a birthday dinner. despite all the food he seemed grumpy! but it was worth it to see him blow out the cake. which reminds me that i haven't blown out candles on a cake in 463046845 years. okay i lie, just one. because i distinctly remember having duplicate cakes on my 17th birthday because i bought one for myself and N. bought one for me and everybody died eating two chocolate cakes with 17 candles on it. which probably explains why i didn't have a cake on my 18th birthday since i had an extra one on my 17th! hah. but i will have a cake this year! i have great plans to make myself one. hahaha - we'll see how that goes.

today while rifling through more things of mine (where did you think all those long quotes came from? i don't fish them out of nowhere, you know...) i have discovered that i need a new notebook! from writing crap inside and late-night musings, travelogues, introspective angsty rubbish, to the names of my future children and various crushes along the years, the list goes on and on forever. the colourful one probably looks familiar to jc people. i spent exactly 9 months filling all the pages up, which is considerably less than how long i took to fill in the thick black book in 2003 (10 months, from february to december, and i spent jan/feb filling in the brown one) considering it was twice as thick. quite funny to think how much less i've been writing these days. and i still love that tranny postcard - so 412 (:

in between you will also find stuff like this, the stuff dreams are made of -- horrendously neat econs graphs, drawn freehand (oh i am so proud of myself! look ma, NO RULER!) filled with speculations on what would happen if AD shifts left or right or up or down or sideways and lengthways and godknowswhat-ways

which were all written with the same pen, proving once again that i am pilot's greatest customer ever. don't bother counting, i didn't. that's the number of pens i used in two years in hc! hurhurhurhur

and i did it all with these two beautiful people, one of whom still owes the other two photos from our last two outings to highly amusing places and our nostalgic revisit to the place of our youth on the day of a-level results -- meridien food court! where the food smells better than it tastes!

anyway i aspire to have my bookshelf look like this once again:
just so you know i didn't make it up when i said i arrange my books by colour. i think i'm mad.

and that's all for my picture-whoring today, because i was seriously bored even though i went out and came back and bought a motherbig red bag at parkway which is actually quite a happening place. awwwyeah baby (:

love changes, changes everything

2006-03-06T21:57:00.000+08:00

"that's easy for you to say,"

do not believe that he who seeks to comfort you lives without difficulty, for his life has much sorrow and remains far behind yours. were it not so, he would not have found those words.*

a few nights ago i had tears running down the side of my face and into my ears. they dripped down onto my pillow and made a sizeable stain. who was it that told little girls and boys never to sleep on the wet spot? meanwhile i think to myself how long it's been since i've held a pen and had black ink splash all over my fingers. someone out there remembers me because of my ink-stained hands. somehow i always wonder how people remember me, the way i remember people, because it always seems divided into parts, like a deconstructed body. i remember little details, things like the colour of his shirt or the multitude of dangly things on her handphone, but never the full picture, the big picture. it's so hard to capture memories with a face, as if that face never changed, as if somehow in real life that smiling face in your mind had never been trembling with fear or slack with fatigue. as if it always conveyed that sense of wellbeing, of happiness, as if it had never known sorrow. in my mind the faces always shift, imperceptibly; the memory changes even as i remember it, while it seems so hard to hold on to something that's rapidly fading away. and it's so odd to be able to find by some miraculous stroke of luck someone who is around at the exact same moment you need to talk about things, after being faced with silence in the middle of the night for too long. in between picking up the phone and opening your mouth, there are miles to go before you sleep, and the memories in your mind flicker like a broken television, black and white and not quite clear. in between imagining yourself being comforted and a strong arm holding you close there is a sense in which life slowly begins to fall into place. for i'm always here if you want me - for i am the centre of the universe. always the centre, with no one else to turn to, with no one else to say i do, because everyone anchors their life around you you drift in a world that is your own. in between closing your eyes and opening them again there begins a long, uninterrupted dream about anything and everything like a time warp, in which years can pass in a few seconds, and we always wake up the same as we always have, as if we were always the same person and unaffected by things that have transpired in nowhere else but your own mind. but what an important place it is, what a place where everything and nothing can happen at the same time, where exactly as many as people as you want to let in can go in, where nobody can go, where there remains in you "a secret place which (can) scarcely be entered -- a goddamn echo chamber -- where (you pace) alone"**. then you walk out the door and face the world you begin to realise that, in the same way that hate is also love, that utopian ideals are also dystopian, that like in 1984 war is peace, ignorance is strength, and freedom is slavery; you begin to realise that when nothing changes, everything has changed.

a stranger is a stranger is a stranger, simply, and you watch the stranger to anticipate his next move. but the people who elicit from you a depth of attention and wonder which we helplessly call love are perpetually making moves which cannot possibly be anticipated. eventually, you realise that it never occurred to you to anticipate their next move, not only because you couldn't but because you didn't have to: it was not a question of moving on the next move, but simply, of being present. danger, true, you try to anticipate and you prepare yourself, without knowing it, to stand in the way of death. for the strangest people in the world are those people recognised, beneath one's senses, by one's soul -- the people utterly indispensable for one's journey.**

*rilke, from letter 8, letters to a young poet
**james baldwin, just above my head

je n'en connais pas la fin

2006-03-06T00:40:00.000+08:00

maybe all you need is someone like him
maybe all you wanted was a dream
maybe that movie you saw was your life replayed
maybe your friends aren't what they seem

what do you think love is? watching the sunrise together, raindrops on roses, butterflies in your stomach? you need to get over all those romance novels you've been reading recently. it's an old scar that doesn't leave no matter how hard you rub the skin, it's cold wind blowing from an open window making your hair rise and your skin prickle. i don't want to hold your hand, i don't want to be your friend, i don't give a damn if you're happy, i want you. you don't lead me around, i want to know where you go. it's not the same thing. and the word is raw. which is both you and everything we stand for.

2006-03-05T02:41:00.000+08:00

but now tonight it is myself:
sitting at my aluminium double-glazed window in dublin city;
crying just a little bit into my black tee shirt.
if only there was just one human being out there
with whom i could make a home? share a home?
just one creature out there in the night --
is there not just one creature out there in the night?
in helsinki, perhaps? or in reykjavik?
or in chapelizod? or in malahide?
so you see, i have to calm myself down also
if i am to remain the centre of the universe:
it's by no means an exclusively self-centred automatic thing
being the centre of the universe.

i'm always here, if you want me -
for i am the centre of the universe.

from paul durcan

HAPPY BIRTHDAY HAN (:

2006-03-04T01:25:00.000+08:00

okay pardon me for laughing but i'm really amused that someone actually, intentionally typed in chronicles of nadia movie and came to this place. you'd think no one besides J. would have thought of it, but then he meant it as a joke, and this person must be mad. i suppose they then found this post, talking about which i promised to do the chronicles of J.'s hair but never actually got down to it. well too bad, i lost all the pictures -- actually i gave them back to him, so hahahha. i think he should be eternally grateful to me! though i still have disgusting pictures of him with his hair slicked down and back for dramafeste in 2004 which just made him look oily and slimy like a certain character we all know. hah.

now that As are out my mum is pressing me to do something with my life, ie not just wait around for something to happen. meaning that for the first time in my life i'm actually in a position to consider scholarships, and then she goes from not caring about scholarships to telling me i should just apply because spending my father's money is something all kids should not do unless absolutely necessary, which of course in turn implies that my educational endeavours are not necessary (true) because i can study here as well (also true) plus if i do, i get additional perks (very very true). of course this is all contingent on me getting into NUS which really is harder than it actually sounds, because UCAS applications were so long ago and i've just about had it with interviews after stupid oxford decided to play mind games with me over my admission and i predictably confirmed all their suspicions of intellectual inadequacy. bloody hell. life is so complicated. all this within 10 days! my life has suddenly gone from nothing to very busy. what a series of unfortunate events!!! >:|

a few of my (ex)-students emailed me yesterday with a questionnaire. i don't know whether to be appalled or amused (both, knowing me) at the range of questions being asked. and they say i'm a pervert.

the boy is hooked on bleach! nyahaha! another one converted!
i'm really sleepy now so goodnight!

460 cos it cuts like a knife

2006-03-02T01:34:00.000+08:00

disarm you with a smile
and leave you like you left me here
to wither in denial

i think i may always be too presumptuous; too quick to convince myself that i am happy, too eager to tell myself i may be happier, hoping it might actually be true. what a load of angst for a happy day. yet the ending subtly works away the happiness, and it's funny how a small thing overshadows the day's events. not a significant thing, not even a meaningful thing. a simple, meaningless action; probably thoughtless, but oh, it felt like someone yanked out the best parts of you and left them on the road to dry.

2006-03-01T23:45:00.000+08:00

i keep thinking about maxine. i can't believe she's dead.
i know. it doesn't seem like she's really dead. it's like i dreamed it.
the only way we know it's true is that we both dreamed it. that's what reality is; it's a dream everyone has together.

from jeffrey eugenides' middlesex

to look life in the face. to look life in the face, and know it for what it is; to love it for what it is. and then, to put it away. life's looking pretty good nowadays.

this post

2006-02-28T23:55:00.000+08:00

...is in honour of what happened on the bridge today that fell slightly short of mind-blowing, but was enjoyable just the same; a few minor revelations, alot of embarrassed looks, furtive glances, here, there and everywhere, the conversation and the off-key singing, the feeling of doing something you shouldn't, and oh baby, you've got to hide your love away.

you used to be a prodigy, now you're just - a shot in the dark

2006-02-28T01:43:00.000+08:00

if there's one thing i will never give away, ever in my life, no matter who you are, it's my books. sometimes i think they mean more to me than my life, which is scary considering alot of things that could have taken their place. i exaggerate, of course, because i wouldn't die for them. i am the kind of person that gladly learns to do without things but mourns their loss anyway. in any case i have this urge to rearrange my bookshelves again by colour but i just have too many damn books it hurts. i think the bloody bookshelf alone is worth god knows how much. in the old days that was all my money ever went to. i think i bought a book or two every week or something. strange how now i seem to have all the time in the world but i'm not reading anymore. and suddenly i think about how it's one day to results and i think i'm still in denial. in any case reading an old notebook and sorting through my old stuff (i do that alot; for nostalgia's sake maybe, but mostly to try and get my life sorted out into an organisable structure, so i can actually find stuff when i need it, which i still haven't managed to do despite last year's 'spring-cleaning') i was reminded of prozac nation. which is the first, last and only book i have ever given away willingly with no hope of ever seeing it again. i don't remember who i gave it to or exactly when i gave it away, all i know is i was so disgusted with it that i didn't mind parting with it at all. i didn't even sell it - it wasn't worth the effort. it seems funny because so many respect her for getting out of it, and indeed like alice sebold says (great writer) you save yourself or you remain unsaved. one of those quotes i used to throw around when i was younger, as if i knew and read alot about this kinda stuff. obviously like i was telling RM the other day, i just look like i know alot of things but half the time i'm just making it up. it sounds believable though, most of the time. which is funny if you're not on the receiving end of it. everything is funny when it doesn't happen to you. all a matter of perception, that is. it's been a long time since i've encountered that book and all the memories it stirs up, though i think in part i was so disgusted with it because it reminded me of alot of other things, which i'd really rather not talk about. in any case it was a close brush. a failed experiment, maybe, but that seems to trivialise the entire matter, which certainly wasn't the sentiment going around at that time. but what i meant to say was that there are so many of us nowadays who do this sort of thing, kill ourselves without the drugs. without the prozac, without the need to pretend to be happy, without all the glamorous frills of the fast life and equally quick deaths. sometimes you wonder if people are even actually living, in the way that they sort of drift around and not do anything with their lives, or do the same thing everyday with their lives. although that assumes that living means wanting and even having to make a difference before it's considered really living, which is an assumption many people make, especially in our small little singaporean world. i hate to reiterate the musings of my 16-year-old mind (see these posts), but i still refuse to believe my entire life is going to be defined, once again, by a piece of paper and all the numbers that are written on it. when you've been in this place (and i don't mean singapore, physically, just the general situation -- gep, gep and more gep) all your life some ideas from up there are bound to filter down to you, and somehow you just always wonder if you didn't end up here by luck. everything, anything else is unimaginable, and a different set of expectations are shoved upon you and all that nonsense that they say gep kids like to cook up and appear victimised about. most of it really is nonsense. but the important parts are true; and i'm not even the smartest of the lot. some people can not care about it. some people don't even think about it much. most people can ignore it till other people start talking to you. it's kind of like how D. never ever cried about her Os till people started coming to her expecting her to be disappointed and making her feel like she had to be disappointed since everyone else clearly thought it was a disappointing performance. how so many people slowly disappear under the weight of expectations and the results that come with it. it's funny how people can fall flat on their face being knocked by a single piece of paper. and you know i'm saying all this because results are coming out on wednesday and i'm half-scared to admit that half of this sentiment comes from sour grapes. it is always the bitter who are noisy, the discontented. the ones that fall short, the ones who nearly made it but didn't, who were good but never good enough. when you miss life perpetually by the width of a finger you start to think the world is conspiring against you. but deep down you know in your heart that it's always been you. and then you save yourself, or you remain unsaved.

what is the point of going into all this existentialist introspection anyway? sometimes i think i think too much. although i think i think alot less now than i used to. compare the amount of introspective and potentially intellectual shit that i used to write about as opposed to now where i talk about how happy i am to have bought something or this movie or that movie. i feel like a vegetating potato. i'm going to grow roots and anchor myself in the soil where the scum of the earth are soon, i'm sure. also, did you know i used to write song lyrics? to songs i never knew the tune of? i'm suddenly unearthing a heck load of them.

also, i don't really believe i actually managed to write something like this. but it seems strangely appropriate for what i want to say to you.

i wish i knew how to quit you

2006-02-27T11:23:00.000+08:00

i'm sure there was a lot more i had to say about last night and yesterday in general, really, but somehow all those words fail me this morning. anyway brokeback mountain was ... not mind-blowing. there were some great parts, but overall it fell somewhat short. it was heart-wrenching but not as sad as my cousin made it out to be, tears and all. it seemed a little too quiet, with a lot of soft-focus moments that muted what could have been potential violence and, well, passion. not to mention the fact that the boy was hiding behind his hand going eeeee half the time, which was cute and not-so-cute all at the same time. basically, i expected more -- but i think 1998's bishonen had more of that violent, doomed-love type of feeling that i admire so much in actors. maybe it's hard to pull off a nuanced, quiet kind of film (not that i have anything against it, you know i like the hours...) but somehow it just lacked that spark.

i feel so pompous writing this, as if my opinion on a film mattered. but who cares (:

anyway i had a great weekend. west coast park is actually quite a nice place in the morning. maybe it was just the weather, or the fact that there were so many little kids running around and both of us ate breakfast in the morning, something i haven't done in a long time. plus all the playground-type things! i think i'd like to raise my kids somewhere where they can play in a park, and interact with other children. i think it's really a good thing to be able to see your kids play and have a huge smile on their faces and generally be happy. it seems like a good place to live, and have kids, and be a cosy happy little family. or maybe it's just because the playgrounds there remind me of pasir ris park and my own childhood and along with my kids, i want to play and have fun too (:

i downloaded the last five eps of bleach last week in a day. the servers are suddenly extraordinarily fast, which is good news (: so now there are 70 episodes of bleach and it shows no signs of flagging. how irritating, though, that the stupid interlude (which was such a mindfuck) turned out to be just an interlude. BAH >_<

also, universities. there is hope for me after all! (:

2006-02-26T10:06:00.000+08:00

so it's sunday. yesterday was weird; somehow i regret not leaving earlier. anyway the food was good, it was good to see people again and remind ourselves how no-life we've gotten after school has ended, enduring a whole flood of army talk (again) -- it just never seems to stop! IL is the perfect army recruit! he memorises everything, knows everything there is to know about whatever they're supposed to know, yet like every other recruit he complains about the army with a vengeance. woah. but anyway he turns 19 -- last year of adolescence (please tell me i spelt that right) and like him we must all treasure our youth. i'm talking rubbish of course.

i'm up now because i have nothing better to do. someone intelligently suggested i set my alarm clock for 730 so i could go breakfast, but this plan fell through as it is already 10am and is painfully obvious that the person in question (whom i was supposed to meet for breakfast) is still in the deep throes of slumber. i think now is a good time to say i told you so.

there are too many weird chinese movies showing nowadays. the quality of chinese cinema, despite the volume of their production, is seriously going down. seriously, Quality please. i still want to watch brokeback! bah. >_<

happy birthday grace lim (:

2006-02-24T01:19:00.000+08:00

sometimes i think to myself how amazing it is that one person can manage to keep three separate journals and write vastly different things in all of them. it seems weird that all the time the most honest thoughts are written as if they are meant for people to read, as if i hope somehow they will pick up the book and see what i'm trying to say to them, conveniently forgetting that these books however honest they are will remain in some undisclosed area of the house or packed in a box for future generations to peruse when all the people in question are either dead or very old. i think sometimes i read too many books. i distinctly remember a book i borrowed from the library when i was young about a rickety old house with elms along the streets and a little girl who went to visit her grandma, who had a black cat on the lawn. except lawns however green they are appear sort of grey in the moonlight, which has a strange habit of turning the whole world monochrome. my students gave me pages and pages of essays trying to envisage a world without colour; a few nights ago talking on the phone i realised all you had to do was wait for the sun to set.

who was it that said if i say i love you, you better believe it before i change my mind? in that one hour of silence i learnt more about people and life than i have in a while; including all the thoughts that ran through our heads and my heart and the way i could never decide whether loving or hating somebody was the same thing or not. you tell me that's love but it's just such a horrible circular argument in that it seems to explain everything away all too easily. i wondered if you were listening throughout the period and somehow it didn't surprise me that you did, though i somehow thought you would fall asleep or go do something else. everyday you show me something new about yourself, about myself, about life and other people. i almost feel guilty romanticising this love and putting it into pretty words; writing about you as if you were a poem, a dream, something perfect and not quite real. but this is real. this is the gritty, challenging part of it all; the time where being suspended from reality is not an option and people (i) have to think about real choices and real life. things that are practical like universities and careers and prospects and even weddings. we're not at an age where there is still hope and a few more years, where secondary school superstars are still at the top of their game and you know, you just know that their time won't last forever like the million and one things that have died along the way. the real part is you. the real part is you talking to me, laughing and joking with me, being serious with me, but more importantly the real part is you being honest with me. when i say that i mean it i like to think i'm being honest. maybe i blunder along like the rest of them not knowing anything about myself or the things i love or even the things you love, but i want to say what i feel and not be unsure of myself, not have to think twice before things come out of my mouth and then be mocked for it. you make me want to do that, be sure of myself.

***
it's been a long time since i've written anything. but i didn't want to let this go.

life in mono
for X

the birds speak in trebles and basses,
each clef rolling out of their beaks
like pearls, and he,
standing at the foot of that rainbow
waiting to catch a sound.
the music
that runs out of that guitar
spills onto the drowsy afternoon. noiselessly
his hand twitches on the park bench
with each twang that runs through his spine.
when the note begins to wail
his whole body bends with its anguish.
the wind sweeps the leaves to the window and threatens
to distract him from the sound. these chords
are words he can only read with his finger.
a phone rings,
and the feelings stop.
then the air is still with his contentment,
and the girl on his lap goes back to sleep.

2006-02-22T22:36:00.000+08:00

clarisse's lame-ass excuse to break up:

"I just have too much going on in life right now - what with my pet rocks billy and zane"

'What is your lame-ass excuse to break up?' at QuizGalaxy.com

how familiar. anyway today i went out shopping with yanj and spent an undisclosed amount of money. which despite the astronomical figure made me a very happy girl despite the fact that a very pretty bright yellow skirt caught my eye and i didn't get it in the end because i figured i could get another two skirts and a top for the same undisclosed amount of money. which, ultimately, is what i did in the end. :D however i also saw this very pretty red and white striped top from zara which i absolutely must get because i feel the need to prepare myself for the impending rejections ahead, which i can just feel in my bones. anyone wants to buy it for me for my birthday? (it was worth a try.) nothing like pretty things to make you happy. i am so easily satisfied. >_<

ETA: i can't stop thinking about that top. or that pair of shoes. or the cute bag in topshop. or the pretty white skirt i saw in guess!!! this is bad. the worst part is that i actually have money to buy it, and the end of the month is approaching which means my next paycheck is coming in again. talk about having nothing to buy for 5 months and then suddenly it just all comes down on you. argh!!! >_<

2006-02-21T20:33:00.000+08:00

by simply not allowing oneself to be hurt one saves alot of heartache and trouble. there is a fine line between a person who does not need things and a person who makes herself not need things. nothing lasts forever, even cold november rain -- strangely optimistic, in a sea of pessimism. but you know as well as i do that everything always comes full circle, and the road splits into two, three, four different directions and somehow life always takes you where you never wanted it to go. alot of times indifference is mistaken for strength. while i scrawled that in the margins of daughters of the late colonel, there was a sense in which i actually believed it. weak, weak, weak, strong; fill in the blanks. it's so easy to be weak. and it's nothing personal, but you got to admit it's kinda funny. always, always that line reverberates in your head, and like alot of other things, it sums up exactly what you want to say in a way you can never say it. the beauty of literature is the essence of a matter in a single sentence. a single sentence that cuts through everything else, through your heart, shows you exactly what you could never have seen in a way you could never have imagined. in the way that we all live our lives from day to day we never bother to think as far as we should. in thinking so far ahead we lose sight of the things right in front of us. in finding that happy medium sometimes we get ourselves impaled on the fence we try so hard not to cross. in this life you win some and you lose some just so that the ultimate score at the end of the day is zero. zero is such a neutral number, neither negative nor positive, not one or the other, firmly in the centre of its own numerical universe painfully watching on as the rest of them run into infinity. nothing ever comes out of it; life, like love, should be entered into with abandon or not at all. and there are so many out there that drift on the edges unable to decide one way or the other which side of the line they want to fall down on, and they hover mid-air forever. like watching a game and not picking sides one finds oneself detached from the losses but painfully excluded from the triumphs. like in dr. faustus, this is hell, nor are we out of it.

2006-02-20T18:16:00.000+08:00

i told you life always hits you in the face whenever you least expect it. i think certain people in my family are undergoing midlife crises. not saying it's not my fault, but i don't think it's just mine. anyway that aside today was my last day at work! it turned out fine especially the last fruitful lit lesson. somebody else takes over tomorrow -- and why are people lecturing me over things that are not even my fault? what the hell man. what is it with people and raking up the past? argh.

anyway. it's been weird. too many bads and too many goods all together at one shot and i'm just super confused. i and your father, as if the two of you were so close in the first place. then it's calculations, and more calculations. everything comes back down to the same thing. advice: marry a rich man and then you don't have to worry about stupid things like that. stupid things, really. don't people realise i'm not listening to anything they say? and also, i know this sounds weird coming from me, of all people, but some people should just stop whining over things that 1) they have no control over, 2) i have no control over and 3) everyone else also has to do. sheesh.

i hate the way your voice changes when you talk to different people within seconds.

2006-02-19T23:41:00.000+08:00

it's been a good weekend. (: and a crazy one.

2006-02-18T03:10:00.000+08:00

spend all your time waiting for that second chance, for a break that will make it okay, there's always some reason to feel not good enough and it's hard at the end of the day; i need some distraction or a beautiful release memories seep from my veins, let me be empty oh and weightless and maybe i'll find some peace tonight

so tired of the straight line and everywhere you turn there's vultures and thieves at your back, the storm keeps on twisting you keep on building the lies that you make up for all that you lack; it don't make no difference, escaping one last time, it's easier to believe in this sweet madness oh this glorious sadness that brings me to my knees

wanted to blog about dramafeste but there are probably commentaries everywhere...and not to be biased, but i think our script was better... :x

thinking back it's been a good five years. the numbers keep on increasing as time goes by, and sometimes you think to yourself that it seems so long ago that it all happened, where it all started. but this year is different. this year i didn't think about it till it was over, and the day was gone, this year i enjoyed myself thoroughly and i've never been happier.

2006-02-16T21:30:00.000+08:00

yes i don't hate the world, i just really don't like the way it works. i don't know why the hell i'm so upset over something that is allegedly my fault. colour me sorry, but actually i'm not. everyone needs to grow up and look at things from a rational point of view and not be clouded by emotional judgments. no matter how much you think somebody needs your support and sympathy this is not the way you do it. i don't care if i sound like i'm the victim because trust me, nobody bloody knows the whole story. maybe it doesn't matter that it takes two hands to clap or that the person in question needs less pity than people think he needs. yes i'll be lying if i tell you it doesn't bloody hurt, whether it really is or is not my fault. i've had so many run-ins over the years it gets so damn tiring just to pretend i don't know what the hell is happening around me, the things people are saying. it's always easier to side with the one who didn't have to make the decision. at first i wrote this then i took it down because i said angst is a bad thing. and it is. but whatever; i just don't care about alot of things anymore.

2006-02-16T19:56:00.000+08:00

a food-related post today because i've been spending all day reading about food on food blogs. i was looking at it in between lessons and during lunch and dinner, which made me very very hungry and craving some really good food. good food to me covers a wide definition; it doesn't have to be fancy or expensive or in a restaurant or anything like that... my criteria is just that it has to taste good. when i was a young girl i was a really fussy eater; i'd not eat this and not eat that, till one trip overseas changed my life. when i was 11 i went to japan on exchange with 7 others (surprisingly, we're all still in contact save for two who somehow disappeared into AC and the other...somewhere else) and it was in the exceedingly polite culture of japan that i felt guilty whenever i left food on my plate after my meal. after two days, i remember, i was eating all my food up in front of my host family just so i wouldn't look like an ungrateful brat. i remember thinking to myself how simply frying an egg over strips of bacon so they fuse together (and form a great, gooey mess of runny egg yolk and crispy, salty bacon) was such a wonderful way to eat breakfast, even if it did come with a whole load of summer vegetables on the side. but the thing about japanese veggies (as i've mentioned before somewhere) is that everything is so bright and fresh you literally feel happy and contented eating it, which is a great achievement for someone who'd really rather not be associated with vegetables as much as possible. i think i've become some sort of vegetable elitist, actually, being so enamoured with japanese vegetables that unless it's from japan, i won't eat cucumber, sweet potato, or cabbage. believe me, there is a noticeable difference in taste (and in price, unfortunately...)!

but vegetables are still something that take some getting used to. out of politeness i'll eat them if i have to, and i do enjoy all the stuff my grandma cooks up (i have this obsession with sweet potato leaves fried with sambal... beats sambal kangkong anyday), but unless it's a tze char meal i probably wouldn't willingly order anything vegetable-y. and i'm a self-confessed hater of coleslaw. funny taste aside, it even smells funny. or maybe that's because my only experience with it comes in a KFC tub.

japan is also where i learnt to eat raw egg. every time my mum and i eat in a japanese restaurant, we're always amused at people who order sukiyaki and then proceed to either 1) ignore the raw egg in the side bowl, 2) whip it and pour it into the pot, or 3) just pouring it in. i always get weird looks somehow whenever i dip my stuff into the beaten raw egg and eat the whole gooey mess over my rice before it falls all over the place, but alot of things that look gross taste bloody good. (like oysters, which look disturbingly like some unmentionable part of the female body but that's the sort of thing you'd rather not think about, especially when they're that expensive...)

i'm a carb girl. i can't live without it. when i went to spain few years back i nearly died after two weeks of just living on bread alone; i was craving for rice a few days into the trip. UK last year wasn't too bad only because i was just spamming pasta salad the whole way and ignoring all the vegetable salads that everyone else so happily took up. one of my favourite late night meals is still maggi mee -- unhealthy, but fast to cook, and GOOD TO EAT! people are going to disagree (especially with my cooking method, but i assure you i can do perfectly fine with a pot -- but i mean, who wants to bother with pot washing at 3 in the morning?!) but it really is very satisfying to have a hot steaming bowl of assam laksa maggi mee with an egg (yolk still runny) dropped into it, swirled around with lots and lots of luncheon meat and the occasional swedish meatball. yum. of course i go straight to sleep after that, explaining my rapidly-going-wonky figure >_< i remember E. making a disgusted comment on the tagboard when i mentioned i love to eat campbell soup poured over rice! BELIEVE ME IT IS GOOD! it's just like cheater risotto, with inferior rice and inferior soup, but it seems i have this thing for great gooey messes, hahah! also, i think i'm the only person who soaks two bags of green tea in a bowl and then uses that same tea in a cooking pot to cook my non-flavoured instant noodles. (again, cheater ochazuke... i do the same thing with rice) a few months back my host family mother (from japan) sent over a few bottles of plum paste and i've just been squeezing that into my green tea noodles. it's simple, it tastes clean, it looks like shit, but believe me it's really quite healthy (: also, i proclaim marche's mashed potatoes the best stuff in the world. i know there're probably better ones around, but i could just eat two plates of that stuff for 6 bucks and i'd be a happy girl.

before you think i can only cook instant food, believe me my cooked-on-instinct spaghetti is actually quite good (: and i can bake without recipes (HOHO) just that i don't have an oven at my disposal, and i'm still waiting for N.'s cookies to materialise in front of me... >_<

man i'm seriously craving food all the damn time nowadays, which is why i'm trying to cut down on everything i eat. this bodes ill for my weight, which has already gone up dramatically due to self-imposed slothfulness and vegetation in my computer seat for the past 6 months. sometimes i wonder if i'm getting pregnant :O weird cravings at the oddest of times, then other times i feel like i will puke if i smell anything food-y. talk about not being able to achieve a happy medium...

2006-02-15T21:47:00.000+08:00

it's been a bummy weekend. a few ups and downs, upsets, but we're all good. don't let the sound of your own wheels make you crazy--we may lose and we may win, but we will never be here again. (: ahh, love the eagles.

today i finally bought a new book. not an intellectual book, not even really vaguely litty, meaning it's not a famous author or anything. a new novel, by a new author, something along the lines of a historical mystery. da vinci code type stuff, only smarter. sometimes you need to read one of these in awhile (:

i don't know why i always like reading on my bed. first i sit up reading, then i end up on my side, then i end up falling asleep. today i was huddled under my blanket (though the weather was amazingly hot, but there are other ways of cooling down...) reading while messaging and doing some other things at the same time. the boy keeps expressing amazement at how i manage to multitask doing so many... strenuous activities simultaneously. hah, but i'm good. anyway i was thoroughly tired out by the end of it all and promptly went to sleep after that!

did i mention i have a really dirty mind? and that all my dreams, somehow or other end up being either about sex or violence (or both)? today was a case in point. after i drifted off to sleep, i found myself in the boy's room and we were doing some things (that are better left unsaid) before i was rudely interrupted by a phone call, which turned out to be none other than the boy since i asked him to call and wake me up. i remember vaguely mumbling something about wanting to go back to sleep and we resumed doing whatever highly strenuous activity we were engaged in before he finally called back an hour later and told me to get out of bed or else. alas, the fantasies of my depraved mind. POOF. just like that! and all thanks to the person in question!!! talk about irony. life hates me.

(do not judge me! i admit i am a pervert! now shut up!)

it wouldn't be luck if you could get out of life alive

2006-02-14T18:57:00.000+08:00

mama put my guns in the ground
i can't shoot them anymore
that cold black cloud is comin' down
feels like i'm knockin' on heaven's door

it's vday and we didn't do much today, just bummed around, had driving...knocked over a parking pole once, kept driving too fast, went to town and shopped for a swimsuit (: which i didn't buy in the end! i think guys should just stop paying for things.. >_< in honour of the boy, whose birthday is today, i shall post unglam photos of him so he starts complaining how uncool he looks in photos all the time! hahahah (:

at coffee club photowhoring! he was complaining how sad it was that on vday the only people around us were two fat ladies and a whole bunch of sad guys congregating together... hahahaha and this is the only family picture i have in recent years! the last family photo i have was taken in 2002! >_< please excuse the fact that we all look like we're falling asleep because it was 630 in the morning when we took this!

now for overdue chinese new year photos...i've been trying to figure out a way to post pictures on my blog again, since stupid hello! died on me awhile back. stupid blogger progs don't work on my computer for some reason. okay this isn't really chinese new year, since we took this while i was soaked and ran all the way from city hall to the arts house before we all trooped to meet IL & co. RM and me!

the boy and i. we look like angbaos, and he looks like he's going to cry. talk about sad eyes (:

and this is 'you complete me' SJ!

2006-02-13T23:04:00.000+08:00

and you can't fight the tears that ain't coming,
or the moment of truth in your lies
when everything feels like the movies
yeah you bleed just to know you're alive

i'm just so tired nowadays; i'm even tired of getting angry. it just doesn't do it for me anymore. realising that shit happens and it's always going to come your way and sometimes it really is your fault is going to be something i still will never get used to.

i wanted to faint on the train just now when i was on the phone when my vision went white and i couldn't hear a thing. i felt the way i felt post-run and then i had to run to the toilet and bend over and generally try not to die. it happened twice this evening actually. i know the reason why it happened but i just had no more energy to rectify it. like the boy says, identifying and rectifying are two different things.

there's alot of other things i wanted to say but i'm just so, so tired of it all.
i'm sorry grace that i couldn't make it in the end. i hope you have a safe trip and have loads of fun there.

this movie isn't going to end.

2006-02-12T23:53:00.000+08:00

i feel guilty now, insisting you do the things i ask you to do.
i'll always be here, don't you forget that.