the night before the funeral

2012-01-22T13:09:00.004+08:00

I was in a house in a HDB flat, the middle of three sisters. The dad was a Viking, and he was waking up in a rampage. The littlest sister and I immediately ran into the eldest sister's room and woke her up. We pushed aside the window grills to get onto the aircon unit outside, and from there make our way slowly across the platforms along the outer walls to safety. The eldest sister went first, and since I didn't want to leave the youngest sister behind I let her go in front of me. Out on the aircon unit, I had a magnificent view of the neighbourhood...from something like sixteen floors up. Fuck.

Above us were something like sunshades installed above the windows of some HDB blocks, and those I used as handholds as I inched my way along the platforms. The oldest sister was already ten seconds ahead of us, unseen around the corner. The littlest sister was very agile. Despite the fact that the platforms she stood on moved, she hopped across them with ease, not even needing to hold onto the handholds. As I stepped onto the same platforms they wobbled like jelly, and threatened to unbalance me, toppling me off and down sixteen floors below. I kept a vice-like grip on the handholds and tried not to look down.

The platforms came to an end where the next HDB unit jutted out, and to continue we had to somehow leap and simultaneously grab hold of a narrow platform continuing on the outside of the other unit. The little girl did so with ease, despite the fact that the platform was somehow made out of a precarious stack of books. No way in fucking hell was I doing the same. She tried to convince me how easy it was, and how I could do it, but I went NOPE.jpg and made my way back into the bedroom. In the bedroom was some guy, probably the brother, and he said that the dad was alright, reverted back from his Viking rampage. I went out into the living room and sorted out my wallet, which had two fifty-dollar notes and some smaller ones.

(Either in between this or before I dreamt I was waiting in line to use the ATM. Or rather, I wanted to use the ATM but the queue kept getting longer and longer while I waited at the side with my wallet on a table. My hair was pulled tightly back in some sort of hairstyle I couldn't see until later, when I looked in a mirror and saw that my head was close-shaven except for a stripe down the middle that ended in a ponytail at the back. My first thought was that it looked pretty cool, actually.)

I ended up in some sort of Maplestory game, with my avatar riding on something that looked like a dragon. I then realised that I had somehow teleported to a high-level area, and though I was safely on the upper platforms where no monsters could reach me I'd be stuck there unless I figured out how to get out. I hopped down, platform by platform, checking if there were monsters all the way down, but there were none, and I ended up in a town with shops and everything. I was in an environment that looked like the mountains of El Nath, the ones with the werewolves and all, grey rock and snow.

The 2D environment then turned into an isometric 3D game, where I moved my avatar around and dropped down platforms, and my avatar changed in appearance every time I moved through a different environment. When dropped in deep water I turned into an octopus, through grass I transformed into a fireball, etc. Finally I made my way to what looked like warehouses made of wooden logs, and there the isometric projection stopped and reverted back to real life.

It seemed like Sentosa, what with the beach cart shops and the atmosphere. I was there with Jaz and TG. We were at a narrow, straight sheltered area paved with gravel, and on either side of us was clear water. On our right the water was located in some sort of channel, with a tall stone wall on the opposite side and above it a sort of riverside walk, with a yellow building further back, kind of like those at Clarke Quay. Ahead of us were the cart shops in the process of opening, and some sold the usual beach accessories like flip flops and hats, and there were those selling medicinal herbal remedies, oddly enough.

Jaz and TG paused at a cart to look at some things, but I was distracted by the opening of a bigger shop in one of the warehouses selling a variety of things. They sold little dresses for toddlers, hair accessories, socks, CDs and DVDs, among other things. I spotted a rack of postcards and immediately went looking through them. I found a set of two Sir Stamford Raffles-themed postcards, with images of his letters and handwriting on the front. It was pretty awesome, but when I flipped them over to look for the price I found out that it cost $4.70 for two cards. Too expensive for my liking. I decided to look around the shop for a bit, and then my mum and my eldest sister joined me.

2012-01-20T00:47:00.000+08:00

On the first day of the year, the very last day of Steam's holiday sales, I bought Universe Sandbox. And Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, but that's another fun for another day. (Listen to K-ROSE, it's the perfect station for a long, virtual roadtrip in a Boxville.)

I didn't realise that Universe Sandbox is actually a rather technical sort of sandbox game. Spacebox, perhaps. A sandbox on a bigger scale than you can imagine. And very technical. A sort of game I can imagine Stacey utilising very well to simulate astro events. Me, a lesser sort of intellectual mortal, can only hope to tinker around and perhaps derive some pleasure in bombarding Earth with a bunch of asteroids. (Some, indeed. Didn't last very long. Would have been nicer if you could see the effects on Earth.)

I tried to make my own solar system, but that didn't go very well. Either the planets were too close to the stars and got swallowed up, or too far and started to drift away, or for some weird reason was slingshot out of orbit by the central star's own gravity. Something Stacey would probably understand, too. Perhaps it was my fault for putting two massive stars together.

One day I started with the Sun. And then I added Earth, along with a few other planets of the Solar System. The Moon, as Earth's satellite. A bunch of rings, like Saturn's. Speed up time - everything went smoothly, so I altered the Moon's orbit - the funny thing is, it was labeled as a satellite of Earth but it was going around the Sun. It met the Earth like only once a day and never stayed with it (the Earth was faster). After a great deal of time, suddenly the Sun was alone again. Weird gravity things at work. All orbiting planets (and Moon) had been ejected outwards in all directions.

So I tried again. With several other planets. Oh, and Alpha Centauri. They promptly started to orbit around each other. It was quite a beautiful sight, much like a dance. And they kicked everyone else out while they were at it, too - a dance meant for two. Swinging round and round, I thought they might collide or one of them be slingshot out into space, too, but they lasted quite a while.

So I left them there dancing slowly across space - slowly relative to the others, anyway - and when I came back one was gone.

2012-01-19T14:51:00.001+08:00

I was in school with Sarah Huan, I think. We had lost a bag full of some important things, perhaps the cats or skunks had taken them away. We went into a sort of greenhouse with plants and all, and there were a bunch of skunks around. We suspected that they might be loitering around here because the bag was here too, so we decided to look around. I walked towards a rather dark and tiny corner at the end of the room. It was a narrow U-shaped corridor with a dead end, and it was lined with empty metal cupboards and boxes. I walked past one of the cupboards and noticed that there was a body of a girl crouching inside, but I thought it must've been a doll. At the dead end were boxes, and suddenly the wall seemed to open up and lead me straight into the metal cupboard with the doll inside. As I watched the doll it began to move, as if stretching itself out, and I immediately freaked out and got the hell out of there with Sarah. She had no idea what happened, and it was best that way as we walked along the corridor towards the foyer where it was brighter.

We sat for a while at one of the benches, and then we thought we'd go back walking around again. After a while I was aware of a girl walking alongside us, wearing a white turtleneck over the school uniform. I glanced at her face and was shocked to see that she resembled the girl in the cupboard! Was this her ghost following us? Soon another girl, apparently the friend of the ghost, joined us. I was feeling extremely unnerved, though Sarah didn't know this, and at the next corner I immediately excused us both and walked away. I had to tell Sarah who the girl was, though without making myself heard by her.

I was with a bunch of flight attendants. We were preparing for our next flight. One of the stewards helped me with my makeup, but he had to go off and do something else so he handed me a white eyeliner pencil and told me to finish up. We then changed out into our uniforms, which happened to resemble those of Scoot's - black with a yellow stripe down the left side (Scoot's is on the right). The uniforms also had a sailor-type collar with multicoloured bands on it, apparently signifying rank. Some had collars with thick two- or three-toned bands while mine consisted of many thin multicoloured bands. One guy said that I had got the lowest-ranked uniform, but we were all equally confused about how the rankings went. I pulled up my socks, beige knee-length ones, and put on my shoes, apparently a pair of slip-ons. We were in a rush and hurried out of the locker room. On the way up the escalators one of them told me to take off my spectacles, since she knew of one who wore them but didn't do so on flights, and I retorted that he was obviously wearing contacts. Without my glasses I couldn't see a thing, what good would that do me as a stewardess?

I was then in a taxi, going to Melaka, except it didn't really look like Melaka, I think. Perhaps a village. Almost every building was painted yellow, and looked slightly run-down. We stopped at an industrial area, outside a factory, and we were about to go in. I remember feeling rather indignant about the new condominiums they were building in the area, yet the factories and shops were left to remain as run-down buildings...

Dream diary

2012-01-16T14:18:00.001+08:00

Undated
Traveling through dimensions. School trip to a themepark, everyone was in their own groups. I couldn't find my own, so I wandered around, reached the end of the park, looked like a warehouse, guy on small bulldozer tried to chase me, lost him in the shelves, I tried to ask the workers where the rides were at least, where all the screams came from. They revealed that there were no rides, everyone went into a freezer, like a testing area, and their screams were only simulated. They asked me to go in anyway, but I freaked out and ran away to the other dorms. I peered in the window of a kampung-like one but the leader chased me away. I walked down the corridor where most dorms were, some were having parties, some chilling with their group leaders - one group in a witch-themed dorm had Nico Rosberg for a leader. (He was chilling out in a cauldron-shaped hot tub complete with green bubbling water.)

26/12/2011
I was in the living room of a house. A guy with a gun was lurking in a dark corner. I thought nothing much of it, but I decided to stay out of his line of sight all the same. I picked up a DSLR and thought I'd snoop around, perhaps try to take a picture of the sniper. As I poked my head around the corner he saw me and ran away. I thought I'd chase after him, and as I came to the next corner a dart suddenly flew out of nowhere towards me. I caught it, and then I realised that the sniper had tried to kill me.

Immediately I ran into the adjoining room, the living room, where Professor McGonagall/Maggie Smith was asleep on the couch. I woke her up and presented her the evidence that he had just tried to poison me - the liquid in the dart then leaked out and dripped onto the floor. They sent him away, and not long after smoke began to emerge from the bedrooms. In revenge he had set a room on fire and thrown all my belongings out of my room. I tried to give chase, running out of the house, but in the courtyard he had set up traps that released wooden stakes into my path. I avoided them all, but I had lost sight of him.

27/12/2011

Walked down this narrow walled pathway. I was in quite a hurry but the lady in front of me was walking very slowly and wouldn't budge. Every so often we'd come to a split in the path but she always seemed to be going the same way. I decided I'd take another path at the next split, but there she was again! As soon as I changed direction she too followed. I was pissed, but she said it was revenge - and then I realised the deal I had managed to spoil earlier had been hers. I turned around, but she started to push me forward back to the other split path, gaining speed. I dug my heels in to try and slow her down. Then I had an idea. I allowed her to speed up a little, then at the next split I quickly changed direction and ducked out of the way as the momentum took her away. I went into a toilet, but there she continued to hound me, banging on the toilet door and threatening me.

Night. We were in trouble. We had to bail out into the sea and wait for help to come. I jumped into the water and swam towards these tall platforms with ladders in the water. We climbed up and tried not to fall off as more people got on. At this height, I was wondering what would come to save us. As it turned out, we were waiting for cable cars to pass by and take us back to shore. The cable cars were taking some time to come and the platform was gradually getting even more crowded, so I contemplated jumping off and simply waiting in the dark, cold waters close to the platform.

Dawn. We were again in the same situation. This time, the cable cars would not come but this flying contraption did. It was flat and wide, with rows upon rows of seats on it. I recognised a friend and boarded the flying ship with him, trying to find suitable seats. We saw some celebrities nearby and decided not to sit too close to them, just in case we appeared stalkerish, but instead a few rows down.

2012-01-16T13:45:00.000+08:00

I can usually fall asleep almost anywhere. It's an ability I'm very proud of. But that day, during the chalet, I couldn't sleep at all. My rational mind told me that I should sleep, considering the amount of sleep I had the night before, but I simply couldn't fall asleep. It didn't help that I had a bad cough that sent me into coughing fits simply by being in the wrong position. When I finally did get comfortable enough to prevent the coughs coming on, I just could not sleep. It seemed that every time I began to sink into a deeper sleep state a strange ringing sound in my head would wake me up, just at the exact moment. At first I thought it was just like one of those occasional hypnic jerks you get, except in an audio form, but it kept occurring with such strange regularity. Every five minutes this mental alarm would ring. I had planned on squeezing in a 30-minute nap but that was obviously out of the question with the constant sleep disruption. Every time it rang I'd be abruptly jerked out of semi-consciousness, my heart beating quickly and my mind momentarily overcome by a sense of fear. In those 30 minutes it happened so often I got extremely frustrated with myself, with my own mind producing these noises, trying to will my mind into shutting up so that I could sleep. It didn't work.

I feared that, if the noises kept occurring with such regularity every time I tried to sleep, I'd face a severe reduction not only in the amount of sleep I'd get but also in the sleep quality. A combination of both would create severe sleep deprivation, which would have been an extremely unpleasant experience. At that point in time I was falling ill, and I'd need a lot of rest to recover as with any other illness. I was afraid that this could actually kill me if I didn't get enough sleep. Luckily, the ringing hasn't happened again since.

A bit of Googling suggests that what happened to me was a case of exploding head syndrome, which "causes the sufferer occasionally to experience a tremendously loud noise as originating from within his or her own head, usually described as the sound of an explosion, roar, gunshot, loud voices or screams, a ringing noise, or the sound of electrical arcing (buzzing)." The adrenaline rush or the feeling of fear described also appears to fit my situation.

2011-12-20T01:12:00.000+08:00

Morning

Dreamt I was in some sort of school, I believe it closely resembled Rosyth more than any other, especially the IBC area. Saw Jingxuan and Mr. Ow sitting at a table chatting - I said "Hi" to JX but I completely overlooked Mr. Ow at that point in time, and had just started to walk away when he called me back and rebuked me for ignoring him. I felt so insecure afterwards - I mean, I really am prone to overlooking people sometimes! - that I just had to look for a quiet corner to hide myself in, but I couldn't find any.

Somehow I found myself in a doctor's office (IDK why I keep thinking of it as the ship's doctor) where this cocky doctor was currently attending to another child. When he got to me he pulled up the sleeve of my shirt, exposing my upper arm. He had what looked like a syringe in his hand, and after prepping the site he promptly jabbed me in the arm with it. I peered at my arm and then realised that it wasn't a syringe he was holding, but a long needle. I thought, "Oh, he must be poking me first with the needle to make way for the syringe later on". He removed the needle, and then - here must certainly come the syringe - NO, HE REPEATEDLY STABBED ME IN THE ARM WITH IT. I couldn't feel a thing, and all I did was just lie there on the bed watching him stab me repeatedly with the needle. He then left to attend to the other child again. I shifted on the bed a little, and realised that there was a vaccine bottle lying next to me. I called him over.

"Hey, isn't this used to sterilise the needle?"

"Oh! I must've forgot!"

I woke up feeling very indignant that he had just used an UNSTERILISED needle to poke both the other child and me.

Afternoon

I was dressed in a Starfleet command division skant-type uniform. Data appeared to be malfunctioning, behaving erratically and refusing to listen to anyone. I took his hand and suddenly he became quiet. I thought, "Let's get out of here immediately!" and pulled him along to escape from...well, somebody. The environment around us was oddly tinted red - the sky was that shade of red as it would be at night when overcast with clouds, and everything just seemed very Mars-like, all red and dusty.

We ended up at the void deck of a HDB flat and I dragged Data up the stairs, pausing to stop at the landing between the first and second floors. On the second floor there was a man in an motorised wheelchair. He turned, almost as if looking at us, and I made to go down the stairs again, thinking he was hostile.

Somehow I ended up in someone's house, full of arcade games in the living room. The Starfleet uniform had been replaced with my usual t-shirt and shorts. I was supposed to meet someone here, for something like a play date, and when I sat down at the table I was shocked to find that the person I was supposed to meet was younger than me, just a child. We did play the arcade games there for a while, but I soon began to feel the child's mother's hostility bearing down on me, as if asking me to leave. I decided to go, then, but when I stepped out of the gates I realised that someone had taken my slippers. With the strong hostile feeling still attempting to bore holes in my back I decided I would go home barefooted.

On my way back home I passed by an area that resembled Little India or Kampong Glam, with the colonial, two-storied shophouses and their five-foot ways. I passed by a rather interesting-looking bookshop and I decided to drop in to see if they had any unique postcards on sale. I saw a few with some good looking designs, but every time I tried to pick them up I kept taking the wrong one, and I never could see their prices so eventually I gave up and moved on. The shophouse area I was in appeared to either be new or undergoing reconstruction, and once I came to the end of the five foot way I was unsure of moving on in my barefooted state.

2011-12-16T00:12:00.003+08:00

Most people wouldn't call Singapore a country with a cool climate, but today I've been wearing two layers of shirts - a long-sleeved white shirt and a black jumper - and surprisingly not sweated in the least. Either the temperature's dropping (by however much you can call it 'dropping' in Singapore's standards) or I'm becoming more susceptible to cold.

Went for a job interview today. I'd say absolutely nothing to have been worried about - shouldn't have been nervous or anything. Honestly, looking back at it now, it was a waste of emotion. Well, at least with a little bit of experience I'll know what to expect of future part-time job interviews - certainly not as formal and serious as executive positions would require, etc. Time to go job hunting again.

Earlier in the year I made a list of what I wanted to do after As. So far, none of them have been done.

Sad.

100 years ago today, Roald Amundsen and his party of four became the first men to reach the South Pole.

2011-12-14T00:13:00.000+08:00

2011-12-09T03:23:00.001+08:00

You have no idea how badly I need to 'Freak Out' right now. Yes, perhaps I have been playing The Sims 3 a little bit too much over the past few nights - from midnight to 5am, actually - but I'd say it's the most accurate feeling I've got at the moment.

It's because of job-searching. I'm not stressed over the actual search - in fact, I found one I'm interested in rather quickly, Google does wonders - but I'm stressed over getting the job. Contacting the job agency and telling them all about me and hoping they'll accept me, and if they do, I'll worry about how well I'd be at the job. It's a customer service job at the airport, until February or so, decent pay and most importantly! It has the option of a night shift from 11pm to 7am, which is practically perfect for a night owl like me. Dude, I sleep at 5am and I was always late for school in the mornings, there's no way you can get me to wake up for a morning job. Stay up all night? More likely.

Getting a temporary job after 'O's or 'A's is like a step into the next stage of life. Well, for me, I guess - other students would have already had temporary job experience after 'O's. Me? Went to Japan on holiday for two weeks, and then afterwards it was straight into JC life. I'm beginning to believe that so far, my entire life has been extremely sheltered from the outside world: primary school, GEP - parents today would consider that almost a guaranteed path into a good secondary school, IP through RGS into RJC...the only big stresser I ever had before 'A's was PSLE.

My two older sisters had polytechnic educations, they took up temp jobs during their school holidays passing out flyers and after their 'O's one worked at a Watsons' outlet in Raffles Place and the other worked in an F&B outlet at United Square. After graduating from poly they landed jobs relevant to their diplomas - my eldest sister who graduated with a diploma in biomedical sciences got a job as a lab tech, the other who graduated with a diploma in landscape architecture got a job as a...landscape architect. They have worked in the real world, they have skills extremely relevant to their line of work and their interests - I know my second sister loves her work - but what have I got to say for myself? Up until now, I still don't know what I'm good at. Not studies, that's for sure - and for that I fear not being able to advance to university - so at least I hope to be able to prove myself worthy in the working world.

Perhaps that's why I'm so scared and stressed. I fear that I won't be able to, and if I don't, there is nothing out there that I'm going to be good at. The world doesn't look kindly on no-gooders, everyone must have a worth to society, and if you can't find that what will you do? How can I be a burden on my parents? Surely, surely I must be good at something in this world! And I must find it!

The thing is, you won't know until you try. And I have to try. I absolutely must. There is no being afraid and scared of what may come if you haven't even tried. Just pick up the phone and call! It's the airport! It's a job where you can actually help the airport and the people who pass through it! And there's a night shift! If there's ever a temporary job that you'll love this is it.

After all, in a discussion with my mum once, I realised that the best time to experiment, to go around and find just what your true calling is, is now. When you're still young, when there is less or no expectation on you to find a reliable, well-paying job, now is the time to go around these temporary jobs, to see how they work, and to find out how comfortable you really are in them.

Good luck, Munirah! Have confidence, dear. Keep your spirits up, you'll eventually find out just where your path in life will take you. If it gets tough and it's choked up with all sorts of obstacles...GET A BLOODY PARANG AND WHACK YOUR WAY THROUGH IT. Or find a way around it, you know, same thing.

Happy Birthday to Me

2011-11-17T19:59:00.001+08:00

I'm eighteen today!

To be honest, when a birthday goes by, nothing changes - only my age has gone up by a digit, and that's just an abstract number. Though, with this birthday past, at least I don't have to lie to Livejournal or Deviantart anymore when they ask me if I'm old enough to view a mature post. Or anything else, really, unless it's something that requires you to be 21; in which case, lie anyway.

It's kinda sad though. In some ways, seventeen is my favourite number. It's so odd and sharp and just all-round lovely, really. Not that eighteen is bad in itself, eighteen is big and wide and older. I'm just going to miss being able to call myself seventeen. I didn't actually say it often. Never really said, "I'm seventeen". No one asks you for your age nowadays. It's always, "Oh, I'm in J2". What does that mean? I want to say I'm seventeen, except I can't anymore.

So we'll move on.

I'm eighteen.

Some things left unsaid...

2011-10-27T00:02:00.000+08:00

You know you're bored when...

2011-09-07T21:29:00.001+08:00

User: Hi Cleverbot.
Cleverbot: Bist du clever?
User: Du bist not.
Cleverbot: Und was bist dann du?
User: AGH CLEVERBOT, I KNOW I WANNA LEARN GERMAN, BUT RIGHT NOW I ONLY KNOW ENGLISH.
Cleverbot: Then why do you talk norwegian?
User: WHAT I JUST SAID 'HI'. 'HI' IS UNIVERSAL.
(And I'm pretty sure that's not Norwegian...)

User: So, Cleverbot, what do you know about German?
Cleverbot: Nothing.
User: You just spoke in German.
Cleverbot: I only speak english!
User: THEN WHY DID YOU SPEAK GERMAN WHEN I SPOKE ENGLISH?!
Cleverbot: I didn't.
User: FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-

2011-08-23T11:33:00.004+08:00

I just had the most terrifying dream.

Not because it had ghosts or it was set in a haunted house, none of the cheap tricks your mind can recreate from the horror films you watch.

It was because I could not tell the difference between dreams and reality.

I fell asleep on the bed at 10.15am, hoping to get some last snatches of sleep before I went back into the tricolour prison that awaited me. After what seemed like so little time I woke up to find that three hours had passed. I began to panic because my mother's shift ended at 12.30pm and she would already have been home by now. I was certain I was going to get a scolding. But when I went out she was dressed in her usual butterfly robes, watching TV and going about as if nothing was wrong.

Then I woke up to find that only 15 minutes had actually passed since I fell asleep. When I went back to sleep again the dream advanced me several hours ahead in time. I woke up and suddenly the idea of inception hit me. What was only a few minutes in real life would be hours in the second level. I rushed to find my sisters and tell them about the time dilation I felt in my dreams.

As I excitedly tried to explain my discovery to them, it occurred to me that my sisters should have all been at work by now. I remembered it being mentioned that time is never constant in dreams, so I looked at the nearest clock and was shocked to see the second hand move counterclockwise. I thought I had woken up into reality; I was wrong.

It felt exceptionally surreal to have to wake up from the first dream level because it was so much like reality. The time difference between the two was practically negligible, and the sunlight streamed in just right, I was still in my school uniform and in the same position I had fallen asleep in. I had little else way of knowing if I was dreaming or not.

When I finally did wake up, properly this time, only 45 minutes had passed since I fell asleep, but in my dreams it had felt like hours. And I woke up with a very real fear that if I fell asleep again, right there and then, I would be trapped in there forever.

2011-08-22T01:48:00.007+08:00

the colours of your prison are in green black and white

2011-07-04T01:38:00.003+08:00

I love going back to my old posts and reading them again for nostalgia's sake. They help trigger memories I had long forgotten, they remind me of how I was when I was younger, and I can't believe I had ever written such things so long ago.

Which is why I find it quite sad myself that the number of blog posts I have been writing year after year is steadily decreasing. In 2005, when I first started the blog, I wrote 170 posts. It still remains my highest post count for any one year. In 2009 I wrote 126 posts; in 2010, 69; and in the first half of 2011, 20. With A-levels looming this year I doubt I'd actually write any more than 60, at best.

It's sad because I had four years in RGS to cover, which I did rather well actually. 157 posts in 2006, 42 in 2007, 160 in 2008 and 126 in my last year. Yet, for the two years in JC I've only written 89 thus far. Only two years, and this is how much I've covered? Of course, perhaps the quality of the posts is better, but I loved reading my old posts because they recorded practically everything that happened. Now, they're only left to record whenever I feel like blogging. Mostly abstract thoughts and ideas, random snippets, little about the goings-on of actual life that would be interesting to look back upon as I do my older posts.

I doubt I'd see my post count pick up sharply any time soon, though. A-levels and all that. But I think I am planning to do a recount post sometime soon, I think I'd at least want to record how TSD has been so far, being such a unique point in my life.

#HappyBirthdaySeb

2011-07-03T01:22:00.002+08:00

Sebastian Vettel turns 24 today.

It's amazing how much he's achieved so far in his youth, which makes the idea of him even turning 24 so old when he's appeared to have done everything before he's even 25. When I'm 24 I doubt I'd have achieved even half of anything I'd ever dream of doing!

And even though he's world champion and everything and clearly the fastest driver on the track at the moment, he's still so painfully humble. Which makes him such a delight to watch and listen to.

Keep on rocking, golden boy.

2011-07-02T00:18:00.004+08:00

I haven't eaten anything since lunch. That was twelve hours ago.

I know I'm hungry but I can't bring myself to eat anything at the moment. Though it feels nice having a rather flat stomach. But no, I'm not anorexic. I'm not starving myself because I want to feel thin.

I think it's a penance. For the entirety of today.

I've never actually admitted it openly, but I think it's quite obvious I'm not the most religious person in the world. I'm hardly religious. I learned the basic prayers when I was four. I was sent to religious school from six to twelve years old. I stopped going after I took the PSLE equivalent of religious exams. I didn't do very well, and I had little interest in further learning of the subjects. And anyway, I wanted my Saturdays.

Even though I went to religious school, even though I learnt how to pray, I never did it regularly. In those six years I attended, the only times I ever did pray were during religious school itself. And even then I still did it wrong. Back then, I didn't take it seriously. Me and my sister, we'd take our positions side by side, and we'd go through the motions of course, we'd say the prayers necessary, but when we prostrated ourselves on the ground we'd turn our heads to face each other and grin secretly, out of sight of the watching teachers. I didn't know it then, but you couldn't do that.

I don't pray at home. I think I tried, once, when I was really young. I don't know why we don't, the family almost as a whole. As far as I know, both my father and brother don't, though they do go for Friday prayers, and neither do my two sisters. Nor me. My mum does, though. But she says nothing to the rest of us. Why? Is she waiting for us to be ready on our own?

During the trip to Japan, my aunt berated me for not praying. So I did try, twice. I don't know. What is praying supposed to feel like for the devout? A close connection to God? Calm peace of mind? I felt neither. It just seemed forced to me, that I did it only to show my aunt that I could and I would. But it never continued after Japan. It wasn't the right way to get me to do so.

I don't know what to tell people when they ask me why others pray and I don't. It's a personal choice, I might say, but if you knew that praying daily is practically compulsory for everyone, you'd wonder why I don't. Failure to pray is basically resigning yourself to an eternal afterlife in hell. What makes them pray and why don't I? I'm ashamed to say that I don't.

I think I believe that there is a God. It's not uppermost in my mind whether He exists or no, but certainly I am of the opinion that things happen for a divine reason. But I don't feel that need or that urge to get closer to Him, whatever praying is supposed to make you feel. Would I be happier if I was so much more devoted to God? Perhaps I'd be more secure with myself and not so self-conscious about what other people might think of me.

Sometimes I wonder why I couldn't have been born in another religion, or at least had the freedom to choose my own. But what would it have mattered, anyway? Devotion to God is the same in any other religion, and if I don't have a strong devotion to God now, what makes me think I'd have it in another? For all I know, I'd be equally apathetic to the idea. And choosing a religion isn't about choosing one with the easiest religious practices, otherwise it becomes just shallow and insincere.

I don't see myself changing any time soon. Maybe, in future, I'll come to my senses, if you will. Maybe I'll find that devotion to God.

Or maybe, this is really the belief I've created for myself with my mind, for the rest of my life. Whether I'll end up in Hell or no.

2011-06-08T01:14:00.002+08:00

You are my sunshine, my only sunshine
You make me happy when skies are grey
You'll never know, dear, how much I love you
Please don't take my sunshine away.

The other night, dear, as I lay sleeping
I dreamed I held you in my arms
When I awoke, dear, I was mistaken
And I hung my head and cried.

2011-05-17T22:14:00.002+08:00

I don't pay attention to dates much any more, since I hardly write them down on my worksheets anyway. So I was reminded by the Norwegian Olymping Curling Team's Pants' Facebook page that today is Norway's Constitution Day! Also known simply as Syttende Mai (17 May). Just so happens that in Singapore and other Asian countries it's also Vesak Day! Oh lol we're both having public (well theirs is National...) holidays.

Happy Vesak Day, and gratulerer med dagen!

And it's interesting, I was looking at the Wikipedia entry for May 17, and it said:

"Although May 17 is the National Day, it is an inclusive kind of nationalism. Therefore any foreigner who happens to be there on this day can expect to have a flag thrust into their hand and is welcome to join in with all activities."

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_Constitution_Day

Really? 8D Ooh, I want.

2011-05-14T12:07:00.002+08:00

I've been having rather vivid dreams involving classmates and schoolmates recently. I think I can attribute those to my increased stress levels due to the impending Critcomm deadline.

Dream #1

...too disturbing to recount. Involves a certain someone being unnaturally possessive over his "collection".

Dream #2

Dreamt about this in Econs class. Before you say, "OMG YOU SLEPT IN CLASS?!" - well, yes, I did, BUT I DON'T TAKE ECONS HAHA. Rhubbini and I moved to the back of the class so we wouldn't disturb the lesson and we just took a nap before PE.

Mr Neo was where we had left him when we fell asleep, still teaching Econs to 11A01F. Rhubbini and I decided to go get lunch, so we walked towards nearby Marymount Station. There I saw Aloysius and Samuel in their school uniforms dropping their bags off at the side of the exit, and as we got closer I saw that they had polling cards in their hands. My first thought was "HAHA I GET TO GO FOR LUNCH AND YOU HAVE TO SPEND YOUR LUNCH HOUR VOTING!". They were in front of us down the really long escalator (much like Bras Basah's), and well, I had nothing to say to them.

At the nearest shopping mall Rhubbini and I split up to get our lunch - I think one of us went to get a burger, but I can't remember who. After a while we gathered again near the escalator - there was a guy nearby usually called Chia, I think, and he had two bottles of mineral water in his hands. Rhubbini and I went back to school and for some reason, followed Mr Neo to his next Econs class which was with 11A03B. Bei Qing was crying in her seat because she had failed her Econs lecture test.

ALRIGHT. Apparently in my dream boys (or just RI boys) are eligible to vote at 18. And I know Bei Qing would never cry over a simple lecture test!

2011-05-04T09:19:00.002+08:00

I've lived in my current home for 13 years. Longer than some people have ever been in theirs. Moving all the time, every four years, three, maybe five. And before that, my house before this one, I lived in it for five years since I was born, but my parents had been there since they were married. How many years was that then? Nearly eleven years. That's why I have such a strong attachment to home. I hate the idea that people could just use their home as some stupid investment, only wanting to gain money out of it. A little gain, alright! We'll sell! NO! I hate that! I'm angry that people could value their home so little! I'm confident Mama would never sell the house in the near future, probably not until all of us get married and then she'll no longer have need of a large five-room house. Only then would she ever consider selling!

I feel so disillusioned now about our own government. GP lessons have certainly opened my eyes, but I can't help feeling that perhaps I might be better off not knowing (though I know it isn't true!) because I feel so down after! I don't want to be part of all this! I want to live simply, I don't want to be disturbed by all this politics business, oh terrible, terrible stuff.

2011-04-13T01:11:00.005+08:00

It's a little belated, but it bears celebrating all the same...

HAPPY YURI'S NIGHT!
Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the first manned spaceflight.
Go watch First Orbit now!

2011-04-08T13:07:00.003+08:00

Meh.

That's all I can say for PW results, really. I mean, PW isn't that particularly important for me because I know all I'm aiming for is NUS, and it seems to me that university entry requirements only seem to state needing passes in 2 H2 subjects, 1 H1 subject and GP. I suppose since PW is a H1 subject you could count it under that H1 pass but I think I'll have a better chance at getting an A in Math, thanks. And anyway, I had already expected a B from the beginning; if the A-rate is so low this year why would I think the work from our group would actually merit a B?

But am I saying "Meh" only because I didn't get an A? If I had got an A would I have been like HOLY FUCKING HELL YEAH AN A! rather than this apathy that I feel now? I don't know. I like to think that I'd still be the same apathetic self that I am now, but who knows? I only say that because let's face it, the reality is that I have a B, I expected a B, and nothing can change that, so there we go. True, I'd be happy if I got an A, but somehow I'm thinking it wouldn't have mattered much really in the grand scheme of things because, IDK. Not much point thinking about that situation now.

So meh.

And to be honest, really, I think I'd rather save my screams of "OH MY GOD" for next year when the rest of the A-level results come out. Both types of OH MY GOD, depending, though I'd really love for the positive. And really? The canteen floor? I'd have chosen a better place to collapse in joy.

2011-03-26T00:41:00.002+08:00

HAHAAAAH HOLEY CHEESE THE START OF THE 2011 F1 SEASON IS FINALLY UPON US!

...UNFORTUNATELY NTV7 IS NO LONGER AIRING THE F1 RACES WHUT. :( WHERE WILL I GET MAI FIX NOW?!

To start off the season I joined Singtel's Fantasy F1 league, heheh. You can make a total of five teams but I decided for simplicity's sake I'd just have two. Each team has a budget of $100m to 'buy' four drivers, an engine and two constructors, plus a 'free' bonus circuit where you can get double points from. My two teams are called Carpentaria and St. Maarten (I wanted Jan Mayen and Bouvetoya - Bouvet Island - but they wouldn't let me).

Carpentaria has Sebastian Vettel (RBR), Michael Schumacher (MGP), Jaime Alguersuari (STR) and Paul di Resta (FIF). I chose a Ferrari engine and the two constructors are Red Bull Racing and Force India F1. Bonus circuit: Turkey.

On the other hand, with more middle runners, St. Maarten has Jenson Button (MCM), Adrian Sutil (FIF), Kamui Kobayashi (SFT) and Sergio Perez (SFT). With more money to spare I chose a Renault engine instead, and the two constructors are Mercedes GP and Scuderia Ferrari. Bonus circuit: Shanghai.

Starting from tomorrow we'll see which is the better team!

2011-03-18T21:37:00.002+08:00

I dreamt I was in Japan with the rest of my class.

It was late in the evening, and we were standing at an intersection of a busy Japanese city. We were trying to get to a place called Orchard 18, and for some reason I felt a sense of familiarity with that place, I knew where to go, we could just walk but I wasn't so sure of it so we decided to take a bus. We boarded a double-decker bus much like the new SBS ones, and at the side they had a fare machine with a map on it. Orchard 18 was only one stop away, and the bus ticket cost 550 yen (SGD8.50; that's fucking expensive for one stop!).

Everyone paid for their tickets first while I rummaged around my coin pouch for the required coins; as I went to pay for my ticket the bus had already arrived at Orchard 18. I quickly pressed the button on the fare machine but it wouldn't let me pay for the ticket, and then the bus suddenly drove off stranding me on it while the others had already alighted. I tried to pay for the next stop but it wouldn't respond either, and by then the bus was nearly two stops away from Orchard 18.

I started to panic, but another bus driver had got on the bus and helped me with it, letting me alight at the next stop without paying. We had alighted at some nondescript building right next to a large rain drain where some kids were playing with a frisbee.

And then I somehow found myself in school, at Block A. It was the time between lessons when people were all moving to their other classes. I didn't have any lessons then so I just wandered around.

At Block B I entered this big classroom that resembled a small ballroom on the inside, complete with wood panelling, parquet flooring and large, almost floor-to-ceiling windows. One of the windows, oddly enough, had streams of water shooting out of the panes like a sprinkler. Avoiding that, I had nearly walked the entire length of the room when a J1 kid ran in with a super soaker. He chased me around the room, trying to spray me several times and nearly succeeding. I found a sizeable water gun (though not as big as his) somewhere in the room and I too joined in the fun. I quickly ran out of water and hurriedly escaped from the room to refuel at the girls' toilet at Block A.

I had managed to run out as far as halfway through Block A when I looked over at the other side and noticed that he had exited on the third floor instead of the fourth where I was. He had been stopped by a female Geog teacher, Ms Michelle Goh - she sat in on my Physical Geog lessons rather often. The boy had accidentally soaked her and I saw her take out a yellow booklet to give him a white slip. He started to argue with her and then pointed upwards, and I knew he was telling the teacher that there was another person playing with water guns with him. Bastard!

I tried to stay close to the wall as I headed back to the ballroom to get my shoes. As I passed by them overhead, suddenly he looked up and saw me. I put on my shoes quickly and ran for it, weaving through the crowd (the lessons had just ended). The water gun I had used was hastily assembled again and left behind at Block A, as if no one had touched it. I knew he was running after me too, leading Ms Goh behind him to me.

Somehow I stupidly ran towards the staffroom staircase. I had just walked past the staffroom doors when I heard her voice right behind me coming up the stairs. She was talking to another boy wearing a navy blue hoodie - I recognised him as a fellow J2 whom I saw around school rather often, wearing Raffles-coloured specs (white-rimmed, with green and black sides). I quickly turned my face away from them and made a move to walk away nonchalantly. It was then that I heard that he was missing a left shoe, and she told him to keep looking for it. I glanced down at my own shoes, and was shocked to see that I was wearing mismatched shoes - one white-and-red, my own sport shoe; and the other navy blue, NOT my own. It belonged to the boy, and it just so happened that the boy was the J1 kid's friend! If I got caught with his shoe I'd be caught for the water guns too, and all hell would break loose.

I started to run again. I had to hide in a safe place where I could take off the shoes and just walk around in my socks or something if needed. The boy was behind me, I knew it. I thought the best place I could hide in was the girls' toilet, because they'd never be able to go in there. I turned into a narrow corridow that led out to what seemed like an amusement park. I forced my way past the crowd going out and took a travelator going up the slope. I turned around to check if he was behind me, and I looked down to see the boy trying to look for me in the crowd. He took another travelator running parallel to my own, though luckily for me his stopped one floor earlier than mine.

I ran for it. I vaulted over tables and chairs where families were sitting and eating and I hid behind them. I had no choice but to take off the shoes now. The boy's navy blue shoes weren't laced, they were velcro-strapped shoes. I debated going barefoot, because with my socks on I might not have grip if I was forced to run, but in the end I left them on. I slipped and slid down the parquet flooring of the amusement park and out towards the main part of the school. I decided to run downstairs instead of upstairs to the fifth - seventh floors because it felt like there was a higher chance I'd run into Ms Goh there and I wouldn't have an escape route anyway. The second floor seemed like the best bet.

I ran downstairs, but I didn't keep track of the floors and I thought I'd just go back up when I hit the first floor. Halfway down a flight of steps though, I saw a large torso of a man walking up, so tall I couldn't see his face, though he was wearing a long-sleeved blue shirt. I ran up to the next floor (which happened to be the second floor) and went to the other staircase. There, an entire class seemed to be having a class party, and they all had water guns and super soakers with them. I was outraged! How could the teacher book that J1 guy and run around chasing me when there was an ENTIRE CLASS doing the same thing! If she ever tried to book me I'd challenge her to book the rest of these people playing around with water guns too.

-----------

This dream occurred when I thought I'd try something different - I had heard that people absorb information better when they read it before they sleep, and that information might even manifest in the dream state. I read a bit of my urban geography notes just before I slept, and instead of dreaming about gentrification and suburbanisation I ended up dreaming of a Geog teacher chasing me around school to give me a white slip.

The odd thing was that there were so many people I knew all over the place! I saw Jazlyn's class going for lessons in Block A, Mr Benjamin Tan sitting on a chair in front of a class he was teaching, the J1 boy with the water gun resembled the J1 kid hanging around Izabel yesterday (named Dion or something), not to mention the Geog teacher and the J2 student. And then there was Liz and Cheng Ee in the first part going to Orchard 18.

2011-03-13T22:05:00.006+08:00

They said they were thankful I wasn't there in Japan when the 8.9-magnitude quake hit; I was thankful they were here.

Chiba prefecture wasn't directly hit by the quake, but the shock felt even there would have been great. When I was in Japan there were minor earthquakes measuring about 2 - 3 on the Japanese Meteorological Agency's Seismic Intensity Scale, and all that happened in the house was a small sensation of the tables vibrating, the light swaying from side to side just a little, the pots and pans on the rack trembling enough just to be visible.

I checked the JMA website for the intensity of the 8.9 quake felt in Chiba; it was classified as a lower 5, which must've been terribly intense. Videos on Citizentube of people in other prefectures showed cupboards falling, everything just falling onto the floor and there was such an intense shaking. I remember what my aunt's place looks like, they have cupboards of ceramic plates and mugs and bowls in their kitchen; I suppose when they return they'll be looking at a whole lot of broken glass on the floor, unless they've somehow secured the cupboard doors.

Seeing them again, however briefly - hearing them talk in Japanese again, my aunt alternating between a mix of English and Malay and Japanese, explaining things to Uncle Tomo, just like she did in Japan - made me feel a certain longing, remembering the two weeks I was there with them. And I've got to add, Uncle Tomo's always pleasantly surprised whenever he hears any of us utter a Japanese word or phrase we know, he gets excited and tries to point it out to my aunt, haha. It's like he's happy that we take some effort to get to know his language, his culture - like when my younger cousin and I took the effort to eat with chopsticks all throughout our stay in Japan, and try out Japanese foods we had never eaten before, and he was rather pleased to find out some of our tastes mirrored his own, like eating potato salad with liberal amounts of takoyaki sauce. It tastes damn nice, I swear.

And then I suddenly remembered an instance at my aunt's house where I had to pick up the phone because my aunt was in the bathroom, and so the conversation went roughly like this:

Caller: Moshi moshi.
Me: Er, moshi moshi.
Caller: (can't remember what she said but I think she meant to ask for my aunt)
Me: Uh...(tries to remember what 'wait a minute' is in Japanese, fails, yells out to my aunt)...chotto matte kudasai.
Caller: Hai.

First conversation in Japanese success! Somewhat. I mean, she didn't seem to pick up I didn't actually know any Japanese, but then again it's hard to tell over the phone and with such few words. Another instance, the caretaker of the building recognised us as staying with my aunt and tried to make small conversation with us in halting English - just mentioning how hot Singapore is - and me just nodding and smiling politely (oh dear).

I wish they'd stay here longer. It was such a bittersweet farewell when I shook Uncle Tomo's hand as I left, and he said "Ja mata ne (See you soon)" and I didn't realise they'd be leaving early next morning, or in just a few hours and I won't be seeing them again for quite some time.

Well then, I hope what he says will be true, and I pray they will all be well until then.

2011-03-06T23:38:00.000+08:00

Well, I'd like to visit the moon
On a rocket ship high in the air
Yes, I'd like to visit the moon...

I've always dreamed of going somewhere. Norway. Iceland. Denmark. Saint Helena. Antarctica. Sometimes I imagine living there. A tiny city loft in Copenhagen. Can't say anything about Antarctica, it's near impossible to winter there. But Norway or Iceland would be a great place to park a tiny Tumbleweed house (I ♥ the look of the Weebee!) on a small patch of land.

I imagine it to be a small, squarish, maybe rectangular patch of land just in front of a row of forest trees, right next to a small dirt road perhaps. Not so well-used as to be inconvenient, but enough so I won't be so alone. Perhaps it would be located in a small village in the hills, facing the sea, a little away from the village centre. I'd build a short wooden fence around the perimeter, and the house would be on one side of the land, tucked neatly in a corner, maybe shaded by a tree. In the middle, taking up most of the land would be a rectangular vegetable plot where I'd grow my own food. On the other side of the land would be a shed to keep my vegetables and my garden tools in, beside it the compost heap. In winter I'd have harvested all my vegetables, maybe pickled them in jars or dried them for future use. I'd be very snug and warm in my tiny little house with its tiny little heater and the warm loft bed above.

Maybe I'd keep a cat for some constant company. It would be a very lovely scene, all curled up in the front room sofa with a cat in my lap, looking at the snow fall; it would be such a dream...

...but I don't think I'd like to live there.
Though I like to look down at the Earth from above
I would miss all the places and people I love

And then I realised, that as much as I dream of living in quiet, peaceful solitude, surrounded by a wonderful, magical environment full of beautiful green scenery as I imagine it, I'd miss my family so much. How could I stand to live away from my parents and my siblings? And maybe, when I go there, it won't be all as I imagined it to be. Perhaps it's only such a thrill to you when you visit, but living there is an entirely different thing. Another language, unfamiliar people, jobs, maybe you'll face real racism as it is sometimes in Europe, what if you have to give up your original nationality? And you'll be all alone.

And I hate the dark. It can get very dark up there, in the winter months. Sometimes the sun won't even show his face. Can I withstand that? Surely not. I'd go mad. And it's cold. I don't very much fancy the cold. I went to Japan nearing the end of autumn and even before the two weeks were up I was sorely missing the toasty thirty-degree weather here. And it felt so lonely and dark and cold when the day began to fade at four in the afternoon. It felt like there was much less time to do anything, like every day my life was shorter. And when I went out in the day, to Shinjuku or Harajuku or wherever else I went, coming back I had to walk such a long way to my aunt's house, and along the way it was so dark and quiet and no one really talked, they were alone in their silent little world. Along the route there was that cheap shop where I bought all my stuff, and I loved it, not only because it was cheap after all, but also because it was so bright in the darkness and it was so warm when you went in, and it was open until late at night, even in winter. Other shops would close at six, but they would stay open until eleven.

So although I may go I'll be coming home soon
'Cause I don't want to live on the moon.

I wondered why the song touched me so dearly, and then I realised it was trying to tell me something. I hadn't exactly looked at the lyrics so intently before this, but today I seemed to pay such careful attention to it that I realised it applied very much to me, whatever Ernie's thoughts and feelings were in the lyrics they resounded deeply in me. Like some sort of resolution. I know my dreams will always be dreams. I know I won't live there, I doubt I ever would have the will or the courage to even if I wanted to. But I can visit. And when I go I can always come back here.

No, I don't want to live on the moon.

2011-02-24T19:10:00.002+08:00

I have a violin now.

I suddenly have a violin.

I'm not very sure what to do with it, because all along I was planning to learn how to play the violin only after A Levels, but now that it's here...maybe I should get used to some basic fingering and bowing, where the notes are, etc.

AHHHHH I HAVE AN ACTUAL VIOLIN.

2011-02-20T20:20:00.002+08:00

Ciphers are rather tedious to do, I'll tell you that.

Actually I have nothing to say, but simply leaving a ciphered post at the very top of the page just seems to beg for it to be deciphered, and I don't want it to be deciphered. Which would be why I ciphered it in the first place. And then perhaps you would tell me, "Don't put it up there, then!" but I want to and I have to, otherwise I'd burst. If you were as silent as I am, perhaps as someone seemed to imply so quiet they're nearly mute, then of course you'd need somewhere to put your thoughts down. On the bright side not a lot of people read my blog anyway so to some degree I reckon it should be safe.

The last time I invented a cipher it was in primary school. I picked the letters QWERTYUI from the keyboard and assigned pairs of letters from the selection to each letter of the alphabet. The letters forming the words were then separated from each other by a full stop, like this:

QW.ER.TY.UI.

The blog posts I wrote in the cipher have apparently been deleted, since Adil was very close to cracking it. I've forgotten what I wrote about in the cipher, and even if the blog posts did exist I've forgotten which letters the ciphers were assigned to. So, not much to be done, anyway.

Hahah, pointless post! Only served to highlight the fact that the previous post was ciphered (no kidding) and that I don't want it to be deciphered (which may instead instigate people to crack it if you've so much free time). Oh well. A post is a post.

2011-02-17T22:17:00.001+08:00

OCYG GHCU OVQZ EUDU ZCHI BHCB OKKI HBRU BHEU DOBP UBOB CXUU IHIU VZPC OIWU KOXD ZDPC HWOU BPCX DUZM VHLI OCYG GHCU PHYW HYKV WZKK OBBQ ZBOW ZKKO BBQZ BZIP LZPL QZBU KCUV HPHY WZKK OBLQ UIPH YDWQ ZODZ IVEO WUWQ ZODZ DUIH LVUW KZDU VBHX UHIZ CZXX ZBOW ZKLH DMOI RLOB QBQU CHWO UBPO ICBU ZVOI CHJU CHDB HTKO JOBU VWZG ZWOB PQHL UKCU CQHY KVPH YTUU KLQU IPHY DUKU WBUV KUZV UDCQ ZEUZ XZIV HIUV PHYT ZOKU VPHY

ZGGZ DUIB KPOB CIHL YGBH KUEO ZIVO BQUB LHDU JZOI OIRJ UJXU DCHT BQUU SWHB HBZM UYGC HJUH TBQU DHKU CBQU PQZE UKUT BXUQ OIVL QUIO QUZD VHTB QUIU LCOB CQHW MUVJ UOIB HCGU UWQK UCCI UCCO JIHB GDUG ZDUV THDB QOCO QZEU ZKLZ PCXU UICH JUHI UIUE UDGY BOIB HZKU ZVUD CQOG DHKU CHJU HIUI UEUD LZIB OIRZ KUZV UDCQ OGDH KUBH XUGD UWOC UZIV IHLP HYBU KKJU OKKU CCUI BOZK KPXU DYII OIRB QUCH WOUB PLOB QKUE OZDU PHYC UDOH YCQH

LVOV OBZK KRHL DHIR LZCO BPHY LQHC BZDB UVOB LZCO BPHY ZCBQ UQUZ VHTH YDCH WOUB PZCZ WHDD YGBU VQUZ VZIV OTPH YMIU LQZJ KUBZ WHDD YGBU VQUZ VWHD DYGB CBQU DUCB HTBQ UXHV PZIV IHLB QOCX HVPO CTZK KOIR ZGZD BUEU IXUT HDUB QUNY IOHD CQZE UCBU GGUV OIOB OCTZ KKOI RZGZ DBUE UIXU THDU BQUP MIUL BQUO DKUZ VUDC BQUP QZEU RHIU

OZJV OCZG GHOI BUVO ZJVO CZGG HOIB UVBQ ZBOB QZCR HIUB QOCL ZPOZ JVOC ZGGH OIBU VBQZ BLUL QHUK UWBU VPHY OIBQ UTOD CBPU ZDLU LQHG YBHY DBDY CBOI PHYZ CZWZ GZXK UKUZ VUDL UQZE UXUU IKUB VHLI XPPH YZIV HIWU OBQH YRQB OBLZ CZKD ORQB GUDQ ZGCO BLZC DZBQ UDVU EOHY CZIV OBZW BYZK KPTU KBDZ BQUD USWO BOIR XYBO IDUB DHCG UWBO RYUC CLUL UDUZ KKNY CBXU OIRG KZPU VXPP HYOV OVIB RUBZ IPHT OBOQ ZBUV OBZK KGHK OBOW CQZQ

ZIVI HLOC BOKK VHIB MIHL LQZB BHVH DUZK KPHB QUDB QZIT ZWOI RUEU DPBQ OIRL OBQZ RDOJ VUBU DJOI ZBOH ILQZ BUEU DWHJ UCJP LZPO TOQZ EUBH CBUG YGBH BQUG KZBU OIBQ UCHW OUBP XUJH DUHG UIBZ KMJH DULQ ZBUE UDOJ RHOI RBHV HOBB QOCO CZVU TOIO IRJH JUIB OBLO KKXU ZVUT OIOI RJHJ UIBO TOBD UZKK PQZC WHJU BHLQ ZBOB QOIM OBQZ CWHJ UBHO LOKK XUTZ WOIR OBQU ZVHI

2011-02-13T23:15:00.002+08:00

‘I have been contemplating on emotion.’

‘Emotion,’ said Dr Ramis.

‘Yes,’ said Stephen. ‘Emotion, and the expression of emotion. Now, in your fifth book, and in part of the sixth, you treat of emotion as it is shown by the cat, for example, the bull, the spider – I, too, have remarked the singular intermittent brilliance in the eyes of lycosida: have you ever detected a glow in those of the mantis?’

‘Never, my dear colleague: though Busbequius speaks of it,’ replied Dr Ramis with great complacency.

‘But it seems to me that emotion and its expression are almost the same thing. Let us take your cat: now suppose we shave her tail, so that it cannot shall I say perscopate or bristle; suppose we attach at board to her back, so that it cannot arch; suppose we then exhibit a displeasing sight – a sportive dog, for instance. Now, she cannot express her emotions fully: Quaere: will she feel them fully? She will feel them, to be sure, since we have suppressed only the grossest manifestations; but will she feel them fully? Is not the arch, the bottle-brush, an integral part and not merely a potent reinforcement – though it is that too?’

Dr Ramis inclined his head to one side, narrowed his eyes and lips, and said, ‘How can it be measured? It cannot be measured. It is a notion, a most valuable notion, I am sure; but, my dear sir, where is your measurement? It cannot be measured. Science is measurement – no knowledge without measurement.’

‘Indeed it can,’ cried Stephen eagerly.

- Master and Commander, Patrick O'Brian

2011-02-13T00:15:00.002+08:00

I miss the friends I had.
They're no longer mine.

To be more specific, they're no longer just mine. They're someone else's friends too, and I can't monopolize them all the time.

So I let them go.

I have things on my troubled mind.
I cannot forget what we had.

2011-02-08T00:34:00.000+08:00

It's cold. There's nothing around for miles. The wind's blowing. Bits of snow on your face. I'm laughing. It's the jungle. Monkeys hooting in the distance, the river flowing as a tiny stream nearby, but you know it's getting bigger later. Downstream. In a boat. It's roaring. Fast. Flood waters? It's more than usual. Fast flowing, where are we all going? The boat's full of people. I've got a hammock at the side. I should be safe, here, on this boat. But the river. Is roaring. Loudly. Maybe I'm not safe. I think I'm safe. But I'm not. I know why. I'm annoyed. The river is my work. It's rushing me, it needs to be overcome, but I'm still in this little boat thinking I'm safe, I'm alright, NO. THE BOAT. IT WILL BREAK. IT WILL BREAK SOON. Do you know how often they maintain these boats? No, you don't. It might break soon. It will break soon. Do you know? Do you? No, you have to overcome it now. NOW. Now. Now. The waters won't stay like this, you know it's going to flood, it's not high enough now, it will be higher, you have to get off the boat. JUMP INTO THE WATER. GET OFF THE BOAT. GET OFF, NOW. Take your luggage with you. Take it, take it, take it, jump, jump, jump, you have to jump, you have to go, now.

Take your luggage. Leave your hammock, you won't be sleeping tonight, you know you have a long way to swim. Throw it into the water. Are you prepared? Can you swim? You have to or you'll drown. You'll either drown or you'll swim, maybe a bit of both, but you have to jump now.

Jump now before it's too late.

There is nothing else you are meant to do.

The ship goes nowhere.

Jump now.

Now.

Jump.

Now.

2011-02-05T01:39:00.003+08:00

I completely, utterly regret staying in today. I had all day to go out - I was woken up at nine by some blasted lion dance troupe, but good luck for the rest of the year to them anyway - but I DIDN'T. I could have gone to Changi Airport which at any other normal day I would have totally jumped at the chance to but I DIDN'T. Why? Because I was being such a LAZY ARSE I kept putting it off until there was no time left to go. I COULD HAVE GONE. I didn't really even watch Shaolin Soccer until the end! Although perhaps I could argue that I did do some new things today, which was that I finally watched all three episodes of Sherlock which is oh so bloody brilliant, and three episodes of Fringe season three. And now I have to say that oh my god the Mio TV free preview is absolutely MARVELLOUS. I can watch practically EVERYTHING on it BUT it's only until this Sunday which does leave me quite a bit of time to watch it but it's not like I've got all the time in the world to sit in front of that TV (although, how I wish). But in some ways you might say it doesn't justify the whole wasted potential of having gone out! Got some fresh air, been to the AIRPORT WHICH I DO LOVE, and possibly eaten Popeye's! Bought some gummies at Candy Empire no matter how expensive, perhaps. ALL WASTED OPPORTUNITIES, HOW. COULD. I. NOT. HAVE. GONE! Only in retrospect could I say all this, plan all this, but in the afternoon when I thought about it all I could see was a calculated waste of time. GOD! I SHOULD LIVE MORE, YOU STUPID ARSE! The world could end tomorrow and the only thing you could say was that you stayed in to watch the telly! Although actually if the world did end tomorrow I could say I spent an entire day at home with my family which is what quite a lot of people would want to do on their last day. Maybe it's not so bad after all, but if you think about it, only if it was made in that context. Hmm.

2011-01-19T22:15:00.006+08:00

I realise I didn't write an after-trip report. I don't actually feel like writing one, but knowing me, once I start a sentence on it I'll probably ramble on until the end and find that I have just done that.

I can still remember the trip back to Singapore, from when I stepped out of my aunt's house every step of the way to Changi Airport. I decided to wear something nice that day, so I wore grey tights underneath a black-and-white knit dress worn over a black turtleneck. Going out I wore a very nice black jacket my aunt gave me that formerly belonged to my cousin. My upper half was rather nice and warm, but my legs ended up being rather cold, haha, the tights not being thermal and all.

I left the house earlier because I wanted to go to Mother Garden at Narita Terminal 2, which wasn't where the United Airlines check-in counter was at. I took a few pictures of the house before I left, and I felt...well, that was going to be the last time in a very long time I'd ever see it again. Perhaps even the last time I'd see it, if I wasn't ever going to return to Japan. The last time I might see my aunt at all. But I couldn't linger, could I? Stay around and soak in the atmosphere, memorize every layout of the house, etch it deeply into my memory so that I could walk around in it at my own time if I felt like it. But I had to leave right there and then if I was going to make it to Mother Garden, shop around and get to the check-in counter on time. I mean, I still remember what the house looks like though. Where everything is, what's in the rooms. I didn't feel particularly sad then, but recalling it all now, how lonely my aunt must be, I do cry. All the experiences I had there are now a world away.

I still remember my idiotic half-baked attempt at trying to cycle to the sea. I had the keys to my aunt's old bike, and I printed out a Google map with vague instructions on how to get there, like "Head west 25m", "Turn left 140m", and "Turn right at random Japanese characters to get on the random Japanese character highway". I thought it wasn't going to be too bad, until I set off and realised I had 1) no sense of direction here, and 2) no sense of distance. "Turn left 140m" ended up being "OH GOD HOLY SHIT HOW FAR IS 140M DO I TURN HERE OR FURTHER UP?!". So I ended up cycling around aimlessly in circles, even ending up approaching a toll gate where the Japanese officer came out of his booth to shout something in Japanese to me and wave me away. I think he was just telling me I wasn't allowed through, so I made an 'Oh okay' expression, nodded like I understood him and turned around sheepishly.

I felt rather awesome going to Narita all by myself. I had walked the route to Kaijin station only once, when my aunt led us from the station to her house at 5pm when it was already dark, so being able to remember the route right off the bat in the day was pretty cool. And being alone on the trip all the way to Narita Airport made me feel like I was truly travelling alone, going home etc. LOLOL OKAY I kinda want to mention it but on the train ride these group of schoolboys boarded the train, like middle school kids, and next to me they started playing the thumb game hahahahaha. OK back to narration.

MOTHER GARDEN. OH MY GOD MOTHER GARDEN. HAS THE FUCKING CUTEST THINGS EVAR. SIROTAN. USAMOMO. HOLEY CHEESE IT'S JUST...ZOMG. The most unfortunate thing is that they don't ship outside Japan, wtfuck! I spent all my remaining yen at Mother Garden, it was crazy - between my own purchases as well as my sister's we spent 10000 yen there, I bet the salesgirls must've been like THIS CRAZY GAIJIN WHAT IS SHE DOING. I bought two sets of Usamomo dolls, one pink Usamomo for my sister and one Rosie doll for me. And then to finish it off I bought a Sirotan coin pouch as well as the airport-limited JAL Sirotan plushie, and for my sister an Usamomo coin pouch as well as a tiny Sailor Sirotan handphone strap. I hugged my new Sirotan plushie to sleep in the plane, haha!

And then it was time to go. We said our goodbyes at the departure gate, and my aunt had tears down her face. She hugged us all tightly and wished us well. I wonder how it must be like for her, slogging away in Japan without family there, not being able to see her sisters and nephews and nieces whenever she wanted and perhaps always missing important things that happen over here. Not knowing when we'd come back to visit again, because we can't always visit every year, and even my fourth aunt who brought me there said she would much rather go someplace else like South Korea for a holiday, but out of pity for my first aunt she goes to Japan once every few years. Mama told her she should come back to Singapore and stay here where it's easier, but she doesn't want to. All throughout the trip she told me, when she's earned enough money and they're ready to retire she'll move to Malaysia.

On the plane I was seated right next to the window, and next to me was an American who had travelled all the way from the plane's origin: Denver, Colorado. We made some small talk, like him asking me if I was visiting Singapore ("Haha, no, uh, I stay there.") and he told me he was going to Singapore on a business trip, his company having some dealings with local firms. He slept a lot throughout the flight, and I was wondering why until I realised he had been on the plane from Denver, with stopovers at Seattle and Tokyo and that would've been a hella long flight, practically 24 hours on planes wth. I fell asleep shortly after take-off, and when I woke up people had just finished their dinner. I had no idea you could ask for your dinner at any time, and so I FUCKING MISSED DINNER ORZ. Ended up just eating the mini-pretzels they gave out earlier as snacks. =.=

While the American guy was filling out the immigration form I got a glimpse of his passport! I don't know about you but I found it funny and so typically American that they'd have a large eagle printed on the inside of the passport, on the first page where they have some sort of pledge or something written on it.

The night sky's absolutely beautiful up there, you can see so many stars! but I couldn't see them properly because the windows just aren't made for it, being tiny, narrow and double-paned. And Singapore is totally light-polluted haha, could see it coming from several miles away. Actually I got confused at first about which one Singapore was, because before we got to the light-polluted area there were some islands that were rather decently lit and I thought that was us, but I should've known better! Speaking of planes, I LOVE THE ACCELERATION YOU FEEL WHEN THE PLANE'S GOING TO TAKE OFF. It's like being in a race car or something, just that real sense of speed and the force of it pushing you back into the seat. S'awesome.

And that's it, I guess. SEE I SAID I'D TOTALLY END UP WRITING IT.

2010-12-01T05:27:00.004+08:00

I haven't been sleeping very well recently. Here I always wake up several times throughout the night, my eyes staring blankly at the darkness not knowing what time it is. Just now I had the weirdest yet by far a rather cool dream...

Jazlyn and I were on a plane headed for Osaka, Japan. Well, at least some part of Japan that started with an 'O' anyway. When it landed at the airport, the passengers were split up into two: those who were transiting on to Osaka, and those who were getting off here (Moscow). On some reckless, rash move both of us decided to get off at Moscow, not caring whether we had roubles or accomodation. The immigration officer at my counter was a large, middle-aged woman with blonde curly hair. Like those stereotypical old Russian ladies. She checked my passport and then gave me a key to open a locker from a row at the side. When I opened it I found a meal inside. Suddenly it felt like I was a prisoner just being handed the first meal of the day. I think Jazlyn had immigration problems, because I never saw her again from there...

[Interlude: I remember some part of the dream had a bit where I was in a dark corridor and someone evil had trapped us there. In a flashback (oddly titled Accidental Boyfriend) I had the opportunity to change that fact or at least find out who did it to us. I ran out of the room into the dark corridor and I saw who else but Neville Longbottom (lol). I told him who I was looking for, and then behind us snuck this old wrinkled guy in a cloak. Neville went to threaten him, and then at the far end of the corridor another shadow moved across. I tried to alert Neville to the other presence here, but then we were both overpowered by some unknown thing.

When I woke up I was in a bed and Neville in the other, Mrs Weasley between us, and she whispered something along the lines of "I didn't know you two were together". I told her that wasn't the case (aha so that's how the title came about!) and then two large owls flew over. Mrs Weasley went to attend to them and I saw another smaller owl watching me from afar. I approached it and saw that it had a tiny rolled up note clutched in its talons. I removed it and unrolled it - it was a long piece of yellow paper, and in the middle was a note from Jazlyn. I didn't get the chance to read it, though, because we were soon hustled away by Mrs Weasley.]

...and then I got captured by Voldemort's followers. I was in the Ministry of Magic, probably the Department of Mysteries because the walls were so white and nondescript, and I had disguised myself as one of the researchers in a white lab coat. It felt like someone was following close behind me, so I started to run through the white corridor until I saw a faint shadow far ahead of me approaching. I turned right into a random corridor and quickly sat down in a doorway, leaning my head against the wall and closing my eyes when I heard someone approaching.

A man and a woman carrying their lunches, both wearing white lab coats, simply passed me by and entered the room. Another two women, with their lunches as well, sat down right in front of me and started to eat. They must've figured I was simply another one of those unfortunate researchers killed by Voldemort's followers and left to die at the side of the corridor. As I lay there wondering what to do next, I heard someone say loudly "Stupido! Lumos." several times over as they approached. Suddenly Gracia came into view, waving her wand at individual people and chanting the spells over and over again. She was performing Memory Charms on them and trying to find me.

I quickly got up and approached her, saying "You don't have to do that!". She gave me my wand and I swept it over entire groups of people as I said the spells. As their memories were erased they all stood up looking dazed. I did this for a few more groups of people before I was satisfied all (or at least most) had their memories successfully wiped. Gracia looked rather surprised and said "I didn't know you could do that!". We were then joined by other members of the Order. We ran around trying to create as much havoc as possible - I opened the door of a lab just a crack enough to slip my wand in and let go a Stunning Spell - until men in black armour suits emerged from the labs, waving black wands around. They looked vastly different from the traditional wooden ones.

I tried to Stun and Disarm them but my spells were useless against them. I quickly realized that this was what the Ministry was developing - special body armour able to resist spells AND wands that were able to be used by Muggles. Except that the wand part wasn't working too well. They tried to wave them at us, but only weak points of light emerged from their wands. Well, lucky for us.

-----------

Before you say it, I know the incantation for Memory Charms is "Obliviate!" and not "Stupido! Lumos!". Don't ask me about what my subconscious comes up in my sleep, we're like two different people in one head. Unfortunately my subconscious is awesomer. Though scarier, I'll describe my other dream another day...

(To remind myself, it has something to do with ghosts and broken gardens.)

2010-11-27T18:48:00.003+08:00

Sixth day in Japan.

I went to LaLaPort in the afternoon just to look around; the place is freaking huge. I took the Musashino Line from Nishi-Funabashi to Minami-Funabashi - cost me 150 yen to get there - and then from Minami-Funabashi it was simply a matter of following the huge LaLaPort signs and advertisements all the way to the mall, a walk of about 5 minutes. If there was a comparison on the types of shops available there, I'd say it's like Raffles City or Ngee Ann City. Full of high fashion brands. Some of their prices in yen are rather reasonable for brands and the designs are pretty OK, but then again there are coats for like tens of thousands of yen. WTF.

I bought some stickers from two shops, meant for my sister Muna and Jaz, and then from the Volks Showcase shop I saw some Hetalia merch hahahahaha. I haven't been active in the fandom for a very long time but I thought, heh cool might as well get them since I don't think I'll have much chance in the future. I bought three clip keychains for 550 yen each and one mini-figurine box for 714 yen. The random boxes were cheaper than the already opened ones - the random box for the clip keychains were 525 yen while the opened ones for the figurine box were 800 yen. I thought I'd just go for it and buy a random box for the figurine. I hoped very much I would get either Finland or Sweden, but when I opened the box it had brown boots. SHIT IT'S SPAINNNNN I'm not a fan of Spain. :( And then I unrolled the bubble wrap and it was GREECE :DDDDD Luckily I didn't buy the unboxed Greece hahahaha. Wasn't what I hoped for but at least it's Greece. No cats, though.

Yesterday we went to the area where my aunt works to see the Rainbow Bridge. When she said that, I instantly thought: "Hey, that's where Seishiro and Subaru had their showdown in X..." As it turned out, we weren't actually going on the bridge itself, but we were riding the Yurikamome Line that runs under the bridge. We ate lunch (consisting of onigiri, potato salad and assorted snacks) at the park by the seaside near Tokyo Big Sight, an exhibition centre much like Singapore Expo. We then took the train from Kokusai-tenjijo-seimon all the way to one end at Shimbashi, and then remained on the train all the way to the other end at Toyosu (where there is another LaLaPort mall) before getting off at Ariake where it connects to the Rinkai Line.

2010-11-22T20:27:00.003+08:00

GREETINGS FROM CHIBA, JAPAN!

I'm currently using my aunt's computer. Or my uncle's, probably, my aunt's not that used to computers. Just caught up with my mum, and now chatting to both TG and Jazlyn hahahaha. The Japanese keyboard's proving a bit hard to get used to - the bloody symbols are in all the wrong places and I keep accidentally pressing the kana mode. =/

Woke up at 4.15 in the morning today. Meant to wake up at 3.30, but I think people would know well I can sleep through a bomb. At the airport there were a lot of people on our flight. Many kids! Going to Tokyo, probably. And there was a girl who was travelling unaccompanied - she checked in before us at the counter. The flight I was on, UA876, was actually a connecting flight through Tokyo-Narita on to Denver. There was another connection, from Tokyo to Seattle, and then lastly Denver. Which explained why the plane was fully booked, and why there were so many Americans on the flight when I walked in.

As we walked towards the United Airlines check-in counter a man was making a scene at the enquiries counter. I overheard the staff say they had no reservation from him, and he yelled and sat down in the middle of the airport refusing to budge and wrestling with the SATS security officers. People said he was drunk and was booted off a previous flight on Thursday for assaulting a flight attendant, and now he was trying to force his way on a flight to Hong Kong today. They finally managed to subdue him and haul him off somewhere...

And some lady behind us told her kids the Denver plane was from DENMARK. I cringed horribly inside.

The plane ride here was...hmm, not to say awesome, but it was alright. I finally managed to watch Inception! Though, maybe I took too long to see it, but afterwards I didn't really think much of it at all. Not to the extent that people would rave intellectually about it. Or perhaps I already know everything hahahaha and that's why I'm not too bothered about it all. And I liked to look at the map! They had some information about the outside air temperature and altitude and stuff.

Ground Speed: 1085km/h
Altitude: 11000m
Outside Air Temperature: -50 degrees Celsius

AWESOME SHIZZ RIGHT? ZOMG that's like, close to Mach 1 hurhur that's so cool. And MINUS FIFTY DEGREES CELSIUS?! No wonder the cabin temperature was so damn cold! Oh, and just before we landed the plane encountered some turbulence and we went up and down like in a rollercoaster! Everyone went whoaaaa and was practically in mid-air off their seats for a split second.

At immigration they had us put both our index fingers on two scanners and even took our picture. Like a Neoprint. >_> I thought I didn't look too bad in it! We got to my aunt's place in Funabashi City by train, the Keisei Line to Funabashi and then switching to the local train to Kaijin. And then walking some more FFFFFF. Bloody luggage bags. Luckily when we go back it'll be easier since the bags will be emptier.

Hmm, weather here's around 16 degrees Celsius at the moment, much like a very cool aircon all around you. Gonna take a nice hot bath later :D Got to sleep by 11pm wtf! I won't be able to check tomorrow's geohashing coordinates!

And I'm missing The Amazing Race today too. :((((

2010-11-21T23:28:00.002+08:00

I forgot a post on my birthday this year. Not that there was anything of interest to note, except that we had a small rehearsal of our prospective A-level group piece and it was also Hari Raya Haji, but other than that, nope. Nothing at all.

I am now packing for Japan. The first time ever that I will be taking a commercial flight out of Singapore, or going anywhere beyond Singapore and Malaysia, for that matter. My aunt says I can use my cousin's clothes over there, but how many I'm borrowing I don't know - if I can't wear them I fear I'll have far too few clothes for the two-week trip. I just packed four long-sleeved shirts (two of which I'm wearing tomorrow) and there's a woollen dress which is the only pretty-looking thing in my luggage, but other than that...

Oh damn, my shoes won't match my woollen dress! I'm just wearing my TRACK SHOES. FFFFFUUUUUUUU-maybe my cousin has some fashionable boots I can borrow. Hopefully her feet are either the same size or bigger, because there's nothing I can do if they are small. Sigh. There is no space to be fashionable when you're travelling, unless you have a luggage allowance of an entire walk-in wardrobe. Or when, you know, you don't have to lug 10 kilos of food with you, dammit. Certainly when I want to go to Europe I'll have to do the same, too. Dammit.

ARGH DAMMIT.

2010-11-15T01:53:00.002+08:00

AHHHH okay zomg lol you know before this I would've just written off Vitaly Petrov as one of those midfield runners AND THEN SUDDENLY in this race EVERYONE AND THEIR SAINTED AUNT knows him for successfully blocking Fernando Alonso and thoroughly pissing him off. There are memes on Tumblr now with Petrov all over it and haha it's gloriously awesome. THE AWESOME PETROV. Except to, y'know, Ferrari fans. They're probably voodoo-ing him right now or something, but the collective positive force of everyone else is just pushing all those negative vibes away.

AND SEBASTIAN VETTEL. AHHHH THE DEAR, ADORABLE BOY. God I never thought I would ever have like a celebrity crush or anything so bad like this but ZOMG there you go I have one and it is this lovely, lovely boy. Okay so he's like six years older than me but meh, who cares, everyone else is saying it. And he's already got a girlfriend - super awesomely lucky girl! ♥♥♥

He's had his ups and downs throughout the whole season - some driving errors, some reliability issues - but he's come through all of that always smiling and looking forward to the next race, never brooding on what might have been, and up to the very end never letting the pressure of the championship get to him. And in the end, he's up there on the podium with the Drivers' Championship title deservedly in his hands.

Sebastian Vettel, you golden boy, you rock.

2010-11-14T23:34:00.002+08:00

HO MY GOD I WOULD'VE THOUGHT THAT SCENARIO NUMBER ONE: SEBASTIAN VETTEL WINNING WAS LIKE, SO IMPROBABLE BECAUSE THERE WAS LITTLE CHANCE THAT ALONSO WOULD SCREW UP AND SOMEHOW DROP BEHIND THIS RACE.

AND SUDDENLY...

GOLDEN BOY IS YOUNGEST EVER WORLD CHAMPION

NOW I MUST GO FULFIL THE PROMISE I MADE TO GOD SO THAT SEBASTIAN WOULD WIN. I WON'T REGRET IT.

ALSO THANKS BE TO THE AWESOME VITALY PETROV FOR STICKING IT TO ALONSO HURHUR

DID YOU SEE THAT SPOILT BRAT DRIVE UP TO THE AWESOME PETROV AND SHOW HIM THE BIRD FOR IMPEDING HIM WHAT ALONSO YOU GONNA CRY BB? WHAT DID PETROV DO WRONG, RACE?

Congratulations to Sebastian Vettel and Red Bull Racing for a clean sweep of the Constructors' as well as the Drivers' Championships. :)

2010-11-08T02:32:00.003+08:00

WORLD DRIVERS' CHAMPIONSHIPS

Sebastian Vettel - 231 + 25 = 256 (5 wins)
Mark Webber - 238 + 18 = 256 (4 wins)
Fernando Alonso - 246 + 8 = 254 (5 wins)

For Vettel to win, he must finish FIRST at Abu Dhabi and Webber finishes no higher than SECOND, Alonso no higher than SIXTH.

IF
Sebastian Vettel - 231 + 25 = 256 (5 wins)
Fernando Alonso - 246 + 10 = 256 (5 wins)

Vettel - 5 wins, 2 seconds, 3 thirds, 3 fourths
Alonso - 5 wins, 2 seconds, 3 thirds, 2 fourths

Vettel finishes FIRST and Alonso finishes SIXTH, Vettel wins by having ONE more fourth place finish.

Mark Webber - 238 + 25 = 263 (5 wins)
Sebastian Vettel - 231 + 18 = 249 (4 wins)
Fernando Alonso - 246 + 15 = 261 (5 wins)

For Webber to win, he must finish FIRST at Abu Dhabi and Vettel finishes no higher than SECOND, Alonso no higher than THIRD.

Fernando Alonso - 246 + 10 = 256 (5 wins)
Mark Webber - 238 + 18 = 256 (4 wins)
Sebastian Vettel - 231 + 18 = 249 (4 wins)

For Alonso to win, he must finish higher than SIXTH at Abu Dhabi, and neither Vettel nor Webber must score higher than SECOND.

Lewis Hamilton - 222 + 25 = 247 (4 wins)
Fernando Alonso - 246 + 0 = 246 (5 wins)
Sebastian Vettel - 231 + 15 - 246 (4 wins)
Mark Webber - 238 + 8 = 246 (4 wins)

For Hamilton to win, he must finish FIRST at Abu Dhabi, Vettel finishes no higher than THIRD, Webber finishes no higher than SIXTH and Alonso scores no points at all.

So in other words...he's got to sabotage the two Red Bull cars as well as Alonso's such that they never leave their garages.

2010-11-06T15:53:00.002+08:00

A NEW RECORD: Wednesday was a three-plane day!

I was walking to school in the morning and I always look up to the sky to check if there are any planes in the air. Sometimes none, sometimes one - rarely there are two, and then suddenly that day there were THREE in a row!

I wouldn't say that the day itself was spectacular in any way, but I still like to predict how my days will go based on whether I see a plane in the morning and how many there are. I always see more late in the year, when the winds change. I don't know where the planes come from, though, and whether they are civilian passenger planes or military passenger planes, etc. Still! Makes my morning very nicely whenever I see one.

SIXTEEN MORE DAYS TO JAPAN. Zomg. My first time ever on a commercial flight, and my first time ever out of Southeast Asia.

I bought a CASIO Exilim EX-Z16 at Gain City's Get IT Fair at Singapore EXPO yesterday. $179.00, not bad I reckon. My mum and I dragged my brother there specifically to test the cameras before I bought anything, 'cause he's the only one who actually knows anything about this kind of thing. The first camera we saw was the Exilim, but we thought we'd look around before we came to a decision - in the end we went back to the Exilim and bought it, haha. Then the three of us proceeded to bicker over the choice of colour, resulting in amused laughs from the two salespeople there. (Random note: My mum noticed the taller one was left-handed.)

The taller one said most girls pick between black and pink, because silver's too common a colour and girls don't want that, apparently. It's true to me, I'd have picked red right away if it wasn't out of stock, so I thought I'd go for black. My brother said black would overheat faster, and my mum thought it would be too easy to lose because it would camouflage with other things in the house. I didn't want silver, obviously, so...I settled for pink. Hmm, on retrospect, maybe I should've taken black after all.

SIXTEEN MORE DAYS ORZ. I feel totally unprepared for a completely different country that's chock full of people and doesn't natively speak English or any language I know. =/

2010-10-28T19:37:00.003+08:00

I dreamt I was in the school library.

Except that it wasn't really the school library any more. It had grown about twenty times bigger, was more stylishly designed and even had a curved swimming pool at one end, like one of those indoor 'beaches'. I was doing shelving duty near the pool, apparently it was the CD section. Some students approached me and asked me if I knew where a certain CD was - I forgot what the title was but I remember it was several words long, and ended with a word that started with ROB. For some weird reason the CDs were shelved according to the last three letters of the last word (instead of the first word).

I went looking for it and there in the RO- shelf were several copies of the title they wanted. Unfortunately they were all broken in one way or another, snapped in bits and pieces. In fact almost all the CDs there were. They were themselves searching for the CD (but in the wrong way - or right way?) and I had to deliver the bad news to them.

Then I had PE lessons in the swimming pool with A01F. We swam out not too far away from the 'shore', though to be honest it was rather small and we were already almost near the floor-to-ceiling windows on the other end. We splashed around for a bit before I got out of the pool; someone then told me that everyone could see our class from higher vantage points and that we cheated and went to the end of the curved pool where the distance from the shore to the windows were shorter. SO WHAT. D:<

I went out of the library afterwards. Where in the library it was very bright and open, the school corridors were dark and unlit. I walked past the staff room and oddly enough there were people in weird positions along the staff room corridor. Weird as in looking almost like positions from the Kama Sutra (or maybe they were). But on the end of the line were two RI boys lying straight on their backs, one with his head on the other's ankles. They were definitely out of place in that line, and later I saw them sit up with puzzled looks on their faces as if they had no idea what they were doing there. Maybe they were being punished and had to sit outside the staff room.

Suddenly around me there came a hubbub of activity. People were running in different directions, as if rushing off to the next class. I had no idea what to do so I followed the most interesting people I saw: people wearing Civil War uniforms with muskets in their hands. There were both blue-coats and red-coats, and I didn't know what to do - I did try to ask them, but no one replied - so I followed them up and down the stairs. Somewhere in between I myself had changed into their uniform with a gun in my hand, and all of us ran in a line down a corridor that ended in this dark, creepy little room.

Simultaneously around me people produced knives from their boots and stuck it under their epaulettes, as if intending to cut them off. Their coats suddenly changed into the new SAF fatigues, and the Civil War muskets transformed into M16s. There was movement ahead of us, so we all raised our rifles to fire. I flicked the safety off my rifle and fired, but for some odd reason it had flicked to auto instead of semi and let out a couple more rounds than I intended. We all had fired once (or more) and then we proceeded slowly into the dark room.

Hamizah was in front of us, leading us in. She was wearing the black Team Raffles shirt with the green RJ skirt. She beckoned us all deeper into the room, and I had stepped through the doorway when I saw that the room was an abandoned, ruined bathroom. Graffiti ran wild over the tiled walls, and the room was stripped bare of sinks and pipes. What remained was a row of half-demolished cubicles with broken cisterns. An unadorned window revealed the sky outside - it was already late in the evening, the sky a purple colour mixing with the blue of the night. I began to get chills about what we were all doing. Also, FUCK ME WHY DO I ALWAYS GET STUCK IN THESE SORT OF SITUATIONS.

At the other end of the bathroom was an open doorway leading to other similarly demolished and abandoned sections of the building, as far as I could tell of what I saw through the doorway. Obviously after we had scouted out the bathroom we were going to move on out that doorway. I started to feel a sort of panic and fear. Beside us, attempting to hide in the darkness of a corner and a low wall, were two teachers trying to scare us. Unfortunately I could hear very well the female teacher's low whisper of "Try to jump out at them!". I wasn't very afraid of them, though - I was more fearful of what I couldn't see at that point in time that might reveal itself later. I tried not to stare too hard out the window and at the other darkened corners of the bathroom.

Hamizah had gone into one of the cubicles and was proceeding to sit down on the broken cistern, all the while beckoning us deeper in the bathroom to surround her. No one was really moving - I guess we were all similarly freaked out - and I decided that was it, I had to get out of there while I still could. I loudly declared that I was leaving and turned around, walking past the crowd still half-in, half-out the bathroom. Luckily there were like-minded people in the crowd who declared the same intent I had and turned to follow me out.

A taciturn teacher at the back end went to accompany us out. But he walked too slow, and he was behaving rather oddly - his face was slack, his eyes stared at nothing in particular and he had a sort of slouch as he walked. If we walked at his pace anything out there could get us. I started to run. On my left there was the corridor wall, on my right were cupboards and various doors leading out to their own rooms and corridors. As I ran, out of the corner of my eye I could see black shapes starting to materialise out of the doorways.

I focused on the path ahead of me and eventually the doors to the main hall appeared in the distance, growing as I approached it. It was outlined in blue and below it were words, information about the doors, just like in computer games. It said that in order to go through the doors, one would need to have their journal with them. I remembered having my journal earlier, but as I patted down my now-civilian clothes I realised my journal was no longer with me. I started to panic. How would I get out now? I would have to wait for someone with the journal on them, and I would have to hope very hard that the journal was also able to open the doors for people other than its owner.

I turned around to see a boy, running towards me, and behind him was another girl. He reached me first and searched himself for his journal, but he too did not have it on his person. Luckily for us the girl did, and we all held hands as she opened the doors. The doors seemed to be resisting us opening it, maybe trying to stop us from using the girl's journal, but she had a right to entry and it let her in, with us rushing in after before the doors closed. I heaved a great sigh of relief as I entered the great hall. We had reached safety.

The hall was large and had a high ceiling, and the overhead fluorescent lights were very bright, illuminating the entire hall. No dim spots anywhere, except in the store rooms. I felt as safe as I did in the library. The hall was a square room, and in the middle were double beds in a three-by-three square, one unit having two double beds (one for each person in a pair). The beds all faced in different directions, and personal effects and luggage were already placed on and around the beds for each person. The two beds in the middle of the square looked the most desirable out of any other, simply because it was surrounded on all sides by people. Unfortunately that wasn't my bed - I was with Rhubbini at a corner unit.

I made my way over to my own bed. By this time other people were streaming in from doors around the hall, having completed their own evening activity. Some of them were laughing and looking happy, so I assumed there were other activities than the one I had just attended - why oh WHY didn't I sign up early?! As I lingered around my bed a teacher came in the door closest to me, followed by a group of Malay students. She said she felt sorry for us, being the only ones here (suppose she meant being the only Malays/Muslims here? Maybe we couldn't eat the food). She brought in a packet of snacks and gave them to us. We put it on my bed and hovered around, eating the snacks.

-----------

And then I woke up with a start, panicking in my head because I woke up in a dark, unfamiliar room. Then I realised I had fallen asleep in my brother's room, which is forever and always bloody dark. I turned around to see if he was still at his computer table and my heart skipped a beat when I thought I saw a tall white figure hovering by his cupboard, but it was only his towel illuminated by the glow of his computer.

WHY do I always get some element of horror in my dreams?! It's starting to get rather disturbing, and NO I WOULD NEVER WILLINGLY LET MYSELF BE LED THROUGH A HORROR DREAM TYVM, as interesting as exploring the other option would be.

2010-10-24T20:31:00.004+08:00

UGH I WAS SO DAMN ANNOYED TODAY.

Sebastian Vettel was leading very comfortably throughout most of the Korean Grand Prix, no mistakes made, excellent drive overall - and then like TEN LAPS FROM THE END OF THE RACE his engine blew! GODDDDD so annoying, if he won the race he would have been leading the championship (since Mark Webber spun and crashed into Nico earlier) and maybe be on course to be the youngest championship winner ever BUT NO IT'S THAT NOISY BRAT ALONSO. :((((( Mark's now second in the championships, 11 points down from Alonso, but Vettel's fourth and TWENTY-FIVE points from Alonso. Only two more races to go, I don't think there's much chance of Vettel ever winning the thing now. Better Webber than Alonso for WDC, then.

RARRR I was like ranting so bad after his retirement, but Sebastian looked so calm walking back to the garage that I figured I shouldn't be taking it so hard, either. He drove the best he could today, and he knew that he would have won if not for the blown engine, a factor that was beyond his control. :(

Oh, you dear adorable boy, you should have won. :( Still rooting for you all the way!

2010-10-18T17:14:00.004+08:00

I wouldn't say it's a coincidence or anything rare but I found my old loan receipt in a book I borrowed again from the school library! I was sitting on the couch reading when it fell out from one of the back pages. Thinking it was my new receipt I tossed it aside, but later I decided to keep it and picked it up and just gave a passing glance at it. And that was when I noticed that the due date was 26 April.

I thought the self-check machine might've been faulty and registered the wrong date, but then a thought struck me - could it have been my old loan receipt? I did borrow the book earlier in the year, but I returned it later not having the time to finish it. So I flipped through the rest of the back pages of the book and there was my new receipt for 8 November! Well, I maintain it's not a coincidence or anything rare, really - I can't be too surprised given that I don't expect anyone else to read the book! Unless it was one that was well-read like, say, Twilight...

-----------

I hardly remember my dreams nowadays, or at least I don't sleep long enough to form any decent dreams, but I recall bits and pieces, snippets of scenes here and there that I thought interesting enough to note down like I always do.

I remember one scene had me forced to marry my sister. Yeah, I know, it's majorly fucked up. They gave us a matching set of tuxedo and dress, made from a chocolate brown silk material, with cream highlights. I got the tuxedo, and it was odd because it had cap sleeves instead of the usual long sleeves. Very obviously I didn't want to marry my sister, but they forced me into the tuxedo and I walked around the entire place with my hands crossed over my chest, glaring defiantly at anyone who dared question me.

In the same dream, a bunch of us were involved in an Amazing Race-type game. At each task station there was a sign pitched into the ground with the task requirements and certain warnings we needed to heed. One of the stations was at a turquoise-coloured pool in the middle of a column-lined courtyard. The sign pitched in the ground there warned competitors that a "naked Ellen" (or was it Allen?) was in the pool, and to swim fast! or you'll get eaten. Competitors started from three floating platforms on one end of the pool and had to swim to the other floating platform on the other side. They went in pairs and both had to stand on the platform on the other end to accomplish the task.

There was a waterfall feature on the other side of the pool, just behind where the platforms floated and where the game-master stood. The water in the pool was milky blue, and it was rather difficult to see into its depths. I jumped in and swam as fast as possible, trying not to go too deep and ignoring the shouts of onlookers behind me yelling at me to hurry up because the naked Ellen (or Allen) could be ANYWHERE. In the brief time I was in the water I could not see the bottom of the pool, and people around me were shadows in the water, though near enough I could see some of their features.

I reached the platform the same time as my partner, and we both struggled to climb aboard the platform which swayed wildly in the water. The onlookers behind me were still shouting agitatedly, further spurring my attempts. We managed to clamber aboard, but there was still the matter of standing up on the extremely shaky platform. We grasped at each other's hands and both trembled violently as we stood up very slowly. Behind us someone was about to make his own attempt into the water.

2010-10-13T23:53:00.004+08:00

HAAAHAAA I'm not sure whether to say my subconscious is full of win or fail. Probably WIN.

This week and next week we're following the restructured timetable where they basically have nothing but subject lectures and shitloads of PW. And shitloads of free time. That is filled by more shitloads of PW.

ANYWAY I was supposed to have Geog and Lit lectures as well as TSD lesson on Tuesday. The longest day of my week, supposedly, ending at 1.30pm. I fell asleep the night before as per my usual late night time, and an unusually long sleep later I was woken up by my mum relating a funny moment she had with the FedEx guy just now*. So she talks to me and I'm vaguely listening when I realise that there's natural light coming in from the blinds and I quickly look at the clock where it says 10am.

WTF zomgosh I'm fucking dead. First I overslept on Monday and now this?! Oh shit oh shit what the fuck just happened in the morning...?

So I let my mum continue talking and when she leaves I decide fuck it, I'm going back to sleep, no point going to school now. I wake up two hours later when my mum comes back in to wake me up and I casually ask her, "Er, did you wake me up this morning?". She says yes, she did, she asked me if I had school today and I just mumbled "No" and went back to sleep.

FUCK SHIT WHAT I DON'T REMEMBER THAT. Ohhh damn but lol wait now it's kinda funny heh. Whoooo my subconscious you are weird yet rather awesome. I think. JUST DON'T DO THIS WHEN I HAVE EXAMS THE NEXT DAY.

*My mum opened the door that morning to find a FedEx guy outside the door, with this huge box addressed to a certain Xynder Izuri Valcien. My mum told the guy that there was no such person here of that name (LOL) and asked him to call the number listed down to make sure that it was the right address. He did, and he confirmed it, so my mum asked to talk to the person and the person went, "Hi, Ma."

LOLLLLL Xynder Izuri Valcien is my brother's online gaming nickname and he used it in an online draw where he won a CPU casing. He said he didn't want to use his name for privacy reasons. HAAHAA ZOMG I mean if I was awake then I'd have known straightaway who it was but y'know I think it's funnier this way. The FedEx man must've been rather bemused by this odd turn of events.

2010-09-27T02:46:00.005+08:00

"We will get there, don't you worry."

- Sebastian Vettel

It's like the loveliest and most encouraging words I have ever heard. ;A; I just love the last three words, like he's trying to reassure not only his pit crew but everyone else out there rooting for him. This is definitely becoming my encouragement! quote, I swear, it feels so touching. And now you know I'm probably totally becoming a Vettel fangirl, haha - if it wasn't obvious before (yeah right), it is now.

Nothing much to report - Hamilton attempted what would have been an awesome overtake had it been successful, but Mark was unwilling to give up his position and ended up making contact with Lewis' rear wheel, damaging his suspension I think and effectively putting him out of the race. Whoo was he angry, flung his steering wheel out just like Rubens Barrichello did at Monaco (though no HRT this time to run it over).

Kobayashi and Senna ploughing into the wall at the same spot - Kobayashi first, I reckon he oversteered into the Grandstand corner and crashed into the wall; and then Senna came along, went too wide just like Kobayashi did and ended up side-by-side in the wall.

Poor Heikki Kovalainen! His car was rear-ended by Sebastien Buemi on the penultimate lap, putting him into a spin. He recovered, but as he approached the last corner smoke was seen at the back of his Lotus and by the time he rounded the corner the rear end was properly in flames. He made an initial move into the pits, but drove back out onto the track halfway down the pitlane entrance and stopped by the side of the start-finish straight. Sat there in his car for a bit as the flames grew bigger before he got out and one of the marshals gave him a fire extinguisher. It was kind of funny and sad at the same time - where the hell were the fire marshals! Not enough the guy's got to drive a grueling 61-lap race, now he's got to double-up as fireman too?!

Later reports said Kovalainen avoided entering the pit lane because he thought the fire was too big and it would put many people in the pits in danger, so he stopped at the side of the track trying to find a fire marshal.

With two safety cars out during the race, it went dangerously close to going over the two-hour time limit - Alonso crossed the line in about an hour and 58 minutes. Vettel followed suit just 0.2secs later ;A; ARGH like some false hope at the end that maybe he could have overtaken him at the last few corners but, y'know, oh well. Can't dwell on the 'what ifs', it's now on to Suzuka in two weeks' time. GO VETTEL, STILL ROOTING FOR YOU.

2010-09-26T00:17:00.004+08:00

I AM SO ANNOYED RIGHT NOW ARGH.

I have never felt so stressed and nervous watching a qualifying before. Vettel was JUST SO DAMN CLOSE to pipping Alonso's time for pole but oh god he had to make a mistake in one of the turns and grazed the wall. DDDDDD: But no matter. He's a fantastic driver, I'm sure he'll be able to win this or at least a podium finish as long as he capitalizes on his front-row position and nothing untoward happens to him. I know he's been rather reckless recently but I think he's improving. ARGH IT'S LIKE SOME CONFLICT. I want to see him, well, win the driver's championship obviously, but he's still young, even if he doesn't win it this year with his talent there are always other years ahead of him he can try and win.

Haha I feel like I've been so unfair on Webber, wishing him misfortune just so Vettel could beat him even though they're teammates and Webber is a good driver and probably a really nice man. Oh dear. Maybe that's just how fans feel towards their own favourite. LOL now I feel like I have to be balanced all the time and not heavily biased towards any one person. Except maybe Alonso, I'd like to wish every sort of misfortune (short of accidents and death, I'm not that mean) against him - grrr something about him just annoys me, especially after the 'team orders' incident. Is it too much to hope that some 'experimental part' in his gearbox breaks tomorrow night? :P

Sometimes I wonder how emotionally invested you can be in a certain area, say sports or music, or to a certain person, like an athlete or musician. Doesn't it feel like a waste of 'resources' in a way, that you could put all the energy and emotion into something else more fruitful, something that actually affects you and not getting all worked up on something not actively affecting your life? But without the fans, the supporters, these people, the sports or the music industry wouldn't have anything to go on...and I suppose people have to be passionate about something in their lives at least, or they'd end up being colourless and blank, stone fellows who live for the sake of living and nothing else.

RARRRR IT'S LIKE I'M TRYING TO RATIONALISE EVERYTHING, SHUT UP SELF.

2010-09-22T00:17:00.002+08:00

God I feel like my heart's palpitating or something. =/ Obviously I have drunk too much of my sister's iced coffee just now. Or perhaps I didn't eat enough to counter the coffee's effects on my digestive system and now I feel weird. Hmmm. Like I'm weak all over or something orz.

I have taken to staying up extremely late until the wee hours of the morning. I plan to put it to very good use MUGGING FROM NOW ON. Stop giving me weird looks, I am getting off the computer after I've blogged. I think. Bugger it. Anyway...

Pre-ordered/bought F1 2010 today! I was hesitant about buying it from Steam at first, hoping perhaps that it'll be cheaper when it officially comes out in Singapore but then I saw a thread that said the PC version would be priced at $59.90. As it turned out I was charged only $49.30 on Steam after conversion from USD. Now hoping that the price really is $59.90 and not lower than what I paid or else I'd have been stiffed! There were problems buying from my own account so I had to get my brother to gift it to me, though of course I paid with my own cash. Gaming reviews of F1 2010 have been very positive, so my hopes are rather high for this! Though I won't really know the standards and all, eh, never having actually played a racing game before. *le gasp*

I won't be able to play it until after Promos though. Or at least I'll try not to. NO I MUST NOT TOUCH IT UNTIL AFTER PROMOS DAMN IT. But at least I'll be able to watch the Singapore GP this weekend. |D My relatives are having an open house on the night of the race itself, and I doubt they would want to watch it, or their TV isn't that good and I wouldn't want to watch it with so many other people anyway. But I've got Promos next week so maybe I'll be let off? My cousins tend to not turn up when exams are near...I swear I'll study then! though the TV will still be switched on in front of me...

2010-09-07T00:25:00.002+08:00

JOHANSEN Hjalmar. WITH NANSEN IN THE NORTH; A Record of the ‘Fram’ Expedition in 1893-96. London: Ward Lock, 1899. [7615]
FIRST EDITION, 8vo, pp v-viii, 351, frontispiece, illustrations, original blue decorative cloth, a very good clean copy. £120

-J & SL Bonham, Antiquarian Booksellers

Oh my god.

Ohhhh my god.

Oh god oh god ohgodohgodohgod it exists. In English.

And even better it exists ONLINE. THEY ALL DO FUCK YEAHH.

The first online version I found of this was on Harvard University's Page Delivery Service, and then I Googled around some more and found like the HOLY GRAIL of all books or something. The Internet Archive has like EVERY SINGLE text there is on polar exploration and I can even find Nansen's The First Crossing of Greenland. What the fuck, right? MY GOD I can't find shit like that in Singapore.

Oh man when I found the list of books I was practically hyperventilating, oh my god so many fucking books I CAN READ and they're all scans of the AUTHENTIC stuff. Johansen's With Nansen in the North has only been printed like, what, once? And that was in 18-freaking-99. GOD I WANT TO OWN THE BOOK SO BAD RIGHT NOW. EIGHTEEN-FREAKIN'-NINETY-NINE. FOR GOD'S SAKE REPRINT IT PEOPLE, REPRINT IT DAMMIT. AND NO FUCKING ABRIDGED VERSIONS, LEARN TO READ THICK BOOKS.

Hnnnghhh I am hoping SO BADLY that the first edition books will still be around and readily available with someone, somewhere in the entire world when I'll be grown up and earning money and ohh my god I will build up my own little polar exploration library filled with antique books and I will read them over and over again and ohhhhh man EIGHTEEN-FREAKING-NINETY-NINE, ancient books, can you even imagine holding a century-old book in your hand! Whooooo better remember to insure them and shit.

ZOMGOSH FUCK YEAHHHH.

2010-08-17T01:03:00.005+08:00

I dreamt I was walking along a narrow brick alleyway with my mum. A park was visible beside it, full of trees decked in autumn foliage. The asphalt floor was damp and the fallen orange leaves stuck to it, creating a lovely orange-and-black carpet. I was playing what seemed to be a version of Poupee Boutique on my mobile phone, with new dress-up game-like clothes and anime-themed hairstyles. I was about to select a cute twin-tailed silver-haired style when we walked into some sort of official government building and I was forced to put away the game.

A man was there, apparently aspiring to be a fighter jet pilot but his superiors didn't think he was suitable enough for the job. I indignantly asked why, and I wanted to see for myself how his flying was like before judging him. The scene switched to what initially appeared to be a flight simulator. The man was in his own fighter jet on the landing strip, ready to take-off when suddenly his entire squadron was ambushed while still on the ground. It soon became apparent why his superiors were extremely reluctant to let him fly - he shot down his squadron mate who was ahead of him on the landing strip, and he took off as soon as it was cleared. Having done that, he dropped bombs on the rest of his squadron still floundering on the ground and flew off to engage the enemy on his own. Clearly not one with the patience to handle any possible liabilities. It would have been fine if it was really a simulator, but it didn't end and the pilot flew off with my in-dream camera following him - so...definitely not a simulator.

There were three types of enemy aircraft:
1) A small, lightweight aircraft that looked uncannily like a Learjet. It had a electric lime-green forcefield around it and it also had the ability to shoot projectiles. It could only be attacked from the front, which wasn't hard to do seeing as it kept turning around to shoot at me/the pilot.

2) A steel-grey stealth fighter. It had the ability to disappear and appear at will. It could only be attacked when visible.

3) A bulkier aircraft that I never really saw, but I did feel its looming presence behind us.

The pilot managed to pursue them through a series of narrow half-flooded tunnels and suddenly I came out into a Circle Line Dhoby Ghaut-like train station, except that its walls were made of some brown polished granite or marble. The pilot and the remaining enemy aircraft were no longer to be seen. I thought I'd descend to the platform to check if they were around (I was on the intermediate staircase landing between the platform and the fare gates). As I descended to a lower intermediate landing, an odd, steel-grey parallelogram-shaped craft drifted into view. It was extremely flat and a rectangular section on its outer edge was metallic and had grooved lines running parallel across its surface. It looked very much like an enormous razor blade.

Suddenly it began to move in a menacing zig-zag manner, slicing through the air like one would with a razor blade to flesh. It then dawned on me that it WAS essentially a giant razor blade, and it was looking for the pilot. It started to move towards the staircase and I knew that if I didn't move fast it would slice me to pieces. Unfortunately for me, the way the staircase was designed meant that it would slow me down and I wouldn't get to a safe height by the time it got here. As I ran towards my original position on that higher staircase landing I saw a train waiting on the platform with its doors open. I jumped onto the staircase rail and off into the air, landing on the platform and making a run for the open doors. In the train, the doors took forever to close, with me panicking and thinking "FOR GOD'S SAKE IT'S A WAR CLOSE THE DOORS FASTER!". Because you know, while the doors are open things could get in and blow the train to smithereens.

Finally the train pulled out of the station into the inky black night and I was left clutching the guard pole for dear life, trembling in fear. I looked down at my feet and realised that for some odd reason I was wearing my school uniform all along. Around me, the train was relatively crowded and no one looked particularly bothered at all by what had just happened at the train station.

-----------

And then I woke up with a start.

It amazes me how I wake up sometimes. There's no intermediate half-sleep, half-awake state, it's just - *SNAP* - I jerk awake and my eyes open immediately. I wonder, should anyone have watched me then, maybe they would have been surprised by how abruptly I woke up.

Today I had the best sleep-in ever. My mum let me sleep on her bed and she said she'd wake me up at eight. AT EIGHT. And the bed was soft and warm and smelled nice, it smelled just like my parents' bed always does, and my soft marshmallow cushion was in my arms feeling so delightfully soft and smelling so...like home. Like family. Everything smelled of home. The fan blew cool air towards me yet the room still retained some semblance of warmth and an intense feeling of cosiness. I wished that I would never have to get up until I wanted to, but unfortunately...you know, school. And the magic moment was lost forever.

Until I find it again.

2010-08-10T15:08:00.004+08:00

Hahah it's rather belated but HAPPY NATIONAL DAY SINGAPORE! I'm so sorry you had to be chucked into the backseat because of YOG, now that National Day's over Mediacorp won't have to keep pretending it actually wants to play 'Song for Singapore' and can concentrate on the moneymaking YOG. Sigh, just when the song was growing on me, too.

I tried to catch the mobile column last night but it was too fast for me. =/ My eldest sister and I tried walking all the way to Admiralty MRT station in the hopes of catching it but they took a faster route than we did and we ended up missing them. All we saw of them were their tire tracks at the junction. When we got home I thought I would have a chance to see them on their way back, but no...

ALSO YOU SHOULD SEE THIS:

TOTALLY LOVED THAT TECHNO BIT. SO HIP, EH?

"NEVER FEAR."

2010-08-04T23:40:00.003+08:00

I donated blood again today :D Second time now! That became apparent to me when I went to the registration counter and I realised I wouldn't be getting a sticker because it says "Be nice to me, this is my first donation" and it's not hurhurhur. I have another notch on my donation card now! And potentially another three lives saved, according to HSA.

The previous time my haemoglobin level was just over the 12.5g/dl limit, but this time it was quite a healthy 13.1 or 13.3g/dl. Must've been all the chicken bits I ate last night. :D Heheh now I shan't feel guilty about gobbling them all up.

I decided to get a yellow bandage this time round! I was tempted to take green again, but I thought I should take different colours this time. At least she didn't try to offer me pink, dear god. Oh, and I'm so amused by the iron tablets they gave to the donors! It's VANILLA FLAVOURED OMG. Is it supposed to encourage us to eat them? |D

Can't wait for tomorrow! School ends at 1.25pm for the Year Fives and after that we'll go for Learning Journey museum visits. A01F will be going to the Asian Civilisations Museum, might be largely boring, though Mr Neo seems to have given us express permission to hang out at the cafe, hurhurhur! What I found terribly amusing was the advice given in the WUTW email to pack according to our timetable - my Thursday timetable is so damn slack I only have PE and MATH tomorrow, with four hours of free block! *w*

Afterwards National Day celebrations will be held at Zouk. Of all places! It makes no sense to hold National Day celebrations at Zouk. It's like promoting clubbing or something x_x Still, I don't mind - the first and last time I went to Zouk was for the Granado Espada launch party and this time I'll be going again except it's school-sanctioned hahahaha. Will be an interesting experience. But seriously wth Zouk? I'm still shocked.

2010-07-26T02:02:00.006+08:00

Oh god oh god oh god I should never watch ANYTHING with men wearing suits in it but it's too late for that I HAVE PRACTICALLY FALLEN OFF THE DARK SIDE OF FANGIRLISM OR SOMETHING. Well actually no, in comparison I probably haven't because I know others who are way more rabid than I am. Damn my chronic apathy!

I only started watching Senkou no Night Raid because Kazura wears a suit. Like all the time, hurhurhur. Yeah I know, I'm shallow. I was looking through my pictures folder and saw a really hot picture of Lin in his usual get-up and I thought OKAY THE NEXT ANIME I WATCH MUST HAVE A DUDE IN A SUIT IN IT. And actually interest me apart from the suit, too. So far Senkou no Night Raid has been very interesting and the superpower aspect just reminds me of Toward the Terra (including the SFX heheh) but half the historical facts they include in the plot just fly right over my head. =/ Or at least needs reading up on, orz.

Gah, subs stopped at episode 10 WHYYYYY ;____;

LIN! Gahhhh for some reason when I saw this picture again I thought of Inception lol. Which I still have to watch (why yes, I am rather naturally slow at things). Also I've been wondering about this for like forever but what in the world is he wearing on his left sleeve?!

2010-07-22T01:09:00.003+08:00

Right, quick update for memories' sake. In future, y'know.

YEAR FIVE CT RESULTS 2010

H1 General Paper: D (53.5%)
H1 Mathematics: D (52%)
H2 Geography: S (35%)
H2 English Literature: D (50%)
H2 Theatre Studies and Drama: E (49%)

So in total I've passed all subjects except Geog. LOL.

Surprisingly, as sucky as our cumulative scores were in general, 11A01F was the best out of the Enhanced Track classes, getting the minimum requirement of 2 H2 passes for J2 promotion. Or so the Dean of Systems said. She also said the Enhanced Track classes did better than expected, and some of the classes even did better than those in the 'normal' track. Sounds so optimistic but y'know, it's only the CTs. =/ Not the real promos itself.

AND AT THE REAL PROMOS WE'LL ALL DO BETTER RARRRGH.

2010-07-19T01:46:00.002+08:00

I wanted to be alright
I think you know it's not a crime
Now we're here what do you feel?

Across the room passing you
I see your eyes all wet
And now you're here what do you miss?

There's nothing I can do to make it all just go away
There's nothing I can say to make it all just go away

So it falls apart, it falls apart
Just like you wanted it to fall apart
It falls apart, it falls apart
Young love, lasted for hours
Couldn't become what we hoped for

I wanted to be alright
Can't you see that's all I want?
You only laugh about it all

Did you find someone worth
All of the hours and all of the work?
I think I know how you get by

There's nothing I can do to make it all just go away
There's nothing I can say to make it all just go away

So it falls apart, it falls apart
Just like you wanted it to fall apart
It falls apart, it falls apart
Young love, lasted for hours
Couldn't become what we hoped for

That's how it felt on the night before the funeral
That's how it felt on the night before the funeral

2010-07-04T01:36:00.002+08:00

Hello.

I haven't blogged in ages. I find no reason to. Not yet.

A lot has happened, of course. Common Tests. TSD J2 A-levels, which I am minioning for. Rather enjoyable, to be honest. Especially after CTs. The World Cup. Formula One. TSD Indivs coming up. But nothing I seem to find words for. Words worth writing.

Maybe that's why I'm not good at writing. I just keep it all up here. In my head. The fact that I speak in my head more than I do in real life. And sometimes I don't even think. Everything becomes mechanical. Routine. Kinda sad. To look without looking, to feel without feeling, to walk with no particular direction in mind (well that's pretty common).

You'd think a mindless drone would be useful in Singapore, a mere sponge to absorb information and learn things and regurgitate it out whenever needed but not in this case. I seem to reject it all.

Any mad scientists looking for potential mind-altering experiment volunteer?

2010-06-13T16:11:00.003+08:00

It's kinda cool but I always have more vivid dreams during the holidays, being days where I actually have six or more hours of sleep. This morning - I stayed up to watch the England vs USA match - I dreamt that Ellen DeGeneres had five Porsches. o.O And they were being auctioned off for charity or something while the Red Bull Air Race was going on. And I think I saw Nick Clegg getting out of a black car to attend. Didn't get a good look at his tie colour! though I suspect it was dark blue with spots.

(And this is what I get for trawling lolitics before I go to sleep. >: D Obviously I must do this more.)

There's Flame and Citron at library@esplanade! Except it's in RAV and I guess I can't borrow it out or something but the library catalogue says it's on loan. =/ Maybe the next time I summon the energy to go there I'll check it out. But I might have to watch the whole thing there, awww. D:

2010-06-11T18:10:00.005+08:00

The World Cup begins today!

Not that I'm actually interested, but you know I might just watch for the fun of it. What's even MORE fun, though, is the little World Cup-themed freebies you get from snacks and stuff! Jack and Jill potato chips come with those handphone charms with the various national flags on them AND OMG SO AWESOME. So far I'm lucky to have different flags each time - Switzerland, England, Argentina and Denmark as of now - but with 36 different designs I guess the likelihood of getting different flags are pretty high. Or something. I hope the luck continues! I was hoping to get Denmark and DPRK, and I was lucky enough to get Denmark today so...the wait goes on. :<

PET SOCIETY HAS FLAGS TOO. But only 15 countries. So far I have Mexico, Italy, Spain, Germany, Australia, the US and Brazil. Ugh I want Denmark and England. =( At least I have them IRL 8D

EDIT: OH MY GOD THIS WAS MY 700TH POST. Though I shan't say I squandered it away talking about flags because hey, it might've been what I wanted to write about in my 700th post anyway. Whoo milestone!

2010-06-06T15:47:00.004+08:00

So basically my slash-addled brain woke itself up this morning by totally rejecting a CANON SHIP and literally throwing all the fan evidence I presented it back into my face.

As in literal lists. Huge 3D blocks of words.

Thus I jerked awake this morning feeling thoroughly beaten up.

2010-05-24T00:41:00.003+08:00

"IT CAME FROM FUCKING CHAPTER SEVEN, AND IN IT…UH. HEATHCLIFF IS JEALOUS OF EDGAR’S PRETTY-BOY SISSY LOOKS AND WANTS TO BE LIKE HIM. BUT HE FAILS BECAUSE HE’S THIS ANGRY MOFO AND HE JUST CHUCK-NORRISSED A ‘TUREEN OF HOT APPLE SAUCE’ AT EDGAR’S PRETTY-BOY SISSY LOOKS. LOSER. WELL, EDGAR I MEAN. OR BOTH. FUCK THIS EMO SHIT STORY."

At the moment this is what my essay looks like, and I've got to hand it in tomorrow or get a big fat jolly white slip. So, if push comes to shove, this might be what I'll be handing in.

...I think I infinitely prefer writing this to stupid proper essays.

2010-05-19T02:11:00.004+08:00

Ugh, starting to see all shades of screwed-up shit right now, and I bet that's not even the full spectrum. >_>;; Wait 'til CTs/promos/A Levels/whatever that's awfully stressful and I haven't even come close to being prepared and then I'll finally see the rainbow.

IT DOES NOT HELP THAT THERE ARE SO MANY DISTRACTIONS. Oh em gee I have not yet mentioned this here but the UK government is so seriously slashy it's funny. Rule 34 is simultaneously creepy yet so damn valid. You would NEVER see this in Singapore - and if it does omg historic event! Though yeah right Straits Times = BBC/The Guardian in terms of slashiness no way, unless y'know, someone up there is a closet fangirl/boy. Heheheheh. Not happening.

If Hetalia got me into world geography, well then...oh dear gods CONCENTRATE ON LIT. ON GEOG. WHATEVER. NARGG.

2010-05-17T20:46:00.002+08:00

OKAY DAMN IT NOT ON PAIN OF DEATH. Well, certainly some form of extreme suffering and anguish, but hopefully not death. Bordering on death. Hnk. I'll just do it and see what happens orzorzorz. AHHHH PW PW PW GP GP GP LIIIITTTT. All my weekends so far have been wasted doing nothing but slack and have complete utter downtime which does nothing to help me in school. =/ But done loads to help me relax and roll around and enjoy life for a bit.

Also, happy Seventeenth of May! I completely forgot about it. Today there's no school because the staff are having some sort of retreat, but today's also the Norwegian Constitution Day ahaha. It could feel like a holiday in celebration of it, but no one really knows that, so...

Sigh, back to work.

2010-05-16T02:18:00.004+08:00

There is A Lot of prep to be done for the June holidays.

1. TSD group performance - early Promos! *gasp*
2. TSD individual skill (dramatic sequence - movement and...sound? lighting? It'll come up later eventually...)
3. Heckload of PW, I reckon
4. Random little things for Library
5. Mug for Common Tests
5a. READ ENTIRE WUTHERING HEIGHTS TEXT.
5b. PICK APART DONNE'S THEMES, ETC. ETC. YEAH AND EXAMPLES.
5c. READ ALL GEOG NOTES.
5d. And do Math revision exercises, I reckon.
5e. Oh bloody hell, TSD too? NARG.

For the first time in eons, I am going to prepare a holiday timetable and goddamn bloody well stick to it on pain of death!

2010-05-10T20:38:00.003+08:00

Ohh emm gee I have been tricked! Or something.

Apparently the felt cover I got with my watch isn't to make the bear look like it's wearing a cute little parka, it's for people who want to show off their watch without wearing it. Like to attach it to their bag or something.

AND THE BEAR ISN'T A BEAR. IT'S A LION. NESS. A LIONESS.

Which is why the box cover the watch came in had silver crisscrossing bars. It was meant to be a cage. And the diamond pattern on the watch strap was meant to be harlequin-ny - though OK, the Norwegian curling team's pants were meant to be harlequin-patterned too so. No difference there. And then there's the font on the watch face.

THE ENTIRE THING IS A CIRCUS.

2010-05-10T19:50:00.007+08:00

I hereby present Nanook!

Nanook is the name I've given my adorable little Swatch watch I bought just yesterday. Granted, nanuq means polar bear in Inuktitut and the bear on my watch is obviously brown, but hey. Even Chinwei called it a "Nanook watch" so clearly I'm not the only one.

There was a 40% sale at the Swatch outlet at Terminal 3 and you know, duty-free shopping and all...I think Nanook was totally an impulse buy. Sure, my Casio watch is like several years old and has gotten rather dirty and roughed up, but it still works! And then I went ahead and got a new watch.

I was attracted to the watch because of the diamond prints on the watch strap, which immediately reminded me of the Norwegian curling team's pants. And the watch has a cute little faux fur hood too. It's so Arctic, so Vancouver Winter Olympics! The box cover even reminds me of an Inuit kayak!

Ahhhh it's so damn cool and cute and adorable ♥♥♥♥ A little on the bulky side, and if the felt cover gets wet I'd be horrified, but a cool and cute and adorable watch nonetheless.

2010-05-08T23:40:00.004+08:00

"Erm, if it helps, you are a rather inspiring senior. I distinctly remember wanting to be like you in P5."

Thanks, Crys. :)

I still remember all those times before Guardians of Heritage/NExIT Club (speaking of which, OMG NExIT CLUB HAS BEEN DISCONTINUED) when you'd chase me around attempting to 'stick' to me and I'd tell you to stay at least an arm's length away. And I actually gave you 'methamphetamine hydrochloride' for a nickname because there were posters on drugs in the IBC and well, you know, crystal meth.

On retrospect, that was a completely cracked up nickname and I must've been kinda high when I gave you that.

2010-05-05T18:33:00.003+08:00

Hmm. I thought I'd try and password-protect my blog just for the fun of it, but then I figured my blog's already out there for anyone and everyone to read so oh well. No matter. Stalkers *cough* will find it relatively easy to find my blog then.

Nothing much to say for today, really, except that Library EXCO results are out and I received the post of Project Manager. Apart from the fact that I am extremely terrible at management and even worse at deadlines, on retrospect I think I'm quite satisfied with the post. It's not too high such that a huge responsibility is on my shoulders, and when I think about it Mrs Chow is right - in all likelihood most of the duties would be shared out between the four EXCO members (just that, you know, Chair and V-chair gets more haha). So I reckon it's all right.

I think Library has the potential to be a pretty cool close-knit CCA after we spend more time together and go out, do bonding stuff or something. We all get along OK so far and everything...so! To a good two years ahead then!

2010-05-03T01:11:00.003+08:00

Hm, I always meant to update the blog, but I can't think of anything to update it with. =/ So I shall just plonk a music video here for your enjoyment. :D

So many years in my chest
It's all locked, it's all locked up in my chest

I picture you in black and white
Falling through
Through the night
You're not even scared
But don't forget to breathe

[I would have loved to put 'Kicks' on here but they don't have a vid on Youtube. D:] I first discovered The Mary Onettes through Spinner's MP3 of the Day with 'Puzzles' and I thought it was a great listen so I went to look for other songs from the band. My favourites so far are 'Dare', 'Kicks', 'Explosions' and 'Puzzles', but I had a listen of 'Void' and 'Lost' recently so that goes on my playlist too. It's a very 80s feel to it and they're constantly compared to bands of that era like The Cure, but I prefer The Mary Onettes because I think they're more mellow and dreamy. (It's funny how they classify the genre as 'shoegaze'.) The Cure's 'Friday I'm In Love' I can listen to, though. Love the music video for that one, too.

AWESOME. The beginning with the guitar is pretty cool haha, and later on he does the hat-whipping thing which is cool too.

2010-04-28T18:56:00.007+08:00

"I screwed up so bad today, didn't I? I completely messed it up. But I have to admit they are all so capable, so much more confident and competent than I. If anyone should not deserve this as much as the others, it is me. How could I have been so complacent? Satisfy yourself with being a normal member. You never really stood out from the crowd. Alleviate your pain now so that it won't hurt as much later. Prepare yourself for the inevitable truth. But perhaps, if it does go your way this time...then you had best make the most of it. OH GOD, FOOL! STOP DEMORALISING YOURSELF BEFORE THE RESULTS HAVE BEEN REVEALED! Whatever will be, will be, so simply accept that fact peacefully, dipshit! Whee I feel a little better now."

- 28/04/10, 04:19:53 PM

So plainly it is true that I freak out before I get better. No, it is a MUST for me to freak out in some degree or another before I get better. That momentary release of pent-up emotion - whoosh - is a relief, because it would otherwise simply fester in my mind until I get positively sick from it.

Eh, que sera sera.

2010-04-25T21:03:00.001+08:00

AHHHHHHCK I CAN'T WATCH THE AMAZING RACE FIRST THING IN THE MORNING TOMORROW!

Library EXCO interview's at 8.50am. T__T Actually 9.10am, but stupid GP starts at 9.15 so I swapped with Devy who had the first slot. Augh I hope 1) the cowboys make it through Shanghai pleaseeee and 2) I survive the interview omg AN INTERVIEW first thing in the morning I'm gonna be like *bleary-eyed* buh-wha? repeat that again kthx I AM RAAAAANTIIIIIING~

At least I can watch it at night, but it means people will know who got eliminated before I DO AHCKKK.

2010-04-25T10:08:00.004+08:00

Vivid dreams always happen to me when I sleep for long hours...I'm not sure whether that's any motivation to sleep longer, especially when they're usually disturbing.

Dream #1:

HDB flat, a child had just jumped off the building. CSI team came into our house to investigate something. There were two Asian CSI members who looked oddly like John Cho and Masi Oka (apparently in the dream his name was Kimmy McDonald...or Kim McDonald-Donald). Suddenly all were mysteriously dead, suspected murder. Family all went out for a bit, but when we came back the pigeons were waiting for us. As the lift went up to the sixth floor, so did they, following our every move...

(The pigeons were, in my dream, manifestations of evil spirits who were somehow attracted to us. Gracia would be sufficiently creeped out. Also, reminiscent of The Birds, much?)

We ran to the lifts this time, hoping they wouldn't follow us, but too bad - they gathered at the lifts, waiting for us to go up so that they could follow us, and the little birdy crowd grew in size as they waited (this time they were brightly-coloured parrots). An old lady came in at the last minute with her white toy dog and the entire family shifted to the side of the lift. We saw the huge bird flock lift up into the air as we went upwards, but we suddenly realised we were leaving the flock behind as the lift went up past the sixth floor. The lift stopped at the highest floor, the sixteenth - the old lady's - and we saw the bird flock way down below us, surprised at the fact that we hadn't stopped at the sixth floor as usual and so they were struggling to gain more height. Then my mum looked out the lift doors and she realised the child's funeral was here (with pastel-coloured balloons, how odd) and I didn't want to go because it was a CREEPY FUNERAL but she went out right away...

Dream #2

(I was dressed in school uniform and I was at the pavement beside Sun Plaza trying to wash my face so that the pimples wouldn't come back. The water was running continuously and I was trying to find my cleanser, until I realised I don't always bring my cleanser in my schoolbag anyway and MY SCHOOL SHIRT WAS WHITE SHIT WHAT AM I DOING SHOWERING AT THE SIDEWALK. So I turned off the water, picked up the faucet and walked away. Nearing the end of the path there were two workers trying to smoothen out a large sand dune they dumped over the pavement. So all of us, trying to get through, helped them with their spare shovels and my awesome faucet, which did most of the job by the way, and we managed to get through.)

We went to some museum this time, no idea what the museum was about. It looked like a Science Centre exhibit. One of them contained vials of DNA from some guy whose name I've forgotten but I'm pretty sure my subconscious made it up. An LCD counter there had 18524 displayed on its screen - the number of vials left that were still viable. My dad popped in to have a look and told me that every year 1000 vials turn unviable. Hm, wow, 18 years left to clone him.

And then something something something HUGE CAR CHASE DON'T REMEMBER HOW THIS HAPPENS and then dream ends.

2010-04-18T19:10:00.002+08:00

I am not happy.

But neither am I depressed. Well, most of the time, anyway. I think. But I feel like I have to say something to someone, to tell them what stresses me out and what my worries are, what I wish I could do and rant about how crappy everything feels at the moment...but I know the words will never come out of my mouth. Even if people offer to listen, I know I just can't tell them. There isn't a way for me to put all that into words.

So...I guess I'll just shut up now.

2010-04-14T22:47:00.004+08:00

TAR - although I told Mrs Chong I didn't particularly like watching the team tiffs on the show, I have to admit they come in useful sometimes. If Brent and Caite/Louie and Michael didn't have some sort of bug with Carol and Brandy, the cowboys would have FOR SURE been eliminated or something, and I totally wouldn't want that. Ahhh lucky lucky lucky. Now I just have to hope they don't get eliminated in Shanghai.

Went bookshopping today for Library. We went to Kinokuniya and we were allowed to go about the store and find books we think people might find useful and would want to borrow. IT'S SO HARD. I don't know what people might want to read (other than Econs books, wth) and Jia Jin and Aloysius told me to just pick stuff based on my own interests. My interests lie in travel and arctic exploration -___________- No one reads that! They're so damn wordy and stuff. I thought I'd recommend The Worst Journey in the World, because it's NUMERO UNO on NatGeo's Adventure Books List and everyone should read it, honestly; and I picked Lonely Planet's The Big Trip because I remembered Liz saying she wanted to go on a gapyear and maybe there are like-minded people out there; and since people seemed to be haphazardly throwing books onto the cart I took a gamble and chucked in Farthest North anyway. Like, a last ditch effort to expose the book to the rest of the world! Even if it was going to end up collecting dust in the 950 section. =( I also picked up The Future History of the Arctic for geography purposes.

Funny, I seem to recall putting five books in the cart but all I remember are four. Maybe I counted wrong. But all the same, in the end only one of my books made it through, and even then Mrs Chow said that there were already quite a lot of books in the library on gapyears and stuff. =( Oh vell. Theo actually picked The Art of Seduction and tried to convince Mrs Chow to accept the book, but she said it would be weird to have a book with such a title in the library. On the bright side, though, if it was prominently displayed at the front of the library you can be sure more people might come in! ;D IT WOULD ENCOURAGE PEOPLE TO READ HAHA.

OH AND I SAW THE SHERLOCK HOLMES DVD IN THE CART AHAHAHAHA. Now I know it'll be in the library soon and I can go watch it, hurhur. I find it impressive that the library has a rather updated collection of DVDs, but I think we're running out of space for them.

ORA on Saturday! It's gonna feel weird coming back to RGS...

2010-04-06T01:16:00.003+08:00

Just a quick update - great weekend! And not just because of the extra two days of rest we got from A-level Results and Good Friday. It was also an F1 weekend, Sepang GP, and that went awesomely well because Sebastian Vettel finally scored his first win of the season! Granted he didn't clinch pole position in qualifying (teammate Mark Webber did) but he pulled off an amazing move turning into the first corner to overtake Webber and from there he simply continued to lead the rest of the race. ;D Alonso retired from the race with just a few laps more to go - I think he blew out the engine trying to overtake Button - so that meant Vettel caught up with Alonso in the points scoresheet; they're now tied in second place with Massa leading two points ahead. Hopefully Red Bull won't have severe reliability issues for the rest of the season, I know Vettel will drive well throughout this year! :) (Maybe the trick is not to get pole position...)

On top of Vettel winning his first race, today I was pleased to watch my favourite team Jet and Cord climb from last place to first in The Amazing Race! And still managing to squeeze in a Speedbump on top of all that. Granted, the Speedbump was really easy and Jet and Cord completely pwned the Detour, but they're still in the race and that's all that matters. It's funny though, how they seem to go through entire legs of the race without meeting another team and everyone else is like "How the hell did they get so far ahead?", which was Carol and Brandy's reaction seeing the cowboys hightail it out of the Roadblock just as they were arriving! I hope they win the race :) If they get eliminated any time before the Final Three I'd be terribly discouraged from watching TAR anymore (but I know I'd still watch it anyway...just with not enough enthusiasm).

Can't wait for next week's TAR episode: the Singapore leg!

2010-04-03T21:30:00.005+08:00

Right, so my dad's gone for about five days now. Out of hm, sixty days. He video-calls us over MSN every day around 10.30am without fail though - I woke up today to hear my mum talking to my dad. He's about five hours behind us so he calls before he goes to work.

Technology's awesome, honestly. Before Skype and internet calls it was much harder to call long-distance, and the fees were exorbitant. A minute-long call could cost several dollars, if not possibly tens of dollars to make. And now it's practically free! You can even make VIDEO calls!

The first time my dad video-called us, it was the day after he left. He had arrived at Qatar, of course. The day before, as well as on that day itself I had been feeling particularly depressed throughout so I went home immediately after school. And it was lucky that I did, because at around 4pm he video-called. At first he tried calling us by phone, but the reception was so bad that we couldn't hear him properly (and I actually thought it was some wrong number calling so I passed it to my mum), only enough to hear that something rather serious had happened to him. Then he tried to video-call me, but I was on my desktop at the time so I quickly scrambled to get my laptop up and running.

When the window came up and he saw my mum's face in front of the screen, he immediately broke down into tears. That was the first time that I had ever seen my dad cry, and it sent me and my sister flailing into separate rooms trying not to dissolve into tears ourselves. But my mum, ever so stoic, remained sitting in front of the laptop with hardly any trace of tears on her face, calmly asking my dad how he was, if he was alright and stuff.

Throughout the day, whenever I thought of him and that one webcam moment, I immediately started tearing up. We joked about how my second sister would totally break down if she saw him then (and when we told her later, after she came home from work, how we chatted to our dad through webcam she immediately teared up. Imagine the effect if she were there!). But then I thought, if we were already that sad about our father being so far away from us, what about our mum? How much sadder would she be than us? But she's a strong woman, and I know she handles it in her own way so it's okay, I guess.

It's just that the family has never been so far apart from each other before, and for so long, especially my dad. I mean, when our parents are gone on small holidays me and my siblings are pretty OK by ourselves, but when my dad's not with my mum like when she goes on trips to KL with my aunt he sort of falls into this depression. I'd say he's a quiet person most of the time, but when my mum's not around he gets even quieter and stays in his room more often. Now he's in Qatar, with not even us for company, let alone my mum, so the daily webchats are a bit of a relief for him.

I hope he can handle it there, being by himself with his colleagues. He's got to be more wary about his health and stuff now because my mum's not there to look out for him, though his colleagues have been very supportive too, looking out for him. I hope all goes well and he'll come back home OK in two months.

2010-03-28T01:43:00.002+08:00

Ah, my parents are off on a short weekend holiday again.

The last time they went I think it lasted five days. Five days of sheer mind-numbing routine. To us, I mean. I wouldn't say it's quite exactly routine but what we did was basically sleep late, wake up late, play games all day and what the hell does hunger mean? There was no sense of time, just knowing that it was day when it was light and it was night when it was dark.

It's actually a normal weekend but since they're gone it feels like...something's missing. And all I do is laze around doing inane, useless things and completely ignoring my homework thinking it's a bloody holiday but it isn't. Oh damnnnn.

It's really lonely. Even with three siblings here, and now I'm thinking THANK GOD FOR THREE SIBLINGS I would never have survived if I was an only child. I realise that, as much as I say I don't mind being such a quiet loner at school I'm actually always surrounded by a lot of people. Every day I have five other family members, which is almost twice the number that some people have. And when they're gone I guess I can feel that emptiness pretty strongly.

Sigh. What will it be like when my dad leaves in two days? I shan't be sad at the airport, he can't leave with all our faces looking so down...

2010-03-24T23:37:00.004+08:00

My dad's going off to Qatar after all.

He's going there for work, staying there for about two months. He'll leave on a Qatar Airways flight at 2.55am on Tuesday. I wonder what it'll be like not having my dad around for two whole months. (LOL it's funny that he should return to Singapore ON HIS BIRTHDAY.) I mean, like me he doesn't talk much and is usually in his room on his laptop, but he makes up a pretty big presence in the house and it's gonna be odd without him.

SO BRING ON THE SKYPE!

And I want to go see him off at the airport next week, to heck with the time. I've survived all-nighters before and this is totally a chance to see the airport at like TWO AM. Awesome shit. And I've got four hours to kill on Tuesday afternoons so I can sleep then hahahaha.

Oh wow.

Hmmm I hope all goes well in Qatar!

2010-03-14T21:00:00.004+08:00

I hardly sleep in airconditioned rooms, but when I do it's a luxury reserved only for especially hot days - or when my dad feels like offering the aircon remote to us. So whenever that chance comes I usually jump at it. Since I sleep on a bed in the living room, I have to sleep in my sisters' room for the aircon.

Usually there's no problem, except the fact that there aren't any mattresses in there and the floor's pretty hard. In the aircon you fall asleep quickly enough anyway so you don't mind that much. But one day, before the class camp, I decided to turn in early and sleep alone (before my sisters join me, anyway) in the room.

I don't know why, but shortly after I fell asleep I began to feel odd. Like I had stopped breathing. So I forced myself to wake up, but then I started to drift off to sleep again. And then a thought hit me. A terrible, terrible thought. The realisation that if I fell asleep, I would stop breathing. I could feel it, as soon as I had drifted off, my chest became constricted as if there was no air in it, and I couldn't feel the cool fresh air coming in through my nose. I struggled to wake up, and then I was dimly aware that the door was open, the warm incandescent light pouring in from the hallway and my mum was standing in the doorway checking in on us. I started to panic, thinking all the while that if she left and shut the door behind her that was it for me, there was no turning back, there was no waking up anymore. So with a great effort I sat up, still half-asleep, trying to scramble to my feet with my hands outstretched blurting out "WAIT WAIT WAIT...!" before the door to life closed on me.

You wouldn't believe how grateful I was of air then.

2010-03-12T20:15:00.008+08:00

Go, and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me where all past years are,
Or who cleft the devil's foot,
Teach me to hear mermaids singing,
Or to keep off envy's stinging,
And find
What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.

- Song, John Donne

I never realised it years back when I read Howl's Moving Castle that this was by Donne. I know Miss Angorian mentioned his name, but what did Donne mean to me then? It could have been a made-up name for all I knew. And then suddenly there the poem was, in my Donne poetry book, and I felt this certain sense of triumph and pride that I was able to recognise the poem even from so long ago.

I've found someone with the same love for polar exploration as I do! Russell was reading this book called Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader by Anne Fadiman, and in the chapter My Odd Shelf she talked about how people have a special section in their library which has no relation whatsoever with the rest of the books in there, yet tells so much about the reader. Her own Odd Shelf contained all sorts of books on polar exploration. In one of the later chapters she talked about how she was given an unread, untouched two-volume set of Farthest North.

SOMEONE ACTUALLY KNOWS FARTHEST NORTH. OHMYGOD SOMEONE KNOWS.

I then went looking for polar exploration books in the Shaw Foundation Library. There's only one, and it's about Shackleton. Not that I have anything against him, I haven't read his account yet, but ONE? Just one? Although I daresay it's better than my expectation of none at all, I still wish they had more. Or at least, even if you're going to have just one, can't you make it The Worst Journey in the World? It's rated tops on NatGeo Adventure's reading list!

On a random note, I saw someone in school who has the same type of specs as I do. I was reading the main paper in the library and he was sitting nearby reading the other sections. I looked up to find the other sections, and when I looked over I immediately noticed the white front of the specs, and then - gasp - green on the sides! I never thought I'd see anyone else with the same specs as me. I imagine it would've been pretty awkward when he noticed, haha.

2010-03-08T21:16:00.004+08:00

Hmm, I haven't updated since before class camp which was like what - last week? Not bad, I suppose, the blog has gone dry for longer before. I'm not going to give a blow-by-blow account of class camp, just the significant bits. It went way better than expected (even though only SEVEN out of TWELVE - now eleven that Eli's gone - people turned up?!).

It was also during class camp that I realised how much of a fear I have of pitch-black darkness. Heck, it doesn't even have to be pitch-black - anything unfamiliar that's bloody freaking dark and not contained within four walls is goddamn scary to me. The time we went into the SERIOUSLY pitch-black maze (honestly, it made no difference if your eyes were open or not) I came close to tears. And then came the night walk. I just cried. It was one of the rare times ever I truly felt panicked. I kept walking and kept staring ahead but the tears just wouldn't stop running down my face, especially when I thought how everyone else was fine with it and I was the only one who was strongly affected. To think that merely hours before I had stated how nice it would be to live on Pulau Ubin. Now I know I simply can't. I can't live anywhere without some form of constant bright light. I'm an urbanite through and through. How can I go to Iceland, to Norway, to Antarctica like this? It's pathetic.

Kayaking on the second day was much better. We got the use of Ubin Quarry (occupied by Republic Poly) and we got to swim around in it too! So awesome. The water was so clear and the depths of the lake were ridiculously blue when I ducked my head underwater. The creepy thing is that you can't see anything at all down there except the blueness of the water. Apparently they sent divers down there to determine the depth of the quarry, and at 30m where light from above couldn't even penetrate the water they still hadn't touched bottom. Creepy eh! What could possibly be down there?

Pushing the thought of an extremely-dark Pulau Ubin aside, it's actually a very nice, quiet place. I admire the small businesses there for sticking it out and it feels very nostalgic buying stuff from them, sitting at the shops, etc. One of the shops in the village had a really old sign authorising them to sell alcohol - we knew it was old because it used OLD MALAY. Like instead of "dibenarkan" it would be "di-benarkan", and instead of "c" it would be "ch" as in "sechara" instead of modern "secara". And "untok" instead of "untuk". SO INTERESTING. And they still sell drinks in glass bottles! The only time I ever see those is in Malaysia. And Andersen's of Denmark, but that's like SO FRIGGIN' EX.

And I still remember the shop with the huge yellow sign exclaiming "Y U SO LIKE THAT?" outside it. The last time I passed by it was during OBS, but we didn't get a chance to stop in and buy drinks. This time we did, though, and we ended up learning a bit more about the old uncle inside when Russell asked about his cat. (Apparently it's named Xiaohua, or Little Flower, and it could climb trees and stuff. Intelligent cat - it had Liz eating out of its paw! It had three or four kittens previously but he gave them all away.) Haha when we bought drinks from him he told us in Chinese that he would only charge us a dollar then, but the next time we come back it would be the usual price of $1.20! I'm quite inclined to come back...ONLY IN THE DAY, THOUGH.

It's interesting how he lives alone, though. The shop's in his house, and I glimpsed what I reckon is his bedroom near the table I sat at. It was just a wooden platform with a pillow on it and a TV was on the platform by the side. How does he stand sleeping alone, in the dark, in the middle of nowhere near a deep QUARRY with only his cat for company? Perhaps he's used to it, perhaps he doesn't really stay there overnight, I don't know. Makes me wish I knew Chinese so I could talk to people on the island.

I guess I should count myself lucky that my class camp is actually something fun and one that's out of school, instead of other classes who just have a one-day rope course in school. =/ I mean, I'd love to do high elements (since in class camp we did low elements) but an overnight camp on Pulau Ubin just gives you more memories than a rope course ever will.

2010-02-28T14:18:00.003+08:00

Well, off to Pulau Ubin for Class Camp tomorrow. I'm not looking forward to it completely because there's a chance of *ahem* womanly trouble ahead which would make it extremely uncomfortable. I hope my body listens to me and waits for a bit. JUST TWO DAYS PRZ.

Homework does creep up on you in JC, honestly. I thought it was OK, having just two essays due next week, and then I realised TSD essay would take some time and I know jack shit about analysing Petrarch/Wyatt's stupid Sonnet 134. The main worry now is TSD essay, which should be kiiiiiinda OK because it's about the acting bit, and I don't know if I should just chiong the Lit essay on Tuesday and Wednesday. =/

Screw, the humidity is making it hard for me to do homework.

2010-02-25T22:59:00.002+08:00

2010-02-20T21:59:00.003+08:00

But don't forget who's taking you home
And in whose arms you're gonna be
So darling, save the last dance for me.

2010-02-17T19:46:00.002+08:00

"A mighty pain to love it is
And 'tis a pain that pain to miss;
But of all pains, the greatest pain
It is to love, but love in vain."
- Abraham Cowley

"The best way of forgetting how you think you feel is to concentrate on what you know you know."
- Mary Stewart

Unless, of course, you know nothing at all. At which the approach becomes useless and you'll just end up mired in your own thoughts anyway.

2010-02-15T00:30:00.002+08:00

I hate fangirling over things. Or having a crush. I don't know. Anything that requires great emotional exertion. It fills me up with a restless energy that I can't spend anywhere fulfilling. When I get that restless energy I become high and suddenly very excitable, moving about frequently, unable to stay still. Less than an hour, or even thirty minutes afterwards, all that energy is spent and I become the exact opposite - quiet, tired and moody. TEMPERAMENTAL, I SAY. I should just go to sleep now, dammit.

Speaking of sleep (oh look, I'm changing the subject), I realise I've been feeling increasingly sleepy after 10pm nowadays. It's a good thing because I'm finally getting the required hours of sleep a growing teenager needs and I feel more rested the next day, but it's also a bad thing because when I sleep earlier, the days become shorter.

Perhaps I should start spinning. Counterclockwise, specifically.

Except it's more like I'd spend more time with homework and school than with a nonexistent special someone. Sad. Or good. Whatever happened to "being more of a mugger than you have ever been in the past four years"?

2010-02-14T15:49:00.005+08:00

Happy Valentine's Day.

2010-02-11T23:09:00.003+08:00

YAY! I was able to donate blood today!

I went to the Innovation Room right after Math class, around 12.40pm. There were already a sizeable number of people there filling out the Health Assessment Forms. Familiar faces were seen too, like Rashidah and Dharani. We were supposed to complete the forms, register at the table, get out blood pressure checked by the doctor, have the haemoglobin test done, and if we passed all that, then finally we could go and donate blood. At that point in time when I entered the room, the counter recorded 17 successful donors.

All throughout the admin process I was aware that at any point in time I could fail the tests and simply not be allowed to donate blood. After all that, coming all this way and not being able to donate blood would've been sad. I saw people forced to leave because their blood pressure was too low, or their haemoglobin levels were lacking. Dharani was rejected because her temperature was too high, and Rashidah was turned away because she had low blood pressure. Luckily for me, my blood pressure was more than enough (I was nervous when I went in so my heart rate was higher than usual, oops) and the nurse there told me that my haemoglobin levels 'just passed' the minimum limit. The minimum limit's 12.5g/dl, and mine was 12.8g/dl. I whooped when she told me I passed. :D

I had to put the needle in my right arm because the veins in my left arm were too soft and could collapse if they tried to insert the needle there. The painkiller injection wasn't bad - hardly felt the prick - and the needle afterwards didn't hurt much either, as thick as it was. I just sat there listening to my iPod and squeezing the ball every few seconds. After about ten minutes, the bag was pretty much full. I had to wait there for another five to ten minutes, holding the gauze to the spot where the needle was inserted before one of the helpers deemed I had rested enough and went over to bandage my arm. I had been looking around excitedly during those five to ten minutes, eagerly wanting to tell them that I wanted the green bandage - just in case they might have wanted to assign me a girly colour like pink. I'm so glad they asked for my colour preference. :DDDD I think I nearly squealed in reply.

Grabbed a juice box and some Dewberry cookies from the refreshments table. I won a T-shirt from the Lucky Draw hahaha. Russ Wong got a photo frame. He came to the Innovation Room before Math and thus turned up for lesson with a blue bandage around his elbow. (He wanted pink, but the helpers had already cut for him a length of blue tape so...too bad.) Lisa also came to the Innovation Room, but I don't know if she was successful. I felt perfectly fine after the donation - no dizziness, no nothing, though I was careful not to exert myself too much. Walking around and having that bandage on my arm was pretty cool, haha. AND IT WAS GREEN. Totally matched my specs.

By the time I left I think the counter recorded 20+ successful donors. Not yet 30, I reckon.

Thinking about it now, I wouldn't mind donating blood again. Knowing that my blood is somewhere out there, and will one day be used to save someone's life, just makes me feel happy. Hoping, of course, my blood is perfectly healthy (and it should be!). The initial thought of donating blood made me fearful, about the needles, about the fainting, but now that I've gone through it once, there's really nothing to be afraid of. Now that I know I can handle it, I can go for more blood donations organised in future. Everyone else who can donate should too! On Facebook and when I walked around, there were people who had misconceptions or fears about donating blood. Oh, it's scary, it's painful, you can get AIDS, etc...they should go and know more about it!

2010-02-10T21:57:00.003+08:00

And so Step One of my journey to donating blood is done.

I don't see why my mum is so reluctant to let me donate blood. She refused to sign my consent form and instead told me to get my dad to sign it. My eldest sister said my mum was already like that when she went to get her own consent form signed, and thereafter my mum just told her to get my dad to sign it. I mean, donating blood saves lives! Why can't I be allowed to donate blood peacefully?

My dad signed it without much hesitation. I wonder if he really minds. He told me he actually donated blood 48 times when he was younger, and he was just 2 donations away from being a champion blood donor (or Silver) when he was deemed unsuitable due to high blood pressure. =/ I guess he understands better the benefits of donating blood...as well as its consequences too.

It's just Step One anyway. I could very well be unable to donate blood due my veins being too thin or too weak, or perhaps my haemoglobin count is too low. Or I could freak out at the sight of the relatively hugeass needle. *gleh* NO IT'S TO SAVE LIVES. I CAN DO THIS SHIT.

Luckily I have six free blocks tomorrow. Three hours to recover from PE (if we're doing any sports), then Math, three more free hours (one of which I will go and donate blood and the rest to recover) and then Lit. I'll probably conk out hahahaha. Jaz warned me about Take 5 on Friday, oh dear. Hope I'll be fine then. DRINK LOADS OF WATER. AND EAT FOOD.

-----------

Had Library meeting today. Most of it was made up of icebreakers. We played Human Knot, Whacko, Charades and Musical Chairs. Our Human Knot ended up as two circles, and the circle I was in pretty much gave up since three of us had our hands horribly tangled, and solving it would've involved one of us having to squeeze through a hole smaller than the size of a basketball. Whacko - got whacked three times because my brain wasn't working well with my mouth. My group won a bag of Cheezels from Charades. I managed to hang on until the last five people in Musical Chairs, and then I missed the chair and fell onto the floor. =x

Brainstormed for ideas for Library's new collar pin, because the old one looks too much like the school badge and it's got RJC on it instead of, well, RI (JC). Went to the student librarians' room in the library where we put our handprints/fingerprints on a sheet with the J2s' prints already on them (I made a Victory sign), and then put up our pictures on the noticeboard. I stayed back a bit with some of the others until 6pm and then left for home.

FORGOT TO CHECK BHG FOR THE NEW DEPLOY CS-6. I suppose I can go with Mat on Friday to Black Tactical, maybe stop by the BHG/Metro/whatever's nearby and see if it's there, because I doubt I'd be much up for window-shopping tomorrow.

2010-02-08T18:20:00.003+08:00

Finally we've got our proper timetables!

...though it makes me wish we didn't. MY TIMETABLE LOOKS HORRIBLE. It's cluttered and messy, thanks to our class' wide variety of unconventional subjects. I've got HUGE BREAKS in between classes on Thursday and Friday, and as a result I end up leaving school only at about 4-5pm on most days except Monday and Wednesday.

Thursday has got to be one of the crappiest yet free-est days in my timetable. Depending on which Lit tutorial class I'm in, I have a total of SIX OR SEVEN FREE HOURS throughout the day, and the only lessons I have are Morning PE, Math and Lit. Friday's not much better - similarly, depending on which Lit tutorial class I'm in, I've got five or six free hours, and two or three subjects: Geog, Lit and PW.

On the bright side, though, I have practically all the free time in the world to finish all (or at least, most) of my homework before the weekend. ;D YES, SELF, YOU WILL STUDY LIKE A HARDCORE MUGGER THIS YEAR. Okay, maybe not a hardcore mugger, but at least more of a mugger than you have ever been in the past four years. The more you keep up with your studies, the easier it is! >: D YES, SELF, GO GO GO!

Heeeh.

Oh yeah, something pretty cool happened today. It first began when I was at the library (as usual - honestly, if you can't find me anywhere I'm probably at the library) and I went outside to get my Math homework from the lockers. I ran into one of my OGLs, who replied my "Hi" with an "Eh, your skirt damn long!". I grinned in return, but inwardly I was like "OH GOOD EFFING GOD, PEOPLE, I'VE ALREADY ALTERED MY SKIRT, WHAT SHIT DOES IT MATTER IF IT'S ACTUALLY LEGAL UNLIKE EVERY OTHER GIRL'S SKIRT IN THIS SCHOOL?!".

So later on, after I left the library, I fumed about it to Sarah and Clarissa in the lift. There was a teacher in the lift with us, but I didn't know who it was, obviously, being new in the school and all. While I ranted how illogical it was that everyone was commenting how long my skirt was when it was perfectly within school rules (UNLIKE THEIRS!), I noticed that he had half-turned around and was looking at me with an amused smile on his face.

When the lift reached the first floor, we all got out of the lift. The teacher then turned back towards me, smiling, and said, "Don't worry about it. If your seniors keep it up, they'll see me very soon." And with those parting words, he turned towards the canteen and walked away. I sort of stared at him, stunned, as he walked away, and I think Clarissa and I were equally blur about who he was until Sarah told us that he was the discipline master.

...LOL.

2010-02-07T15:27:00.004+08:00

There are all three volumes of Uzumaki in the graphic novels section of the library.

Library Society has a day set for bookshopping where they go to Kinokuniya or Borders to buy new books for the library (subject to approval, of course). So now I'm thinking, WHICH DEPRAVED SOUL BOUGHT UZUMAKI FOR THE SCHOOL LIBRARY?!

There are DC and Marvel graphic novels; The Resident Tourist series by Troy Chin; Sir Fong comics by Otto Fong; other significant graphic novels like Maus and Persepolis; two or three volumes of Ouran; CLAMP manga like Clover, xxxHolic and Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles; the Manga Guide series; and then there's Uzumaki.

WHERE DOES THAT FIT IN?!

But I finished all three anyway. Oddly enough, after I left the library, my eyes felt funny. Dizzy. Like I had just stared into a spiral for some time.

Yesterday my sister cooked some hotdogs. When they came out of the boiling water I noticed that they looked odd. Usually hotdogs are straight, but these were curved in places.

"Hey! You know these look funny, right?"
"Yeah I know, they look like spirals."
"SAY WHAT?"
"I said they look like spirals."
"DID YOU SEE?"
"What?"
"YOU SAID THEY LOOKED LIKE SPIRALS!"

2010-02-05T00:15:00.003+08:00

Right. Well, screw blogging about Orientation; I'm not bothering to try and remember every single little detail, nor would I like to dredge up any unfavourable memories during that time, so let's move on to school proper.

I'm in class 11A01F. Can't really remember the two prefixes, but I do know A01F and that should be all that matters. There are only 12 students in my class, including me, and the only subject we all have in common is H1 Math. (YEAH SCIENCE/MATH HATERS!) The problem is, that being the ONLY subject we have in common, for about half the time the class is basically split up into smaller groups (CSE, TSD, TLL, Art, Music). LIKE WE AREN'T SMALL ENOUGH ALREADY.

It's pretty good being in a small class - I mean, you only need to remember 11 other names, and when you already know half the class it's pretty much a done deal. The downside is that EVERY SINGLE PERSON MATTERS. When the whole J1 cohort gathers together in the hall everyone's already in their big groups of classes, but we're still struggling to find remnants of our class. When we manage to gather a group of three we're already celebrating because it's ONE THIRD of our class. As soon as we lose a member that's quite a big chunk taken away from us.

Think about it: my class is smaller than an OG!

We first thought we were so small, we'd be a clique on its own, but actually you can still be split into smaller cliques even with just 12 people. It's a sad thought. =/ I mean, I can see myself hanging out with some people, but I don't feel as if I can make any lasting 'best friend' relationships with them. I'm being all antisocial now - I suppose I will eventually make new friends, of course - but I'm already coming up with backup plans just in case I end up being such a loner.

And this is where Library comes in. It'll be my one and only CCA. With TSD, I don't think I'll have the time to accomodate two CCAs, and anyway, it's so much better to devote my time to only one. The library's a lovely, spacious place; quiet, peaceful, full of books (though their fiction variety leaves much to be desired). That could be my new place to relax. Cataloguing books, wrapping them, checking out items, etc. Quiet therapy or something. I wouldn't have to speak much. ;D And Student Librarians can borrow three more books than others. They've got their own room too, with couches and music and a TV. The librarian said the student librarians love to study there during exam time because it's so quiet. You can eat there too, if you like, just not things like fried kway teow (obviously). And throw away stuff when you're done.

There are only five J2s in Library now. I wonder how many J1s will join, there were perhaps 15 people at Induction. In a way I'm kinda hoping it's small - I don't do well in big groups (GEEZ, MAN). Oh well, I'm looking forward to next week's meeting anyway! :D

2010-01-29T22:53:00.003+08:00

This should not have affected me as much as it did.

DAMN YOU, NASA.

2010-01-26T23:52:00.002+08:00

I just realised that in about one month, my blog will be all of FIVE YEARS OLD. Isn't that some awesomecakes? FIVE YEARS of documenting my life and feelings, etc. Gosh, how times have changed.

Tomorrow the JAE results will be released. I hope Jane gets her first choice! I would love to be in the same school as her again and eat recess/lunch and go exploring Bishan and go home together. Though I doubt it'd be rather often due to TSD - YES AFTER ALL THAT DELIBERATION I ENDED UP STICKING TO TSD, STORY COMES LATER - but it'd be fun! We can do crazy stuff again. ;D

Reminds me, I still have to prepare my back-to-school stuff. I saw some CUTE notebooks at Daiso the other day, so adorable! and I thought it'd be great to use as subject notebooks. To get me motivated and stuff. So that's about three/four notebooks, and maybe I'll use my Sims 3 tote bag as a school bag because it's THE SIMS 3, and Jane gave me this nice green waterbottle for Christmas. I wonder if she knew I liked green (though it's no surprise to anybody by now - I proclaim my love of green as often as I change clothes). And for feminine stuff, cough cough, or other small things I got this functional blue pouch from Daiso with a cute penguin mirror - a mobile phone accessory, actually - attached to it.

After all this I BETTER be motivated for school lol.

Oh yeah, about TSD...I was woken up this morning by the buzzing from my handphone. TG had just messaged me to tell me that I was accepted into TSD. The night before I had 99% decided that I would go straight to the Head of Systems and tell her that I wanted to drop TSD, but the fact that I had been accepted, the thought that I actually probably did have some potential for drama, shrank my entire resolve. I hadn't planned to leave for school until 12 noon, but I just had to see that list for myself. It was my One Big Decision. Today was probably the fastest and most motivated I had ever been in my life getting out of bed and washing up.

Well, the accepted list for TSD looked more like a list of people who had just auditioned properly and thus got in anyway. Dimmed my enthusiasm a little - not that it was even impressive to begin with - but throughout the day I realised that TSD was better than CSE for me (it wouldn't have been much difference, just that I had more experience in drama and I hated writing anyway).

So...guess this is it. My final combination. Geog Lit TSD math.

Now to see if Head of Systems can somehow sort me into the Enhanced Track for losers.

2010-01-22T14:20:00.003+08:00

I dreamt I was at RGS, shampooing my hair in the bathroom. Suddenly we were all called out into the corridors, so I was forced to run out with my hair still full of soap suds. We pretty much stood around in the corridor doing nothing, and as tempted as I was to go back and rinse my hair we weren't allowed to go back yet.

Luckily for me, every light in the school was hooked up to a water pipe. The water could be turned on using the fan controls in the classrooms. I went to turn one of the water pipes on and a stream of water poured down from the light onto the floor, draining away at the gutter at the side of the school corridors. I simply stood there under the light, letting the water wash away the shampoo. The water ran down my collar, through my uniform and out down my legs, but oddly enough my school uniform remained perfectly dry. (To be honest it felt kinda gross washing my hair with the water, because I was under the impression it was collected from gutters on the roof.)

I turned off the water when I thought that my hair was completely rinsed. However, I had to dash back to the bathroom to rinse my hair a little bit more because I thought it still felt soapy. I was going to the sink, but when I saw one of the toilets overflowing I immediately ran out so I had to use the light's water pipe again. However, everyone else was already returning to class.

I have no idea whether this is even linked or not, but somehow I found myself wearing a yellow T-shirt, holding a pair of red pinstriped pants in one hand. Apparently they were the RED Spy's pants, and I was debating whether or not to wear them back home. In the end, I decided to wear my culottes, and off I went to meet my mum.

We walked to the MRT station, behind this young couple. I had a rectangular sticker with the words "I AM A SPY" on it, and I couldn't decide which sleeve to put it on. The sleeves of the T-shirt had the TF2 logo on them. In the end I pasted it on my...well, I forgot which sleeve.

The MRT station map was extremely confusing. I thought we were at three stations at once, when in fact it was only one and the map simply displayed the other two stations very closely together. I think we were at Vya or Vda station, and the next one was T____ _____, can't remember. Apparently this MRT line was linked to both the NEL and Circle Line stations. We went through the gate, and...

I woke up bwahaha.

2010-01-21T02:25:00.002+08:00

AHA!

It finally comes round on someone! *cough* Might've been with some intervention from me, but the guy was clearly a sitting-duck. It HAD to happen some time or another.

So, the first and last time I played TF2, I stupidly chose to play the Sniper. End result simply being that I got backstabbed. Thrice. In a row. By the same Spy. That singular experience threw my confidence off completely that I have never returned to competitive playing ever again.

(YES. I AM AN FPS COWARD. I CAN'T EVEN GET PAST RAVENHOLM BECAUSE I'M SCARED OF ZOMBIES KTHXBAI.)

The guy had a Razorback, so my brother couldn't backstab him BUT he could still shoot him. From behind. Same method, different weapon. DOESN'T MATTER. The dumb thing was that the guy kept coming back to the same spot! Like me, but I don't think that this guy was a noob, so that makes it even more stupid. I suppose he didn't realise it was 'another' form of backstabbing - maybe the shots came from somewhere else, and that Spy's just got really good aim - and I think my brother could've gone for a fourth kill had the time not run out.

It's fun to watch my brother play, and he plays it so easily that I'm tempted to try too, but then I remember my initial experience and I just say "Well, another time". Once I get the courage to do so. =/ Heh, could probably be one of my New Year resolutions, eh?

ALSO: I WILL NOT THINK ABOUT TSD AUDITIONS.

2010-01-13T18:37:00.003+08:00

RI (JC) Subject Combination 2010-11

H1 General Paper
H1 Project Work
H1 Mother Tongue
H1 Mathematics
H2 Geography
H2 Theatre Studies and Drama

....

H2 Literature

FUCK YOU LIT.

2010-01-12T15:45:00.005+08:00

I'd say I've been stunned into silence quite a few times in my life, and yesterday was one of them. I walked right up to the desk with the sort of constipated frown on my face, and I could hardly pick up the pen to sign on the name list. I'd have frozen in position over the name list with the pen in hand, but I couldn't very well hold up the line so I hastily signed my name, even if it turned out rather shaky.

Dropping the pen on the table, my attention was immediately drawn towards the pile of result slips on the table, all facing down. His hands seemed slow and deliberate as they picked up the topmost slip and flipped it over. The first thing I saw was a FOUR, all in CAPS, and right next to it was a B. I took the paper from him and I stared at it, barely comprehending what I saw. FOUR, B. FOUR, B. Therefore, B4.

"Do you like your result?"

I opened and closed my mouth several times like a fish out of water. I wanted to ask that burning question ("ARE YOU SURE YOU'VE GOT MY RESULT RIGHT?!") but it would've been pointless to ask him; the answer would simply be a bemused smile. I turned away, still staring at the paper, and an unbelievable lightness came over my body.

I started to laugh. The disbelieving, hysterical kind of laugh. People stared at me, but I've always wanted to be known as slightly crazy. Yet still sane, of course. And then I felt like I couldn't hold it in any longer.

"I GOT A B4 YEAHHH!"

-----------

Truthfully I expected a C6 for HMT, so that was a major surprise for me (and my parents). ;D Never in the past two years have I got a B for Malay.

Got my OGL call today at a rather inopportune time. My mum told my OGL that I'd call her later. Her name's Beatrice, and now I know I'm in group BB04. Otherwise known as Gardenia Kaya Bun.

I am sorely tempted to bring a real Gardenia Kaya Bun on the day itself and point at it when people ask what my OG is.

2010-01-11T00:29:00.002+08:00

I've been looking for this ad FOR AGES, and it turns out it's been up on Youtube since October last year. I guess I must've been searching for the wrong keywords! The ad is SUPER FUNNY. Though I think it's got more impact in Malay.

I love the song, but too bad it's most likely made specially for the ad. I wonder who sings it, though. DiGi's ads are always cool, funny, and appealing. Their advertising team must have one heck of an imagination. Their ads with the Yellow People are hilarious, go watch!