332: where’s the fire, what’s the hurry about

… we’ve got so much to do, but only so many hours in a day. And we can dream on, but don’t imagine they’ll all come true.

I have decided to update this post everyday for a week with the things that make me happy everyday. It is time for some POSITIVITY! Also, strange how they say people only blog when they are either 1) very depressed 2) very free 3) very busy. I suppose this must be true, because I do it all the time. 

279: dinner with cleavageman j

Did I ever tell you I love Muji food? Like, not the clothes, but the random selection of weird and wonderful foods they stock up near the back. Like plum cheese tarts and black pepper cheese bites. Yum. 

I should be buying less since I’ll be in Japan in a few days, but I can’t help it. Anyway yesterday concluded the neverending series of birthday parties (surprise, and otherwise).

277: the kids are alright

Obviously I had no time to do this before today. So even if it’s 1.5 months late, thank you:

269: お誕生日おめでとう！

It takes a special kind of person to stop coming home drunk after a party. It takes a special kind of person to ignore the flashing lights, the booming music, and the leering eyes. A sea of white shirts wherever you go, squeezing through bodies to get to the toilet. Resisting glass after glass and bottle after bottle of whisky. You think maybe you’d be better off with a beer, or two, or none. A Coke, maybe. Then you think about how there is still work to do tomorrow, Equity and Public Law waiting for you, their siren songs turning to unpleasant wails in your head. Still, it’s a road that must be taken. And still you smell of smoke.  It takes a special kind of person to forget about all this, to let go, and just be happy. As if there is nothing on tomorrow, as if nothing is the way it was yesterday.

We got lost on the way home. It was raining and I couldn’t see anything and I knocked down a cone outside Zouk and the security guard screamed at me. It was mildly unpleasant but somehow it was funny, when everything was a haze. I probably shouldn’t have been driving. 

To the special person tonight who abandoned tomorrow and lived for today, here is your very happy 21st birthday. I know you will remember it forever and ever, even if you can’t really remember anything tomorrow. We are always here to remind you. Hur hur. :)

So the sky turns from black to purple to orange, and still the clock ticks on. When it turns blue we will wake up and life will start again.

266: 你是我的花朵

 

爱你伍佰年！Thank you for the ticket, guys. It was so wonderful. I sat 10 rows from the stage and I got to see every single detail up close, properly, including his 34869759 guitar changes (beautiful guitars too!) and everyone was jumping up and down with lightsticks and generally going crazy. I didn’t sit down at all the whole time, and that was over 3 hours. He gave two encores, there was a lot of fireworks, and random confetti. Whoever said Singaporeans are staid obviously aren’t going to the right concert. Chinese fans are seriously crazy. It was so fun. That said, I have never seen so many Ah Bengs congregated in one area before. Hahaha. 

#

 

In other news…

 

258: a peach is an upside down heart

PEACH: ひっくり返る愛のマーク！！！

Err. Cos you know like how I have not been sleeping for the past few days and staying in school till 2am to do my stupid public law assignment. Naturally once it was over I reverted to doing completely time-wasting things.

Like posting pictures.

Oh and I half-forgot there was Equity today.   

256: i’ve got my mind set on you

So pretty right? I have been looking at this thing for like 6 months. Really only US$395 :(

 

Alternatively, the ring is only US$150.

 

My middle finger is 7.5 and my ring finger 6. Haha.  

253: 青春 … 万歳!

I don’t know why everyone seems to be getting on my case recently. The entire weekend (and today) my mother and grandmother have been making weird and insinuating comments and it is getting really, really difficult to not get pissed off. Obviously, my Lenten resolution (which is not to get pissed at my mother) is not working out as well as it should. Considering my mother’s own Lenten resolution is not to complain, I’m not even sure who failed more. This is a situation that deserves a huge GG.  

I’ve been intending to start my Public Law assignment today but I just can’t get down to it, and all I did today was read two White Papers at McDonald’s, and even that took all of an hour. What is with me and inertia? Even more worrying is the fact that I will have to seriously start studying for exams again after this break is over, and then it’ll be a long and painful two months to the finish line again. Considering I do less and less work each first half of each semester, I don’t know how I’m going to pull off a miracle. Now I’m just biting my nails and hoping I don’t slide down to the bottom.   

# 

So. Ian celebrated his 21st on Saturday, and perhaps really for the last last last time ever, we will gather Ian’s house. Next door, Silver Tower has already been pulled down, and soon everyone will move out and there will be nothing left. While keeping to our Happy Hwachong Nucleus Wilson and I concluded that Ian’s place is really somewhere where everyone meets, and it has been so over so many years. That day someone asked Grace how she knew Ian, and to our surprise neither of us could remember the answer. It was strange; I don’t remember how I met all the guys I’ve known since secondary school. Was it a GEP thing? Or was it just that strange and inexplicable era of instant messaging where everyone was indiscriminate about adding random email addresses to their MSN?  

Probably so. 

252: once more, with feeling

Today I thought about a lot of things. When we first started out, we met each other at the bookstore, and I was reading Gathering Blue, after a long and painful search. We then went on a trip for tea and then to search for the perfect present, before calling you up and finally settling on something. And then, as time went by, the conversations got stranger by the minute, always talking about things other than us, about our surroundings, our plans, and all of us talked about the wine, the food, the random people who were not there, the people in the room, the Japanese embassy. Each story was filled with vignettes and things to remember, as well as very forgettable things, which we only listened to because we were polite. And so on.  

Then as the night died down and the people left, we went on a wild goose chase for an alcohol binge, which came lately in the night, though whether it was much appreciated or not went unanswered. There was alcohol, yes, though some of the pleasure was diminished, and there was good music, and for a few moments all of us were intoxicated and happy, and eager to dance and forget the world. Then we sat down on the plump sofa and realised that it was not our birthday we were celebrating, and as we looked down on the people dancing, I realised what an elaborate mating ritual it was, just like a poem you wrote about so long ago.  

A few days ago there might have been a lunar eclipse. Only when we looked up into the sky, we saw no moon, and thought it was a normal thing. And so, both of us missed a momentous event, as we always have.

247: look at the stars

155: happy boys and happy girls we’ll be

crimson tide! spent most of saturday night feeling fuzzy and warm, which was very good considering i started getting crampy and had a headache through the night – but then again, i slept at 5am.

it was hong’s birthday party yesterday, the last one in a long long time, since he’s flying off to MIT in september. this year there weren’t 3 cakes (just one) but it was baked with looooove even though d_____ thought it tasted like play-doh (omg when was the last time you played with this stuff!) i think he’s just jealous he doesn’t have someone to bake one for him…

caught up with grace and joel, all the while marvelling at how all the boys remain the same – as full of nonsense as ever! anyway the good thing that came out of that chat with them is that now there is a meet-the-girlfriend session in the works… joel you better go organise it quick!

j came to pick me after and his car got banged, now his headlight has fallen out. it would be funny but it’s evil to laugh, so :x anyway we went back home and watched music and lyrics on my mac – after he protested he didn’t want to watch a bloody movie (kill bill) in the middle of the night. hence, a sappy movie! it was actually quite funny – british humour (: (“maybe this time i will write, and i will write like a human, and not like a … small pekinese dog”)

anyway – here’s some of friday’s happenings (:

138: there’s gold in them hills

the day started off with brunch at graze in rochester park, with a lovely walk into a “leafy glade” (i quote!)

i think graze is a really nice place. it’s a family type breakfast place where there are kids running about on a lazy sunday morning, their parents reading newspapers al fresco in the sunshine, and there’s foliage all around. i felt away from everything, and it wasn’t even that hot, even though it was sunny throughout. a sunny sunday! we sat and talked, ate our food slowly, marvelled at the strawberries floating in the water jug, how everyone seemed friendly and relaxed and sunday-like, for over two hours. how fantastic.

happy campers lazing in the sunshine

after that we took a walk around rochester park and looked in at all the other eating places, before driving to town to walk about for a bit, because our lunch reservation (!!! so much food!! the horrors) was at 1.20. so we hopped into zara where i found the happiest tank top ever (yellow with a watermelon print!)!!! after which we walked over to palais renaissance (where i guessed it was marmalade pantry the moment he said ‘we’re going to … hilton’) and headed downstairs, where i walked into a table full of 20+ people who yelled SURPRISE!!! as loud as they could, and i could feel myself quite literally beaming. beambeambeam, like a torchlight. and i was very happy! even though i knew it was coming a long time ago because i happened to chance on the bf’s mailbox… (fail)

us at marmalade pantry! his t-shirt is lopsided. haha. and the girls: michelle, caitlin, sharm, chris

lovely orgasmic food: salmon scrambled eggs, sticky date toffee pudding (lisa i know you love this!), steak sandwich, linguine with crabmeat and pesto, corned beef hash, chicken pot pie, eggs florentine, risotto with portobello mushroom and asparagus, french toast with pears and vanilla ice cream

then the amusing stuff begins!
cheryl and JQ try to kill each other, JQ is an evil bunny, the girls peer at the pastries in the glass box, jo sits between two pious catholic girls whose lenten resolutions are not to eat chocolate (:


jon tries to listen to cats having sex on sam’s phone, while sam lords it over his newly-found empire

we disappeared to the toilet and photowhored for a bit. when we came back, there was CAKE!!!


AND PRESENTS!!

and lots of lovely friends (: (:

to recap:
when i was 13, i failed a test
when i was 14, i got booked
when i was 15, my mother bitched about my socks in the morning, my mother bitched about my passport photo when i went to apply for ic, my parents went out for dinner without me at night while i had tuition.
when i was 16, my classmate booked me for my socks and i went to detention
when i was 17, i twisted my ankle
when i was 18, it was the last day of block tests, i was studying for basic theory, i got back my econs block test (16/30, guys)

it’s been a long time since there were so many people gathered to celebrate with me, and even though it might be because i’m out of teenhood (i’m 20!) that this is possibly the first birthday since i was 12 that didn’t suck, thank you to everyone who made today possible, even though the surprise failed (long before all of you did anything to sabotage it, haha) but it really made my day and i was very, very, very happy. hope you guys had a good time, and kwek i hope your specs are still in working order!

and now to thank our sponsor, without whom this would not have been possible. thank you, i feel very lucky (:

108: some kind of lazy day

st james was… interesting. the cover was only $10, though, so it’s worth a check out just for the variety. i’m sure the music and crowd will improve with time — though it seems horribly overaged, and the guys were suitably disappointed by the lack of fresh meat down there (heh). and the DJ was vaguely annoying. but happy birthday JQ anyways, you’re 21! (:today was possibly the first day in a long time without any rain, and i finally watched curse of the golden flower, starring gong li’s boobs (and about 10,000 other extras’) — seems a trifle excessive, though, JQ was telling me he’s off boobs now after watching it, he’s “now an ass man” — quite a depressing film, really. there are loads of good movies coming out in january, though, so that’s something to look forward to. since we watched it in yishun, it seemed like a throwback to the past (when was the last time you visited yishun?), and it was pleasantly nostalgic and suburban. the spaces are so much wider, and you can actually see some greenery… bumped into ziyao at the interchange, and had a drowsy, pleasantly stony bus ride home. stopped a bus stop earlier and walked back, soaking in this glorious cool non-rainy weather, just in time for dinner. lovely. off to bangkok in two days!