347: maybe that something’s gonna happen today

I feel like today has been a peaceful day. After the hubbub of last night, where I remember having dangerous conversations, great chili from Mitch, way too much wine and unnecessary beer, and once again, the frenzy of dancing in a crowd of bodies that have absolutely nothing to do with each other, smudged eyeliner. Strange because I didn’t recognise most people there and was too lazy to make new friends, for the most part. Increasingly I feel rather anti-social and reclusive and all I want to do is hide back in my (now) familiar, cosy room and not come out, especially since the weather this week has been completely uncooperative. Yesterday on my way to school I encountered at least four different weather phenomena in the space of twenty minutes, which sounds impressive but is terrible to get through. It is hard to explain how horrible it feels to have it rain ice when you are trying to cycle your fastest to get to school on time with the howling wind blowing ice right at your face the entire time. My cheeks are still itchy from the cuts. You never really know how much the weather affects your day, mostly because it never really changes in Singapore. In any case, everything is insulated against the weather, and nobody really cares. In view of my upcoming trip to Austria I finally downloaded The Sound of Music, which is possibly my favourite movie of all time and one that I really needed to have watched about three months ago. 

339: remember 2008

The year has been eventful, to say the least. I ushered in the new year at the beginning of the year (last year, now) in a variety of circumstances; every year with the Hwa Chong people, screaming “Happy New Year” at the top of our voices around the swimming pool, and then drinking Raffles beer at the front of Block B, our cars parked in a perfect straight line along the parallel parking lots. I was wearing a red dress, I remember, and the rest were happy and drunken.

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:

237: how new year’s eve was spent

Pictures above courtesy of Michelle!

 

 

After watching the first episode of Coffee Prince with Nurul on Ian’s TV on New Year’s Eve, I went and looked it up. And I finished it in two days. Oh man. I love it. Every character is so well-developed, even the minor ones. And the acting was wonderful. Okay, and the guy was hot.

234: giddy-up, giddy-up, giddy-up, let’s go

Christmas. Always a good time to get together with people, and laugh your head off.  

217: 你的爱还在不在?

you know, it is always amazing how things pass by really fast – in just two hours, CLT was over, and i could get on with my life.

which now consists of property and company law. not terribly exciting, to be sure, but one step closer to the finish line. and more and more, i find myself inching closer to the second half of the class.

okay. that’s enough depressing talk, because nobody likes it when people whine about studies and how they are supposed to be brilliant but their grades are not reflecting it. so i will talk about how i love 伍佰.

yesterday while we were in school, i concluded that we should set up a co-op exchanging chinese songs – from the past. songs you remember singing from your primary school days, when you were small and young and watched on channel 8, formerly known as SBC (and the no transmission sign on premier 12 was rainbow-coloured). like 被动 (LIVE), 红蜻蜓 (by 小虎队 — so long ago), 你知道我在等你吗？and the one and only famous song that 黎明 has: 今夜你会不会来?

(你的爱还在不在?)

and so after that i went on a downloading spree, and now i have lots of songs to tide me through those long and lonely nights in the study room. and if 伍佰 ever came for a concert, i would so go and watch. AHHH!

i observed a disturbing trend in all this, which i told mok last night, which was that all of us exchanging songs somehow appeared to be from hwachong. HAHA! (:

today is sunday – the jacob ballas garden is full, yet again. people with big cars should not have the licence to any how park. they are contractual licensees! they can be chased out at any time! wah lao! slap them. and then they park and block the entrance to the car park some more, with their huge black hulking mercedes SUV.

you think just because you are rich means you can any how park is it?! KNN! (*#%&&#%!!! zzz.

/rant

216: 我们都已经长大 好多梦还要飞

just so i can spare you the trauma of having to come here and read my depressing post again, here are exciting pictures of exam madness to tide you over and make you laugh, because i am really going crazy for the exam tomorrow because i only started studying 3 days before. GO ME!

as i’ve told wilson before, studying comparative legal traditions has never made me so glad to have studied history. civil law? french revolution? german unification under bismarck? the Enlightenment? NAPOLEON? the french haunt us still. they will never go away. let me show you some proof, an entry i wrote almost exactly two years ago on 19 november, 2005:

WHY ARE FRENCH SO STUPID?

no really, someone answer me! why do they continually feel the need to go all dramatic and shout their LIBERTE EGALITE and FRATERNITE all over the place? (pardon the lack of accents because i speak ENGLISH not FRENCH, which only sounds nice and romantic precisely because you cannot understand what the fuck is being said) why do they go on strike over two stupid people who decided to get themselves killed with no help from the police at all? why is their politics always in a mess? why does the french government never know what they’re doing? and most importantly, why do they have stupid people like d’argenlieu who continually feel the need to fuck up everything for fun? why are they so rude to anyone whose surname is ho? why are there people dumb enough to like a newspaperman who, having a skin condition that causes skin to flake continually everywhere all the time, bathes in hot water every single day of his life only to die in a damn bathtub, stabbed by some stupid girondist sympathiser who happens to be, of all things, a WOMAN? did marat get pwned by a crazy woman? INDEED HE DID. (i wonder if marat ever had sex.) did robespierre get pwned by himself? OH INDEED HE DID. do the french continually pwn themselves by talking to americans? has no one realised that enlisting the help of the americans means you will end up fighting their war? (BRITISH ARE STUPID TOO.) why is everyone called NAPOLEON unceremoniously pwned by someone with a british or a german name?! why is there all this talk about LA VILLE LUMIERE and their irritating policies of assimilation which require the setting up of alliance francaises all over the damn globe (africa and asia included, blinking neon lights sold separately)?! the FRENCH! they are the cause of all problems! they are the cause of every single major revolutionary movement post-1789 that i have had to study for since then!

I AM NOT XENOPHOBIC. I AM JUST BITTER.

i will forever and eternally be devastated. woe. also, the other day, i met huixuan and alex (haven’t seen both in awhile, and totally random! hi if you still read this!) at starbucks on sunday. and everyone was studying. studystudystudy. whee.

ok, pictures.

194: 当你孤单你会想起谁

dinner with yanj last week along prinsep street, with lovely food and 3 main courses for 2 hungry girls – who was supposed to go mambo with me tonight but pangsehed to spend time with her boyfriend, whom she will see 24/7 on campus anyway -_- !!!!

because i love my school, and everything that comes with it.

191: zing is the core of the porn industry

so this is how the food trail went –

(1) nurul’s dad’s prata shop
(2) island creamery
(3) abortive trip to newton
(4) shopping in town for $250 zara jackets and overpriced prada wallets
(5) seafood at esplanade
(6) drinks at harry’s

as you can see, it did not go as well as planned. but fun nonetheless!! (and expensive.)

186: 三年的感情 一封信就要收回

today was a good day.

we are often too caught up, too absorbed, too too busy to just sit down and have a chat. so what better way to do it than pon a useless lecture and relive a holiday mood? i like talking to people. thank you for trusting me. (:

only one useful thought while watching hairspray. it suddenly seemed poignant to me in the middle of the movie while queen latifah was off belting out some song pretending to be emo and crying that the camera angle swept across the marching crowd and in it all i noticed the wizened face of an elderly black man holding a ‘integration not segregation’ sign. which could have been real, and him there to hold it. i wondered as he walked if it brought back any memories for him, marching as he would have when he was younger, 45 years ago. this moment in the film – it changed it from being just another happy teenybopper musical into something much more meaningful for me.

funny how things change, and thankfully not always for the worse.

#

some people are in deep shit, and they do not realise it. sometimes people really need to think about things properly before they do them, and land themselves into a whole pile of muck without knowing. and preferably not with the anatomical protrusion on their body.

it really annoys me that people really don’t know that they are messing up their life.

#

成年人分手後都像無所謂.

talking to you brings back memories. it’s sad to realise that i remember the After more than the Before.

179: all terribly exciting, i must say

it’s so weird to think about the fact that rag is over, yet again – and it’s not us on stage. even though it was hard work, i hope they had fun. in any case, too many hours in the sun is really bad for you. after spending 9 hours in the hot sun on sentosa on wednesday, i am officially sunburnt and sick. today didn’t help much, since my back got even more sunburnt during rag day at the padang. i’m so heaty i can hardly breathe – my nose is terribly blocked and i keep coughing. back to school jitters, maybe. heh. am also really tired.

went for shuki’s P party today, in a Pink Peony dress. others wore Polos, Printed tshirts (totally cheating), Pants (heh), PE tshirts (omg), Pink, Purple, and Pinstripes. they also brought Popiah, Pizza, Pau, Puffs (, curry), Pringles, Pokka drinks, Pepsi, and Pranky Prawn crackers. and Pretty Pink and Purple cupcakes. oh, and we played Pool. theme parties are cool! and they are even cooler when people play along! :)

am dreading the readings i have to do soon — my mailbox is noticeably missing a CLT bundle that is supposed to be there and which i am supposed to read. hmmmm.

176: consoled a cup of coffee, but it didn’t wanna talk

today is casual friday. everyone is wearing jeans. strangely enough, the only thing on me that is truly mine is my jeans. i am wearing my own shoes (but my mother shares them), my boyfriend’s belt, and my mother’s shirt. i like sharing my mother’s things because they fit me and so we buy for two. and then, when i steal them, i don’t feel so bad about it. her shirts are always nice and crisp and have a professional feel about them, always dry-cleaned and hung up in little dry-cleaners’ plastic bags in her cupboard. so i take one and wear it, and these days her shirts are all from the same brand. but mainly i like them because they have nice patterns and have an unobtrusive cursive “R” at the sleeve or the back. my initials.

 yes i know my name starts with C.

this morning is possibly the first morning i have no work. yet. and the starbucks woman cheated me by giving me only one tub of cream cheese for my bagel when yesterday i had two. so half my bagel sits lonely in its brown paper bag for lack of cream cheese and i am sad because it is no longer nice to eat. i am waiting for work to come.

school starts in a week, but before that the weekend waits with good things. strange how these people are those i only meet a few times a year (and always at the same time) but still feel somewhat close to. it is good. and i sort of like work. (hmm) 

174: just go ahead, let your hair down

today was pretty good. met the girls today and watched the simpsons, which was funny in some parts but still better in half-hour episodes. had a nice dinner (marred by a telephone call, but quickly rectified after) and some really nice dessert. i spent a lot of money today, but it was good. bumped into the a14 people and chatted at macs for a long long time before heading off to chijmes for drinks. and talked a lot more, once the alcohol was all in the system. ’twas good to see everyone again and catch up and talk about stupid things late into the night, sort of high. thankfully no drunken photos.

watching NDP preview tomorrow courtesy of joel! whee (:

161: that’s where we wanna go

has it not been awhile? the days have been good, even though i just got my results back on saturday. i’m feeling rather neutral about them — so the less said about them, the better. in any case it’s only been a week since i’ve been back from bangkok, but somehow i’ve managed to spend obscene amounts of money — bought a new dress from gap (white shirtdresses? whee!) while walking about vivocity, after a nice relaxing time at the beach at cafe del mar reading (of all things) about food writing. i am seriously addicted to food writing — just can’t get enough!! met up with nadia after i got back, for lunch, and then the mongolia people yesterday at brewerkz, and then scooted off (in pursuit of sj, who cannot drive, haha) to chinatown for a happy karaoke session. ian knows how to sing chinese songs!!! :O in between i’ve been going to school and doing stuff, bumming with the bf (we’ve been doing lots of reading). on a whim, we went to the wine company at 11pm and bumped into ian, who was working at the time; and after we were done, we moved next door to the prata cafe to have prata and pappadums. ooh. i like! so much eating!!!

it’s nice to be on holiday. i’d take more pictures, but i’m more caught up in life.

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 (:

149: this was where it all began

took this off pak, so i don’t have to look at contract law for tonight…

East-West

changi airport holds too many memories to count, from when i was small enough to sit on the trolley and go whizzing past everything while my parents wheeled it around, to me dreaming of getting sent off one day, to sending people off
expo i only remember for the book sales. i only ever went once, i think – with ian and yanj
pasir ris – 10th birthday parties with yumun and her twin, sending ian off to tekong in january, bumping into haireez, weekend getaway at costa sands (:
tampines is where douglas stays – we watched soccer through the night drinking whisky and ice!
simei is where patrick stays, and that’s about all i know
tanah merah is a stop-and-go place, where there is a country club i don’t look at and people who stay there, but all i know about it is that i need to get off the platform to somewhere else
bedok is where my auntie lives, where douglas brought me to eat bak chor mee
kembangan is where my grandparents, grandauntie, and zing live, which is near siglap with all the nice food, which is near where caitlin and ruimin live
eunos is where my uncle lives, where 93 ends, and where i got lost one fine day trying to make my way to parkway parade in search of douglas (i dunno why my encounters are all so douglas-centric, maybe he is a harbinger of doom)
paya lebar – studying for A levels at the post centre, running to catch the no. 28 bus, desperately hoping i didn’t miss the last one on the way back from shuki’s house
aljunied – first a jamming studio in 2003, with a band i’ve lost touch with, and a trip to swee lee not so long ago
kallang – the eagles, eric clapton, jacky cheung concerts, sitting in the dark by the river just two people alone
lavender makes me remember the diamond shaped hawker centres with huge tables that sat 8 people with the nice fishball soup and SIR where i keep going, for whatever reason
bugis – where my dad used to work for intercontinental, where i cut my hair, the random shops in bugis village that hide treasures only if you bother to look hard enough
city hall, where i found myself in sec3 time and again after i got bored with going to town, to avoid people; there’s always somebody to meet at the starbucks at the top of the escalator
raffles place is somewhere where my mother used to work, and where there is lovely roast meat
tanjong pagar – we met in sec2 for a choir concert and i was walking behind charlene while whispering to somebody, i don’t remember who, that she was very skinny
outram park was where nadia and i got lost after taking the 190 bus to nowhere, and where we stopped to get to SGH to visit hailing after she fell
tiong bahru is where i stopped day in and out during the june holidays of 2003 to get to delta house
redhill is somewhere i’ve never been.
queenstown reminds me of ikea, which reminds me of meatballs, but more importantly the colourful furniture, and the dreams of the kind of room i wanted when i was a kid
commonwealth is just another MRT stop to me
buona vista is where all the RJ kids used to pile up, then it became the place to go when you lost your ez-link card and needed to replace it
dover is where rochester park is (:
clementi is where i went to go to the west coast, taking a bus whose number i don’t remember now (even though it was just last year)
jurong east was firstly for iceskating, and secondly for a place to go when there was nowhere else
chinese garden was somewhere that only appeared in my chinese textbook
lakeside is where keith stays!
boon lay is the furthest place on earth and yet i still go there, because i love my brother

North-South
bukit batok is where i volunteered, for a brief period, to take care of kids at a daycare centre type thing with bernie, and we always took the 157 home
bukit gombak is where shuki stays!
choa chu kang is somewhere i don’t know much about
yew tee is some part of singapore
kranji has a war cemetery, where we went in sec3 after being shown an abortion video during the first and only lesson of the day, biology
marsiling always reminds me of marsupial
woodlands is a passage to malaysia
admiralty is more recognisable as a MTR station in hong kong
sembawang has a nice park with friendly ice-cream uncles
yishun is where the first GV was, the last stop on our take-a-random-trip-on-the-mrt fest, and where i had a long and awkward train ride back to civilisation after settling some fac comm stuff at ziyao’s house, so much so that i couldn’t stand it anymore and got off at novena by cooking up some excuse, even though i said before boarding the train that i was heading to town
yio chu kang is where krystal lives
ang mo kio is where i used to stop alot in sec3, where a ton of people live, and has nice fish and crab beehoon
bishan is grocery-land, infested with RI boys i never used to care about till i started teaching there
braddell is where i sat on a bench at the platform in sec3 watching the trains go by for an hour
toa payoh is where i spent the first 3 years of primary school, and thereafter taking the no. 28 bus home almost everyday in secondary school, where i watched the bus interchange morph from the kind you find in yishun to another across the road to back on the right side but with aircon and a shopping centre
novena the church, the food opposite the church, those nights spent watching movies on our laptops, mugging for SLS in starbucks, spent on the overhead bridge
newton was spent, in my childhood, avoiding stingray, and then gulping copious amounts of it with lots of beer on late saturday nights after concerts and events along bukit timah road (almost inevitably involving a few chinese high boys)
orchard is somewhere where the whole world lives, where you can bump into almost anyone, where you bump into strangers that become familiar faces because you bump into them so often, a place that hides memories and creates them all at the same time
somerset is where i sold flags, fell in love at emerald hill, and had nice korean food
dhoby ghaut had booksales too, and got immensely cooler when the NEL opened – and now i only ever go there because i want to watch movies at cathay and eat carl’s jr while i’m at it
marina bay is somewhere i got stung by mosquitoes non-stop while the rest played capteh and random games

North-East

harbourfront was where we stopped by on the way to sentosa for a tan, and then where we got together one fine day
chinatown, land of heritage tours, too much smoke, too much red, lots of food, including dessert soup i love nowhere else, and cheap karaoke
clarke quay, where people stroll down by the river, falling in and out of love
little india is the land of primary school heritage education and masks a whole horde of photo opportunities
farrer park has a tunnel you don’t know exists
boon keng has a comics connection shop along the road
potong pasir is where somebody’s grandparents live
serangoon is where i grew up in
kovan has nice durian puffs
hougang is where i took a train to at 7 in the morning, sitting in the macs alone in my pajamas drinking iced milo, then sitting out in the open till the 10am sun emerged
buangkok is just another place the train whizzes by
sengkang is too far away for comfort
punggol has fish, and no memories for me

144: you wanna fight for this love

today i watched the sky turn dark on me. stayed in the library from 12 – 8 on the 11th floor, where zhen, shuki and i used to study during the last leg of our a-levels (i attribute us getting exactly the same results to all this studying together) with the huge glass panels that let light in and reach up at least two storeys. when the sun comes out in the afternoon these black hangings slide down the sides of the building, unrolling like film*, and the lights go off because the sunlight is really all you need. when the sun begins to set and it darkens slightly outside the hangings go back up, all the way back to the sky. the library brightens with artificial light while the streetlamps switch on over the city in an instant, and the neon lights begin to flash, yes, even in singapore. as we pad silently to and fro in search of the toilet or the fundamental principles of criminal law, i think i might love this new library of ours, big glass monolith that it is.

in addition i had a nice homey breakfast at the bf’s house when i went to pick him up this morning, and ended the day with duck rice for dinner (RICE! the joy), and decided to walk a bit from bugis to city hall. it was a lovely night, and when we reached raffles city, we stopped at bakerzin and i was tempted, so i had a lovely chocolate souffle for dessert!

AND I UNDERSTAND CRIMINAL LAW!

*it actually pains me quite greatly to notice that in about two decades or so, comparing anything to a roll of film will be an anachronism

109: so hurry down my chimney tonight

now that my macbook’s finally back up and running, here are the christmas pictures!

this was everyone at ian’s before midnight, on christmas eve; and before we tackled the horrendous crowd that was seething around in orchard road, while i ran off to alex’s.

ian, and clement!

 

 

the boys; rz and i — we haven’t gone out in so long!; this would’ve been a gans and roses photo, but…; the girls and kenneth

 

 

chue; michelle (seems weird calling her mitch now, hmm) & wanxuan with the reindeer hairband; beekee!

 

pretty girls in dresses!

 

 

everyone squashed on the sofa (: and people whose names contain three letters — sam, ian, ben & mok!

 

 

more sofa squashing wheeeeee

 

 

 

ian, JQ, & jon :D

 

this might be a picture in which JQ actually looks substantially taller than me! :D; christine; jgan minutes before he passed out on the floor somewhere.

 

three days ago, while at pret. look at the pretty star!

 

 

and this is a year back, at the pret in london, where i was noticeably less fat.

 

and, well, this is a random photo from three weeks ago, and i’ve just finished dinner, but… shit.

 

sing for the year

sing with me, sing for the year,
sing for the laughter, sing for the tears
sing with me, just for today
maybe tomorrow, the good lord will take you away

it’s the last day of the year! every year i do this obligatory sumup thing, but this year seems to have been vastly different from the rest. i’m hard-pressed between choosing 2003 and 2005 as my favourite year, despite having various ups and downs in the process. sometimes it’s the little things that make it all worthwhile. this year has been full of surprises and many little good things. things like the pwn lit club, the mugging club, and now soon-to-be oxf rejects club (haha), the frantic note-copying in class, running up and down from the canteen to LT5 buying food and drinks, the yongtaufoo stall auntie who keeps mistaking me for SF and SF for me (even though the girl eats nothing but chee cheong fun and drinks nothing but hot barley), my crazy obsession with vitasoy, getting thrown out of a pub in lake district with my dubious photocopied ID, hiking for god knows how long up a stupid hill and finding a single flower in the middle of like 308576586 miles of grassland (york is odd), dancing in the moonlight, the kboxing that never materialised (oh HZ! how!), the fishing trips, bitching by the jetty, running after stupid bicycles that refused to wait, the goddamn set building for production this year, sneaking out with K. to orchard while everyone was slaving away (hahaha), watching SDJRR play at bandage and prom, getting caught in the rain 4067405877 times, getting high in clarke quay with RM and B. the first time round, then all the memories it brought back for B. and JS that culminated in that eulogy rubbish that seems to circulating everywhere now, the third time round with the mongolia people (i miss you yanj), the clubbing, dancing on the podium, getting hit on by odd people, the cute guy in the blue tshirt, CH getting drunk, M.’s dog, HY’s house, running all over singapore with yanj and camping on sheares bridge (so beautiful) for two hours and taking dumb pictures of raffles in boat quay, and best of all, jumping into a hotel pool with all our clothes on in the middle of orchard (you’re the craziest person i’ve met this year man). what i love are the wonderful conversations, the people i’ve grown closer to, the things i’ve settled, how i hope i can walk out of 2005 without any regrets (and winning that bet). in short, this whole year can be characterised by “WTF?” and a whole lot of laughter following. 

also, this week’s been pure madness. there are so many crazy things happening i don’t even know where to start describing from. but it’s been a good week to end off the year, and i suspect things will get crazier tonight. i don’t think there’s anything better than spending holidays with people you love. aww yeah baby (: