396: we are always running for the thrill of it

You don’t know about the little things that we do without, when that whole mad season comes around.

293: japan: osaka city riots

18- 21 May.

So, finally, here is Osaka. Most of what they say about Osaka is totally true. It’s a merchant town, and it’s filled with people who love food, love being happy, love being loud and funny and living life. It’s kind of like being Hokkien on crack. Being Japanese, they’re naturally polite, and really really willing to help. They’re the sort of people that, when you are standing alone on the train platform surrounded by your luggage, an elderly lady will totter over to you asking, 大丈夫か？ (Are you all right?). At this point most of what you can say merely consists of ああ、はい (Ah, yes) which is really rude now that I think about it. Yet the same elderly lady, when getting onto the train, will fight you tooth and nail to get in and give you a not-so-friendly push if you dawdle too long at the entrance. Osaka people are always hurrying everywhere; not in the same way as Tokyo or the big cities, where everyone needs to look like they have something very important to do. Here it is pure unadulterated rush. 

We spent four days in Osaka, and they were a good four days. We visited temples and parks, castles, got lost, did lots of shopping, checked out Kennedy’s wildly expensive t-shirts, gawked at more wildly expensive merchandise, ate and walked, and ate, and ate non-stop. 

285: this, my friends, is the soundtrack of our youth

Written one May Sunday after exams sitting at Starbucks and watching people. My mind… goes in weird directions. Also, I didn’t forget about the Japan pictures. Except I’m still editing them (only got Kyoto left though!) and they will be all up soon. Yay!

282: 写真を撮って、いいですか？

Just a quick post: in Yokohama now, heading to Osaka tomorrow morning.

Everybody loves Japan, yes? I am no exception. I wish I could stay here forever, but we all know that’s not possible. However I thoroughly indulged my fangirl self ogling cute boys everywhere (and the girls are so pretty) including random Kanjani8 Nissin Cup Noodle advertisements in the subway, caved in and bought two KAT-TUN DVDs (haha did you know Johnny’s Entertainment has their own separate section in HMV?) and a magazine (the one where the photo below appears) while my boyfriend dragged me all across Harajuku and Shibuya shopping and looking for his weird obscure underground shops. Oh, and he bought about half of Uniqlo as well. Also, I have overheard more conversations about the merits of Akanishi vs Kamenashi vs random Japanese celebrity from girls with their boyfriends than I can count. Starbucks is freaking everywhere.

Today was good: Yokohama is a pretty place. Pictures when I come back; the night lights are beautiful. I’ve also sat more rollercoasters than I can count, including the ones in Disneyland (the parade was magical omg, but I got sunburnt haha) and some random super drop rollercoaster in Yokohama today, in a free theme park no less!

Lots of food. Ate orgasmic sushi at Tsukiji it’s like food porn. Really can die.　And my Japanese is super bad it’s so embarrassing.

More when I get internet again.

280: just like a graham greene novel

All this hate and love; it’s soft, it’s hooey.
There’s only things, Blackie.

 

 

244: it’s friday – i’m in love

232: gone away is the bluebird

Went to the toy museum at Seah Street today. 

222: 不敢在午夜问路 怕触动了伤心的魂

okay. so i lost an ebay bid for a really nice dress by a pound. never mind. there will always be more things to buy. :(

was at starbucks earlier this morning to have breakfast, before my last burst of energy for company law tomorrow. you know – i wanted to say something – but there is no better, more beautiful way to say it than like it is. because that’s how it is. so – i saw a caucasian family walk in, except the mother was distinctly not caucasian. ordinarily that wouldn’t be unusual, except that she looked really young, the kids were like ten, and were nowhere eurasian. and then i thought, do they think this person is daddy’s friend from overseas, or do they really think of this person as mummy? and what would ‘daddy’s friend’ be doing with them bright and early at 7.30am (yah don’t ask) on a sunday morning (don’t ask again)?

this is where my bf steps in and gives me the very loaded, “i see.” – and he does see – but i don’t, most of the time. ordinarily, who cares? both my cousins married caucasians but they’re not SPGs (or whatever their modern equivalent is). but that thought – that thought about this girl and the kids was so weird.

anyway, the more i think about it, there is less than 48 hours to the end of the exams. for better or for worse, it’s going to be @%(&*$(%#-ing OVER!

201: hen random de dong xi

the necklace on the right is very pretty.
i also want to buy a lot of things. like shoes.

#

watched nanny diaries tonight and had a talk at starbucks after, which made me very happy and a lot less angry. yes. sometimes you just need to take your mind off things, although i still have a company assignment hanging over my head.

#

there are two sites you need to go if you are interested in asian film/drama and/or music.

http://www.crunchyroll.com – for almost any anime/tv drama (taiwanese, hk, korean, jap, etc)/movie you want to watch.
http://www.sogou.com – sort of like a chinese google. with direct download for mp3s and godknowswhat.

damn shiok. no more searching on limewire on american servers for elusive chinese songs!

197: gina works at diners all day

yesterday while we were at the beach (blissfully empty on a non-holiday wednesday afternoon) i thought about a lot of things, even while i was reading my anthony bourdain book, for the 348694867th time. the first was that some things are so unnecessary, but people strive hard to work at it anyway – like the new and random carpark they have just scratched out from what used to be a nice open space. on the beach. and second, is how much things can change in a few months. the last time i was at palawan beach station-mastering for beach bash, the playground and signage was used as a landmark to identify the offending spot. when we went back yesterday i looked around and wondered why things looked different but i just couldn’t put a finger on it. then i realised the playground and the signs were all gone, leaving only a bunch of trees and sand. if you were not there recently enough to remember, you would completely forget it was ever there.

a couple of other things happened yesterday.

my journal ran out a few weeks ago, but i didn’t get down to buying one for a long time. so i bought one yesterday because i was getting grumpier thinking about all the things i wanted to be writing down, then remembering that i have no more space and no new book to write on. the bf said he’d get me one for an anniversary present but i was going crazy and refused to wait that long. so. i have a brand new book to fill up for the next year. i realise that my journals are synonymous with certain periods in my life, and the last one documented the most turbulent changes. the university, the applications, adjusting, everything. it is nice to have that part of life filed away now, i guess.

oh and very gayly, i am now addicted to starbucks’ green tea latte. and last night i won my first ebay auction! managed to get a dress for $50 when it was originally $164. proud of self. and i don’t understand why the last 50 words of my assignment are so hard to cut. aarrggh. and my ‘W’ key is falling out.

it was mok’s 22nd, and we went to butter factory both for that, and pop/re/tart. which is free for all nus students if you flash your matric card, and the music is 45703468x better than mambo. so i realised that my style of dancing varies with the music, and yesterday was alot of flailing about and jumping (lots of jumping) like at a gig. and now i have aches in various weird places to prove it, like the middle of my back. strange.

part of the charm was eating hot bak kut teh at mohd sultan half-stoned and high at 4am when it started to pour.

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.)

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) 

154: 不甘心不放手

sometimes i see the things that are happening around me to other people and i feel inexplicably sad. not because these things will never happen to me, or that i will never face the same kind of problem, but that there seems to be an entire level of emotion that i can never relate to. things like dating someone nearly twice my age confound me, because i wouldn’t do it myself, but i can’t bring myself to say anything against it, because i’m always pro-choice. in the end, your life is really about how you want it to be, and parents have to outgrow this thing about treating you as if you’re their precious child. it was probably kox who said it best when he said, i’d ask my mother the same question – what would you do if your father didn’t like daddy? nevertheless, i cannot understand it, though i feel some emptiness on the behalf those who do.

today was a riotous mess, and criminal law wasn’t too bad – someday we’ll get out of our superhero-complex and stop believing we can do everything in a day – a huge lunch, KTV, movie, shopping, supper, club. but what i liked most, was at the end of the day, sitting around chatting and talking nonsense without work hanging over our heads, talking about things that amuse us the most, and then going to borders and curling up with a book (non-law) till closing, then lounging on a chair al fresco at starbucks doing the most energy-less thing of all, people-watching, with an iced caramel macchiato. i love these moments, the quiet moments, the ones at night. even in the city, where everyone is still awake, there is always a spot somewhere where you can sit down and feel like you can go to sleep.

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