do-mee-no

Everytime we had to marcato the Cantate I felt like I was going to say a very bad word.

People have been asking me what Im busy with, and I feel almost ashamed to say that im bumming around, and have been for the past month. Im not so sure what im busy with, but Amore definitely tops the list for the highest activity recorded in a week. my bed comes a close second.

-
And today I think I spotted a real life Carey Mulligan; a Lynn Barber; a Jenny Miller. Maybe a little unfair to put the label on her, but its one of those movies where the idea of it gets stuck in your head and you keep wondering if you'd ever do a 'Jenny', or as Bing puts it, 'Youth's folly'. I did want it to work out for jenny, I did want him to be her ticket out of her seemingly boring and stifled life. She just seemed to be much more than what she was getting, but alas, if its based on real life can it still be cliche?
(if you havent, do go catch 'An Education')

Or as Lenka sings it (yes Im still sore about Budak Pantai) "live like you're dying, and never stop trying. its all up to you, use whats been given to you"

in the wee small hours of the morning

i woke up today, and the air was cold. there was a nice cool breeze blowing through my living room. the sun looked strong, and i made iced milo for breakfast. all morning i felt a sense of nostalgia- as if it was the december holidays and my mum was going to bring me to some cool place today, probably tangs to see the christmas decorations or the science centre.

i let that feeling of nostalgia linger on for a little longer, before it disappears and i have to start my revision for the day.

bert and ernie

during my euphoria at showing everybody my disney crocs i tried to tell janice about the wonders of seasame street (and the lack thereof - they arent showing on okto anymore!!), and then i tried to sing her this song but she wouldnt stop staring at me (those cursed big eyes) and she made me feel funny so i stopped short of finishing the song.



besides now that theres a new baby in the family im quite excited to play aunty;)

i succumbed to crocs.

so the metro sale did me in. but i had finally succumbed to The Crocs, previously known as ThoseAwfullyLargeAndUglyPlasticSandalsThatEveryoneHas. i still remember when Quan Yifeng first wore it on TV and i couldnt believe that Mediacorp actually let her. needless to say i never understood my sister's fascination with them either. she must have, like, five pairs.
But hey, at least this one is mickey, and because its a kids version (Size 3, one size smaller than the biggest kids size!), the shoe doesnt have a big head. i wore it to breakfast this morning and i must say i was rather pleased with it. like a big kid who just bought a new thing! mickey mouse!

Long Live Disney.

lets take a better look, beyond our story book

yesterday my mum dragged me to go watch 'City of Life and Death', the film on the Nanjing Massacre. i tried to pull her to 'Julie and Julia'; i didnt want to watch something so depressing on a sunday morning. but as always, my mum's puppy eyes won.

i loved history back in TKGS because we got to study world wars and ive always thought them fascinating. not the torture techniques, i understand they're, in a way, inevitable and part of the war; but the whole idea of wars. invading a country and taking it by force, and claiming it as yours from then on.
but since 'The Pianist' ive kinda stopped watching war movies. i cant remember a war movie ive watched after that; been putting off 'Schindler's List' for the longest time now. it was as if 'The Pianist' has satisfied my then seeming insatiable appetite for war stories. that plus me imagining Japanese pulling off my fingernails.

The Nanjing Massacre was a horrifying account as far as the Chinese were concerned. Perhaps much so for the Japanese; i wondered if their conscience pricked at them when they raped those women and mass murdered those chinese soldiers. just a tinge?

halfway through the movie i wished for the movie to end. i kept wishing that it would end in the next frame, that Chuan Lu would decide that it was enough.

when the movie ended no one left the theatre for a long time. then they started showing the names of the characters, with their life years. it was then everyone realised that the characters in the show were real people, not simply the imagination of the playwright based on research. these were the stories of real people.
but what was comforting was that one little boy, who cheated death twice, survived to tell the tale.

"Death is easier than life." said the japanese soldier.

flashdance..what a feeling

today marks the end of my no-scratches-or-nearaccidents streak. i lightly bumped (lightly) a lorry in its rear, and some of its silver paint came off on my spoiler thing. the lorry uncle was nice enough to say 'my lorry nevermind its your car thats got abit' and i was only too anxious to say its alright.

and today janice and i detoured to jurong before finding the pie exit to get home. from clementi campus. thats how eros and anastacia do it baby!

i love jimny;) (and so does my dad)

"even if it means id have to face the queen"

winning tickets to Zee Avi must be the best thing that has happened to me since a long time, and i was absolutely thrilled to hear her sing, and as usual, they all sound better live than their cds. she kept making us do sing-alongs, something i must say singaopreans are rather good at. sadly i only know the lyrics to kantoi, ha.
somehow i didnt have to queue with other minions on the long queue and was ushered onto the VIP queue. ive never felt more privileged to be in the same queue (and ahead! cos i was first:D) with those socialites.

i have to say, she does have the cutest little brother.

im definitely going to frequent timbre more;) shirlyn and the unexpected is up on my to-do lists!

a beautiful mess

(it was on my itunes shuffle)

The Night of the Rebellion, we girls met at Royals Cafe and pondered (among many other things like if singapore is a one party state or one party dominant state) upon a perplexing question: we are all so hot and desirable(statement), so why is it that no guys are chasing us/chased us(question)?

we carefully reviewed each of the boys from our class and affirmed that none of them made any moves; gave flowers; or tiffany necklaces (hee).

That we put forth to our Aunt Agony hailed from Figaro Gardens. and to each of us he gave his insights (so matter of fact but i guess that helps) and told us how to remedy our, shall i say, uniqueness.
the hot babe: you look too high class (eug: huh what kind!)
yours truly: you look too dao
the cool one: you dont hang out enough with malays! (but surely under the block counts..)
the one perfectly happy the way she is: you.. just dont care right?

and why should we?

and i shall stop here in short of lapsing into what adibah calls my self proclaimed prophecy.
in short, boys are stupid, throw rocks at them. in long, i am working towards a bachelorette pad.

in nus com lab,

its my first time doing soemething schooly in nus so i thought i should commemorate it.

its nothing great, im still terribly bored in lecture, and we didnt even know how to get into the lab. we had to look really lost, so this girl would come and open the door for us. and then they made alot of noise so i felt slightly annoyed, oh monday blues.

now i have to go back to lecture.

semalam i call you, you tak answer.

so ive been driving (!) my new ride around singapore, but none by myself and without any banter between the three of us- me, the directionless driver; my dad, the director; and my mum, the backseat driver. and occasionally we argue with the gps, too. but its been fun, and ive had 'bitter heart' stuck in my head for the past two days, so ive been humming that while driving, until i discovered this song. now that i know the english translation to it i love it even more;) ahh zee avi ive underestimated you.

i had a really fun weekend, with baybeats and bing's birthday party. i actually even enjoyed today's salsa lesson; i giggled secretly at shaky boys' hands and others' uncoordinated steps. i do not want the week to start again sigh.

i dont want to fall apart today or ever,

today i realised how i love my friends very much and that im very lucky to have such good friends to hang out with and talk about everything under the sun with. school's a bore and my grouses about it never ceases; but my tiredness dies with good company, even if its over kfc and toomuchcream strawberry shortcake. i cant wait for the rest of my life to start ;)

a triangle trying to squeeze through a circle

to be honest i was quite happy to go to school; home was boring me and i wasnt doing anything productive. now that im back in the system i find that i just go back to my old ways.

today we were learning about Singapore's Criminal Justice System and a Senior DPP even dropped by. but further into his lecture I realised- the 97% conviction rate is and will be so because of the system. the prosecution has an upper hand and crime control is simply an efficient yet heartless way for a criminal justice system. its not just the fact that we dont have the right to remain silent (silence may be inferred as a guilty conscience; this is shared in uk as well); but more on the various presumptions made against the defendant and the lack of rights that is accorded to the accused. true, i dont know enough to do a comparative study, im merely sharing an intuitive feel i got at the lecture. sure the justifications for the various measures were, well, well justified; but they are that. a utilitarian system is truly flawed and even as i marvel at Bentham's intelligence, I seem to see more faults than not with the principles and system of utilitarianism.

but as judy turned to me to lament about the lack of fundamental liberties, i explained to her the crime control system that singapore employs; and after some discussion i say "well that's just the way things are."

it seems like i will be saying that alot more in the future?

all done!

OKAY its all pretty much done. ive updated the links (some,) and added some stuff. too bad the bookshelf thing doesnt change by itself, but oh wells. i couldnt find another one.

;) im actually quite proud of myself!

dottedness

its like when girls go for haircuts, wardrobe rehauls and makeovers; my blog needed a facelift as well. hence, tadaa! i did get this off blogskins (thank you) but i twinkered around with it, although i realised that i dont have the links to the blogs anymore. that will take a while to fill in. im tired.

i really love my friends, and all the girl nights we have. the junk food is getting to me though, but i really appreciate how we still make the effort to hang out together;) and of course, the bridge mahjong poker, and gossip. ah, what are girlfriends for right! too bad we couldnt get any sun.

school tmr, again. i hope it gets more interesting.

muhna muhna!

its bing, she did it.

well i finally unpacked clothes and shoes! :) :) yes that is a huge achievement, thank you very much. now its just the small itsby bitsy stuff which ive been procrastinating.

but in any case, heres a song to cheer everyone up;)

finally, a time to breathe.

i have to say that the last few days in london and the first few days upon touching down hasnt been easy. the knowledge of your life in limbo isnt exactly easy to handle for a girl who has always been about the black and white; the knowing and not knowing. the thought of graduating without a life plan scares me.

but;) today i have two good news;) i heard from my law firm(my!) and NUS(about time lah).

so, starting august 11th, i will be a student at National University of Singapore. and come January, a pupil at KhattarWong.

ah, wish me luck. ;) here's to working life!

she-e-ryy (sherry baby)

its been quite a cold summer, or at least it hasnt been warm worthy since i got back, and now i have to leave soon so id never know if it ever gets warm in london during summer. my dad and sis have left for singapore and now its just me and my mum (and a rat, which my mum is convinced lives within my walls, sorry may) in cold summery london, packing up my room.

it was fun having my family over, and of course, graduating. the feeling of ive-got-what-it-takes-to-tackle-the-world-now hasnt really come to me because really, i might be looking at unemployment for a while (yes, even with a lse degree, which really scares me) but the fact is, i have graduated. i made friends that i really liked, lost a friend that i liked, and added on facebook my eye candy, so i guess its been three years of growing up on my own and trying to find my way around. but i know that even if i am down, id have my family to fall back on, not that they can offer me any strings to pull, but just that i can count on them to be there for me; and my friends, haha, for all the laughter and senseless nonsense, and the relieve knowing that some people in my life are probably going to be in my life for a long time to come. ;)

(and i realised that this might be the last of my post under the label 'life in london')

Truly singaporean

Im in a queue, half an hr earlier than the stated opening time, and im third in line. Strangely the two ladies before me are european; i had expected asians to be hogging the queue way ahead of everyone else. But oh wells:) this is a much better way to spend my jetlagged mornings than surfing internet randomly. Besides, then my sis wont have to complain that i 'lied to her' bout her maybe not being able to get a ticket to my graduation ceremony!

25 mins more. Oh time hurry up!

the unbearable lightness of being

on the night my grandma was supposed to return (ie. the 7th day), a big brown butterfly flew into my second uncle's house and settled on the wall nearest to her big armchair. my cosin who was sitting on the chair freaked out and ran away, saying 'ah ma's come back!'. i marvelled slightly at the beauty of it all, and suddenly felt like i finally understood (or at least at peace with) the mysteries of afterlife and death.

my grandma went with a smile on her face; a smile that i had so seldom seen when she was alive. the suddenness of it all makes me feel like i havent felt her departure; it just seems like shes gone on a holiday, just as my aunt had said.

at least we know she's happy, forever;)

---
going back to singapore made me realise that i've changed (and so has she). coming back to london now made me realise that singapore is really my home. i do love my london room, i feel so much more at ease in this room than the room back home (sorry mum) but its a place i made my own; it isnt mine.

the good thing about singapore is that my appetite goes back to what it was - small, which i hope will help me lose that dreadful muffin top:(

Sun and more sun

waiting to go into morocco right now; in a few minutes we'd be on our way to the tarifa port to board our ferry. Quite excited about our little adventure into morocco, and oh well rachel is done with her internet so we shd go off soon:)

ah, hammams and couscous:)