- alena'z, well, blog. -

2006-07-07T21:47:00.000+08:00

I HAVE MOVED.
AM MOVING.

whatever. at any rate, i won't be updating this blog any longer,
so.

RELINK ME AT http://limegreenpiggy-.blogspot.com

2006-07-04T02:16:00.000+08:00

okay so i was supposed to post photos & talk about e busy days that have been e past few days, but well. it's already 2.12 right now and i still have a considerable amount of work to do so i shan't be relating the events of friday-today to you for now.

but i am a bit pissed off, so allow me to steam off for a bit. i simply cannot stand people who love acting pro and totally crazy about a certain sport or a tournament & giving commentaries or analysises of it on their blog, or announcing results like it seriously matters to them. i mean. its painfully obvious that you darlings know absolutely nothing about the sport, get your information from other sources, just post these things on your blog to impress goodness knows who, and its really insulting to the people who really care. GRRRSH.

in this case i dont mean the world cup.

and this has been a horribly mean post so im going to shut up and smile.

2006-07-03T01:00:00.000+08:00

shall blog tomorrow about the events of yesterday and today as well as other random bits of stuff! meanwhile, because im tired, lyrics!

five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes
five hundred twenty-five thousand moments so dear
five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes
how do you measure, measure a year

in daylights, in sunsets
in midnights, in cups of coffee
in inches, in miles
in laughter, in strife

five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes
how do you measure a year in the life

how about love?
measure in love
seasons of love -

five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes
five hundred twenty-five thousand journeys to plan
five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes
how do you measure the life of a woman or a man

in truths that she learned
or in times that he cried
in bridges he burned
or the way that she died

it's time to sing out now
though the story never ends
let's celebrate
remember a year in the life of friends

remember the love
oh you got to remember the love
you know that love is a gift from up above
share love, give love, spread love

measure your life in love, seasons of love -
measure your life in love.

2006-06-24T22:44:00.000+08:00

so, i went to giant today to get stuff for food&funfair.
twas quite fun while it lasted, but required much on-the-spot quick thinking, calculation, & last-minute switch of ideas to accomodate prices & whatnot. plus i realised we're not e only store selling what we're selling, so now we have to add some OOMPH!

im a goner & i have only myself to blame.
have to get maths sia done by ... well, monday. i havent started.
tonight im going to do e other maths stuff & decipher lit.
tomorrow i have church after which i'll skip youth & make a ferocious dash to school, where i'll help out w e band concert lightings & most probably reach home only at 10pm at night.
which means, no need to sleep.

but its worth it.
music is <3.

im all jumpy & nervous about e germany-sweden match tonight, dont know why. have this horrid gut feeling that germany might get tired or something. sigh. or that ballack will get a second yellow card.

well. i shall stop being a football bimbo-wannabe & go off to do work.
& be productive, as liza says.

2006-06-21T10:28:00.000+08:00

couldnt get online yesterday to post this, but ...

GERMANY WON! =)

ecuador, that is.

2006-06-20T20:26:00.000+08:00

tristan & isolde!

my gosh its such a glorious movie.

1) e storyline e script was gorgeous. e choice to use such an ancient celtic (i-think-its-celtic. but-im-not-sure.) legend thats so ... sweetly romantic woot!

2) e actors cast were great. from e leads to e supporting cast, twas wonderful & i personally felt that everyone was in character & i could BELIEVE it, even though they spoke in perfect modern english & stuff.

3) it has all e weepiness of titanic & romeoandjuliet, minus e over-revealing sex scenes. well fine, T&I had a considerable amount of suggested sex scenes, but considering this is set in those times, i guess e scenes were necessary to show love? but still. a bit too much.

4) THE SOUNDTRACK IS BEAUTIFUL. the best i've heard since pirates of the caribbean, in fact. its amazing how e music can just really do so much for a movie. & kudos to e person who designed e soundtrack & all.

5) thank goodnessly, unlike titanic, R&J, it wasnt only about love. it had a CONFLICT. e internal one, in e case of tristan, i think james franco brought out his pain very well. honour. love. pride. country. gratitude. circumstances. duty. =)

6) it also had glorious external conflict, e irish-english, as well as english-internal conflicts. e scenes were really really good, quite nearly as nice as troy's, but not as majestic i guess. scenery was amazing, & e castle, e bridges, everything was fantastically beautiful.

(haha, im looking @ e credits now and e person in charge of makeup was called alena. from czech, apparently they did most of their filming there.)

7) e dvd has a LOT of really kool special features. THE CZECH REPUBLIC IS GORGEOUS, i see where vaidisova gets her inspiration!

well i mostly love it for its pretty pretty soundtrack. just caught me straight on. there's very few silences in this movie, and they work very effectively. thumbs up to e director, seriously, & everyone else in charge of production! not to mention all e actors which made it come alive.

so yesterday was working w e lightings! for e band concert, yep, appassionata X! hahaha i finally figured out e X stood for 10. remembers e discussion i had w someone cant remember who though, about whether it was appassionatax or appassionata. it was really kool. & e power of music is ... shocking i guess. persis, phantom, gelato, ride, just have ... i dont know. power. to draw you in, suck everything out of you, and spit you out again, while you wonder what's happened & want to go through it again. but i do have problems w following e score @ times. coughcough. thanks shimin for sending me e songs! i seriously think persis should be danced, its really beautiful.

right. i have talked enough rubbish. off to decipher e mysteries of trig.

PS. watched e special feature, 'e making of tristan & isolde', & i quote this actor who's talking about e many layers of clothes: " Well, the clothes are very warm, a lot of them, you can tell they're very warm, as can be seen from my shiny forehead which is reflecting light from e video camera towards you right now." so amusing! =)

2006-06-19T23:26:00.000+08:00

i feel like slapping the commentator on the switzerland-togo match for his painfully obvious biasedness. bias.

" OH, AND TOGO IS OUT! "
" LOOK AT THE SEA OF RED SUPPORTERS WITH THE WHITE CROSS EMBLAZONED ON THEIR CHESTS!"
" THE SWISS ARE DEFINITELY MUCH FITTER THAN THE TOGO PLAYERS. "
after togo is given a free kick:
" OOOOH, NOT A POPULAR DECISION THERE. "
well im SORRY if you dont like the referee's decision, but angled shots show that he was perfectly right. go argue with the cameras if you desire, dood.

my heart (aww) goes out to the african teams, for 4 of them, or was it 5, their world cup debut! they're fit, healthy, fast, tolerant of heat, have grit. they just lack refined technique - which comes from experience. even e fact that they dont have renowned coaches is nothing, im sure their coaches are good enough if they managed to break into e world cup circle. they're playing really awesomely already i think =) and they're definitely e most gentlemanly on e field. like after a foul, they dont raise their hands in the way that other players do, meaning AIYOH REFEREE IM TOTALLY INNOCENT I WASNT EVEN NEAR HIM DONT BOOK ME! the african players, most of em i saw, they help e offended guy up, ask if he's okay, in a way thats like 2nd nature to them? tis really kool!

anyhowdies. the world cup really amuses me by all e people acting pro at analysing e matches, when you KNOW that they're getting their info from commentators, dads, uncles, brothers, apeks at kopitiams, cousins and whatnot. its like who are they trying to impress!

hahahaha, - contemplates whether im guilty of e aforementioned crime - jiayou germany! playing ecuador tomorrow. =)

okay enough footie rubbish. but i have nothing to say, apart from e fact that i really like christian bale & heath ledger. two absolutely wonderful actors. good looking too, yes. not e point though, lol. there's this movie by heath ledger i really want to see, tis called candy, about a young desperate couple who lead wrecked up lives kuz they're hopelessly addicted to each other, and heroin. candy's the girls name, and a nick for heroin. yeah it sounds really awesome.

finally watched fearless! i think it rawked. ending was a bit too artsy for me, but it was a wonderful way to end off a kungfu acting career (for jet li's case). & e japanese warrior was so gentlemanly! hahahaha not exactly. how-to-say, jun1 zi3. yep. very. a quote which i thought were very meaningful, but i cant translate them properly, so i apologise to e writers of e screenplay for fearless. but the quote really struck me & made me think, so yep.

- a man has no choice about the beginning of his life, but he must have the courage to stay upright to walk until the very last step.

( ren2 wu2fa3 xuan3ze2 sheng1ming4 de4 kai1shi3, dan4 bi4xu1 you3 yong3qi4 zou3 dao4 zui4hou4 yi1 bu4 )

& today was officially last day of smp labwork.

i'll miss not being there half the time because im in brunei or malaysia or bsp camp. SORRY LIZA AND BRENDA!
i'll miss trotting down to nus at 8 or 9 in e morning and leaving at 6 or 7, sometimes leaving very early to rush to school for other things, or going late because i've rushed there from school.
i'll miss jana being patient and explaning everything to us again and again.
i'll miss using micropipettes and shooting away pipette tips to discard them.
i'll miss e smell of latex gloves & donning on e labcoat that looks purple under e lights.
i'll miss e excitement of checking out our agarose gel bits under e ultraviolet light.
i'll miss e breaks we get inbetween pcr for us to 'be productive', where brenda and liza would do maths, and i theory.
i'll miss e canteen w e reasonable food & banana balls.
i'll miss e bookshop with even better food.
i'll miss e nus internal buses where i always forget they're free and fumble around my bag or pocket to dig out my wallet.
i'll miss e sound of e centrifuge when its not balanced & we all freak out.
i'll miss making all e mistakes that ruin e experiments.
i'll miss not understanding anything at all.
i'll miss measuring out agarose to be exactly 0.750 grams.
i'll miss e lift and how e 'close door' button doesnt work on e buttons for e handicapped.
i'll miss all e really funkeh vending machines w good food and drinks. (HAHA LIZA LIMEADE!)
i'll miss much fun i had with liza & brenda.
i'll miss e uber uber cold freezer.
i'll miss e cold room, and definitely e koolest machine ever - e ice machine.
i'll miss putting pipette tips into boxes, & eppendorf tubes.
i'll miss e smell of lb broth.
i'll miss all e people in lab 1 - siew leong, yvonne, michelle!, anir
i'll miss e excitement of heatshock, e scurrying from incubator to ice.

sniffles. yep, smp labwork was much fun. shall go back on teacher's day to terrorize jana and dokmok even more, & we have even more plans. when jana becomes a professor we're going to all try to get to nus & be his undergrad students or something! ahahaha. he'd probably get a major heart attack from shock & send in his resignation letter the very next day.

but we made a nice card for him! well, brenda did, anyways. i just signed on it. but it's really a very nice card and we must get him something for teacher's day. it feels bad just giving him a card. one to share with dokmok, too.

holidays are almost over, and i've accomplished .... absolutely nothing.

2006-06-09T21:04:00.000+08:00

hiya people!'

BSP camp rawked a lot a lot a lot. like a lot. =)

anyways, i'm afraid i shall be pretty much uncontactable from tomorrow morning to wednesday evening, then thursday morning to sunday evening. will be in brunei & malaysia respectively, to visit people and have fun, of course.

i am in much trouble for my workload right now is rather ... scary. was going to bring my laptop to brunei so i could work on all my stuff but decided to keep it as a family holiday kind of thing? so im only bringing all the trig stuff & theory work. i hope my relation's house in brunei & malaysia subscribe to e world cup! ahh well, doesnt matter really.

see what happens when we procrastinate?
1) we end up with scary workloads.
2) i forget to go subscribe to roaming so that i can stay contactable.
3) i am painfully short of clothes to bring.
4) i cant decide on which luggage to bring.
5) i cant find all the stuff i need.

go germany & argentina!

my thoughts are veering crazily in fourteen different directions, so dont be surprised. went to see e veggie orchestra performance yesterday and whoots they're really awesome. raffles hotel is quite a pleasant little place really, just strolling around its corridors & stuff, since most people will never have enough money, or be foolish enough to spend it on e uberly classy hotel rooms. though i would like to see how the president suites look like. the only idea i have of a presidential suite are the ones in some sandra bullock chick flick i watched five years ago.

see what i mean? i cant talk, or think straight. i will look back on this post and laugh at myself.

my luggage bag's too big, & i have very little stuff. anyhow, 10.50 pm tonight, germany vs costa rica. JIAYOU GERMS! whee. decisions, decisions, decisions. oh forget it i cant blog in common sense. have a nice day people, and if you need anything, EMAIL ME! i'll be able to check.

2006-06-04T20:06:00.000+08:00

bsp camp tomorrow. partly anticipating, partly am feeling too tired to zest myself up to go.
ladida. i should start packing.

& sinners will come from the Father
gathered up and carried home
we have passed the time of waiting
come let us bow before your cross

we will meet in the golden city
in the new Jerusalem
all our pains and all our tears
will be no more

we will stand in the hosts of Heaven
and cry Holy is the Lamb,
we will worship and adore you
forever more.

still absolutely harths this song. sigh. first week of holidays are officially over, and i've never felt this exhausted. grrr. shall stop complaining and being a naggy singaporean. singalaysian. malaysian.

the packing list for bsp camp is so ridiculous. whee, am going off to watch some movie with my daddy to chill out for a bit before i start putting random rubbish into my lasportsgear bag. that is, if i decide between my lasportsgear bag or my adidas sports bag.

heath ledger is an amazing actor.

2006-06-01T00:51:00.000+08:00

The words denoting lying, deceit, greed, envy, slander and forgiveness have never been heard. They have no jealousy. No sense of possession.

a peaceful, gentle, simple world.
yet hardly a world at all, for without those things, we would never know compassion, love, faith, trust, understanding, hope, comradeship or care. and a world devoid of these things, is akin to a pond with dead fish floating atop it.

without hell & earth, would we know e beauty of Heaven?
thank you, God.

2006-05-29T00:25:00.000+08:00

went to red rain's rock concert today!

for the ignorant, they're a Christian band from NZ & AHHH THEY ABSOLUTELY RAWK!

& e following days shall be busy so im not certain i'll be blogging. but i'll try! =) if you're reading this, li-en, im watching A WALK TO REMEMBER again, & embarassingly, im gushing out tears like my nose spews out water when my sinus acts up the same time i get a cold. im certain im the wimpiest person alive who cries in nearly every movie i watch. e movie i havent cried in so far i think, would be sky high or something. yeah, i actually even weep when i watch chick flicks. grr, so dignified.

LI-EN, IN THE ORIGINAL SCRIPT, LANDON WAS GOING TO GET REMARRIED. thank goodness they changed it.

i'll scan in a pic of my ticket & e tee i bought sometime, when im boliao and not lazy. =)

2006-05-27T10:23:00.000+08:00

on Louis Phillippe (better known as Louis the XVIth), in Les Miserables:

Often, in the midst of gravest cares, after a day of struggle against the whole diplomacy of the continent, he retired at evening into his apartment, and there, exhausted with fatigue, bowed down with sleep, what did he do? He took a bundle of documents, and passed the night in reviewing a criminal prosecution, feeling that it was something to make head against Europe, but that it was a much grander thing still to save a man from the executioner.

a weak, cowardly king, perhaps. but an honourable one, nevertheless. in his own right, he was admirable, but they found fault in everything he did, from his choice of wife to his inability to control the clergy. he truly loved his people and country, and what more can we ask for an involuntary, incapable ruler?

ladida. i feel strangely free. light. like there's nothing on my shoulders, when i know theres a gazillion things i'm meant to do. random things i got from reading the papers and SSO concert booklet just now:

- international book expo at suntec next week!
- linlaoshi ( my chinese lit teacher ) is on the papers as one of e 'inspiring chinese teachers' awardees!
- aung san suu kyi's metal barbed fence is being torn down as i type this, and she might be set free soon!
- there're about 10 or so concerts that sound interesting so on average i'd be going for one concert a month, if one includes non-sso performances!
- there's this downloading programme thingum, $2 per song, you buy like valued cards at popular w/ password & stuff.
- im wonderfully blessed =)

watching grease tonight! hope it'll be fun, my dad wanted me to go because he felt i needed to understand the popular things of HIS time! ahahaha.

2006-05-24T22:50:00.000+08:00

music -

is the communal art.

needs no study of instruments
nor knowledge of note-reading
nor a canary's voice to enjoy.

doesn't mean concert halls of grandeur
nor ballrooms aplomb with crystal
nor backstreet alleys with graffiti.

is the pattering rain on ground
the whooshing of the waves breaking over sand
the drone of the driller.

is the child giggling when tickled
the chirping of the cuckoo
the chants from the monks of all faiths.

forces the smile tugging on your lips
the tears from your eyes
the impulse for your feet to move along
your hands to clap.

is the merry chanting of working farmers
the family carolling on Christmas eve
the olympic gold medallist singing his national anthem

is the most powerful thing on our planet.

doesn't recognise country or skin colour

is life.

2006-05-22T21:50:00.000+08:00

ow my teeth hurt. quite badly. tightening, then rubber bands. dentist made them smaller and thicker so im just like YEOW CRAP THIS HURTS LIKE HECK BUT I CANT DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT.

no music today! so after sabbats, went off to esplanade with lishin! ate a dome-thingum, e really nice one @ breadtalk, then showed lishin around the uber-expensive shops at esplanade, treated her to mrs field's cookies/brownies/muffins! which were great. didnt have time to drink milkshakes at e library though.

managed to photocopy some of e piano diploma scores! really nice =) will go put them in e file later. then also photocopied three entire marimba books, double-sided & all so they can be binded all nicely. whee! i <3 color="#000000">library@esplanade. although the piano & keyboard percussion section is e only place i zero in on to. ahaha not e point!

the two types of people who piss me off to the nth degree

1) ahaha. jayne would know about this one! =) have complained to you about it a lot of times. thank goodness you dont do it. anyways. i cant stand it when people complain and whine about having too much stress, too many things on, no time. look, we all have a choice in life. you cant take the stress, you drop 3rd lang or something, or find a slack cca. & i think we should all remember that everyone is just as busy, if not more busy than we are and NOBODY has a right to complain.

2) i dont like it when people act poor. as in poor as in kelian. like talk about how other people are rich and can afford this and that when they cant. may i say - what utter bull. see your many blessings and count them one by one.

okay shall change topic now. am thinking of finding a cell group to join, i think itll really help me in everything i do? asked my mum about it, she said i can if i truly want to, but she doesn't want my grades slipping. sigh. i really need to start studying. the fact that i got an average A1 through the skin of my teeth for CA marks (75 on the dot) should really remind me that i NEED TO STUDY YOH! as in i only studied for maths and physics in semester 1, & maybe thats why i did okayly. if i've studied for chinese i might've gotten 1 more mark to make an A2, darnnit.

no more talking about marks! yes. too depressing. time coordination.

haven't been blogging for so long i cant talk properly! lol. my marimba came on saturday and its absolutely gorgeous, but the mallets they gave me are wrong - glockenspiel ones. so e marimba sound's ambience is completely lost kuz bell mallets are plastic, not yarn, & are much harder, so e sound they produce are much more ... unmarimbaish.

teehee. anyways! have a nice day. will try to blog again tomorrow! & oh. im having a fetish for disney princess movies! my goodness. yeah. its e effect of playing disney princess series uno cards. ariel, mulan, pocahontas, jasmine, belle, aurora, cinderella, snow white! technically i only like the first five, whees. wanted to watch 'the new world' or was it? some movie thats pocahontas, in human-actor form. yes. shall go watch it some day. dvds out already.

GAH IM SPEAKING SO BROKENLY.

2006-05-13T19:02:00.000+08:00

hahaha these days have just been whirlwindishly busy and im a wreck, but lifes been great! sort of. in a way. that is. kehshin jie, lishin jie and kehshinjie's friend came over yesterday morning! so basically outing to jurong point yesterday, i left at about 12.30 to go to jayne's house to discuss physics sia, where erm, we certainly did a LOT, didnt we, now!

watched pride and prejudice, we did. heh. then i bought some unknown whiteandpurple flowers for ma for mother's day and to apologise for being an arse. gave them to her when i got back and all she said was dont disturb me and went back to sleep, but im forgiven and thats good. =) dinner at ubin seafood, then we went to take pics @ e merlion, and went up mt faber but hardly saw anything, & went home dead beat.

today woke up, went to orchard! first to john little's where they were having a sale, i bought jeans! which i havent worn since forever. and yay they're quite pretty jeans. after a long time dillydallying, we went to limefleamarket and bought random bits of rubbish then ate, went to bukit timah to eat chinchow, and back home. i went for guzheng and came back, practiced piano for an hour, showered and HERE I AM NOW!

so anyways. zhuanglaoshi said we can all go for guzheng exam grade 4 next march! which's quite kool but it does add on a flurry of problems. kuz my piano dip will be in march too, so i'll be really busy first quarter of next year. and if i want to do LDP, which i do, very badly, im gonna get seriously stressed out because ldp is mainly first four months too. SNIFF. if only -

aiyah. shall not worry. shall think of happier things. like how i got coldmountain for three bucks today. NYAHAHAHAHA. oh erm btw, anyone interested in going for NJC's guzheng concert on march 25th, tickets at 8 bucks? =)

2006-05-12T19:15:00.000+08:00

aiyah i feel like an idiot for posting that last night - just proves what a selfish, whiny brat i am.

have found a new way to destress. listening to international fm 96.3 between 5 - 9pm, when they have the music interlude thing, really works. =)

2006-05-11T22:34:00.000+08:00

why dont you understand that my life is different now. that i have a lot of things on & coordinating/juggling them all takes time and drains me. why cant you see that i do prioritise you and the rest of the family already; why cant you accept me texting my friends so i can settle times and stuff like that properly. why cant you understand that i dont have to go meet my friends tomorrow, i can fail my physics sia and heck care. but i cant because i dont want to disappoint you anymore. why do you have to act like im some kind of prodigal daughter without the 'becoming good' part. why do you have to shout and scream for no reason when i dont talk to you because i dont want us to have a conflict.

you've known me for more than 15 years, do you still not know that i dont show love by smiling or i love yous or hugs or kisses. that i am freaking incapable of showing love in any way and that im already trying? that the reason i stress myself out and want to excel in everything is because thats my way of showing my love for you - to make you proud. why dont you understand the reason i sleep 4-5 hours a day (more than enough for some people, but i reckon i need 12 hrs a day) is not because i want to rebel or act cool but because i AM a slow worker but i try to complete my work on time and fit in other things as well. why cant you see how hard im trying and stop picking on my faults?

im sorry, but it hurts. and you wont ever know that.

2006-05-11T00:15:00.000+08:00

hans christian andersen scares me.

anyways, today was really quite a piss-off day, considering pn being absolutely URGHish and dood, he NEVER ever checks our socks or name tags or skirt length, then today, suddenly came around and got grumpy. so he ticked off everybody whose socks he claimed he couldn't see. (which includes me) and which i also think is very unfair. because yes, my socks are low, but so are my shoes, which means if you lower yourself a bit you can see the NYGH clear and obvious. gah. & so he sent off to an email (to our parents) and even said he's SICK OF TELLING US TIME AFTER TIME and we're like blink blink. really?! when he never mentioned or hinted about it. not even a 'pull up your socks'. grsh. anyways, its not like ma and pa will care. they see me wear my socks almost everyday and they dont give any comment. and we dont get demerit points by having low socks, especially not if the NYGH is clearly there for the rest of the world to see.

and i dont think it was right of him to say our out-of-school activities might affect our marks. (refers to ronnie) maybe he should understand that some of us simply dont care about the subject.

and SPA. haha im doomed for chem larh. am quite surprised to realise that i dont really care. i mean, chem is absolutely not one of my priorities right now. maybe it was at the start of the year, but things change, whether its the subject topics, the method of teaching, the expectations, the test formats, the teacher. and now i dont hate it exactly, but i like it no more. i think chem is too much overanalysing. why do we want to what direction electrons spin in? or what the properties of magnesium oxide are? or stuff like covalent ionic and whatnot bonding. it doesnt help us in our lives, at all. what, the world is dying and you're there magnifying something that is so tiny and pointless?

now think physics. its a completely different world, equations, diagrams, solid facts. nuclear power is physics. creating things to promote safety, stuff like sunblock lotion. physics! a leaf falling when the rain hits it, or when the wind blows, is physics. the chubby child on the swing set is physics. everything is physics. and tbh is a rawkass teacher who's very kool. might be saying this because i comparatively do better for physics than chem, but the reason i do better is because i study for the tests, while i barely touch my chem stuff (except to read through it in the free period before chem. nyah!). and the fact that i bother studying means i care about it. and yay anyways physics is <3ed. color="#009900">my list of priorities as follows, as in time allocation.

1. God/church/etc
2. time with family! - bowling, tv, sitting around, tennis
3. friends!
4. practicing piano
5. academics
6. cca

whee :) soon marimba should overtake academics. heh.

academic subjects priorities as follows:

1. physics
2. maths
3. music
4. chinese
5. chinese lit
6. chem
7. langarts
8. ih

WHEE!

aiyah the only reason i shall stick with chem in jc is kuz i'll need if i want to go into engineering, which i do. have thought about accountancy, but if i do take accountancy, itll mean giving up physics and that is too much pain to bear. =D

csm tomorrow! much slack and hanging around doing nothing. hahahaha lovely week in general, minus pn pissing me off. popo & alicia came on monday and they're leaving tomorrow, so we had dinner with a few random relations today at crystal jade, toa payoh hdb hub. then tomorrow night kehshin-jie and li-shin-jie are coming! hahahaha things rawk. will go to limefleamarket on saturday!

and the 27-28th may limefleamarket is gonna be so kool. theme's on sports and wellness so i can go hunt racquets and see if they have head nano titanium s4! :) and stuff like tees. whee! oh talking about that, im gonna watch GREASE with pa on the 27th, he says i need to appreciate his generation's theatre! and im like er okay but it should be fun larh! and on 28th im going with jayne to watch RED RAIN's concert! yep i got tickets already, its free and they're a pretty kool Christian rock band. yay cant wait!

2006-05-08T20:42:00.000+08:00

so i realised over e weekend, while stressing out about what book to do for erp, that i haven't been reading good literature for - eons. i cant recall the last decent A-list perfect-for-doing-bookreview type of lit. stuff like apologetics, which doesnt count, and much michael crichton is all i've been doing, and e other times im off in e land of trashy rubbish & wuxiaxiaoshuos =D.

thusly i decided to embark upon e journey of reading a truly lit-teacher-approved-book, LES MISERABLES! and i finally understand what i've been missing - im only done with like 10 pages or so, the font is SMALL and the books are thick (comes in 2 volumes) but its really one of the best books i've read so far - each character, each story, and hugo is so ... philosophical and wise! haha. really rawks. AHH ITS SO GOOD.

but itll take me until e end of year of finish, judging by my current rate. i've even highlighted wonderful quotes inside e book and whee here's one i felt was prettay:

Humanity is identity. All men are the same clay. No difference, here below at least, in predestination. The same darkness before, the same flesh during, the same ashes after life. But ignorance, mixed with the human composition, blackens it. This incurable ignorance possesses the heart of man, and there becomes Evil.

yay french lit is much harths. shall go find lady of the camellias and count of monte cristo and hunchback of notre dame. YAYERS. i've read them in either abridged versions or chinese translations, but they lose much of e meaning and all the really kool quotations from deep within. so yeah. =)

2006-05-07T20:33:00.001+08:00

political joke. apparently once there was a person called wong pok too. or something like that. & he went to disneyland, or SOME PLACE, and there were these people dressed up as winnie e pooh characters.

so piglet came along and extended its hand, said: "hi, i'm piglet!"
shaking piglets hand, wong pok too replied by saying, "hi, i'm pok too!"

read it out if you dont get e joke. got me cracking =)

2006-05-05T22:22:00.001+08:00

maybe love is like coloured chalk
with time, it can create the best artwork
but once the rain pours
it's washed away.

(perfect, wangrong.)

okay yes, so that was my meagre attempt at translating! yay. translation is much fun, just mafan. and whee im all hyper, its friday night! and for once, (thanks to GE) i have nothing on tomorrow morning =) all's quite kool.

and next week is practically a four day weekend kind of thing, vesak day on friday and thursday's combinedsportsmeet which means much slacking! hahaha sarah cheang and i decided to have a picnic of sorts. apparently last year they roamed hwachong and found an airconditioned drama theatre or smth, & slept thru e entire sportsmeet! TUT TUT.

so i'd better get started on e smp lit rev by 11pm so i can finish by 2pm? & brenda won't murder me. haha nobody to blame except myself, of course. but IM FREE TOMORROW MORNING TO SLEEP MUAHAHAHA. & my apologies to jasmine lol promised to stay up with her until 2 yesterday, but i fell asleep @ my desk around 11.30? then woke up @ 4.40 in shock, rushed a bit of work and went off to school. feels very useless, but i was relatively energetic during the day, until about 12, because 5 hours of sleep whee!

then after school went to jayne's house with erzi (yingming) and played badminton! sigh i really dont dare to smash anymore, past experiences = not good. my arm hasn't acted up in a while though, i think, not that i'm in any hurry for it to, but. today my knee was wonky & on tuesday it was my ankle! GARH IM DISINTEGRATING. but im all fine now. had a nice sleep on the bus home! piano was quite fun indeed, and theory too, and thank goodness the seasons by tchaikovsky is still on the rack @ sonare! plans to buy it next week, $30.80, can larh! i havent actually heard the pieces though, only saw e scores, but considering its tchaikovsky & that it looks darn nice, everythings much fun and im determined to get it!

there're some times i really resent the fact that im not talented/gifted in the musical sense. i have trouble with aural, sightsinging, composing, etc. i practice an hour a day just so i can be equal to people who dont practice at all. BUT IM NOT NATURALLY GOOD so its really ... annoying. i dont like being average, but my piano grade is considered just that. average, plain, normal, expected. MUTTER.

ms foo says i can start la cathedrale engloutie soon! =)
and my marimba comes first week june. HAHAHAHAHA LIFE RAWKS.

except that i realised i got something quite major wrong in the physics test.
darnnit, i want a1 for physics so badly im willing to fail three other subjects for it.
sigh. but still, life kicks ass!

OH AND I GOT MY PRETTY AQUAMARINE COLOURED LAPTOP BACK!
it looks oh so nice and its repaired and its so much faster than my old one WHEE!

2006-05-01T17:42:00.000+08:00

garh i just realised how many things there are i love with "every fibre of my being" (to be cliche), or with "my heart and soul and body and mind" (to quote from the Bible), or simply put, that im willing to give up whatever time/energy/effort i have to perfect.

but there're too many.

& i know the logical idea that 99% of the people i ask would say, is to pick one and get on with it.

but i dont want to just choose one or a few.

GAH.

2006-04-30T19:50:00.000+08:00

the worst is over now,
and we can breathe again
i want to hold you high
you steal my pain away
there's so much left to learn
and noone left to fight
i want to hold you high
and steal your pain;

'broken' - seether.
quite a sweet song, rather old i believe, and SEETHER IS WHINY!

was going to start ranting about how much i do not like analysing unseen poetry. especially not when the poem is by sylvia plath garh! i believe that both poems and prose are meant to be appreciated, enjoyed so we grasp the atmosphere it's meant to weave around us susceptibly. everything is lost if we choose to break it down word, line, stanza. why do we have to approach it with specs (subject purpose emotions craft summary) and its craft by slims (structure language imagery metaphor sounds)? doesnt anyone feel that this completely defeats the purpose of language and art?

it actually doesn't bother me much, language is not my forte anyways. & i can hardly talk about appreciating art hahahaha so nevermind.

am looking for a gamelan cd, tell me if you know where to get one? =) blargh i have nothing actually substantial to say so whatever i'll go off to practice piano. ohoh here's a quote from 'rilla of ingleside', lm montgomery. i was rather amused by it, tis about the war.

'The Germans have recaptured Premysl," said Susan despairingly, looking up from her newspaper, "and now i suppose we will have to begin calling it by that uncivilized name again. Cousin Sophia was in when the mail came and when she heard the news she hove a sigh up from the depths of her stomach, Mrs. Dr.dear, and said, 'Ah yes, and they will get Petrograd next i have no doubt." I said to her, 'My knowledge of geography is not so profound as i wish it was but i have an idea it is quite a walk from Premysl to Petrograd.' Cousin Sophia sighed again and said, 'the Grand Duke Nicholas is not the man i took him to be.' 'Do not let him know that,' said I. 'It might hurt his feelings and he has likely enough to worry him as it is.' But you cannot cheer CousinSophia up, no matter how sarcastic you are, Mrs. Dr. dear. She sighed for the third time and groaned out, 'but the Russians are retreating fast,' and I said 'Well, what of it? They have plenty of room for retreating, have they not?' "

then someone says 'the thought that haunts me night and day is - will the Germans smash Russia completely and then hurl their eastern army, flushed with victory, against the western front?'

'They will not, Miss Oliver dear," said Susan, assuming the role of prophetess. "In the first place, the Almighty will not allow it, in the second, Grand Duke Nicholas, though he may have been a disappointment to us in some respects, knows how to run away decently and in order, and that is a very useful knowledge when Germans are chasing you."

ahh a list of the instruments i wish i knew how to play:
- gamelan
- yangqin
- cor anglais
- dizi
- viola
- angklung (i think my sister wants to learn too!)

i think i'll get an angklung as a birthday present for my sister. but then i was going to get another hamster for her. gah!

and of course, i wish i had perfect pitch and a nice voice. tis quite demoralizing that everyone in music has perfect pitch except yours truly. and that i can strum on the guitar but my voice CMI and i sound like a banshee. sniff. i swear i'd have been tone deaf if ma hadn't made me take up piano.

gah im slacking my life away again. shall go work. see you dears.

- limegreenpiggy.

2006-04-29T17:36:00.000+08:00

wow i think this is one of the longest times i've gone w/o blogging (1 week) !

so i have three common tests left - physics, music, ih. that happens to be placed both in order of time it will take place, and the order i expect my marks to be in descendingly. yep. im really going to die for ih ARGH i cannot do sbq to save my brain and my hand will die fr all that writing and im whining so i'll stop.

i think there's something wrong with my lackofsleep-immunity system. some people can not sleep at all lorh, but i just realised how tired i am. have enough self-control to keep awake during class, cca, piano lessons, church, guzheng lessons, when im practicing piano. but when i get on an mrt and lean on something i shut my eyes and start drifting away into the beckoning oblivion called slumber. then i get jerked awake because of my subconscious telling me im falling asleep standing, which equals not good. then like on wednesday, i reached home at about 7.45, ate dinner, took a shower, attempted to read newsweek for a while, then i plonked on the bed, shut my eyes and the next thing i knew it was morning. 9 hours of sleep, i dont know how i managed it. sigh, ohh well im really trying to keep with everything and its not my fault im a slow worker. garh. i know i need more than 4 - 5 hrs of sleep a day, but that's all i can take without owing piles of work or turning up for piano lessons without any improvement and theory lessons without progress which would mean im wasting my parents' money.

but its all a horrible cycle because the lack of sleep i get results in me falling asleep at, say, 10 then i jerk awake at 12.30 to realise i have a lot of work to do, then i do work until 2, and sleep. and broken sleep makes me more sleepy in the end. ladida. but recently i've managed to find ways of effectively using slack class time to do my theory homework! =) and the random long weekends are like second heaven. one lastlast week, one this week.

but despite it all, i can say im happy. very satisfied. being busy makes me feel like i have some sort of worth somehow and that im actually leading a relatively meaningful life. and God's with me all the way whee! and having the little breaks - like watching bits of the chelsea/manu match, like going with erzi to buy flipflops, like buying birthday presents for people, like playing tennis and going bowling with my dad, going to church and worshipping, stuff like having wonderful icecream in the house - are absolutely fantastic and makes everything seem worth it after all. and despite feeling shibai quite often, at least i havent failed anything yet!

& i harth my family, im getting my marimba! GLEES. dont ask me how ill find time to practice, i will. kuz i do believe that as long as you really want to do something, you'll make time to do it. ohoh and my daddy wants an electronic drumset im so amused, he wants me to teach him and says we'll form our very own ensemble, heh.

watched first part of the 'why my vote matters - a dialogue session with mm lee' and although political blogging isn't allowed and stuff but i have to say that some of the reporters in e dialogue session were e rudest arses i've ever seen. especially miss turqoise. felt like slapping them and asking, do you happen to know why you can speak english? why you have jobs? why you have a degree? why you can afford to wear the branded trash you're wearing? you owe it to the man you're facing (lky), dood. i mean im not saying go kowtow to him gratefully or vote for him, but at least have the decency to show some darn respect.

i bought $2 flipflops today!

2006-04-22T23:08:00.001+08:00

i've been falling asleep all over e place this week - on the bus, during seminars, when i just flop on the bed not meaning to close my eyes at all. sigh. doesnt bode well, but i really cannot sleep early or anything because three tests next week and lots of work due! actually i think im not TOO bad, i dont sleep in class. or nod off, not even in chem. whoots!

yesterday had napfa 5 items, then yingming, cheronne, jasmine and i went off to kap! it was great, just talking about general things and ranting, etc etc. haha they absolutely rawk. so does sarah cheang who taught me how to do standing broad jump! whee. okay back to the point. then i went back to school, met up with xingyee & yangzi, we stood around with cheronne and melly waiting for 171 to arrive (it took TWENTY MINUTES) and got off at panpacific, xingyee&yangzi bought dinnuh at burger king, and we dashed to esplanade, to realise we weren't late after all!

mrs ho seemed rather shocked that we appeared in school u, the other peeps were dressed in sensible clothes, but ahh well. the concert was quite kool! basically they played beethoven's missa solemnius, and it was awesome YAY I LOVE SSO. it's a choral work, means 'solemn mass', but the irony is that it really isnt very solemn, and its too big a work to be sung in church. SSC and various other choirs sang, and we saw mr tkc (an awesome gep maths teacher in our school who sings bass in SSC), looking bochap as usual. but well. the alto soloist was SOSOSO GOOD! & e double basses were wonderful, i think - i never thought they could be that agile. ladida. nodded off in e first half, stayed awake through e second half! :D

okay reached home at 11.10, showered and hung around for a bit, slept at 12, woke up at 6.30 (WHEE, SIX AND A HALF HOURS OF SLEEP! am elated with that.) then off to mcritchie for cca cip - it was combined cip, so i saw michelle and yangzi and rachel and joelynn there too! YAYERS. was quite okay larh, seriously just walking the 3.2 km distance, i walked with melissa yeo (307, obs watchmate, very tall, pretty, slim) who was much fun. and behind us was pearlynn, patricia, and someone-whose-name-i-have-yet-to-find-out. but twas much fun. then we sat around in a circle and chatted. pearlynn wants to learn salsa with patricia and huijin doesnt mind joining! huijin asked me and im like SPUTTER SPUTTER COUGH SALSA HAHAHA, when i have zeero coordination and negative flexibility.

AND I GOT A PRIZE!! hahaha lucky draw. kitchen now has a oven-toaster thing. i assure you i looked weird carrying it on the bus.

then we finished quite early, about 10? so off on the bus i went, to school. haha reached there right when the reception ended and THERE WAS NO MORE FOOD. but anyways the seminar was soso, quite boring and i tried to sleep but speaker's voice was too blaring and he kept coughing into the mike. bad throat, but quite annoying too. the talk was actually meant for teachers on how to make their lessons etc more interesting, so e other students there were quite amused too.

went home, had lunch, started work on IH presentation, FELL ASLEEP, then woke up with a jerk to realise it was time for guzheng! had guzheng from 4-5, came home, continued IH, played piano from 6-7.10, then dinner! and pa, ma, lorena and i went bowling from like 8 - 10.30ish! so fun, my scores are still depressingly low, but. fun!

okay i'll stop being hyper when im praying just to last until 1 tonight, finish darned IH. then tomorrow i have a lot to do, grrrr. two dangans, maths ws, studying for chemmusicchinese, practice piano, trombone. and there's the synod thing at SIS so it'll take up my time until like 1+. SIGH. also my quads really ache i dontknowwhy, but i seriously wince when i walk down stairs, so if it doesnt get okay by tomorrow i might not be able to play tennis with pa. is pissed.

haode, i'll stop ranting. today i found two new loves of my life -

the smell of bakeries
and
the sounds at bowling places

okay i dont need to elaborate on the smell of bakeries thing, just step into one, one fine day and you'll be enveloped by it whee =). but the sounds at bowling arenas. i think they're so happy, like everybody at bowling arenas are absolutely contented with their lot in life. people normally bowl with family and friends and all the laughter, patsontheback, clapping when there's strikes or spares etc its just so warm and nice! then the people who bowl alone are normally teh pro ones, so you know they're happy bowling. kuz they would have to love bowling to be pro at it. oh whatever.

yes, im not making sense. whee. cant think straight. well off i go anyways, have a lurvely day =)

2006-04-20T23:54:00.000+08:00

i am an oxymoron.

2006-04-20T00:08:00.000+08:00

i decided to delete the post i wrote just now, because it was rather horrible of me to rant. i dont think i should really rant on blogs - people dont read blogs to hear ranting. at least, i dont think so. and its quite ridiculous of me to rant after i've already ranted about it to yingming. =)

saw this meme on yangzi's LJ and found it quite amusing. basically teh instructions are as follows, there's like 12 months, with adjectives describing the people born in each month, and "1. Pick your birth month.2. Strike out anything that doesn't apply to you.3. Bold the five-ten that best apply to you.4. Copy to your own journal, with all twelve months under a lj-cut."

but since im doing it here instead of my eljay, i'll just put the 'january' one here. if you want to do it too, tell me your month! will give it to you :). and instead of striking etc etc, i'll just greenbold the ones that apply to me.

JANUARY:
Stubborn and hard-hearted. Ambitious and serious. Loves to teach and be taught. Always looking at people's flaws and weaknesses. Likes to criticize. Hardworking and productive. Smart, neat and organized. Sensitive and has deep thoughts. Knows how to make others happy. Quiet unless excited or tensed. Rather reserved. Highly attentive. Resistant to illnesses but prone to colds. Romantic but has difficulties expressing love. Loves children. Loyal. Has great social abilities yet easily jealous. Very stubborn and money cautious.

all in all, im not a particularly nice person. ahh well.

2006-04-16T20:55:00.000+08:00

i'm obsessing over something
- thats not mine
- that never was mine
- and never will be mine.
but its easier to say 'let go'
than it is to loosen my grip
and its easier to cling onto frail hopes
and imagined reciprocals
than it is to act like
it was merely a passing breeze
coming, only to go
leaving behind a memory
a whiff of fragrance
like footsteps in the sand
blurred by the waves and the wind.

am starting to understand a bit of what that feels like. and before we start speculating the usual random gossip that goes around, note that it says something, not someone. =)

so my nice aqua comp broke down, and im using my old one (which is now my sister's). was waiting for my sister to be done with her gaming so i could get started on the annoying bsp sbq which is worth a whole 20 marks, and cheronne (being a history student and would know this well) says that means we need 9-10 points. ARGH.

to what extent is the movie [ jia3 wu3 feng1 yun2 ] sufficient in explaining the reasons behind China's loss to the Japanese in the jia3 wu3 zhan4 zheng1?

grrr frankly i do not care because the jia wu zhan zheng is practically unknown to the rest of mankind - as jasmine says, its so unknown that it has no english name! and they went to war for crappy reasons (read: a weak emperor under control of a strong empress who, being a woman after all, used the country's money to build a FLOWER GARDEN for herself while her country was falling to ruins.) brilliant, no? it never fails to amuse me how people with such power abuse it in the most miscellaneous of ways.

also, i realise one cannot survive w/o acronyms.

2006-04-16T01:01:00.000+08:00

whee these days have been rather good.

and God works in the most wonderful ways even in the minute-est details in one's life. like yesterday while playing tennis, a thingum developed on my left foot - a blister? has no idea what they're called, anyways, what happens when you wear a new pair of shoes. which is quite strange, kuz my shoes aren't new and they're tennis shoes. but it really hurt and i was wincing while strolling to hit the ball (strolling, yes, i couldnt run) and even pulling up my socks to cover it only aggravated it further so i was like ARGH DARN.

then i uttered a quick prayer and tied my shoelaces, then miraculously it didnt hurt half as much and i could RUN! whee. but im getting rusty again, after not playing for a rather long time, so yeah. need to buck up! pa & i are going to start playing weekly and lorena wants to go bowling so we'll do that too! =D i love my family. then we need to start convincing my mum to participate.

but my mum rocks. she says she is all ready to sign the cheque! seriously. ahhh im e happiest person in e world right now and life really kicks much arse. whee! i think i'll have time in about two weeks then we can go down and sign the cheque then my object of admiration&adoration should be delivered within 2 mths HAHAHAHA. try guessing what it is. - gloat -

we live, to prove
love, its existence in shadows
fire, where after the flames have died down
a victorious life emerges
kill, to praise
the magnificence before the destruction
darkness of night,
the deep tunnels of a wolf's eyes
waiting for dawn to arrive,
alone.

haha, guess what the green stuff is too! ps: its not meant to make sense.

functions is so fun. but i cant do coordinate geometry to save my life. or circle properties. ARGH. geometry and VISUAL STUFF is the bane of me, sniff. maths test on tuesday, i really need to get an A this time, i absolutely refuse to go through maths with mere passes of 60. there. i will do it and i will do it well. mugmugmug. will also try to find time hunting down TP scores on the net. grin.

right, off i go to read wulinwaishi which is getting very good! =D but on a parting note:

In Christ alone,
who took on flesh
Fullness of God in helpless babe
This gift of love and righteousness
Scorned by the ones
He came to save
Til on that cross as Jesus died
The wrath of God was satisfied
For every sin on Him was laid
Here in the death of Christ I live

There in the ground His body lay
Light of the world by darkness slain
Then bursting forth in glorious Day
Up from the grave He rose again
And as He stands in victory
Sin's curse has lost its grip on me
For I am His and He is mine
Bought with the precious blood of Christ

happy Easter sunday everybody!
and isn't it nice
that sometimes when you feel unloved, unwanted,

to know that someone once willingly died for you?

2006-04-14T13:45:00.000+08:00

from Isaiah

1:18 - Come now, let us reason together," says the Lord. 'Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool."

35:10 But only the redeemed will walk there, and the ransomed of the Lord will return. They will enter Zion with singing; everlasting joy will crown their heads. Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away.

its Good Friday.

its going to be 2 in about 12 minutes, and its raining. thunderstorming, in fact. on this day about two thousand years ago, and with weather conditions vaguely the same, Jesus died. there were people below his cross, weeping their souls away. there were two people on crosses beside his, on their way. there was a crowd. people were jeering, people were cheering. some were despaired, some were elated. there were the commoners in their rags, silently crying for their saviour. there were the authorities, heaving a sigh of relief that they'd managed to retain their status. there were women. men. children. elderly. there were people who were once lame, blind, deaf, - some even dead. but at that moment, they could stand, see, hear, live. there were past-sinners, condemned by society and hated by all, but loved by Him. and far away in Potter's field, another soul was hanging himself.

two thousand years down the road, and things havent changed much, have they.

so justice is far from us, and righteousness does not reach us.
we look for light, but all is darkness;
for brightness, but we walk in deep shadows.
like the blind we grope along the wall,
feeling our way like men without eyes.
at midday we stumble as if it were twilight;
among the strong, we are like the dead.
we all growl like bears; we moan mournfully like doves.
we look for justic, but find none;
for deliverance, but it is far away.

for our offenses are many in your sight
and our sins testify against us.
our offenses are ever with us,
and we acknowledge their iniquities:
rebellion and treachery against the Lord,
turning our backs on our God,
formenting oppression and revolt,
uttering lies our hearts have conceived.
so justice is driven back,
and righteousness stands at a distance;
truth has stumbled in the streets, honesty cannot enter.
truth is nowhere to be found,
and whoever shuns evil becomes a prey.
(Isa 59:9-15)

for everything.
especially for today
for the cross
the three nails
the crown of thorns
the whipping
the humiliation and agony and pain
the words uttered
for God's forgiveness of our sins
for you -

thank you, Jesus.

2006-04-13T00:55:00.000+08:00

why buses pwn mrts

1) its cheaper for fulltime students. try beating 45 cents flat rate, and even cheaper if you take consecutive buses within half an hour or something of the sort i dont pretend to understand.

2) its more er, stable. you lose your balance but you dont jerk in all 360 degrees.

3) no matter how crowded a bus, you can always look out of the windows. now mrts, are different. when its REALLY peak period, all you see are bodies.

4) you see more than bodies, you see things you dont want to see. (refer to my entry written on saturday) most of the time this means overly-passionate couples acting unaware of the fact that they are in a crowded environment where people have trouble just standing and do not appreciate having to see, er. things!

5) after peak period, mrts retain the unpleasant smell - normally of shoes, sweat and perfume. buses, on the other hand, don't.

6) bus interchanges, no matter how huge, are easy to go through. just like er walk and you'll find the bus that you want to take. now compare this to places like dhoby ghaut interchange, where you have to go up down left right north south east west just to get to the train you want. even if you're just following signboards. or maybe its just me, and having no sense of direction.

7) you can eat at the bus stop while waiting for your bus to come.

8) you can talk to bus drivers - who're mostly very nice people.

9) everytime i decide to take the looong way back from orchard to bukit batok ( long way meaning i dont need to change mrt) the bus i take TERMINATES AT YISHUN. always. (prob kuz of the time i take = around 7 ) now see, that never happens in the case of a bus. so far, that is.

10) buses come in double decker =)

11) when at the busstop with a group of friends, you can wait for a whole bunch of buses while your friend can only take one bus. thusly, you ge the chance to gloat. this is definitely not the case in mrt situation.

12) in mrts, one often comes across selfish prats plonking their arses down on the floor, a group of them SITTING IN A CIRCLE with all their bags/sports equipment in the centre like a campfire. while people around them politely compress around them. grrr.

okay i cant think of anymore.

monday music test, tuesday 2.4 run and maths test, thursday chinese-lit test, friday napfa other 5 items. doom, death, destruction. thank goodness theres a nice long-ish weekend for me to prepare & all. God please do give me perseverance (i have the feeling i spelt that wrongly) for the three days, and the good judgment to balance a bit of fun, a lot of work.

anyways, list of things to do during the weekend. this is minus off all the Easter meditation, worship and stuff.

- play tennis with pa
- go bowling with pa and lorena
- mug for music
- study for maths, understand coordinate geometry
- practice piano for at least 4 hrs in total
- buy drumsticks (2 sets)
- do lit review for an article (SMP)
- check out price of marimba in yamaha
- finish unfinished work
- burn a copy of melissa's physics cds
- do something to fix up the computer
- read up on waves and whatnot.
- eat (a lot!) at the pasar malam thingum outside west mall
- write zuowen for SIA
- do the SBQ for BSP argh.
- finish report draft for maths

whee which means i really need to work. hard. sniff.

2006-04-10T21:55:00.000+08:00

spirit touch your church
stir the hearts of men
revive us, Lord
with your passion once again
i want to care for others
like Jesus cares for me
let your rain fall upon me
let your rain fall upon me -

2006-04-10T00:56:00.000+08:00

nostalgia.

of dancing figures -
songs suggesting deja vu
people you meet
stop and stare,
you've seen them before.

gossip. teasing.
the laughter of the time
familiar people, different year
different date, month
the same names
gathered at a mcdonald's table

remember the time -
when he broke my racquet
when she cried
the concert we messed up.
the most likely to succeed
the smartest, the fool-arounds

how we've changed -
fatter, taller.
mellow, cynical - complacent?
ugly ducklings now swans

memories that remain
or perhaps, are slowly lost
like rain that trickles
from the roof into drains

of course
we laugh everything off
jokes. relate stories.
experiences of the like

the time that's gone
fails to return
5 years older, sitting
around the same table -
but the table is new.
repainted, polished

the tree in school repotted
vanished name carvings
renovated, revamped grounds
can't find our way -
we're lost as we turn
round and round again
only to face each other

and realise
we dont look the same
5 years ago.
scrutiny, we notice
the differences that cannot be bridged

we part, smilingly
vowing to do this sometime again
- knowing we wouldn't.

we've too much going on
we simply havent the need
or time
or energy
or space in our hearts
for the hidden tears
when we grasp
that what's gone doesnt return.

disclaimer: this isnt a poem. just ... ramblings.

2006-04-08T21:20:00.000+08:00

two things i saw today:

1) cheeyang! well he's a person. anyways he was in cineleisure same time as sarahjoannalynette and me! he walked diagonally past us quite quickly and was gone out of sight rather soon, BUT. there were 4-5 girls around him TRAILING around him like despos so it was not very pleasant. like, have some pride, people! i mean he's cute and all, but dont stick to him in such a pathetic way.

2) a couple. very scandalous, er, how do i say this. open-minded? the guts to show affection. which actually isnt too bad, i always find myself right in front of couples nearly making out in mrts (which is one of the reasons i dont really like mrts.). i wouldn't have been too disturbed by this particular couple, except for the fact that they were both female. ARGH. its very that one leh, and i saw them from the mrt station until up the mrt for a few busstops. my gosh i dont think they stopped kissing.embracing.leaning2cmawayfromeachother.talking to each other while staring into each other's eyes and mouths 5 mm apart. really, i felt my goosebumps rising to record high. so maybe its common now and all that, but then maybe im just a close-minded conservative un-liberal (whats the proper prefix?) person. =D

hahaha i crap so much on my blog its QUITE amusing. like i was reading through my past few entries and im like wahpiang how come i can talk so much and say so little for the tiniest little insignificant details!

this quote is teh cute, by douglas adams (unknown) - " life is like a grapefruit. it's orange and squishy, and has a few pips in it, and some folks have half a one for breakfast. " should add that it can be sweet or sour depending on what you compare it to.

then the saddish one: "life is the call not yet made to the woman who lost her man in Iraq."

GAH I GET BETTER AT TALKING CRAP DAY AFTER DAY.

2006-04-07T23:06:00.000+08:00

interesting things to note.

my parents have spent a bomb on my piano lessons and pianos etc since i was 6? and well, fact is (and i dont think they realise), i have no flair for it. i can work hard at it, but i'd be nothing compared to some people who merely touch the keyboard once a week - during their lesson. sniff. its quite sad not having the talent. ahh well. and i very nearly quit it forever, two fateful years ago. sigh.

as i said before, it shall merely be a skill.

will be going to rgs for some chinese talk tomorrow. feel a bit of the irony here - people of the chinese high family going to the raffles family for a chinese talk. its a gep thing, and its DARN LONG, 7.30 - 1.30 , gah. although i do think there're refreshments =D.

yesterday, while on the bus and chatting with tianyuan, i was standing in relatively close proximity to a hci guy and girl. and they were having a rather animated conversation loud enough to reach people within a 3 metre radius. note, this is on the bus.

and guess what they were talking about! yep. geppers.

all i can assume is that the two of them are most probably not from the gep secondary schools - seeing their horribly twisted-gnarled-ridiculous conceptions. first of all, they say that geppers are smart. well to quote it in their words: the geppers, horh, damn smart one. in class, only they know answers. you see people get full marks, the teachers like one lah! is definitely gepper. silently amused, tianyuan and i stopped our convo for a while to listen to them.

(note here: ty isn't a gepper, and even she was amused by their total crap.)

everyone knows geppers arent SMART as in brain-smart-iq-over-160 kind of smart. we're just taught to be different. and the current state of geppers in nanyang ip, sec 3, we arent doing very well at all. we're gifted, sure, whatever. but so is the rest of the homosapien population. gep's a bond, an identity - just like i would say im Christian, and how people from track/basketball etc would say so. something we're proud of being, but we dont look down on other people because they dont have this identity. its not some stupid elite clique with unpenetrable doors - glares at the writers of that article in today which was written a while ago and caused the wrath of many -.

but back to the point. next thing the two hci-ans said that made me really tempted to smack my files on their heads - although they WERE rather tall - was: geppers are despised. really leh. you see people walk around, then you ask the nanyang girls or hwa chong guys, all the mainstreamers say they hate geppers lor. say the geppers very stuckup.

rolls eyes. more clues they've never actually interacted with a group of geppers. despised. maybe we're despised - but only by people like you, darling. okay i shall stop with the ego. i dont think we're despised - there is absolutely zilche reason for us to be despised.

i dont think we act stuck-up and ELITIST - glares once more at TODAY - , that is, go walking around the halls of nanyang, do you see random people sticking their noses up in the air and walking haughtily, looking down at you? do you see people strutting down corridors, pushing others out of the way, acting regal and idiotic? do you overhear conversations from TEH ELITES talking about how the world should ban mainstreamers? do you hear them talk about mensa iq questions? (no, you hear them gushing over cute hci-ans in campus superstar.)

"they only stick around themselves lorh. the other people not good enough for them." and we are oftenly accused of sticking around within the gep cohort only. well, WHAT DO YOU EXPECT US TO DO, MAN? we've known most of each other since primary four, thanks to all the gep events and the limited number of schools we can come from. our classes are small, we bond easily, we're given different teachers. just like you bond with the people in your class, then you change class every year, so every year your friends-list gets longer. and longer. and longer. but us, we stick to the same cohort. we are amongst ourselves every year, so duh we hang around each other!

but of course, that is not the case anymore. ip makes us all one big happy family ( to put it in the cliche, spastic-sounding way ). and then there's cca mates. obs-friends. seniors. juniors. friends' friends' acquaintance's friend. and so on and so forth. and we're gradually dissipating, and jc will make us all 'equal' once more in that sense, but please, as if we werent equal before. we're no more recognized as the gep classes, or gep individuals. so seriously, whats your problem?

anyways, my point to that girl and that guy in the 174 bus on thursday, sometime between 6.15-6.45, is that, if you want to say anything bad, or even discuss a relatively sensitive issue, be aware that the bus is three quarters filled with ny and chinese high people, thusly, there is a possibility that there might be a gepper there. think, my dears, think.

this is such an old topic i cant believe i've wasted my time discussing it.

2006-04-07T00:43:00.000+08:00

theres something terribly wrong with my lackofsleep immune system. today is the second day in a row (out of 4 days) i have managed to fall asleep in front of the computer while doing work, and stay asleep for more than an hour. this does not bode well. darnnit.

2006-04-05T23:37:00.000+08:00

im too obsessed.
(haha, with what or who, i shall not tell. go figure!)

i dont think i'll ever regret taking chinese lit because it really is so much fun. as in, science is absolutely wonderful with all its facts and stuff, but chinese lit forces one to think in that lateral way. anyhows! todays quite packed with work, so will tomorrow be, so i dont think i'll be free to blog. hmph. i'll miss hearing myself rant, so i've decided to forgo a few minutes and type this instead.

so yeah im in a good mood. today, went for the talk at nus, about how to write a scientific report properly. was quite okay except the speaker's actually incharge of srp (science research programme, jc level) so he was not very pleased with the general unresponsiveness of the srp cohort this year.

anyways, was quite interested in taking srp for applied science in jc at first, but after hearing the guy talk today i've quite changed my mind. srp is actually considered a H3 subject larh! where got such thing. means that its actually graded and all, which is quite annoying. and i still haven't figured out what the dif between H1 and H2 and H3 is. except that H2 is core. hmph.

- flurries off to check ny's and hci's websites -

oh, quoting ny, H2 = rigour of A levels maintained. H1 = half the time of H2, designed to cater for different needs. H3 = H2 and H3 to be offered in same subject. SOMEBODY EXPLAIN THIS PLEASE. curriculum time, 1/2 to 3/4 of the time of H2, to be taken only in J2. so confusing. i wonder if people take more than 4 subjects. like maybe 3 H2s and 2 H1s or something. gah complicated, really.

got the forms for end of year programme. we need to make 3 choices, and i cant think of the third one! darn.

1) regional cip - vietnam
2) china attachment programme

3) student exchange (shenyang)? or exchange programme to the western countries? except thats too expensive. GAH.

whee! okay shall not worry too much, and go back to doing c-lit work. which is loads of fun, seriously. bonesetter's daughter lies abandoned in my bag, to rot.

2006-04-04T19:42:00.001+08:00

But pain...seems to me an insufficient reason not to embrace life. Being dead is quite painless. Pain, like time, is going to come on regardless. Question is, what glorious moments can you win from life in addition to the pain? - Lois McMaster Bujold, Barrayar, 1991.

hm. that quote does raise a rather interesting point.

and i think im a really shallow blogger who talks about the most boring details of my life.

anyways, argh. ow. my right arm muscle at the top i always forget what its called, is doing that thing it always does, AGAIN. just that its slightly different today, i cant write for more than 15 minutes without stretching for a bit, then i continue writing again. kuz it hurts. sniff. i really should get it checked and see whats wrong with it lorh. i dont think its just muscle cramping anymore ... feels rather different. ohh wells.

yesterday while watching the watoto choir video, i figured out the perfect and ideal job, which i would seriously love to do - but unfortunately, i doubt im good enough in music to do it. basically, major in music teaching or something in a uni, then instead of working for MOE and teaching schoolchildren in that sense, it'd be nice if i could teach the underprivileged - orphan homes, convicts, etc. i'd really love working with convicts if i could but then i think there're other people doing that already.

doesnt it sound like such an awesome job? but i dont really have any gift in music, (not that i HAVE a gift in anything, fact is), so it would be quite hard. kuz majoring in music would require going to overseas universities, etc etc. SIGH. so i guess its back to doing some physics thing and maybe volunteer lorh. whee! doesnt sound too bad either, actually. quite fun!

OHOH I FINISHED BIAN CHENG LANG ZI! yes its such a darn good book and there're so many awesome twists in the ending. ahh, and all the characters in the book are so so so kool. but well now i can concentrate on reading bonesetter's daughter for a bit. though i hate reading novels simply because they're compulsory lit texts.

oh and we got back our unseen poem timed trial today, AND I ACTUALLY PASSED WHEE! and whats better is, it was mirror by guess who? sylvia plath. would've guessed the teachers would use a psychotic, neurotic poet's poems. i mean i mean im not attacking sylvia plath as a person BUT I REALLY CANT STAND HER POEMS. doesnt like poems that have underlying meanings about two thousand floors underground and you need to dig. and dig. and DIG. to find the darn meaning and usually its entirely far-fetched and ridiculous. but i actually managed to pass one of SYLVIA PLATH's unseen poems! my gosh life rawks. though admittedly i didnt pass well at all.

(on the sidenote, we're studying some modern poetry in chinese lit and its loads of fun.)

oh well, 8 o'clock in 3 mins. so shall blog abit more until the 3 mins is up and i start practicing pianoh. i've decided not to read bonesetter's daughter anymore, simply because i dont think its one of amy tan's better books, and also because i generally dont like it as our lit text. shall go online sometime and read summaries/reviews. so right now im gonna read wu-lin-wai-shi, another absolutely wonderful book by gu long, yep its wuxiaxiaoshuo and harthed most deeply by yours truly!

roasted peanuts and cheesy nachos,
- alena.

2006-04-03T23:31:00.000+08:00

sometimes, its nice to just sit back and count your blessings, one by one.

2006-04-02T15:36:00.000+08:00

"all men dream; but not equally. those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity. but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, if possible." T.E. Lawrence

gah i really need to learn how to prioritize my life properly. and this is officially one of the most boring posts i have ever written.

so anyway, today in church we talked about spiritual leaders? then youth was prayer and praise which's great, our worship team rocks, really. and afterwards ms meeting, cum lunch with marilyn-madeline-lois-gregory. i love sundays, really. they start off absolutely wonderfully thanks to church and youth, which then gives me much motivation and energy to last for the rest of the day (and night. and into the early hours of monday morning.)

whee the zhu-di (bamboo flute) sounds so nice i want to learn it so badly!

and haha last week was my major electronic-gadget break-down week.

first my laptop kept hanging for strange, strange reasons. so i fiddled around with things, then after deleting the pdf-printer thing, it recovered! then my printer got uninstalled from my laptop while i was doing deleting, so i needed to install it again, but i lost the installation and verification cd thingum. however, i managed to find the installing software off the net so it got re-installed.

next on wednesday, i got caught very badly in the terrible rain-storm thing while strolling around nushigh and missing the bus stop and ending up at nus science faculty then getting confused because thats where i go for smp, and then finally remembering i was meant to be at nush instead. so anyways, i was drenched and so was my phone in my pocket, as in the keypad didnt work but everything else was fine. then i refused to listen to people's advice about going down to the motorola centre to get it fixed, because i was too lazy to go to plaza sing. so i blowdried it with the hairdryer, and now its fine!

and on thursday, i bought a new black ink cartridge, and helped cheronne print her dangan at about 9 something. BUT THEN after working on that zuowen about wolves until 2, my printer refused to work. it kept saying there was some error and foreign item stuck in it. but i couldnt see anything. (so i went to school on friday without the zuowen, but thankfully zuolaoshi decided to give us a last minute extension!) and on friday night, i re-explored the inside of my printer, and LO AND BEHOLD found a rubber band stuck inside, and i didnt see it the day before because its been dyed black by the black ink and stuff and because i was very sleepy already, at that time.

and now it works and i've printed out my wolf zuowen very prettily. =D im so very proud of myself really. unorthodox methods of fixing stuff. but it WORKS you know.

to add more colour to the post, meet the loves of my life! boonhian and jay.

gregory said something to me about the nanyang girls he knows being all-rounded and that the school grooms us well. whee! maybe. im obviously an exception to point number 1, because im more of the barely-above-average kind for everything, but i agree with point number 2! haha nanyang really rocks larh. we dont always get good teachers, but all our teachers really care for us! and there's something about the "qi-li", "xing-li" and the bowing to teachers as they pass that really gets instilled into us. everyone changes when they come to nygh - for the better! haha im so terribly biased and subjective.

anyways! was thinking about the whole thing regarding elite schools and neighbourhood schools and top schools and SAP schools yesterday. then started thinking about how people often say that students from top schools feel elitist and act stuck-up with people from neighbourhood schools. and today i've been sort of reviewing my actions and the way i talk and i have the horrid feeling that although i dont feel that im better than others at all ( because, in fact, i always feel im undeserving of gep and nygh and ip and whatnot ), i act in certain ways and say certain things which could give people a very wrong idea.

sigh. must change must change! somehow.

caramel apples and banana splits,

- alena.

2006-04-01T19:17:00.000+08:00

"we cross our bridges when we come to them, and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once, our eyes watered." Tom Stoppard [Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead]

that is an absolutely gorgeously spiffy quote.

anyways! im actually doing work. WORK. which is quite a big deal because i normally dont do work on saturdays. so yeah. its all quite kool, but i really dont intend on sleeping this weekend, thanks to this:

- chinese mindmap and jian-bao
- functions mindmap
- IH SIA proposal completely refined and perfected
- IH assignment research on the impacts of the Holocaust
- physics lens formula exercise
- to make the maths ppt presentation by collating research from sian, ronnie and melusng.
- rewrite zuowen which i failed very badly
- music: finish composing worksheet
- theory homework: 4 pages of completing chords
- copy out chinese lit homework because i forgot to bring my file last lesson.
- design survey for IH SIA

it actually isnt very much. im just a slow worker.

so anyways! yesterday after school, being free for once, i went to jurong point with erzi! which means yingming, for the ignorant. it was all quite fun, but JP is starting to get a bit boring. went to toys r us and whatnot to ogle at soft cuddly toys and we ended up buying glow in the dark thingums (flying pigs for me, surprise surprise), stickers, and i bought a headrest bean cushion for my parents. there's this lime green star shaped beanie that im eyeing which costs $6.90! and this cow which is lying stomachdown and has its hindlegs kicked up in the air like how i used to lie when reading.

then today, i met up with yangzi for lunch at west mall, then we went off to school for the piano recital thingum! (as i told yangzi, e implementation of the 5 day week has no effect whatsoever.) learnt quite a lot about the different techniques, george crumb is such a kool composer, the way he puts in hitting the metal stick thing with a yarn mallet to create the funkiest effects. and pizzicato on a piano! talk about interesting. spent $8 on a ticket to a performance which is in june i think, at VCH, should be quite kool, the performer is the same woman who presented and played for us today - lee something something. anyways shes considerably young but she already has her doctorate in uni of michigan for piano.

sniff.

after which i rushed home, grabbed my books and went for guzheng. then came back again to sit around and finally have time to kool off. dinner was great, cream sauce chicken pasta which was quite reasonable from bukit timah food centre, and chinchow! i've had three portions of chinchow today, for some strange reason, lunch dinner and before guzheng.

right. and i also realised i havent touched my guitar in almost three weeks so i picked it up today and strummed for a bit. and now here i am, relating the horribly boring activities of my day to you. soon will be going off to play piano. i think im starting to get the routine into my system, which is good. one hour piano a day. soon i'll try to incorporate 15 mins guzheng a day!

whee! and i finally found out the price of my dream marimba. THREE THOUSAND SIX HUNDRED! sigh, talk about annoying. and not even the slightest offer. ma and pa said they will subsidize half the price if i really want it, but one thousand eight hundred isnt a very nearby goal either. i think i currently only have like 500 in my account. darnnit. maybe i'll discuss paying by instalments.

2006-03-30T19:12:00.000+08:00

so.
i've tried my best, and if that's not enough, there's nothing i can do,
except to move on.

ps, i can tie the longest part of my hair up! it ends up being about an inch long =D.

2006-03-29T23:57:00.000+08:00

jersh.

getting drenched is not a ... comfortable feeling. trudging around nushigh anticlockwise, then clockwise, to realise that before i turned clockwise i was only 10 metres more to the gate, is also not a very good feeling. generally, i love rain, but heavy-rainy days with thunder and lightning are best appreciated at home when one is nice and warm. not for 25 minutes walking around and around in school uniform, soaking the books in my bag, the papers in my file, myself, my socks and shoes - yeah, not nice.

so i turned up at the lecture 35 minutes late, drenched from head to toe and shivering in the general coldness of the nushigh audi. although the audi WAS a pleasant enough place. although i really wish nush would open the gate thats closest to the bus stop. not that it'd have helped me much, considering i missed the stop, then went on to nus instead, then had to cross the road and take the bus back to nush and WALK. sniff.

that was 3.35. when i reached home four hours later, i was still wet. not soaking anymore, just wet and damp. still not a very comfortable feeling. right, i need to work on my chinese essay about wolves. its quite interesting, am using wolves to symbolise loneliness and pride. all much fun indeed, except that my mind aint working at all today, so im working uber slowly. which means i wont get to sleep until much later which means i'll be even more tired. sigh.

ohh well, whatever! life rawks anyways. there were two rj girls in our group for the lecture thingum. they were both very nice and very pretty, and one of them tied her hair into a bun using a real wooden chopstick! so fun. =D

2006-03-29T00:20:00.000+08:00

le coucou.

its one of the prettiest pieces i've ever heard! le coucou, translated to the cuckoo, as in cuckoo bird type of cuckoo. am glad i have the score for it, its quite an easy piece in terms of technicality, but i really want to master it and play it on a harpsichord! am listening to the harpsichord version right now and it really rawks. although it IS meant to be played on a piano, being composed in the 20th century by daquin. his only memorable piece, i believe.

but anyways! its really so nice i love the modulation to major in between the minor and repeated segments. i dont know why its termed the cuckoo, its very much like a dance in fact. the kind of dance thats very quick and rushed, in a flash between two people who are not meant to be together. sniff, its beeyooteefool.

"why're you crying?"
" because sometimes beauty does that to me."
[perfect] by judith mcnaught (a trashy romance novel).

so true. not that im crying while listening to this piece although its absolutely gorgeous, but i do believe that there're so many things in the world that can make a person cry, and beauty's definitely one of them. =D i cant recall myself crying because of beauty though. hmph.

been on a classical music craze tonight so for the first time in two weeks i turned off FORT MINOR and JJ LIN and switched to tchaikovsky, & the lot. which was very nice. and argh I WANT A HARPSICHORD. haha of course that is all rather ridiculously ridiculous, if there are any harpsichords around they'd be standing around concert halls and stuff. not in my house where it'd be destroyed by annoying children passing by and slamming on it like they would a piano. and like what they do to my guzheng and guitar. SNIFFLES.

shall end with a lovely quote i saw today:

it was such a lovely day i thought it a pity to get up. - w. somerset maugham.

2006-03-28T19:41:00.000+08:00

whee, slushies are harth!

today i caved in to temptation and went down to 7-11 to get a green apple slushie. and it was ahh so good i havent had one in 5 years! heh. its a waste of $1.40 though, kuz it actually just takes like green apple with lots of froth and bubbles and ice. but tis nice indeed.

sleeping only 3 hours on sunday night is taking its toll on me and i cant believe how lethargic i am. but aye shall gather up whatever energies i have and go practice piano later at about eight. yes, self-discipline is the key to success indeed.

and i know i have a lot of work today, but i dont want to flip open my organiser and see the painful list then get a nervous breakdown. a lot of it is overdue work, or SIAs that are started too late. no worries, shall complete about half of that and worry about it all later. then i need to write an email to matthew lim because he is also un-findable, and then i need to write an email to the st.lukes oldfolkshome in clementi to ask if they let students do cip there. schniff. argh.

right off i go to practice piano!

and thought of the day, as provoked by jasmine on friday.
is placidity merely my escape?

2006-03-27T20:49:00.000+08:00

and today, my parents and i discussed end-of-year programme.

if my memory does not fail me, the choices for end-of-year programme are as follows:

1) china attachment, or jing-ru.
2) china thing thats not exactly exchange.
3) regional cip - vietnam, india or krabi
4) local cip
5) work experience programme
6) outward bound sabah
7) attachment to various places in new zealand. exchange, basically.
8) stanford university thing over at hwa chong

so basically from the start of the year i've already decided i want to do regional cip. and whee im pretty much set on doing it in vietnam! fun fun. my main reasons are to i dont know. teach myself to be less self-centred? and er, try to pay a few of the debts that i owe the world for being such a lovely place.

my parents were rather intent on getting me to go for an attachment of some sort. especially since im in bsp and all that, but yeah. managed to convince them that attachment is something thats very fun, and meaningful, and educational, and you get loads from it. but its not what i want! i mean, endofyear programme and i go to study some more? like gah lol. but anyways because my parents rawk a lot, they've decided to let me do what i want!

after all, cip is not a common thing and one doesnt get much chance in life to do it. and if i really want to go for attachments and whatnot, there'll be more chances in the future, im sure. and regional cip would completely PWN local cip because i could do that anytime too!

regional cip = $1500 to $2000.
china attachments = $2500
new zealand attachments = $3500

which is another reason i dont want to go for attachments, itll mean extorting too much money from my parents. sigh. although they did say they dont mind and can afford it and all. but thats not the point. of course, some might argue i could stay in singapore and do the $15 work experience programme. but i think work experience is quite...how to say, i dont believe you'll really get to have actual handson experience in that sense. shall wait a few more years for that!

(oh and i can use the extra leftover money for my MARIMBA! no wait im saving for that myself. okay fine the leftover money shall be used for my intensive dizi/sheng/xiao/flute/coranglais lessons during december!)

so vietnam regional cip it is, wootz!

2006-03-26T20:38:00.000+08:00

the newspaper is a muchly useful learning tool, kuz i just learnt that "the vice trade" = prostitution. yeah, im rather slow.

so. a conversation between my sister and me in the car.

her: what do you want to be when i grow up?
me: i want to be ... happy.
her: huh? you mean you dont want a JOB?!
(mum and dad erupt into guffaws. sister is unaware that she has said something amusing.)

anyways, of course its not really funny at all. but it DOES set off a chain of thought. i mean, i do need a job to be happy. and for me to be happy, the job needs to be one i like. which leads me to think what subjects i want to take at jc.

cryeth. i've always thought i'd take something sciencey. and with chem and physics, seems like i'd most probably go into engineering or something like that. i do think majoring in physics is a lot of fun though. probably the aftereffects of reading 'angels and demons' and books discussing physicists doing amazing research. and i love physics!

but then and again. if i had the time and energy to, i dont mind sitting for hours on the piano practicing one single piece. so music is really rawkass too. sniff. and i think its the only job which doesnt involve doing the same things over and over again. (practicing pieces doesnt count. each time you play, its different and there's more beauty to it somehow.) but music isnt really that big a field? especially pianists. considering half the world are pianists. sigh.

which is why i want to take up at least one more instrument. i have guzheng, but my ability there is currently quite stagnant because i dont practice. must start practicing regularly! guitar doesnt count because i dont play classical. so im hoping somehow i'll find the time to learn dizi or xiao or flute or cor anglais. a woodwind instrument, anyways.

so about the music field, its not really very big, that is, i dont appear to have much choice about profession if i do take music. i mean, okay piano teacher is one. or i could go into conducting! and go back to peps to do conducting hahahaha how fun. OR the really kool but impossible one is to do arranging and composing for singers. or music teacher in secondary schools, but thats all rather dreary, methinks.

if only i can get into band. in which case i'll play percussion, and that could be another thing i know how to play. especially if i manage to get my marimba at the end of this year. but wait i want to start learning my woodwind instrument at the end of this year too. ARGH.

perhaps music really is my passion. but im not very good at it. as in all the hmp people are much better than i am. and i can effectively only play one instrument well.

then theres chinese. which im not very brilliant in, but i like very much all the same. and chinese lit is really loads of fun. HMPH. am very confused. should i go into arts or science stream in hcjc! if science, it'd be physics chem maths definite, and chineselit or music. which results in confusion. if i go into arts stream itll be er, chinese lit and music and SOMETHING I DONT KNOW (econs or accounts or elit), and maths as my contrasting subject. which is really annoying because i'd have to give up physics. SNIFF.

if only we could take two sciences, two humans. physics, maths, chinese lit, and music. perfect!

but im only in sec 3, and jc is faraway. i suppose.

2006-03-24T22:40:00.000+08:00

NEWSWEEK IS LURVE.

anyways. lol, yep i finally got my newsweek! (just subscribed, you see) and im so absolutely happy because newsweek is such a rawkass magazing thingum! whee.

so i think i broke my record today, for least hours of sleeping, that is. i slept @ THREE THIRTY this morning, and woke up at six. okay for some people it might be perfectly normal, but being a pig by nature, it really isnt my fault i felt rather groggy during midday today. im quite okay now though. goodness knows how lynette survives on no sleep! piang.

duael tomorrow! hope its good.

im yawning a lot but im all hyper so im going to be a couch potato for tonight and watch watch watch! watch what, though, i havent decided.

anyways, piano today! ms foo said i can take my dipabrsm next year, like in the first quarter! WAHAHAHA SO FUN I LOVE HER SO MUCH. and she's right, doing repertoire is so fun. although i think my standard right now is below grade 7. still! thats what not playing for 2 years does to you. now i've started again, i never want to quit! heh.

sorry for chanyi if it was annoying asking for pieces from you. ARGH DIPABRSM why all these pieces and none of which can be found!

2006-03-23T19:36:00.000+08:00

dont rummage through the pile again and again if you cant find something,
perhaps you're looking in the wrong place =D

okay so anyways.

i've been gorging myself with all kinds of food, mamee, sandwiches, chinchowthingum, randomkoreansnacks, magicPOP, banana cake. feels very childish, satiated and satisfied. now i can hardly move, kuz dinner was yongtaufoo which RAWKED. food makes me happy.

have a lot of work today, because teachers are lazy creatures and like marking over weekends, so they assign work to be handed in on fridays. and because students are also lazy creatures and enjoy procastinating, here i am not planning to sleep tonight.

oh but before i start. i love days that start off well, they make you feel awesome altogether and you just feel capable of anything. so i woke up in the morning, and upon picking up my handphone groggily, i saw a message ... from judy! yep JUDY CHEN PEI YU! whee i love her. for the unaware, she's one of my best friends in shanghai, taiwanese, cute, funkeh.

so she was saying she and annie were in nanjing, and having lots of fun and staying up very late (she sent me the message at like 3.30 in the morning) and that they missed me! so that made me very warm and loved inside, and the day has been great.

except one thing. I LEFT MY [ bian cheng lang zi ] AT SCHOOL so i cant read it tonight! SNIFF. its so horribly upsetting. but i suppose tis a good thing. if it was around i wouldnt be able to concentrate very well on my work.

haha and oh ronnie is so fun to hang out with!

our house has icecream again! west mall was having some sale like selling 2 for 1 so i coerced my mum into getting some. HAHA but i feel no guilt, she admits that she was missing icecream too. =D and ladidadeedums. everything rawkxers. one of the best days in my life!

hiho, hiho, its off to work i go!

2006-03-22T23:18:00.000+08:00

i guess
that this is where we've come to
if you don't want to
then you don't have to believe me
but I won't be there when you go down
just so you know now
you're on your own now
believe me.

WHEE FORT MINOR IS HARTHS!
(yeah, those are lyrics.)

so im all much better today, yesterday was just a ridiculously moodswingey day, dont ask why, dont ask how. dont take the angsty upset post to heart, just remember the normally-goodmood-blur-me. heh.

progress reports - were not good. but shall not care too much about that, thanks jiawei for listening to me rant ridiculously, and i've realised how stupid it is to complain and wail about my depressing marks. all i can do, and what i should do, is to improve. and AYE WILL.

bian cheng lang zi is coming along very nicely, the wuxiaxiaoshuo im reading right now i mean. im awfully slow for some reason, but its really very interesting. and gu3 long2 's sentence format is just lovely.

foreword for chinese indiv SIA due friday, so i need to decide what the five articles im going to write are about. possibilities as follows:

1) guan1 dan1 xiao3 ji4 - basically, on kuantan life when i go back. cheers!

2) xing1 jiang1 - this would be describing scenery. am thinking of purposely imitating gu-long's short sentence format, but short sentence is very un-me, so i'd better not. but itd be fun to try! especially since xingjiang is desert. i can make up all kinds of exaggerated short sentences like. " feng1 chui1 zhe4 sha1, sha1 lian2 zhe4 tian1." translates to the wind blows the sand and the sand rises to the sky. HAHAHAHA WHAT CRAP.

3) lang2 - wolf. while describing a wolf in action, or poised to kill, hopefully i can somehow capture the essence of suspense and tension in the moment, as well as do that TUO WU YAN ZHI rubbish. like er maybe. how the wolf shows us the frailty of the human heart. my gosh i seriously can win awards in talking absolute rubbish.

4) hui2 yi4 dang1 shi2 - memories. of the time when we were in band, innocent, idealistic and cute. this would be quite hard to write though.

5) a contemporary chinese poem.

6) ke1 xue2 yu3 xing4 yang3 - the all-explored topic of science vs religion. i could do it in an yilunwen format. and quote from case for faith, angels and demons, etc. would be fun but i dont think i'll score.

7) kristin! you shall be one of the topic options.

8) ren3 - one word titles rawk.

WAHAHAHA I SUCK THATS ALL I CAN THINK OF. HELP.

2006-03-21T23:48:00.000+08:00

to raise my self-esteem slightly, although it actually doesnt need much raising.

june - somehow find time to take bowling lessons. with my sister =D
december - pick up a chinese instrument, a woodwind. dizi or sheng or xiao would be nice.

there, settled.

i hate my darn mood swings.

2006-03-21T23:00:00.000+08:00

see, all i do in my life is disappoint my parents again and again. then i find excuses for myself. and disappoint them once more. yet they're always there for me, and they never give up. they still think im capable of so much, that i have all this bottled-up potential. they trust me, they love me, they spend i dont know how much on me, be it time or money. and what do i do? i lie, i run, i hide. and i make them disappointed with me.

im having a darned breakdown. the kind when you sit in front of the computer screen, chatting on msn, listening to random music, and tears just gush out, but you dont dare to cry out loud because your parents are sleeping in their bedroom opposite, and you cant let them hear.

2006-03-20T20:15:00.000+08:00

WAIL.

MY GOSH I FAILED THE PERFORMANCE SO BADLY I SLIPPED UP FOR ALMOST EVERY BAR AND NOTHING WENT RIGHT AND I WAS FREEZING MY FINGERS OFF AND I SUCKED AND WHEE I SHALL SHUT UP RIGHT NOW BUT IM REALLY PISSED OFF ABOUT MYSELF.

no, actually, im not pissed. i just realised that im really very lax with myself. as in, too easy on me. i expect very little, whether its personality, temper, or academically. and i must change, yesh i must.

anyways, today i managed to spend only $1.40 on recess! =D whee im going to start savingsavingsaving and hopefully by the end of april i'll have enough for one thing on my wishlist. im hoping its the qi jian xia tian shan vcds. ahhhh. if not, i'll settle for the tchaikovsky scores.

SO i am going to change. resolutions as follows:

- to spend as little as possible on recess, but still remain full. this can be possible ( like today ) and especially if i bring sandwiches from home.

- to really practice piano 1 hr a day, 6 days a week (the other day is my piano lesson)

- to scrape out time for general revision, at least 2 hrs a week.

- to complete homework on time. which means i'll be up til rather late tonight. if i should get to sleep at all, that is.

- to learn how to prioritize.

- to scrape out time for guzheng practice. hm shall not be too ambitious. 2 hrs a week.

- if i do get vcds to watch, i am going to watch them only after doing my work.

- to read papers regularly. both chinese and english. and read my newsweek & asia weekly (the chinese one) like how i would read my wuxia xiaoshuos. (which means, back to front, front to back, and can memorize the main ideas and most of the quotes.)

- to get cracking on my various SIAs.

- work first then play. put msn status on busy until 12 has past, or when there's only 7 people left online, whichever is later. blogging is an exception, but i am not to spend more than 20 mins a day blogging.

- to not slack off during weekends. most of my homework piles up during the weekends, because i cant do any work on sats or suns. normal days i manage to finish stuff.

- if i really want to read my wuxiaxiaoshuos very very badly, i am to do so on the bus, or during lunch, or after i finish work. but by the time i finish work, its really suggestable for me to go and sleep. but of course, its up to me and my moods at that point of time.

- to tighten the reins. on myself. very very very much more.

there! okay i have forty-nine more days to improve my piano so i manage to scrape a pass in class performance (which will be marked this time) so yep. i have to do this. i have to perfect flight of the bumblebee. i know i can.

see you darl. i've broken one of the resolutions already, i think i spent quite a while blogging.

and the whirls of the mind
we will never understand
or need to.
for in there lies the beauty
of the soul
of man.

-alena. (dont ask me what the stuff in green on top means, i dont know either. just an on the spot thing. it sounds weird and stupid, i know.)

2006-03-19T17:20:00.000+08:00

enduring is painful, yet at times, it is also an art.

quote above taken & translated from [ bian1 cheng2 lang4 zi3] pg 19, written by gu-long. i couldnt think of any other word for (ren3 shou4), so enduring it is. other words could be persevering, tolerating, etc.

anyways, that quote has nothing to do with my mood today. just thought it would be a sort-of effective way to start. yeah, im exploring ways to begin.

so, i read a few pages of bian1 cheng2 lang4 zi3 today while waiting for jasmine in the mcdonald's near west mall. and i realised how much i underestimated gu3 long2. of the three most famed wuxia writers, i always thought gulong was the least deserving, because well his books seem more adventure and thriller, accompanied with lots of beautiful (naked) women and wine. & e main characters seem too perfect to be true.

but i was very wrong. of what i have read of his books, maybe i was younger then, but well now i appreciate his style of writing so much more. in a few simple words, he portrays a picture, a scene, a mood, an atmosphere. something liang-yu-sheng & jin-yong cannot do. for example, he starts the book this way: the house did not have any colour, only black! and on the same page, he portrays the image of an elderly woman and her young son, both dressed in black, welding black weapons.

imagery of the son:
the setting sun illuminated his face. his features were well-defined and handsome, but they seemed as if they were carved from the ice from the mountains yonder.
the setting sun waned, the wind raged.

its just so nice okay! my translating does it no justice, im afraid. go read the chinese version online to understand! okay and in the same scene, (the very first few pages of the book), the woman tells her son to take revenge on the people who killed his father. the son hesitates, but the woman is so full of hatred that she tells him, "if you dont slice the heads of your enemies off, and come back to see me, not only will the heavens curse you, i will curse you myself!" then the next line is " the wind raged. she watched him walk out of the temple slowly, walk into the darkness of the night. gradually he seemed to blend in with the darkness as one. the knife in his hand seemed to slowly blend in with the night, as well. at that moment, darkness enveloped the earth."

feel the imagery, its beautiful, seriously. especially in chinese, everything is so much shorter and crisp. you feel the woman's evil, her hatred, her pent-up loathing. you feel her son's lostness (portrayed in the darkness of it all, note all the clothes were black, the things in the temple were black, the knife was entirely black, outside the wind raged etc.)

and later you find out the son's name is hong-xue. as in red snow. which the woman said was name because when he was born, his father died and dyed the surrounding snow red with his blood. thusly the name. its really amazing larh. gulong really uses short sentences to illustrate and sketch the image of what he wants us to feel. and it works =D

okay, enough irrelevant stuff. today was quite kool, am feeling guilty because i overslept so i missed morning service and only went to youth. where we learnt how to write our testimonies! whee im half done with mine (typed out) so i'll paste it on here when im done. im very longwinded.

and jasmine came over to do work -coughs violently-.

whee im praying desperately for God to help me tomorrow because of piano performance. i havent practiced since like er, forever. sigh. not my fault exactly, my finger was malfunctioning as you know thanks to kayaking injuries. wait actually i didnt tell you. my finger was bruised all purple-black, (yes im serious. no exaggeration.) and its still painful when i use strength on it but it looks fine now. not the point. im gonna practice lot tonight. and heck care about my finger. though itd probably hurt. -sniff-.

alright shall stop boring you all with insignificant details of my mundane life.

have a g'day, mate! kuz schools up tomorrow. groans.

2006-03-18T19:22:00.000+08:00

WHEE EDIT EDIT!

with 10 photos taken @ the jinyong stand @ expo! SQUEALS. of course, very few other people are interested. the first photo is a pic of jinyong's own handwritten " fei-xue-lian-tian-she-bai-lu, xiao-shu-shen-xia-yi-bi-yuan" so its really kool. & the next 9 are pics of the various versions. its all really really kool. but only to me of course lol. =D

[/edit]

happy birthday mum!

today was so far quite a family-ish day. as in i spent the entire day with the family instead of going around doing my own stuff. & i harth having such a fantastic family so thanks God!

whee. so today i went to EXPO! im sure my dad burned lots of petrol driving all the way but it was all fun because the book fair ROCKED. & never underestimate my powers of estimation, because i said in the shopping list that splurging @ expo would be above 60, and LO AND BEHOLD i spent $62.20! whee! im broke. but ma subsidized a bit of it.

i got two sets of gulong - wu3 lin2 wai1 shi3 and bian1 cheng2 lang4 zi3. well the first set i've always wanted, and the second i've always heard a lot about the main characters so whee. & i also got a cai lan book because there's much gushing in taiwan about her too. oh and i got cd pockets and a cd file thingum. pa was nice & bought me a stamp thingum, as well as lovely lovely ink cartridges for e ever-dying printer! -hugs- and my mum got a chinese-english Bible and some Bible thingums for my sis. all quite kool.

AND MY GOSH there was this stand that SPECIALISED in jinyong. they had all the prettiful covers and they were positively droolable and aahhhh. so i asked the lady who was standing there looking over everything with a hawks eye harbouring a malicious glint (okay, so i am exaggerating, she was actually very teh nice) whether i could take photos of some of the jinyong book covers. and she looked very surprised but she said yes.

so i have 4 or 5 photos of nice covers stored away in my handphone! am planning to have them printed out nice and big so i can stick them all over my room. i think my mum would have objections though. ohh well!

afterwards we went to take a look @ e civil service club which is a 15 mins walk fr our house! (we're members) and its very funkeh indeed! cant wait for the tennis courts to be up. the bowling alleys are nice, they've 24! and of course the wave pool, the general pool is nice. plus although the layout is darnnit confusing, its also darnnit pretty because everythings like wood and rustic-ky.

speaking of tennis i managed to watch a bit of the pacific live open today, before going to expo! the match between baghdatis & rafael nadal, tis the quarter finals? & yesh. nadal really rawks larh his strength is incomparable and if one observes his arm muscles theyre so well defined its scary. has that vein thing. i dont know the outcome of the match, but surprisingly baghdatis was proving quite a worthy opponent. ohh well hopes nadal wins, he's amazing! =D and he likes orange, doesnt he. everytime i watch him play he's wearing orange.

yay dinner time! i da-baoed a nice big portion of indian rojak from our market. =D heh. then i'll go drool over my new books. and oh yes. i still havent done any homework due monday, or some of the homework thats overdue from before obs. doom.

- alena.

2006-03-17T21:38:00.000+08:00

my shopping list.
which will only apply after i learn how not to spend all my money on food.

1. qi-jian-xia-tian-shan [wuxia drama, 39 episodes] $49.90

2. xian-jian OST $21.90

3. tchaikovsky's die jahreszeiten [english: the seasons. has 12 pieces, one for each month] $30.80

4. JS Bach's inventionen und sinfonien $13.20

5. answers and reasons - to questions regarding Christianity. $16.90

6. case for a creator $27.80

7. a new calculator though not entirely necessary $18

8. how to speak malay (yeah, im serious. im getting sick of being embarassed when people ask me about malay and im like sorry i only speak the very basics and they go BUT YOU'RE MALAYSIAN!) approx $30, i think.

9. renting the last ten episodes of zi-jin-zhi-dian $7

10. birthday cake for mum & dad $26

11. fort minor's album mike shinoda! $18.90

12. splurging @ the bookfair @ expo above $60

13. and if i can find these books, im willing to pay a LOT for them.

- sai4 wai4 qi2 xia2 zhuan5
- qi1 jian4 xia4 tian1 shan1
- bai2 fa4 mo2 nv3 zhuan5
- yun2 hai3 yu4 gong1 yuan2

feel my pain, people. especially combined with the fact that i get $100 a month, that the bookfair ends this sunday, and that my parents' birthdays have to be celebrated by this sunday. oh and how could i forget. if i wanted to i could spend the entire lot of my pocket money on food alone.

with much headache,
- alena.

2006-03-16T19:34:00.000+08:00

haha i finally got will's latest album which came out almost one year ago. heh. but anyways its really darn good! & im all happy kuz i have jj's and will's newest albums! whee.

anyways. i figured out my general taste for drinks today. i like hot tea, any flavour, any kind, blah blah and blah. includes chinese ones like longjing, and those herbal english ones with mango essence etc and whatnot, lipton and so on. & most definitely rotiprata shops' TEH TARIK & hawker centres' TEH! for coffee i only take cold. =D. & then i like water chestnut, sugarcane, lemonbarley, chinchow, and oh water of course.

so, that was just a completely irrelevant piece of information. but i really really harth tea. - insert image of old woman sipping tea from a china teacup with her pinkie up - heh.

today was e thing. e poetry workshop thingum @ grange road, teachers' network. nothing special, but i liked e poem "thoughtscapes singapore" its really funkeh. at least thats what i think. got rather inspired i think.

i mean i was never a poetry person, & today i sat down to read my past poems, a compilation of about er, five?! & they really make me cringe. the forced rhyming words, the depressing tone in four and a half out of the five poems, everything. it doesnt work for me anymore. but im JUST NOT A LIT PERSON so it all sucks very muchly. wish i could write decent prose or poetry. one of the two.

gah. ideas, people, ideas! i need to take lessons fr li-en.

& my gosh the christian bookshop in great world city is twice better than how i remembered it. the range of books is just so wide & everythings just so nice & i just feel like SPENDING but im all broke and feeling guilty because i spent it on cds. still. will IS good. and gosh he's really kool. but jj is so much love too!

seventeen-leaf-chlovers & seventeenhundred-degree-angles,
- alena.

i love the number 17. its so alluring, and so mysterious and like whee such a pretty perfect prime number.

2006-03-15T10:49:00.000+08:00

AHH jj's new album caocao is absolutely fabulously starifically fantastic! i love the track caocao itself, but e truly wonderful song is bu-si-zhi-shen, vaguely translated as the-body-that-never-dies, literally translated as eternal life. the dizi in the song is so so so good argh. the album rawks and im so proud of jj! - pats in a maternal manner -. also found out he goes to westside anglican church! heh.

OBS! now i start.

DAY ONE 060306, Monday.

well i woke up @ e usual time, donned on e obs tshirt and my dads trackpants, & off to school i went! bringing w me lots of overdue homework which i managed to complete on sunday to hand up. heh. we gathered @ e LT, chatted for a bit, 310 & 311 were there, so we figured if we were mobile, we'd both be mobile, and same for resi.

SO anyways. the bus trip to punggol jetty was loads of fun! apart from jasmine attempting to molest liza and stuff. which was a bit disturbing. of course, nothing was taken seriously and suaku said i look auntie with my hairband! PFFFT.

we reached pulau ubin! & started getting sorted into groups. i was the first on the list to be called and to be present, and i was in BO SENG, oh trust me i was giggling like mad about e name. then after a while, sarah cheang and i realised that e people coming to boseng were from 310 and after 9 people ..... some strange unknowns came along!

we had our first circle w chiobu! or chew yien, to be more politically correct. e hostility between e 307ers and 310ers was fairly obvious. chiobu was like " why are you all quiet, look so sian " and someone from 307 said "because we're different class." so there, not a very good start. needless to say, i was relatively pissed off by that. but anyways.

we were shown around obs camp 1, then off to our bunks. which were a LOT better than expected. with nice mattresses, blankets, pillows, pillowcases, bedsheets. after much ado with packing our stuff nicely, cum chatting a bit, then eating, we started!

we had a map activity, chiobu sorted us into groups so we couldn't just stick with e ppl fr our class. it didnt actually succeed in bonding us, lol. trust fall! was very interesting. although i dont seem to be able to fall backwards straight. i remember doing it before a long time ago, but i never could. ahh well. cowardice. & we also had our group activity, the group to be standing behind a line, and a ball of twine a distance away fr us. we had to figure out the quickest way to get the ball of twine in a way so that everyone in the group would be touching it. we clocked 5 seconds, but chiobu said her record was 2. pah!

we also took our watch group photo, (which turned out not very good). afterwhich we learnt about wearing a harness, and belaying. then we had our first work-together with kurt, & found out their instructor was rather kool, wee how, his name is? so our first climbing thingum, just a log with metal staples sticking out. quite amusing, i was with yulin, melissa and baihui. i think, the same people in the group as the map activity.

we had a first-aid talk but that sucked. i didnt really take any of the advice in. like dark clothes to keep away this, bright clothes will attract these but keep these away. gah. its better to let go & stop worrying! then we had supper (YES WE EVEN HAVE SUPPER, who ever said OBS was a torture camp? but then i think us resi people have waaaay the best deals.) which was red bean soup and that was awesome. totally warming & stuff. also got a nice shower!

DAY TWO 070306, Tuesday.

started the day with PT. which was interesting. the flagraising was strange lol, literally just flag raising with no anthem-singing and pledge-chanting. and PT involved lots of stretching, warm-up exercises, a rather short jog, plus a couple of pushups and crunches. not exactly very tiring, but it wakes one up.

had our first height element thingum! the external rock wall, the one outside the MPH. naturally we separated into 7ers and 10ers again, taking the two halves of the wall we were assigned. congrats to all those who reached the top and conquered the horrible part which i got stuck in! i guess i shouldve stayed there and continued on, i've no idea why i came down anyways. partly because time was running short, partly because i was just like AIYAH ITS JUST A WALL I CAN DO IT ANYTIME FOR THREE BUCKS AT TANJONG PAGAR. anyhow. can't say i was tired, because i seriously wasn't. sarah, when she saw me coming down was like "are you tired? because you dont look tired @ all." whee i have stamina! actually, thanks for jasmine dear for being such a fantastic belayer. the wall was quite kool, as jas says, i've never tried a wall w e actual rock gradients. only e ones with sticking out blobs of colourful plastic.

then it was backpack carrying! aside fr stuffing all my stuff into my bag, i stuffed in about 7 cans of can food (YES ITS HEAVY.) and 20 tentpegs (OH YES THOSE ARE HEAVY TOO) so the weight nearly murdered my shoulders. but it was just for a short distance anyways, we heaped them off into a speedboat, where they'd be then transported to obs camp 2 for us.

so we learnt to kayak! something i've never had any experience in. and our capsize practice. while we were kayaking there initially to do our capsize practice, jasmine and i started paddling and all right, then someone from kurt came in from our left so we steered to our right, but then another gust of water came along and so we capsized. w/o any forehand knowledge that we were going to. twas rather amusing, & not a very good foresight of my kayaking skills. (jasmine has experience.)

SO WE KAYAKED TO CAMP 2! with no injuries, i think. and no capsizes, woot! i still think i really suck @ kayaking. but anyways. jas lost her patience with me quite a few times. but ahh.

we got a nice place to put our bags down in camp 2. but that was the only use for the place, we had to built our barshas! which is smth similar to a tent, but basically a big sheet of canvas in an inverted v shape above the ground, with groundsheets for us to lie on inside. so a tent with airspace. a lot of it, actually but anyhow, not the point.

camp 2 was nice, there were toilets and stuff, but i just took a powder bath and it felt so darn good okay. thanks to jayne for lending me the powder! never expected powder baths to feel just like a shower. whee.

sarah, joanna and annie cooked our dinner for us! (we got GIANT rations okay, so much food, seriously.) which was great, maggi with sardines and chicken curry. & that was all nice but not very filling, and we still had lots of food to lug around. SIGH. but they're great cooks! the rest of us built the barshas, but the sad thing is that the 7ers took one and the 10ers took one. chiobu tried to change that but it didnt work, unfortunately. it was also freezing during the night, im so glad chiobu suggested taking our ponchos to use as blankets because i was really freezing, especially as i was @ the side, with my whole body to the open side of the barsha.

sarah says everytime she wakes up, im awake. which is interesting. i never knew im that light a sleeper, i just know that when i sleep in a group, once somebody wakes up, i automatically do too. ahh well. but that day was prob only kuz i was freezing my arse off.

DAY THREE 080306, Wednesday.

the giant hike. today was the apparently ultra tiring day but it was a great day for me seriously. after breakfast, which was bread and coffee buns, OFF WE WENT!

we had to find 3 checkpoints, then go to ubin village, ubin resort, and e highest point in ubin. be aware that we're still carrying our terribly heavy backpacks, with slight modification because we packed up everything again! so, whilst switching navigators throughout, we chufa-ed!

first checkpoint was led by felicia, yulin, and someone i forgot. oops. anyways we walked for quite a short distance, then we had to follow a small trail off e main route. after much fuss & backtracking & re-checking, we finally found the sign hanging on a tree! with a famous quotation. i think obs rawks, the use of quotations, they all seem to fit w e situation. whee. & i harth quotations myself.

then the next walk! jayne & two someones navigated, i forgot TOO. wheesh. feels stupid. anyways, this one was direct, they're wonderful navigators we just walked, into a small trail, and were told to put down our backpacks and go off to search! i found it entirely by accident, saw this path which seemed trodden off into the trees, so i was like, okay lets try here, and when i got up and turned, on a giant tree, there was the obs sign. whee! pats myself.

the third one, jasmine annie and i became navigators, but jas did most of the work. i felt we were taking too many breaks in between so was like " we'll only rest after finding the third obs sign and then we'll have our lunch!" this one took ages and a LOT of backtracking because we mapped the coordinates wrongly (SORRY!) but we eventually found it thanks to wonderful accidents, cheers to chaiping!

lunch was tuna and bread. not too bad.

then was a long walk to ubin resort, much further away. we took two breaks in between, which i also felt were excessive, because with each break i believe people got more tired. but we made our way to the resort, which had nothing much! but was quite amusing anyways. then the highest point of ubin, which i dont regret going to.

the view was amazing okay, the quarry was shining aquamarine from our view. it was really calming, and with the light breeze, you really feel like one of those SIA ladies on the playing cards, you know the ones where a stewardess would stand on a cliff and the wind would ruffle her hair and she'd look all pretty and her uniform would tighten around her showing off her fab figure. anyways. my point is, one feels wonderful there.

then we were given a time limit to reach another quarry by. we managed it and for our 'prize' we were allowed to go for a dip in it! which was fantastic, acted sort of like a shower for us. we learnt the art of spitting water from wee how, but unfortunately joanna & i simply cant do it. we end up spouting water relatively unsuccessfully and it sortof drips off instead of spraying out. lol disgusting indeed.

then the walk to the campsite! we managed not to break but it was really tiring, especially after the dip in the quarry. sigh.

BUT WE FINALLY STARTED TO BOND. yes! we all left to either cook or build barshas. & guess what, we connected our two brashas, so we'd all sleep together instead of 7 in one and 9 in the other, separated by class! that really rawked okay. & we cooked lots of noodles mushrooms anchovies etc and that was all really good. & oh campbell vegetable soup which was nice too!

there was a residential wild boar we were warned against. it managed to take off with a loaf of bread i think, but after that we wrapped up our food and hung it up on our tree. we were also told to bury our leftover food in the beach (our campsite was at the north of ubin, opposite e johor shore) but because we were all too lazy to, we ended up scraping til the bottoms of our mess tins and pot, finishing the food. WOOTS!

then we had a circle with chiobu where we actually played TRUTH OR DARE. gosh lol. bu that was fun. chiobu said she doesnt have a boyfriend, but according to people from boonshi, their instructor boonwee has a girlfriend who's a fellow instructor & comes from nanyang girls and has a chinese name so everyone's pointed glances are in chiobu's direction, lol.

there was no toilet, so yep, peeing in the bushes/sand. very interesting indeed. changing behind ponchos, too. night was okay, we did SENTRY DUTY! joanna, sarah, jayne and i combined so four of us stayed up for 1 hr 40 mins, but when it came to jayne's and my turn, after a while, the three of them fell asleep (HARRUMPH) so i was left to do duty all alone. sobs. well not exactly. the dhanabalan ppl were there too, with cheronne, liza & melissa sng. harths those fantastic people! liza gave out speculoos =D and i shared a muesli bar w cheronne dear.

we didnt talk much, but i really loved the surroundings there. from across the shore, you could hear the muslim chantings and they were beautiful, especially from across the sea. some said it was eerie, but amidst the eerieness it was truly amazing, matched with the chantings of the monks/nuns from ubin itself. there was apparently even indian karaoke from malaysia too. bu that wasnt too obvious to me @ the time. then the night crickets, leaves rustling. the quietness is fabulous, & i love e darkness that settles itself on me. apart from the flashes of the torches of the sentry, its just darkness and still trees.

" i reckon when the darkness is close to us it is a friend. But when we sorter push it away from us - divorce ourselves from it, so to speak, with lantern light - it becomes an enemy. " - Captain Jim, Anne's House of Dreams.

wahahaha okay fourth and fifth day will be recounted in the next entry because im geting bored of typing this all out!

2006-03-14T22:25:00.000+08:00

whee! am back for malaysia. all rather tiring, coming back fr obs on friday and leaving for m'sia on saturday, and came back today!

well m'sia rawked as usual, kuantan is teh love & all my cousins are absolutely wunnderful!

so obs. havent much to say about it, i dont think im boliao enough to post the entire list of what happened. itinerary, its called? yeah. but i cant spell the word, nevermind. but it really rawkedass larh. especially the hiking day.

when everyone was exhausted etc, and then we finally sortof bonded! and the seveners really rawk okay. it was so kool, joining the two brascha thingums so we all slept together! loads of fun. and meeting all those amazing people like chaiping! and melissa, baihui, etc etc. wheesh.

okay thats it for now. yeah, im lazy to type. and I HARTH MY NEW LAPTOP!

2006-03-05T21:29:00.000+08:00

OBS tomorrow! 'nuff said, its gonna rawk and everything's gonna kickass. WHEE!

although im lost about whether to bring jay or boonhian. jay's my (soft toy) pig and boonhian's my (soft toy) cow. so cute! i know its rather bimbo and stupid to bring pigs and cows along for a roughing-out-and-learning-independence camp, but i'll miss them so badly. sniffs.

so. help me choose.

but afore that, my inventory;

1) Bible! and the Lent devotional book.
2) 4 sets of clothes
3) toothbrush toothpaste shampoo soap
4) rope and torchlight
5) lighter
6) spare glasses
7) extra shoes for water
8) towel
9) deodorant and sunscreen and mosquito repellant
10) plastic bags
11) swiss knife
12) 2 pairs of socks
13) plasters for that disgusting blister on my right foot which i got fr wearing court shoes for the performance yesterday. dargh.
14) wallet and with it, cash.
15) 2 mugs, one for jas and the other for me.
16) BOONHIAN or JAY??
17) notebook and pens, and NYAA booklet.

2006-03-01T21:24:00.000+08:00

splurged on a WoW Worship CD which has 30 songs . am listening to refiner's fire, which is very nice indeed!

the feeling of inadequacy is eating at me again. i think it comes together with the 'overachieving' streak, which has somehow been found from within the marrows of my bones. it was lost for, i dont know, almost four years? and now its here again. grrrsh.

but the fact is, overachieving four years ago is nothing compared to what it is now. when i try to work hard @ something, i see people beating me effortlessly. when i don't study at all, i see the muggers beat me. and i dont know which feeling is worse.

yeah. how pratty and pissifying, i know. anyways. i talked to swayn about this whole overachiever streak thingum, and she said she'd pray for me and all. thanks darl. i've been praying a lot for this already, like how to put God more first in my life than caring about my grades, but well. i guess i need more help!

whooph. was talking to jayne and jasmine as we pranced along orchard today. decided that jack neo should really film a movie about students in top schools instead of the normaltech students or whatever. kuz the fact is, while people have plenty of sympathy for the so-called underdogs, they only know how to set expectations for us. and think that we're stuckup prats.

i mean, i've been i dont know how to say, teased and pai-d by even CHURCH people for being a nanyang girl. like its a permanent label. nanyang girl. fact is there's about FIVE nanyang people in our church so i dont see the big deal.

they also dont realise that it is, in fact, people from good secondary schools that have the lower self-esteem. same issue as the whole gep thingum. goodness.

read jasmine's post, about bsp and her rants. i agree with a part of it - that we should be judged on a subject by passion, not marks.

anyways, lotsa people are starting to pick up drums/guitar! hahahaha is reminded of yciss yr 9 days. a great deal of fun indeed. but i dont get the craze, that is, it seems like a passing fad. i know its a horrible thing to say, but yeah, thats just it. the only person i've seen so far who really really seems to care would be jasmine. yeah, her. with the kind of reqing that is found when a person has been useless all his life suddenly finds something he's good at, and he pursues it with all his energy. and he excels. whee!

does playing the drums or guitar really make a person any kooler? because i dont see that.

anyhowdies. thank you muchly lynette! for helping me think of a topic to write about lol. harths. except i dont really know how to go around doing it, but ahh well.

- refiner's fire, my heart's one desire, is to be holy, set apart for you.

2006-02-26T23:24:00.001+08:00

"if you please, pretty pretty please,
could just tell me where heaven is?"
the artist smiled, pointed to his paints
- empty canvases, hairless brushes -
the beggar grinned a mouthful of yellow,
remains of rock-hard bread.
the banker leans forward, and with a
snap of his fingers
a stack of $50 notes in his outstretched hand.

"if you please, pretty pretty please,
could just tell me where heaven is?"
the man outside the brothel, lumbering in,
the man outside the bar, shuffling along
the man outside the casino, counting his coins,
deciding what to mortgage next.
and in the portable toilets outside
needles - heroin - cocaine - ecstasy, snuffed
quickly as the sirens ring.

"if you please, pretty pretty please,
could just tell me where heaven is?"
mountaintops, valleys. and-oh-maybe!
they're hidden behind the grasses.
elves, gnomes, fairies? perhaps
below rivers, ends of rainbows
wide-eyed wonder, only 10,
the bed on a rainy day, or -
skiving off sunday school to play with boys.

heaven is everywhere,
concluded the child.

2006-02-25T21:05:00.000+08:00

SO. maybe you're wonderfully mature. maybe you think that you are SO MUCH MORE intelligent and streetsmart than i am. or maybe WE JUST DONT LIKE THE SAME MOVIES. why the heck must you make me out to be an idiot just kuz i like i not stupid too?

like " oh, obviously you haven't watched jack neo's movies before. " I HAVE, ALL OF THEM. and after a huge discussion about why i think its good and why you think it sucks, you add the final insult. " oh i know why you like it. just because there're hot guys in it. " thanks for hinting that im shallow. so yes, they're GOODLOOKING, not hot (that has sexual meanings, fyi.) but that is not the reason i like the movie.

whatever, so you're much more intelligent than i am and enjoy watching movies with artistic value blah blah blah.

anyways! today i went shopping with liping jie and it was awesome! the flea market near orchard cineleisure wasnt too bad. saw guomeimei. yeah, believe it or not. didnt know who she was, was talking to this nice lady @ the shop when she came along, red hair and horrible eyeliner, bought something from a shop, and two people with very pro cameras started taking pics of her. only after they finished phototaking, and she walked off, before the nice lady @ the shop said oh thats guomeimei! (she was wearing positively disastrous clothes.)

well im not exactly SURE its jocie guo, but thats what the shopkeeper said.

the nice lady really is very nice! basically she does handpainting on tiles and stuff and its so darn nice i bought one that says happy birthday for unknown reasons. i also pre-ordered a plate from her! it says 'bless this home, O Lord' at the top, and it has a house plus four pigs, 2 adults 2 piglets, and their names below saying "lorena, alena, ma, pa." SO DARN CUTE RIGHT!

whee cost me 24 bucks. but nice. liping jie made one too, with five animals of e different zodiacs in her family. so fun!

I SPENT SO MUCH TODAY OHGAWSH IM GETTING BROKE BROKE BROKE.

2006-02-24T23:17:00.000+08:00

SWAYN THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THE WONDERFULLY FUNKEH WATCH!
basically its like one of those punk wristband thingums, i have one with a star on it, but this one's an army green colour with a clock face on it. SO KOOL! argh shall use it for obs. e colour matches, after all.

today i realised two things.

1) ratio of numbers of
people i've disappointed or let down or failed in my life so far
to people i've done proud of in my life so far
= approximately 40:1. somewhere along those lines.

2) THE WORLD IS FULL OF FANTASTIC PEOPLE!

- like john boon. though i hated him and i was convinced he hated me, i think he was awfully nice today.

- like sodium hydride. besides having a surname that sounds like my nickname, and despite being relatively lazy, as well as a workaholic, (thats all oxymoronic, yet true, nevertheless), plus his varying moodswings and temper, he is quite nice.

- like my baobeierzi. YINGMING you're such a dear, seriously. thanks for being there! whee. & letting me play with your squishy tangerine.

- like me. HAH, the ego.

okay anyways, that is all very besides the point. today we got back our maths test, and the class fell into a deep state of depression. my mark wasnt depressing but it wasnt good, i just passed, with 30/50. sigh. i know i should be glad i passed in the first place, and i can imagine people going " please larh, look @ WHAT I GOT " and im just like, thats not how i compare my marks. i mean i aimed for @ least 35, so 30 is rather disappointing.

my mum promised me a new laptop/notebook @ e end of e year if i got 6 A1s out of the 8 subjects i take. so texting convo between my mum and i today:

me: ma, i got back maths test. 30/50. highest mark 35, average 21.
ma: oh. why so bad?
me: it was hard. do i still get my notebook?
ma: yeah, a paper one from popular.

see, i harth my mum.

but i absolutely cant foster a liking to zjf @ all. in all her time teaching us so far, she has never called on a singaporean to read kewens. ITS ALWAYS THE PRCS. i dont know why. gosh. & all those things we spent so much of our energy on. if she's going to mark us based on the wonderful PRCS, we're all going to fail and blah, and blah, and blah. which im already doing. sheeshit.

WHEE!

2006-02-24T00:07:00.000+08:00

ladida. allegro barbaro is SO DARNEDLY NICE! i've only practiced one page though. so about like 6 more to go. ha. but nevermind. im working on flight of the bumblebee as well so thats all kinda kool! 20th century muzik love.

council invest wasnt too bad today! & cheronne was TEH CUTE, people in class are voting for her to dance for our silver centre cip thingumajiggum.

so about end of year programme, i really want to go to vietnam/thailand those southeastern countries to do cip, but then yingming raised a very good point about bird flu, so i dont reckon my parents would be particularly keen. i will convince them somehow! if not i'll go to india. maybe i'll go for attachment / exchange next year. fun.

my computers freezing & lagging on me, as usual. argh.

well today im thanking God for physics! how one can explain things through equations & calculations. actually chems not too bad too. how one can explain things through a strange table.

because im awfully cheesy, i have just christened myself (drumroll...) sodium! figure out the horribly lame pun. think chemistry. er, even bigger hint. pnah is sodium hydride!

2006-02-23T01:18:00.000+08:00

im feeling rather guilty because i took my piano-practicing hour (8 to 9) to sleep instead. so i didnt practice AT ALL today. sigh.

i failed my maths test. i just know i did. its horrible, like, the first time in my life i've ever failed a maths major thingum.

i think i passed chinese, but borderlinely.

so today after school, went with chanyi to e science centre for chem talk! though it ended up being a physics talk, which is even better wootz! hahahaha physics is so much harth & im now in love with quantum mechanics. like how an electron can pass through two slits @ one time. & antimatter. fun!

anyways, then off we went to watch i not stupid too at jurong entertainment centre. my 2nd time! all i can say is, it has a slightly different effect on me - i didnt laugh as much, & i cried even more. and chanyi's right, shawn lee has very nice skin colour - that kind of bronze you seldom see in asians. and when joshua ang cries, i just feel a new flood of tears coming, because he has that very strong face and when that kind of face crumbles, you cant help but feel for him too.

they're wonderful actors, seriously. i think, anyways. so is joshua ang's dad in the show, & the girl is so pretty. the one with the very oriental face, who's quite good friends with joshua ang in the movie i believe.

and chanyi's mum is awfully nice. like giving me lifts, then letting me leave my barang in her car, and buying bukit timah plaza waffles (drool) for us!

whee! today im thanking God for somehow steering my path into percussion when i first joined band in p2 (because i was SUPPOSED to join clarinet)!

2006-02-22T00:56:00.000+08:00

whee, i dont know what else i can say really.

thanks for being there with me yesterday Lord, sometimes i have my downtimes and its hard to put up a happy face (or more like bland, nonchalant expression, in my case, because thats how i look like most of the time?) but we're expected to.
thank you for not "expecting" me to.
thank you for listening, and understanding.
thank you for being there for me, no matter what.
thank you for showing me verses.
thank you for opening your door to me.
thank you for helping me see that there're many more important things in life.
thank you Lord for lending me your shoulder to lean on. no, giving me your shoulder to lean on.
thank you for playing ' In Christ Alone ' and ' When You Believe ' yesterday, i cant say how much it helped me.
also, thank you for giving me wonderful people around me, like kristin, chanyi, lynette, people who bother to hear me rant and give me their time to help. woots!

wahaha my list is getting too long. i figure from now on, i should thank God for at least one thing a day. because He's worth so much more.

as follows, the lyrics to ' In Christ Alone ', by Newsboys.

in Christ alone, my hope is found,
He is my light, my strength, my song
this cornerstone, this solid ground,
firm through the fiercest drought and storm,
what heights of love, what depths of peace,
when fears are stilled, when strivings cease
my comforter, my all in all,
here in the love of Christ, i stand.

in Christ alone, who took on flesh
fullness of God in helpless babe,
this gift of love, and righteousness
scorned by the ones he came to save
til on that cross as Jesus died,
the wrath of God was satisfied,
for every sin on Him was laid,
here in the death of Christ, i live.

there in the ground, His body lay,
light of the world, by darkness slain
then bursting forth, in glorious day,
up from the grave He rose again,
and as he stands in victory,
sin's curse has lost its grip on me
for i am His, and He is mine,
born in the precious blood of Christ.

no guilt in life, no fear in death,
this is the power of Christ in me,
from life's first cry to final breath,
Jesus commands my destiny
no power of hell, no scheme of man
can ever pluck me from His hand
til he returns, or calls me home,
here in the power of Christ i stand.

2006-02-20T19:08:00.000+08:00

weehee. have just showered, after returning from school. music, that is! which was quite fun actually, despite the test. i passed with a b, i would think. anyhows, the chinese high guy finally came! his name is jason, and he's a basketballer, and he seems quite nice but awfully shy. well considering he's in a room with 8 girls and 1 pregnant woman (teacher) he cannot really be blamed.

anyhow, I DIDNT PERFORM TODAY! only xinyee did, actually. heh. we ended up not having time! and mine's postponed to t2w1, HAHA i feel darnedly shuang.

blogging is so irresistable, although i have a pile of work to do that'll last me to about 1+. groans. dont know if i can survive, kuz i had 3.5 hours this morning, which sucks, really. as in im still awake and energetic, but i know i cannot survive on just another 4.5 measly hours. grrr, whatever.

i realise that im very moodswing-y these days, which is quite a scary thing. as in i dont remember ever being this moodswingy. one moment im elated, one moment im pissed off, one moment im exhausted, one moment i feel inadequate, and another i feel guilty.

like right now, i feel awfully nostalgic. of primary 2-3 days, when huiyi, amanda, candice, jiawei and me were all in band, percussion. those days were seriously awesome, when band was very nearly the centre of my life. and nothing made me happier than going to band practice, hang around & chat to seniors.

(goodness i forgot their names though. i remember isaac, who was like WOW @ e drum set, & e tall thin guy who played bass drum, then the half jap guy who played timpani, and the girl who played bass drum or gong. and most of them could play the pitched percussion. and the auxiliary percussion! but mostly that was left to us juniors of course.)

when the seniors let us try the drum set, and i could do it & was so proud of myself. when in lord of the dance, i was given a break fr auxiliary, & i got to play e vibraphone, i was e happiest person on earth. & when i got to play the glockenspiel (affectionately called bell) for 'together', i was i dont know. in second heaven. sigh. then when recording, 'lord of the dance' - which is a pure percussion piece (ALLITERATION!) took the shortest time, 2 hours, and all of us were gloating about it.

those were the days. and theyre gone.

and maybe thats why i want a marimba so desperately.

oh, and im so glad to still have the band cd, in good condition. listening to it makes me want to laugh and cry and talk and write. and it makes me feel old. so now i understand why old people feel miserable so much. because they finally realise that all their times gone are only in their memories, and when those memories are gone as well, they'll have absolutely nothing.

american folk fantasia
carnival de paris
warabe - uta fantasy
the lord of the dance
variations on an african hymn song
katak lompat

much love,
- alena.

2006-02-19T21:32:00.000+08:00

freak. im pissed off.

and i dont need to sleep tonight either. sorry, maybe YOU'RE used to sleeping 4 hrs a day and you have beautiful eyebags, but some other people on this planet prefer to get 5 hrs, and thus be able to concentrate during class, which will mean i actually understand stuff, which will THEN allow me to be able to complete my work quicker so i can sleep a bit more.

i dont fancy having to do the SIA by myself indeed, and having to churn out the entire speech and stuff.

so you are busy. so you have a lot of homework to do. argh, newsflash, SO DO I. and i have a music test tomorrow, blah blah blah. you're not the only one with commitments, YOU KNOW.

and i cant not do it, because i do care about my marks. GARH.

2006-02-17T23:31:00.000+08:00

today was a rather interesting day!

well first off, after flag raising, someunknownteacher in army regalia came up & talked. i have no idea what he talked about, something about totalle defence. then he got people to come up & read war poems! ididntlikethefirstone. yeah. @ least, im quite certain there're many other people who wrote better poems. definitely.

then was this fire extinguishing exercise! & then this person came up to tell this story about an unknown group of people who worked together as a country, and succeeded in whatever they set out to do? gosh. it was so drama everyone was like dotx3.

then we had e chem test. but halfway through, there was a darn FIRE DRILL! talk about e brilliance. when we got back from e boarding house (where we evacuate to when there's a fire), nah told us to continue w our tests and said we've been blessed greatly by supernatural forces today.

i think i passed chem, but will definitely not get an A. SIGH. my mum says i get a new laptop @ e end of e year if i get 6A1s for the 8 subjects i take. i'll die larh.

okay anyways. chem ate into our recess & left us w 5 minutes. gah. then lunchtime, i went to watch some random people play football! (namely lynette, jayne, brenda, sam, claire) then i joined them for a duration of about 6 minutes. ha, that's not too bad for me, considering my excellent footeye coordination.

MR LEE TURNED UP IN THE MORNING IN ARMY UNIFORM WITH THE CUTE LITTLE BLACK CAP AND OMGAWSH HE WAS TEH CUTE BUT HE REFUSED TO WEAR IT AGAIN!

& when i asked him to take a pic of himself in uni so we can show yingming who wasn't there today, he said " oh just go online, search for a plump man in army uniform, and CLICK. we all look the same, really." yeah, he changed into his infamous pink striped shirt after the pretty adorable army unif.

after school, went to coro w lynette, wanted to get a pe tee, but they were out of stock! then we saw the prettiest fbt black jacket, & lynette's thinking of getting a team jacket so she'll talk to eliza like next week. its really nice. 26 bucks.

then we went to kap, where we hung with nicolette & amanda & melo. which was vastly amusing (albeit disturbing) as in the topics they choose to discuss. (read: discovery channel style. aka reproductive thingums.) yeah.

AFTER WHICH, i went home! to west mall, actually, to check out the cds that liping jie asked me to look @. they were really crappy.

& then piano. omgawsh i think i'm really starting to harth piano again. not that i ever loved it much, but seriously. there's just so many NICE PIECES! (which reminds me, chanyi, i need to ask you for some pieces) ahhhh. & im thinking of continuing w theory, kuz apparently dipabrsm needs grade EIGHT theory. which poses a slight problem.

so i'll think about it, i'll most probably continue, have indiv theory lessons after practical lessons. i wont really mind e extra workload, i think. its all for a better cause. & i think im going for the dipLCM (from london college of music and media) @ e end of e year, its quite an easy one to take, like, not much harder than e abrsm grade 8 pieces, apparently.

would act as exposure. then maybe end of next year, i'll take the other dip from lcmm, called ALCM (associate dip). and by then i should be done with my grade 7 theory? hopefully. and then finally a year and a half after that or something (which means halfway through j2, goodness.) i can take my dipabrsm, or lcmm's llcm (licentiate dip).

woot, fun! hahaha not really. hopefully i can cope larh, i dont plan to have a lot of commitments during jc. weehee. just cca & my piano. harth. plus my guzheng. & my guitar is just for me to sing along to when i want to do worship. so yep.

OHOH. and on the way back from piano, in the mrt, when iw as holding my thick fat book that says piano classics, this guy about 28ish i think? he asked if he could see what pieces my book has. then i was like sure and passed it to him to see, & he looked through it for about 3 minutes, then right before the train reached bktbtk, he told me to try mozarts piano concerto no 20 and 21, because it sounds good. hahahaha so interesting! but thank you very much, unknown person, & you're awfully nice.

then while i was rushing to get back home (to watch white chicks) there was this father and his son in front of me strolling @ a lento pace. then the son (approx 16-17) saw me rushing-ish and he just moved aside, & his dad was still blocking me and he was like " 'dy, move to one side," and the dad did exactly that & i was like omgawsh everyone's so nice today! and i was all sorries & thankyou's as i bustled past them & went home.

ps. i got sandals. finally! for obs. and general usage.

ps. my dad had a violent reaction when i told him if he'd mind paying $105 extra a month. (i meant it for my theory, kuz thats how much it costs for 4 indiv lessons, 45 mins each.) he thought i meant pocket money.

p.s. my parents seem to support me taking theory. WOOTZ!

p.s. claire & jayne are coming with me to join tennis in jc if we can, kuz LYNETTE is abandoning me to go & join football, if they've a girls team by then.

p.s. ithinkifailedmy chineseliteraturetest. no, i know i did.

2006-02-16T19:47:00.000+08:00

" you're supposed to fail everything in sec 3. "
good, because i'm accomplishing this quite fantastically.

2006-02-14T00:36:00.000+08:00

we now have a hamster at home. my sister has named it some disgustingly mushyly horrid name, but i demand to call it Doctor. btw, my sister got the hamster by going to a friend's birthday party. all attendants went home with a hamster. goodness.

i dont recall my teeth ever hurting this much. today the dentist did something awfully strange and added three bunches of wires and said i dont need to wear rubber bands any longer for now. and the pressure REALLY hurts darnnit.

so, HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!

being a cheapo, as well as being awfully forgetful, i was only reminded of the fact that i needed to buy VDAY GIFTS like after school, when ym asked if i wanted to go vday shopping with nicolette & her. and i was like omgawsh i so need to. sigh. hence in my rush, & my immense lack of time today, i've ended up with giving people only ONE bar of chocolate. goodness.

but its the thought that counts right, and er, any amount of chocolate is good!

OWOWOWOWOW MY TEETH ARE KILLING ME GOSH.

the vintage guide to classical music is such a rawkass book, seriously. i WANT TO PHOTOCOPY THE ENTIRE THING LARH. and when i try to just take down notes, i end up copying half the page kuz its so darn good!

i dont generally approve of valentines day actually. ( not that my approval has any effect on anyone, but yes. still. ) it's so commercialised. and its like, made to be obliged to give roses/chocolates/engagement ring. nothing in love should be obliged whad, right? well technically. whats so special about feb 14, i could set any random date to be cupid's day or something. love IS present throughout the year! wootz.

AND, valentine's day is NOT specifically for bgr love. pffft. love is also for family, friends, God (except i dont think He celebrates this occasion much) pets, siblings. so it is sortuf kool i guess if people recognize that part of it. and actually care to be nicer to each other on that day, to break into a smile more easily, to give a word of encouragement or endearment. see! life is much simpler than some people make it out to be.

but on a lighter note, life really is sparkling rainbows sometimes.

OW again. teeth pressure is horrible.

purple grass and silver sunsets,
- alena.

2006-02-12T15:40:00.000+08:00

you're really pissing me off.

i cant stand the way you talk to me on MSN just to tell me " OMGAWSH im so busy i have so many commitments so much work so much this so much that im gonna die. " then you start listing your extra subjects (BIG DEAL), you being able to play two instruments (I PLAY THREE, IN YOUR FACE, and well, though i dont play any of them well, i still pwn you, so there) and being in all kinds of communities & leadership groups and your mum expecting so much of you.

whatever. who decided to go for all those crappy communities? there're more capable people around, stop hogging up the places while being upset about it. stop telling me that you're busy and have so many commitments. if you were, you wouldn't talk to me on msn just to tell me that.

for your kindly information, half of singapore's schoolgoing population has just as many, if not more, commitments than you do. so stop complaining. just because i don't try to be monitress and twenty-five subject reps and a student councillor and activity organiser and school leader thingum and under a mentorship programme doesn't mean you get to pretend you're complaining, when you just want to show off.

gargh.

we're all busy people, hon. some of us actually bother to do whatever we're meant to be busy with, instead of getting invitations to parties and gatherings and meetings, then saying "oh i'm very sorry i really want to go but i have this, this and this on so i wont be able to make it, or i'll go really late."

then you appear three hours late, dressed up in school u alright, but looking as if you've just taken a shower & put on layers of makeup, & you look perfectly awake. & oh right, you'll always make sure you have your student council badge thingum on, & always carry a stack of thick books & files.

brilliant. i applaud you.

pissed,
-alena.

2006-02-11T00:02:00.000+08:00

yo girls (e two of you ex-ycissians),

hope you're feeling much better! and sorry i couldn't be much of a help to you, i guess im not e comforting sort, but yeah. dont worry, life's really pretty dont let some of e people on e planet affect e way you enjoy it. seriously!

& ignore them. e two-faced backstabbers. they're seriously not worth your thinking & worrying about. anyways people who bitch are normally just fishing for compliments so yep. & e reason those byotches byotch about you is prob kuz they're jealous or just bored or pathetic. jealous, mostly, i should think. idiots.

yep. so dont let one frickin' person reel you, there's so many more people in e world, & you all have so many more friends, (REAL friends, that is) so yep. do e measuring! & since e nice good true friends are so much heavier on this side of the seesaw, you should just join em too & make this side so heavy that your one single byotchy 'FRIEND' on e other side flies up into e air when all of you on this side sit down, & then your byotchy 'FRIEND' will come falling from the clouds, landing & crashing on e seesaw with a sickening thud & splintering into splinters of a gazillionpieces, never to be jigsawpuzzled together again.

& dont worry about crying kris! perfectly normal, tis. & it really helps you just you know, cool off & come to terms with e whole problem.

& lastly but not leastly, dont hold back okay! i'll be here almost all of the time so just talk if you need to. i cant guarantee comforting & stuff & stopping you from feeling like crap, but i can listen to whatever you feel like ranting about. or you can make me rant but i do that entirely too well. so yeah. I'LL BE RIGHT HERE, WAITING FOR YOU. why does that sound familiar.

with harth, alena.

<3 GOODNESS IM TURNING BIMB!

first meeting with mentor tomorrow wootz can't wait & im gonna sleep soon so i dont fall asleep halfway through tomorrow. that would NOT be very nice, after all. & wow busy day. after smp i'll eat lunch somewhere, rush home from wherever i am, practice guzheng, then go for guzheng, go home, then off to ronnie's house to discuss maths sia. i SIGH.

& obs packing list! so much stuff. i need to get a swimsuit, though i dont think we'll need it but e list says we need one (DARN), as well as a pair of sandals. good old bata, cheap & comfy. heh. so what if its cheapo!

went to jurong point today, bought a tee from giordano, its light green & has giordano's famous ME thingums on it. ladida. quite nice actually i bought it mostly because it was 8 bucks & light green. was largely tempted to get a black one, til i realised black is a waytooangsty colour & i have a lot of it already. ohh well.

parqueted wood & polished marble,
-alena.

2006-02-07T22:49:00.000+08:00

doritos are HARTH!

oh hbo was showing return of the king today and so i managed to watch about half an hour, the last part. wonderful, it is. lord of the rings is so much love.

& whats kool is that lord of the rings & chronicles of narnia have a fatherly figure, the type of mentor who dispenses advice and sacrifices themselves. aslan & gandalf both die, but later are resurrected. hm, where've i heard that before. so yep i absolutely harth christian allusions.

aragorn is lurvely. & i think e hobbits are by far e best actors! followed closely by gimli & legolas & aragorn of course. whats really sad is that orlando bloom did such a fantastic job in LOTR as e cutesy lil elf with the interesting hair and pretty ears, but he cant act quite as well (not well @ all actually) in other thingums. ohh well.

oh right. & im here to complain about my right arm muscle. the muscle thats highest up e arm, i cant recall what its actual name is. anyhows, since september last year, i think, everytime i play badminton, and when the shuttle goes really high, i just unconsciously execute a smash, & every single time i do that, my muscle over there cramps up.

i dont really know like whether it IS a muscle cramp, or not. but anyways it feels strange like out of place, & really painful @ first, but it isnt out of place technically, because i can still manage to move my arm, except that it'd be like really shaky and i wont be able to clench my fingers for a while. & then after a while, the muscle suddenly locks back into place (at least, thats how it feels like) the pain subsides and i can move it naturally, but there'll be an annoying ache for a day or so. annoying. very.

happened today again in basketball, when i was attempting to get the ball off gloria. just suddenly i have no idea how, but it happened again. jeesh.

i told swayn about it & she said its because i play tennis. im like HUH that doesnt make sense kuz tennis should EXERCISE the muscle plenty so technically it wouldnt cramp. & shes like probably because you're used to smashing a tennis ball which has much more force than a shuttle so the overforce results in muscle cramp.

interesting theory, but lynette doesnt have the problem whad. & her smash is like, twenty-seven times harder/faster/stronger/prettier than mine.

SIGH.

oh yeah. i think im going to present myself to docmok (smp assoc prof mentor) as a bimbo. & talk like this when i email him:

i lUuuUb yOoOuuU dEeeZ maAaArrRcCch loRxXxZzX

which roughly translates to i love you this much lorh.

teehee. was planning to get a hot pink lab coat to traumatise him, but i figured i'd traumatise liza first, followed by traumatising myself & everyone else who knows my preference of colours, thus i think i shall stick to white. or lime green, if i can find one. HEE.

lime green volkswagen beetles (MY DREAM CAR! & i saw another one today) and orange piggy banks (the one i got from taka),
-alena.

2006-02-06T22:17:00.000+08:00

its when the movie ended at 9.05, and at 10.15 that im sitting here to post, yet my eyes are still red and puffy, that you know the movie's great. not that im a very good judge, i cry in almost every movie.

the movie rawked a lot of ass.

im feeling a lot of SPORE pride! (haha, i quote cheronne: if australians are called aussies, then we should be called SPORES!) i not stupid too is the only movie i've ever watched so far, that can MAKE me cry and laugh. and know that if i watch it again i'll cry and laugh even more.

AHHHHHHH. so nice.

shall stop whining about it. but it really is awesome. jack neo is wonderful, seriously. i mean inotstupid2 PWNS every other movie that i used to love to bits, be it the lame soppy ones (read: nicholas sparks) or the ones with great scenery, battle and stuff (read: TROY), or the ones that make me laugh til it hurts (read: lion king 1.5, hugh grant comedies). its also better than all e taiwanese dramas with e dramatic endings and stuff ahhhhh. IM HAPPY TO BE HALF SPORE! WE HARTH YOU NEO!

and i was serious about that.

OHANDOH. the soundtrack, that song that sounds completely jaychouish in i not stupid too is wunnerful! yep i'll prob rewatch sometime soon, like, during the week if i can find some random time and random cash. hee.

apparently channelnewsasia did a report on geppers! in GET REAL. yay how fun. i've to say, im absolutely proud of being a gepper wootz! & its sad MOE is trying to disintegrate gep larh. like spend so long building the programme, then now, introduce ip and e entire thing collapses.

& being a gepper is so much more than just the scholarship and different classes & awesome teachers, and being criticized by others and being called ELITIST coughcough.

gep's a great big nice comfy family! (tell me i dont sound like barney.) i mean see the bonding between 310, 311 & 312, its like i dont know. jolynn (from c-lit) was asking me when jasmine & melo & them geog people met us in the library on the way back to class, like " you're all really good friends with each other right, in gep? "

its something that very few other places offer. i'd really miss it in like jc & then after a levels when we all go our separate ways. sigh. i harth you, gep!

joshua ang (who used to be, and is even more goodlooking) & shawn lee (who has turned out really goodlooking though he wasnt so in i not stupid part 1),

-alena.

2006-02-05T14:14:00.000+08:00

I HARTH QUIKSILVER SO MUCHLY!

i dont know why, i guess its about e same as ripcurl, and e same as billabong, as in e things they have, but i luff quiksilver so much more.

i found a funky quiksilver-cum-billabong-cum-levi's store near xiaoguilin. ahahaha. no need to go all e way to heeren to drool now. actually e only thing i actually bought fr that heeren store was like my pencilcase. but anyhowdies.

im waiting waiting waiting for a pasar malam to pop up somewhere near my place. i havent seen one in AGES argh and i miss e food so badly! plus all e funky nice clothes and stuff. yayers. but mostly e food.

andand. i saw this REALLY PRETTY jacket at the baleno in IMM yesterday and was going to buy it but they didnt have my size! (for once, that means the ones they had were too big.) (but of course, thats only because the jackets are malecut) so one day in the far future, ill go to jurong point's baleno and get one. its dark grey and awfully comfy.

tea cups and coffee bowls,
-alena.

2006-02-03T23:01:00.000+08:00

because i feel like blogging, and lattes taste good.

i said i was a dork yesterday. according to melly, a dork is a male whale's reproductive organ. oh dearie me.

I PASSED MY CHINESE ZUOWEN TALKING ABOUT BAMBOO! gloats.

so! today was seriously awesome. i mean the SMP launch thingum @ NAP. which stands for ngee ann poly, btw. i never had any idea it was that near our school! i mean clementi just doesnt sound that closeby to bukit timah. but it is, sort of.

so the launch itself wasn't THAT fun. as in, the people talking. most of the ge branch people were reading straight out from the pretty booklet that we got. i dont know, felt like hurling things @ them and telling them that we can READ, thank you very much. but we had nice refreshments! like these tiny lil egg tarts were positively droolable, both literally and figuratively.

but the NAP people, like the lab technician who told us all about lab safety, was really funny. and the other NAP guy whose accent i took years to figure out and in the end just asked him outright what it was, he was awesome too. teaching us about aseptic techniques. which apparently means doing things in a clean manner and keeping bacteria as far away as possible and at a minimum. which was a boring topic but he managed to engage us, so that was kool.

and i think the NAP people are so awesomely nice. the campus rawks too, being like cojoined with SIM. they get gorgeous labs.

& so it happened that NAP's open day was today too! so being boliao, brenda liza & i made our way to visit the labs & peek @ what people do. it was SO DARN KOOL, like there was this liquid nitrogen thing, where the guy put a pipette in it for 10 seconds, took it out and smashed it with a hammer because it'd turned into glass-like thingum. kuz liquid nitrogen is like neg. 190 degrees? fun fun.

then there was a whole bunch of other really kool things but the open day ended @ 6 and our launch ended @ 5 so we had really little time to explore. i bought this 4 bucks thingum, theres supposed to be a strand of DNA in it, but i suspect mine either fell out or decomposed to nothing. anyhows, its orange and it looks like a vial, really really small and they put it like a pendant onto a necklace! so fun right! im gonna wear it for the weekend. its pretty. brenda and liza bought a PINK one for ms chee hahahahaha i think ms chee would rather die than wear it larh. but its so nice.

and while we were worrying about why we couldn't contact assoc. prof henry mok, who's our mentor, we decided to call him on monday to see whats happening. but just now online brenda popped up to tell me that he REPLIED OUR EMAIL! and he sounds darn nice. really, and kuz hes an assoc prof hes not free and all, so he has this grad student to help us out with a lot of stuff, which's kool.

prospects for smp's looking great!

now i trot off to continue deciphering our topic, which, after much reading of wikipedia notes, i still understand nothing of. "Sub-cloning and expression of mutants of the anti-apoptotic Mcl-1 protein for study of small molecule inhibitor binding using NMR" blinks. ohh well. i'll figure it out somehow.

and im so utterly proud of myself. im going down to the nat.lib. tomorrow, FINALLY! i havent been there yet. quite embarassing, really. will be good to check out what range of reference books they have, both for smp & the various SIAs, as well as taking pictures and brochures for the LA SIA! wootz.

thank you God for making me happy.

oh right. i need to practice my prelude and fugue! class performances for music on monday. shivers at the thought. today ms foo gave me two new pieces and theyre really awesome, one is flight of the bumblebee, by some unknown russian dude, i chose to learn this one first kuz its nice nice nice, and the other is allegro something, by bartok. i heart. 20th century classical music is lurve.

broken chairs and graffitied tables,
- alena.

2006-02-02T23:36:00.000+08:00

hello donkeys.

so today, for some completely unknown reason to me, i appear to be quite free! oh joy. as in i've finished whatever im meant to complete by tomorrow already so im all happy & bouncy. yay. i'll do a bit of blogging then go to read all my smp stuff later. around 12ish. its all so very confusing, really, biochem stuff. kuz i dont take bio & i dont understand dna stuff @ all. but ohh well. wikipedia has a way of making one understand things so much easier!

madeline is organising some mustard seed thingum! not very sure if i'll be able to go, might be doing smp stuff either in nus or national library so yeah. brenda & liza havent told me anything about it yet though. so OHH WELL!

ladidadums. im feeling quite constructive lately, finishing up the IH proposal! oh, i gloat. but it wasnt really that much work, kuz brenda & jayne did most of the preliminary lit. review so i just had to do the rest. which was pretty easy. and i really like our LA SIA topic kuz it sounds so darn fun okay! thanks to clee for helping us get e idea. "how to be a singaporean", a guidebook for the foreignor. fun! will have things like how to speak singlish and recipes for local food and also brochure like intros to the zoo and stuff so its very language based but its SO DARN FUN! and i'd have an excuse to go out to outrageous places. yay.

then c-lit SIA im probably not going to do with the 'gepclique' in the bsp class, but with jolynn from c-lit. shes awfully nice, really. and two ppl are gonna drop c-lit for e-lit, sigh. fun, fun!

i feel like a dork, saying SIAs are fun and thinking schools pretty kool and stuff. OHH WELL. busy as i might be, really, life is pretty kickass!

i gave cheronne her present today! FBTS, heh, her response when she got them. EW! in this bimbo way which was SO AMUSING wootz. and i even got her happy house wrapping paper and pink sparkly "fragrant" pen ink. shivers lol. ohoh and i borrowed this period drama from yangzi, about xiaozhuang and dorgon. so kool really.

and lastly but not leastly, LIPING JIE IS HERE! wootz i feel so loved. first lishin jie then liping jie. shes here until march, when we go back to m'sia too, and shes taking a fulltime english course, (the 5 hours a day, 5 days a week kind) at a language centre to brush up her english. shes awesome and loads of fun except she sleeps really early so i feel quite bad most of the time. since i sleep way later than her and my computer whirs and hums like eck.

i really really want to go to the christian bookstore at novena.

chinese new year was starific. i love it absolutely. kuantan is so much wonderfulness i cant imagine any chinese new year without being there. all the relatives, people, the sun, the gambling, the rocky beaches and the sea at night! is marvellous. and i get to practice my terrifying cantonese. heh.

talking about the sea at night, its the most beautiful thing in the world. in kuantan, that is. apart from the food, which IS really the best thing in the world. but anyways, the sea at night, between 8 and 9, is so darn kool because its just that you really understand the meaning of waves "crashing". its not slapping on the rocks like during the day, its seriously crashing and just completely choppy. the waves, i dont know, theyre entirely awesome in the way they dont fold and envelope one another. they rush and like typical chinese they push to get in front of the line. and match those waves with the gigantic sharp rocks on kuantan beaches, cum really big-grained sand with spiky thingums and bits of splintered seashell, its SO PUHREETAY!

well, me shall shut up and go off to do some reading. plus i needa get my dad to explain mol calculation. mole. mol. whatever. but apparently i need to know about it to work on smp. argh. but hes asleep. and the smp launch is tomorrow. ARGH. okay one more thing to study later from my olevel chem books. GAH.

apple pies and orange meringues,
-alena.

2006-01-31T13:48:00.000+08:00

well im back from malaysia, it kicked ass, lifes good.
and ive piles of homework so i cant blog.

will blog when time comes along though. heh.
just on a sidenote. I LOVE MY CURRENT DP!

2006-01-24T00:29:00.000+08:00

gah what's wrong with me.
i dont think im going to be able to survive in music class.
but i still really want to continue with it.
of course i will continue.
i have the feeling i might even want to do alevel music.
gosh.

ive even started listening to more classical music now.
sigh. its actually not bad and really pretty. kuz i remember when my daddy gave me this collection of golden classics in 4 CDs, and im listening to CD2 right now. has awesome pieces.
and one must say tchaikovsky's nutcracker is absolutely the best thing an orchestra can pull off. its about e prettiest thing i've ever heard so far. =D

have a nice day ppl! chinese new year's on sunday and i've just spent an hour or so making really trashy cny deco for our class. sigh. now to study music & clit.

2006-01-22T20:45:00.000+08:00

well after much searching around various sports shops, i've decided that it is impossible to get my beloved head nano titanium s1 or s4, simply because i havent seen it anywhere. dargh how pathetic. and annoying and pissy.

so i've a new goal for the end of the year. as in a new pinch-every-penny-and-hopefully-get-enough-for-this-ridiculous-thing-i-dont-need goal. A MARIMBA! yes so funkeh to have one right in my room and like just tinkle away all i want! with the nice soft mallets, of course.

i loveth the sound of the marimba. woody, nasal and lower than a xylophone but OH SO PRETTY and its made of wood! well, & metal tube thingums. but thats all not counted.

im being unrealistic. but who gives a crap, and whoever set the standards for realistic, sensible and whatnot probably wasnt a very realistic sensible persona himself.

meanwhile i shall start wondering, of all the instruments i've learnt, i've never actually blown anything, except a recorder but that doesnt count of course. the recorder is, in my opinion the most uncreative, stupid, and unappealing instrument. a thorn in music's side.

IM RANTING ABOUT RUBBISH AGAIN.

youth was nice today. "in Christ alone" got stuck in my head so i came home to figure out the chords and play it its so darn nice!

everythings lovely. i haven't done my homework yet. duh. but im feeling bad about it kuz i think doing homework on sundays is just...wrong. like wrong in that sense of wrong, unless like i truly rushed my ass off on saturday and friday but STILL cant finish. which is definitely not the case over here. well in a way it is. considering i was out until 9 yesterday and on friday too. tis still not a very good excuse though.

all the SIAs are piling on like er, ants on jellybeans. so i've been busy! well sort of. went to JRL yesterday for about 3 hours, 6-9 and am planning to make that my weekly regular times for visit! got an aung san suu kyi book, she is absolute HARTH! then 1 book on ageing population of s'pore, 1 on nation-building politics in s'pore, 1 book on nationalism & globalisation east & west, 1 really awesome but thick and chunky book on e history of e Bible which has loads of really kool thingums inside, & a kool maths book to decide what topic to do for e maths SIA.

today took a look @ e church bulletin, they're conducting a whole bunch of talks on how the da vinci code is THIS & THAT and im just like whats the big fuss. my mum calls the book evil. im like no its not, dan brown's a good writer. just that the facts he chooses to present are crap, but think about it really, theres a reason the books put on FICTION and not in like reference books.

but fact is you cant not admit that dan browns a rawkass writer. he manages to really put you in the place of the langdon person who like has an affair with every woman he works with. but thats not the point. anyways he makes you feel the tension and the stress piling up and i think very few authors can do that. like angels & demons, the pace of everythings terrific. digital fortress too. deception point i forgot what the story was about exactly, roughly about this searock was it? anyways i loved the ending of that. really poignant. and davinci code. dont you get hooked on trying to solve the mysteries?! like, the apple one.

hmph what a lot of ppl dont realise is that instead of attacking the theory itself, theyre attacking dan brown & the davinci code. i mean dudes, go walk into any popular, you see that BIG black and red book that says HOLY BLOOD HOLY GRAIL thats always put in display beside dan browns books? well thats where brown got most of his ideas for davincicode so gosh go attack THAT book. brown is merely putting some random untrue facts into a book to create a funky thriller.

meanwhile i really want to read "the bible code"! jolynn (from clit) suggested it muchly and in turn i recommended lee strobel's various books. ladida.

as for now. I CANT STAND LITTLE KIDS NOT EATING ENOUGH BECAUSE "THEY DONT WANT TO GET FAT". i think the real pandemic threatening the world is not bird flu or sars or dengue or WHATEVER. its the stupid brainwashing of the people that being fat is worse than being a skeleton when in fact theres no difference between the two. just like you can get burnt with strong alkalis AND acids.

look in any newspaper, and chances are after two or three flips youll see an ad for a slimming centre. its so ludicrous, its almost funny. and the irony of it all. walking down orchard road one will realise that 60% of the females are underweight, 10% are borderline underweight, 10% are normal, 10% are chubby and 10% are overweight. yet you ask all of them and theyll say theyre fat or have a sagging ass or have spare tyres or BLAH.

for you ridiculous people out there. think. when the world runs out of food, itll be the fat people who survive the longest because their bodies can feed of themselves. lol, lavender's long ago theory.

meanwhile, i have better things to do than go and worry about becoming obese. namely overdue homework.

2006-01-19T23:46:00.000+08:00

i HARTH cny!

yep i do. chinese new year is absolutelymy favourite season/festival/celebration in e entire year. its so happy and cheery and so much red/gold and everyone's happy. & no, its not just kuz of the hongbaos that i love it.

SO im in a considerably betteer mood now, less guilt, less shibai-ness. just general blandness. as if thats a lot of an improvement. i hate being bland and having no opinion on a lot of things. its just not me. but its the easiest way of doing things, and sometimes i just BE bland so i can lie back, relax, and breathe.

school's relatively hectic, what with the countless number of SIAs, and the different deadlines for each of them. not to mention different groups and all, makes organising hard. in the first place, even if it WAS the same group, organising a time where everyone is free is nearly impossible if you ask me.

so im making a 310 '06 scrapbook, not for any particular reason. just for me to flip through in the faaaar future. so far i've nothing in it except one page of quotes, a treasury loanshark note, and a picture of my very own bus sign! HAs. am bringing cam tomorrow to take more pictures of stuff. heh.

im such a moodswinger. kuz i think life kicks ass right now. and it does!

2006-01-18T22:18:00.000+08:00

on and on and on and on.

oh well so. these strange feelings that i get nowadays. which involves a lot of guilt. like that day i was in e school library, looking through a bunch of books on famous composers. then suddenly the library phone rang and for a split second i had a vision that it was my mum calling up to find me to maul me for something, and i actually almost panicked. i use that word so much these days. maul. i dont know why i felt that way, i think im turning paranoid. i dont even know why.

i guess a massive guilt attack plus two entire days of reflecting on all the things i feel guilty about has a serious effect on me in general. kuz i really cant shake it. im doing work thats due MONDAY, for goodness' sake, and visiting EViL everyday but somehow its still hanging there. like i've committed a sin so huge that nothing can save me from judgment. and for only once in my entire life so far, reading the Bible doesn't help me to calm down, relax, or anything.

dammit.

i hate feeling guilt. right now its attacking really badly, kuz its so silent except for the whirring of my fan. i really wish it'd rain, i love midnight rains, and they make so much noise and make me feel someone's there to listen.

gosh.

well on a lighter note, schools been great and i've survived perfectly fine. today, after school and decorating a bit, WE FINISHED THE NOTICE BOARD WOOTS! then jasmine & i went to bukit timah plaza, the place outside ntuc where theres a TINY food court with like 4 stalls i think. sat there and talked. it was a very broken conversation, like not active talking, but i really enjoyed it muchly.

the blander a person's expression is, the more secrets they're hiding. something jasmine said when i asked her if she felt that i have a secret life or something. and she says my expressions ARE very bland. like no expression, basically.

i dont know if im hiding secrets or not. firstly, i've nothing to hide. secondly, if i've nothing to hide, then why do i put on a placid expression? thirdly, if by some random chance i have secrets to hide, putting on a blank face doesnt make it any less obvious. fourthly, who do i need to hide secrets from anyways.

im turning too angsty for my own good, so DARN IT ALL and have a nice day!

2006-01-14T23:51:00.000+08:00

" a ship in harbour is safe, but that is not what ships are built for. " - William Shedd.

im fifteen, oh yeah.

the number seems so alien to me right now, but OH WELL WHO CARES. i've been 15 for almost e whole day! wootz. as i told lynette though, i dont feel any different except that i can start learning how to drive in TWO YEARS, count that seven hundred & thirty days! if my maths doesnt fail me, i think thats correct. and it ALSO means that i have 2 weeks to get my ic done or else i get mauled by e ministry of something. manpower perhaps. or education. nope cant be. oh wait immigration & checkpoints authority. says so on the envelope telling me to go get my ic.

talking about being mauled by ministries, i really need to brag about my most wunnerful birthday present. given to me by chanyiclairelouiseliannyuechinmelly. six people & so cheapo harh give me present that didnt cost them anything! hahaha but i love it. basically its a bus plate thing, apparently they were in a double decker bus & somehow managed to steal e plate that says what number e bus is. so i currently have a 154 sign in my room, which says HAPPY BIRTHDAY ALENA at the back of it. how amusing! but seriously, its a great present.

so today eating @ tekka was pretty great, then roaming around, getting my QUIKSILVER PENCIL CASE (!!) & stuff. then nice nice people texting to wish me happy birthday!

ladida, i know its my birthday so its a joyous occasion & all that, but well i decided to be a guaikia & do some FANXING-ING. so for now i'll be a bit ... non-hyper and non-cheerful. maybe even slightly angsty. SIGH. i do hate angst so very much, but i do get angsty. thanks to my temper which i STILL am unable to control fully.

so yesterday @ piano lesson, i sat at the piano. [duh] and ms foo asked me to play my nocturne in e minor. & i felt slightly well, nervous, kuz i cannot play it for shit. then while i fumbled my way through e left hand notes & basically sight-read through e rest, i found myself really pissed @ myself.

why couldn't i play the stupid piece?! i've been learning it for what, 2.5 mths, & im no better than when i started. & e worst thing is, e piece isnt difficult. its just tedious. which means all i have to do is tinkle away for about half an hour a day and i would've been able to master it in 1.5 mths. but no, 2.5 months on, and im still playing absolute crap.

so that was when i started to feel shibai. then when i got on the mrt to go back home, i was thinking through everything i have in my life that's important to me, and i feel shibai. very darned shibai.

firstly, for my QT. there're TWENTY FOUR hours in a day, & somehow i cannot spare e time to do QT properly. a rushed 10 minutes most of e time, before my eyelids crash down. why?! why is it i cant even single out a good 20 minutes to half an hour for God, when i can linger in front of e TV & watch CHANNEL EIGHT DRAMAS for an entire hour?

then, tennis. i love tennis, i really do. im not that great @ it, not very good @ all, in fact. but the least i could do is turn up for training right?! but i dont. in fact, i've been ponning since e end of december. & i have no excuses, tired, busy, blah blah. kuz im not. i come home & slack away my life. or my sit in e library under e pretense of reading science journals. which i am, but which is more important, training - a commitment i make, or reading science journals - in a manner that seems more like im reading 8days or something.

after which, school. im not stupid, im not slow. that much can be said. im not currently very busy, kuz SMP & CIP isnt all settled yet so i have two afternoons free until february starts. so i have THAT MUCH TIME, & do i practice piano? or guzheng? do i do QT? nope. i go to coro, i eat & play cards. on e first day of school, i got to bugis & raffles city, for gawshs sake. i pon cca. & i say i want to be a good student this year, or @ least try to be. we've only had one official piece of work so far, maths, my strongest subject. & guess what? i dont do it but go to school & KOPE FROM JAYNE. & i didnt even feel guilty.

everything i put as central in my life, is ALREADY falling into ruins. & we're not even halfway through e first month of e darned year. i seriously have no idea how i became so shibai. GARH.

gosh i need help. so off to pray i go.

i really need to set new resolutions for my 15 year old onwards life. & i seriously need to plan my time WISELY. okay so my future life is that fr mon-fri, i'd probably be done with activities by 6, reaching home by 6.45, then showering, eating, etc by 7.30. which means i have from 7.30 all the way to about 1. so that makes it FIVE AND A HALF HOURS A DAY. take away about half for time with God, so that makes it five. take away another hour for piano, so its FOUR HOURS. see, i actually have that much time in my life to work on SIAs & homework & whatnot so i absolutely have no reason to say i cannot complete my work.

yep, settled.

OHOH but first here are some inspirational quotes from famous people which i koped from cheronne's council book & old nanyang diary & stuff lizzat.

" an eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind. " - Ghandhi.

" do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. " - Ralph Waldo Emerson

" the harder you fall, the higher you bounce. " - unknown.

2006-01-12T20:40:00.000+08:00

have been letting e tune of 'differences' by ginuwine just come over me. e lyrics are very bland & normal but e melody & harmony & all is just - bliss. wonderful. has a calming effect, but also sortuf sad in a way. makes me think of things that i'd prefer not to think about, things that are long past. but it IS amazing.

so on a lighter note, today went to PEPS w/ jiawei, & i think i've managed to sort of settle my csp for nyaa already! hopefully. & e article featuring brenda is up on our class notice board , plus jasmine's working on something that says " our class pride " or something. which she is! i really admire her, wootz. & her brother! EIGHT A1s for his As!

so i'll just give a round-up for all e subjects i've been taking & how theyve been going!

lang arts - has been loads of fun. being my general worst subject, its been so much better than expected! somehow calvin lee is like e easily-bullyable type. & he's so darned nice, starting off lessons with jeopardy for mythical stuff & today was tictactoe for biblical references! twas awesome. & whats better, SIA is anything we want, which means i'll prob. combine it w/ integ humans!

maths - tan chik leng is nice but he's way too nervous, shouldnt have started teaching w/ our class. a more complacent, calm class would be ideal. for my SIA its doing some project with cheronne's "THE WINNERS" hahahahaha which includes melissa sng & lisian SO YES IM THE SHORTEST. we're going to do something for the maths cluster trail for sec 1s & maths amazing race for sec 2ers!

chinese - teacher's bland. we've done nothing much. only things livening up class would be jasmine & cheronne. seriously. plus did a crappay zuowen yesterday, which im sure i flunked, considering the way i ended so weakly. GAHHH. what happened to me im supposed to be good @ chinese! SIA's with chinese-lit, which in turn is indiv.

chineselit - teacher's fun but we havent DONE anything interesting yet. but SHEDIAO's going to be one of our texts! WOOTZ! aint that just absolutely marvellous. cant wait. she gave us loacker today, while in the library, which is entirely funkeh of her. plus kuz im a stranger in that room, its kool i've made a friend! jolyn, who's really bubbly & christian too =D

physics - my fave subject! tan boon hian is adorable & funny in his inaudible way, while managing to confuse all of us while he's teaching. i realise e way to stop myself from misunderstanding, is not to listen when he talks. wel listen but not to overconcentrate on him. concentrate more on the slides he's showing, and its easy. while doing worksheets however, consult him for help! kuz he's really a softie. & its annoying kuz i dont know nothing about our physics SIA yet!

integ humans - im e ever-responsible rep. COUGH. its seriously dry & boring, this nation-state stuff. plus e methods of teaching arent really terribly engaging. rach khoo's nice though, but dont know anything about SIA too! am in group w/ jayne, jasmine & SOMEONE though.

chemistry - paul nah has a really really bland flat voice with no emotion. but his lab stuff is really awesome. & he's awfully well organised, but i think he can get scary when he chooses to be which is like GAH WHATEVER. im right now seriously wishing that i'll get the nus chem project i want for smp, so i can convince him to replace or something. ahh well. im in a group w/ jasmine & zheng shan. unless im allowed to replace!

SO YEP THATS it for now. pe we're doing basketball & we get chang tsai.

nothing much importantuh. i need to go redo smp proposals, darnnit.

2006-01-10T22:55:00.000+08:00

happy hari raya haji, my lurvely friends!

anyways, today was a relatively uneventful day. i woke up in e morning, played a bit of online tetris (which REALLY KICKS THE ASS), ate pineapple tarts & chipsmore, then sat down with this music book wei lent me to photocopy so i was basically just reading it through. while chatting, of course. AND I CHATTED TO KIT LENG (or sarah) today! hahaha long time no talk. also found that four ex-pepspers are in ny too! one of them being XINXI, which is kinda funkeh & she's in 305 so i'll find some opportunity to talk to her.

can't wait for the primary 2-3 peps band percussion gathering! good memories lol. i loved band, really, & percussion really was teh rock for me. probably kuz i was actually good @ it. & i loved the variety offered in percussion, not like other instruments. you play oboe, you only play oboe and thats just too bad. i have nothing against oboe players, truly! just e first random instrument that popped up.

gosh i cant stand my mum right now. kuz alicia & albert are gonna come over tomorrow, she's like " i'm telling you, dont just because ppl are coming, you neglect your studies. " im like WHAT THE SHIT oh i see so thats how much resilience you think i have, is it?! and i hate the way she's saying it as if i've already done it, or its a foregone conclusion that i WILL do it, so its really annoying. IT PISSES ME OFF AND MAKES ME WANT TO KICK SOMEONE WHERE IT REALLY HURTS. i feel just like maybe going out tomorrow night partying with them or something, after the way she said that to me. gosh.

shall calm down, which means reading the Bible later. wonderful method of cooling one's temper.

my mum's pms-y or something. or just plain grumpy kuz of the rain that hasnt stopped since like forever. but i dont get why she vents her anger on my dad & me. my dad argues & retaliates of course, but i've given up doing that kuz there's simply no point. if someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to him the other. i think its rubbish & its not the way i do things, but its in the Bible. so i have to follow it. but i only apply this rule when i know i deserve the 'slap'. in which these cases, i dont.

HARRUMPH.

i was almost on the verge of cooling down, when my mum just stormed out of her room and scolded me. why? kuz a week ago, alicia asked me if she knew where they sold duty-free liquor in s'pore. i said i think its only in e airports and i didnt tell my mum kuz er, LIKE THAT'S ANYTHING SERIOUS. alicia is NINETEEN for gawsh's sake and is capable and mature enough to drink liquor if she knows she can take it!

& today anyways simon sooksook came & was chatting about how alicia wanted to buy liquor & all, & i added in that alicia also told me about it. that was like @ dinner time, and NOW my mum comes & tell me off about it.

mum - why didnt you tell me about alicia etc etc etc.
me - she just said it offhandedly, asking where they sold duty free liquor.
mum - when did she tell you
me - about a week ago
mum - how come you didnt tell me?! you're hiding a lot of things from me. (in extremely pissed tone)

then she went back into her room, THANK GOODNESS.

i cant freaking stand it. seriously, who does she think she is?! GOD?! and i think i have MY RIGHT to tell her what I want and what i KNOW is necessary. and this isnt. i also cant stand the way she criticizes everybody on my dad's side of the family. dammit. the way she criticizes everyone but herself. maybe she doesnt realise, but people have PATIENCE LIMITS. and my fuse is very very short and has been broken too many times but somehow i just keep finding more patience for her. i find excuses for her stupid temper & the way she flares & nags, but there will be a day i can't. gosh, when will SHE learn.

she just completely spoilt my day. which was meant to be good kuz its my birthday celebration. i got a hundred each from her, my dad, & simon sooksook. plus a $50 voucher for popular from edmund sooksook which is so darndedly kool. & its for cd-rama too.

& what does my mum say? "dont buy CDs theyre useless & expensive, buy USEFUL things. and you should keep your money in the bank kuz you'll lose it." for your information, dearest mother, i am FIFTEEN in four days. and PERFECTLY CAPABLE of making my own decisions.

i know i'll think this post is painfully childish tomorrow, but whatever. i needed to rant.

2006-01-04T22:41:00.000+08:00

second day of school today!

pretty funky, i've decided to start collecting quotes. as in quotes fr our ridiculously hilarious classmates & teachers (SOME). class is turned pretty much wonderful thanks to peeps like cheronne & jasmine!

well, chinese or bsp today was a disappointment. it was so ... dreary & boring & dreary. e way she made us read, & showed us powerpoint slides of flowers & waterfalls kuz it was related to text, honestly i was like HUH?! & i truly hate e s'pore chinese texts. so ... weirdly immature. ahh well. @ least we stop having names like xiaoming & xiaohong. heh. hopefully lessons will start livening up a bit, kuz today, everybody in class was just dead. no comment, no this, no that, no nothing. sigh.

we had maths again, & i do think i like tcl after all! he's just fresh out from nie after all, and he's really very nice. & he's darnedly nervous plus 310's a handful to handle. 3 times 5 = 35 indeed, lol. i think he's deeply traumatised by us. but we're not THAT horrible right?

physics, was awesome. tbh has a good sense of humour & kuz we're mostly familiar w/ him e lessons' pretty spunky. WOOTS!!!! hahahaha e best subject on e planet, i swear.

then rubbishy talks in LT2 which shant be talked about. waste of saliva. & energy.

integ humans was MUCH better than expected, seriously. i was expecting social studies kinduf thing, geog + history, stuff i absolutely suck @, basically. but turns out it also includes political science (YAY!) , economics, anthropology & sociology! ahahahaha. wonderful. & rachel khoo is nice, though not very attention-commanding, but nice.

calvin lee seems darned nice too! like his voice & accent completely belie his outward appearance of burly build, emo glasses & punk hair. well we'll have him tomorrow so we'll find out, & also our first pure humans class! which means - chinese lit, all alone in 306 unknown to e rest of mankind. sob.

& i stayed back today after school since i was free, to make our noticeboard nice & pretty! pat on e back to jasmine for her wondrous artistic skills.

well well, tomorrow apparently theres cca orientation so i'll bring my racquet & pe gear just in case! i desperately need to play anyways, havent played for years. well, a week, actually. plus e exercise, e tan, AHH, bliss. & get to observe our sec 1 midgets!

so here goes quotes. btw my memory fails me so words might not be exact.

tbh - you can decorate your folders with something regarding physics, like newton, edison, mr tan ... (class erupts into laughter)

tbh - we'll be learning about waves like sound waves heat waves etc
jasmine - kallang wave!

(nicolette goes to get physics worksheets, someone says lets do kallang wave, and only a few scant people do it)
lisian - what kind of kallang wave is that?!
yingming - a failed one.

(tbh is talking about prefixes for SI units like deca, giga & centi)
tbh - last time they thought micro was the smallest, then they realised its nano ...
cheronne - then ask microsoft to change its name to nanosoft!

melissasng - (on e board) throw food wrappers in the dustbin right outside class or they'll think we've been eating in class which is so highly impossible.

(while listing e 6 social sciences in IH)
rkhoo - one more, come on do you know any more social sciences?
cheronne - lee kuan yew!

rkhoo - i studied anthropology in university, and when you go around and tell people that, they think you studied ants.
jasmine - (a few seconds later) isnt anthropology like a study of insects or something?

yepyep i LOVE THREE TEN!

2006-01-03T20:23:00.000+08:00

SO, first day of sec 3.

thanks very much for buying the case for christ for me, charissa!

well pardon me very much for being CRUDE, but i simply must express & stress upon my views on this. WHY THE HECK AREN'T WE ALLOWED TO WEAR DARK-COLOURED BRAS? i think i've told quite a few people why im pissed about it already, so just bear w/ me & hear me out. firstly, most of mine are black or dark grey. secondly, e nanyang uniform is half transparent. if we wear a WHITE bra like we're meant to, & say someone pours a bucket of water over us, we'll be completely transparent, hence defeating e purpose of a bra. gah!!

okay, im kool, im calm. & i'll continue wearing whatever undergarment i LIKE, thank you very much.

so first day was pretty awesome, well no, actually. e audi talks were darned boring, & i dont have a particularly good feeling towards our HOLs. & e new maths teacher, he makes things really confusing! paul nah isnt quite as bad, he's actually really amusing. a bit quiet though. i have to strain to hear him talk. & thats pretty much all we did, for e entire day.

& i'm in a wondrous mood! kuz tbh's teaching us for physics & i've a crush on him. HAHAHAHA LOL but he's really cute though. & he teaches my favourite subject & although everybody else thinks hes a horrendous teacher i dont think so kuz he actually is quite humorous when he feels like it. & he's like so small & nerdy-ish cute like e last time he was bent down over a bunch of papers & walked around e corridors w/o lifting his head even ONCE. was damn funny!

& since maths is already ruined this year kuz of tcl, i'll just have to be thankful we still have tbh for physics. hopefully paulnah's good @ teaching chemistry, & our hcl/bsp teachers good, & i'll be a very happy person already!! heh.

so first day of school & e stress's piling up already. we've gotten our chemistry SIA thingums on IVLE, so darnnit!

anyhow, i love e class though! we have absolutely marvellous people who are kuku & funky & we have three aep peeps so we'll have pretty class tshirts & nice deco, they've already got an idea for decorating e back of our noticeboards by using zo-cards! doing either a mosaic or tile thingum. its awesome, seriously. then we have e chinese geniuses, yulin & felicia. e maths genius, gloria. e science genius, liza. e everything genius & born monitress, brenda! & e rest of e ppl are hyperly kuku starifically wunnerful!!

so can't wait, apart fr all e busyness & stuff that awaits us this coming year, this year should rawk a LOT of ass!

p.s. first day of school, & yuechin, jasmine & i went shopping right after. well shopping & roaming around, kuz i actually managed to control myself & not buy anything except a mcflurry! lol.

2006-01-01T00:47:00.000+08:00

should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and never brought to mind?
should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and days of auld lang syne?
for auld lang syne, my dear,
for auld lang syne,
we'll take a cup of kindness yet,
for auld lang syne

happy new year everybody out there on this pathetic planet of ours, & may your blessings be infinitely better than those you've had in 2005!!

so. its midnight, or zero hours into YEAR TWO THOUSAND AND SIX, wootz! & so to usher in e wonderful new year ahead of me, i'm going to devote a large portion of my time to write a loooong meaningful blog. e only problems that im not a literary person, nor a very thoughtful, philosophical type so my post will be extremely er, un new-year-like.

i'll start w/ how i disagree w/ e term "ushering in e new year". in e first place, e new year does not need to be ushered in like people in church who do not know where to sit. e new year doesnt give much of a damn where it sits. what people should say is, rushing to get out of e way as e new year ravages past. yep. & hoping you survive. sortuf like a hurricane.

naturally thats e more pessimistic e way of looking @ it. e way AYE look it is more of ohh yay a new year is here & i can rewrite my resolutions which i will definitely not keep & will rewrite one year later! therefore i've concluded that resolutions are useless, for me, & i very well shant bother to write em down here. heh.

SO. an entire year has passed, e whole of 2005, arguably one of e best & yet most unusual years in my life. e pinkworm reading bookclub, for example, which was e most fun i've ever had in yew chung, but also got me into e most trouble! not that i regret it, as i've said a gazillion times before, i never regret. then there's coming back to singapore & going through a 180 degree change in just about everything, plus getting e lowest average i've ever received in my life, sigh. & making new friends, separating from old ones (geographically! i mean) & i dont think i've ever gone through as many changes as i did in 2005.

& next year, i'll make it awesome. its meant to be! so i'll be quite busy i guess, w/ all those new things in my life but naturally i wont allow myself to get stressed out, kuz i do firmly swear that life's about enjoying oneself. dreams & aspirations are aplenty of course, but right now im too hyped up to name any!

so here's one resolution that i'll stress upon for this year: to spend more time with Him. Him being God, of course. which includes a great deal more quiet time than what i've done in 2005, as well as truly walking in Him. which will require a lot of effort so yep wish me luck dudes & dudettes!

i've actually run out of rubbish to crap about. so NEVERMIND. its e end of my post today. but its e start of a wunnerful new year! a fresh new start, like a blank piece of foolscap. oh darn school hasnt started & im ALREADY brainwashed.

so because i dont want to stop now though i've nothing to talk about, i'm gonna list 26 random things about myself i randomly thought of & randomly put down.

im currently reading memoirs of a geisha, which i borrowed fr san bookshop!
i have an inability to take pills. i simply cannot swallow & gulp.
i like wearing rings on my fingers, & black rubber bands on my wrists.
nivea has good deodorant.
i am so hopelessly materialistic that my mum says e only way i can survive when i grow up is find some billionaire husband.
i desperately want either a lime green or fluorescent orange volkswagen beetle in e future!
but, subarus are my favourite cars.
i wanna work w/ convicts & ex-cons in e future!
dan brown is love. michael crichton is love.
my sisters ambition is to be a mother when she grows up.
i dont really get stage fright. not that i go on stage a lot.
i love shellfish.
my three great passions are food, sleep & tennis.
i love kuantan, truly do. its my mummy's hometown but we always go back & i love all my relatives there & i love e place & i love tembeling (its our tiny tiny tiny apartment over there) & i love e beach over there even though its really rocky & it hurts ones feet but its still prettiful especially e rocks beside e hill, & @ night when the waves crash.
i have a weakness for white flowers
i think grass is e absolute symbol for life.
17's my fave number!
i am excruciatingly lousy @ ite. computer & tech stuff in general.
e best friends of my life were made in s'hai.
pink is hated. absolutely absolutely hated. e only pink visible thing in my room right now is this cylindrical thing i use to put my bookmarks & stuff. but i like it kuz of e flying cow design! grey is love, though!
i swear my pens have feet.
my money as well.
i dont think im shallow. just kuz i dont wallow in self pity & complain about e miseries of e world & how nobody understands me & how im so depressed & act like everybodys against me or something, doesnt mean im shallow right?! gah like theres a problem i think life's pretty & wonderful & nice & just kuz im a spastic generally optimistic person.
SMOKERS ARE E MOST INCONSIDERATE HUMAN BEINGS IN E WORLD. and my dads one of them. sigh.
i am e absolutely most egoistical, spoilt, bratty, quick-tempered, lazy person you'll probably ever meet. but i do have SOME good points too, you know, i just dont show them a lot.
all you people out there, especially those suffering from e aftermaths of e tsunami, or Katrina, or terrorism attacks, or poverty or sickness or anything @ all, remember God's with you always! wootz.

and here i conclude my post, with two absolutely wonderful words with a wealth of meaning behind them. hakuna matata my friends!!

2005-12-30T14:11:00.000+08:00

i understand now why my parents never thought about being writers. i was starting on my commonwealth essay, which really pisses me off, btw, 1200-1500 words w e most RIDICULOUS topic that are absolutely crappay. & being a failure @ english & lit, naturally im at a horrific loss. apparently its compulsory, probably because this girl fr rgs won last year & e school feels we need to win too or something. pffft.

back to e point. so i needed a tribal name, like a non-english name that can be spelt. so i asked my dad if he could suggest any. & he's like roomba, tanba, kaba, laba, frooba, pumba, simba! i was like pa, its not e lion king!! then my mum. which ended up being even worse, kuz she suggested pocahontas. honestly, how original. & when i told her twas a guy that im planning to write about , she suggested coconot. COCO-NOT!! i now understand why she gave me such a strange name.

so im back to square one, but please do suggest some names. maybe papayat. or bananot.

so e new years coming soon soon soon & its gonna rawk! well not that i know, but im sure itll be pretty kool, kuz life's just absolutely marvelously fantastically prettiful. grins.

btw, i came back to singapore yesterday! & i got a beauteous new devotional for next year, from kuantan. cost a bomb but its so so nice. its called e 'one year book of christian history', though in fact it doesnt HAVE much history, its just stories about christians through e ages & how God touched their lives! really nice =D

yesterday i saw someone dressed in a lime green polo, tucked into pink jeans. it was a guy, too.

other interesting things that happened yesterday include me filling up e re-entry forms in e car on e way back to s'pore, & then suddenly my dad braked & i crashed into e seat in front & my glasses broke! so now im wearing my old glasses, i made new ones yesterday & i got my contacts TOO. wootz!

also, my parents found out about my two very very overdue books yesterday, the 'ten commandments' book & e 'encyclopaedia of musical instruments', I HAVE NO IDEA HOW, & also my commonwealth essay, needless to say, they were extremely pissed & i received a looooong lecture about my irresponsibility, which i am sorry to say is very well-deserved. sigh.

thus my resolutions for e new year are to
1) stop procastinating
2)) take more responsibility for things
3) stop procastinating
4) get more sleep.
5) stop procastinating
6) spend much much much more time for quiet time.
7) stop procastinating!

wish me luck, & school starts in 4 more days, cheers people! OH SHUCKS I CANT FIND MY DARNED NAME TAGS!!

p.s. i havent decided where i should go this year to countdown. suggestions?

2005-12-25T20:38:00.000+08:00

ahh merry christmas! whoever visits this blog, anyways.

today went for church in e morning, which is pretty kool, once more e sermon meant nothing to me, but e worship was love. & ppl were darned nice larh. like oh she's brother lee's niece from singapore! kinda funny, but not e point. it was really embarassing though, being there alone with uncle lee & wei only. like i really dont understand why my dad & mum chose not to go, they went breakfasting instead. gah.

then lishin-jie drove wei & i to lulu-yee's daycare centre thing where they were having a party. & we played uno stacko + ate. interesting. & after that off to megamall! (btw, megamall is like one of e only hypermalls there are in kuantan. but it rawks, nevertheless.)

i love Christmas, its one of e seasons of e year i can really get into e spirit!

we also played mahjong yesterday HA which was kickass. & we've been playing taiti for practically e entire evening.

so anyways right now ling-yee & uncle lee are downstairs crooning away, karaoke-ing i mean, & extremely loudly too kuz of e mikes. i dont get e difference between singing w/ or w/o e mikes, ITS ALL THE SAME. its just some crazy notion of showing off one's apparently lovely voices. i apologise for my crude tone, but karaoke is one thing i cannot stand, not in e house. if its like @ kbox or something, a SOUNDPROOF place, its okay. but not in a person's house. & there's absolutely no escaping e singing. GARSH.

& i broke a new record! up to now, only ONE person has said i've gained weight! last time i came, everybody i met said so. but anyways ling-yee said it this time, " if she gets ONE OUNCE FATTER she's going to become obese!" i was like blink blink obese? chubby, yes. plump, yes. rotund, yes. fat, yes. but OBESE?! im sorry but my ego absolutely says i am NOT obese. gah. yes, im afraid my ego is a very bad-tempered horrible thing thats excessively large but TOO BAD.

anyways, off i go to seek quiet. they're singing really really horrible old chinese songs. it was so darnedly rude of them, i'd just stuck e king kong dvd into e player & it had ALREADY STARTED then uncle lee was like OH I HEARD KINGKONG SUCKS and im like no, everyone i asked said its good, and he's like, "no larh its just a remake of e 80s version & its no good @ all!" & ling-yee's like "come i want to karaoke! long time never sing already! must sing! kuai dian, ah-lee, find a cd & put it inside e player! everybody sing also!" everybody sing my ass. she's been hogging e mike. but anyways, so, without even so much as asking, kingkong was stopped & now e entire household has to endure their less than lovely voices.

ahh well, its really terrible of me to be so bad-tempered & talk about them like that. but im really pissed. not that that's a good excuse. i've just been in horrifying mood swings & right now its bad. bad. i think its kuz of the combination of lack of sleep, lack of respect, lack of my VOICE. i deeply apologise.

well i'll go read e Bible now to kool down then find some way of being nice to uncle lee & ling-yee. sigh.

2005-12-23T22:10:00.000+08:00

so my head's bursting w a stupid headache & i've a fever that i caught from goodness knows where. i mean i drank lots of water, didnt go dancing in the rain, didnt bath in ice water, and didnt stand in front of the fan or aircon for a consecutive hour. i didnt eat much oily fried stuff either. gah, perfect time to happen, the very day before we leave for kunantan!

well thank God its just a fever, kuz @ least its one of those sicknesses where im not confined to e bed so @ least i can blog & pack & worry. & print out christmas carol lyrics for e ppl in kuantan, kuz ha-yee's having a christmas party tomorrow & she's appointed me to lead e singing. gah w e state my throat is currently in, i can hardly do that. sheesh. well well will drown myself with water & honey & barley & WHATEVER cures sore throats. plus pray, of course.

anyways. church camp. i was really going to blog about it, but i dont have e time right now. but all im gonna say is, it was absolutely amazing. & i understand what people mean when they say renewal of faith. & e sermons were amusing but i didnt actually absorb anything, but worship! worshipping was teh rock, there's just something about worship that brings you TO God, like you're standing right in front of Him.

"You are El-Shaddai, You are my Adonai", ahh pretty pretty song. then camp theme song was awesome too, " and my eyes they look onto You always, and i am captured by Your majesty, all of my days, i will sing of Your greatness, all of my days, i will speak of Your grace, all of my days i will tell of Your wondrous love, Your love in my life, Your love! " & a gazillion others, well, they rawk so much ass.

so i've found an absolutely starific Christian bookshop in plaza sing, tis called trumpet praise & it has loads of devotions! plus a whole bunch of really cute things. Christian things. then e yamaha in plaza sing has a heck lot of gospel songs for guitar & piano! ladida, life rawks. yep must find some time to go there again soon, i got 'everyday with jesus' & 'daily bread', the non-free ones.

so off i go to kuantan (malaysia) tomorrow!

2005-12-11T17:28:00.000+08:00

to say it in short, Christmas deco in our house is up & li-shin jie's here! which means shopping for christmas presents for everybody in m'sia & loads & loads of fun, wootz!

(and new contacts, & ear piercings.)

so dont read the rest of this entry, kuz the rest is lyrics to god rest ye merry gentlemen which is a rawkass Christmas carol too, yay!

God rest ye merry gentlemen
may nothing you dismay;
remember Christ our saviour
was born on Christmas day;
to save us all from satan's power
when we're gone astray;

O tidings of comfort & joy,
comfort & joy,
O tidings of comfort & joy!

in Bethlehem in Israel
this blessed Babe was born
and laid within a manger
upon this blessed morn
the which his Mother Mary
did nothing take in scorn

O tidings of comfort & joy,
comfort & joy,
O tidings of comfort & joy!

from God our Heavenly Father
a blessed Angel came;
and unto certain shepherds
brought tidings of the same;
how that in Bethlehem was born
the Son of God by name;

O tidings of comfort & joy,
comfort & joy,
O tidings of comfort & joy!

"fear not then," said the Angel,
"let nothing you affright,
this day is born a Saviour
of a pure virgin bright,
to free all those who trust in Him
from satan's power and might."

O tidings of comfort & joy,
comfort & joy,
O tidings of comfort & joy!

the shepherds at those tidings
rejoiced much in mind;
and left their flocks a-feeding
in tempest, storm and wind;
and went to Bethlehem straightway
the Son of God to find;

O tidings of comfort & joy,
comfort & joy,
O tidings of comfort & joy!

and when they came to Bethlehem
where our dear Saviour lay;
they found Him in a manger,
where oxen feed on hay;
His Mother Mary kneeling down,
unto the Lord did pray;

O tidings of comfort & joy,
comfort & joy,
O tidings of comfort & joy!

now to the Lord sing praises,
all you within this place;
and with true love and brotherhood
each other now embrace;
this holy tide of Christmas
all other doth deface;

O tidings of comfort & joy,
comfort & joy,
O tidings of comfort & joy!

2005-12-10T00:06:00.000+08:00

hence, i decided to blog.

kuz i woke up this morning, lo & behold, in my cup of water i always put on my desk, i see five dead ants. i counted, yes, five. last time it was four. & before that it was one. amusing, no? so i wonder what it is in my room, or in my cup of plain tap water that is so fascinating to ants. fluorine, perhaps.

& everytime the number increases. gah!

so i'm busy looking for a suitable verse i can use to write up prettily & decorate for my mummy's friend who just realised she has cancer. she's kinduf been down lately (i mean duh. its cancer, not flu.) & basically moping around life thinking she has no more purpose merely kuz she's got cancer. well i think my best so far is isaiah 35. YES, isaiah again, its not my fault that i absolutely love love love isaiah, its def the most amazing book in e Bible.

if you've any other suggestions, please do tell me!!

so isaiah 35 verses 1 to 7 goes:

the desert and the parched land will be glad;
the wilderness will rejoice and blossom;
like the crocus, it will burst into bloom;
it will rejoice greatly and shout for joy;
the glory of Lebanon will be given to it,
the splendor of Carmel and Sharon;
they will see the glory of the LORD,
the splendor of our God.

strengthen the feeble hands,
steady the knees that give way;
say to those with fearful hearts,
be strong, do not fear;
your God will come,
he will come with a vengeance;
with divine retribution
he will come to save you.

Then will the eyes of the blind be opened;
and the ears of the deaf unstopped;
then will the lame leap like a deer;
and the mute tongue shout for joy;
water will gush forth in the wilderness
and streams in the desert.
the burning sand will become a pool;
the thirsty ground bubbling springs;
in the haunts where jackals once lay,
grass & reeds & papyrus will grow.

isnt it absolutely prettiful?!

2005-12-08T12:45:00.000+08:00

praise God, i got my NEW TENNIS SHOES! yarh we ended up not going to queensway after all, kuz while waiting for claire to wake up lol, lynette's sister called & so we went off to orchard instead. then claire finally came @ kino & we had lunch, lynette's sister is DAMN NICE okay, we got treated & i shamelessly spent $14 bucks which i will return somehow. somehow. kuz lynette & her sis both absolutely refused to take it. gosh.

then after walking round & round, getting my shoes @ world of sports, & my new grip (which is black btw), plus double sided tape, we saw ms ong while waiting for lynette's dad. gah. wearing pumps & looking cute as usual lol. ms ong, not her dad i mean. then off to her house for tennis & table tennis!

& i left her house kinduf late & then i got pushed out of the train (was peak) & then the next train i took got terminated @ yishun so i reached home QUITE late. mum didnt mind though which was strange kuz she normally cant stand it when i dont go home for dinner without informing in advance. ahh well.

anyways, kino is love, saw a bunch of religion books which look REALLY good. will go there sometime when i have teh opportunity. & money of course.

so i was going to talk about something, except i forgot what. so give me a bit of time to recall. gah. oh yes my tennis shoes, they're adidas, white & black with a bit of red? the cuttings a bit weird, and it looks generally strange, but ahh well. its not too bad.

anyways, just a random thing. over there in shanghai, i never watched movies in cinemas kuz they were five or six times more expenive than just buying e dvds. & over here i have to watch movies in cinemas kuz dvds are five or six times more expensive. sigh, teh irony of it all.

& btw, my table tennis, has gone down the drain into the longkang, drowned dirtified etc, & is now officially dead. sigh.

2005-12-05T14:37:00.000+08:00

psalm 62:1 is prettiful. "truly my soul waiteth upon God: from Him cometh my salvation"

my life is currently a social dud, quoting from some book i've no idea when i read. ahh well. seriously. no trainings, & my life is going to ruins. gah. im planning to go buy or rent soppy dramas to watch tomorrow, yay cheers for me! well @ least im hanging with lynette, going to queensway on wednseday. then & again, buying shoes, how long will that last. my mummy said i can get new school shoes, but not @ queensway kuz she thinks i'll spend too much. & she has perfectly good reason to, i admit.

so, basically i realised what a wonderfully nice person my mummy is, that she's worthy of being called a 'practicing christian'. anyways no, its not just kuz she agreed to let me get new school shoes, though it is one of the lesser reasons. the story is, the other day when we were seated in the living room ( the whole family, for once. you have NO idea how seldom it happens. though tis only four of us. ) & she's like lishin-jie's coming, you can go shopping with her in metro!

and im like blink. "er, ma, since when did you like to shop in metro?" ( i digress here to mention that metro has sucky clothes. e only thing i ever got there was e skill of wrapping presents, which i koped from the assistants who help you wrap up your christmas gifts & all)

so my mum's like, oh i got about $200 worth of vouchers, you know, maybe you could get a nice blouse (HECK) or a nice skirt (and im just like coughing my head off. a skirt?! what the heck for. the day i wear skirts is the day my eyes fall out & my nose becomes unflat. except chinese new year, that is.) but the point is, my mummy said she had vouchers.

so i asked if she got her vouchers thru her mastercard, or visa, or mx, or her company dinner & dance. she said " no, i gave my dinner & dance free gifts to my poor friday girl (her subordinate) who always gets prizes but didnt get one this year. they were vouchers to takashimaya, not metro, by the way."

so i was like gaping @ her & wondering why she didnt keep the taka ones & give the metro ones instead.

then she said, the vouchers weren't free, you know. i was like HUH?! i mean i think the reason they're called VOUCHERS is because they're free.

& shes like, well my tea lady got them @ the dinner and dance, but she says she never goes to metro because she can't afford it, (tea ladies are generally not as well to do, my mummy explained) & she looked so upset that i bought the metro vouchers from her. for the full price & all.

& then i was there gaping @ my mummy's niceness while she concentrated on watching tongxinyuan, as if she'd just told me something as insignificant as the fact that she had satay for lunch. but hey, theres one person i'm absolutely proud of to say " my mummy's a christian. and a true blue, real one."

i feel like a retard, calling her mummy. ahh well, not the point. i call her ma in real life anyway.

& i miss my dad! he's on a business trip going all around china, then to thailand, and will be back this sunday. i told him to get food for me. lol.

& i saw ms chi pin lay @ starhub bukit batok on saturday, she was wearing a white sleeveless & short red shorts. amusing, no? i pointed her out to my mummy & my mum was like, "she has a very nice figure for a dean. but she doesnt look like a dean. she looks more like my exclassmate blah blah blah" & started on a whole rant of how they used to hitch rides with guys on motorcycles. i was rather shocked about that part, but its not the point once more.

im painfully, drastically bored. so bored that i've started flipping through our maths textbook for next year, the one that goes " new syllabus additional mathematics, seventh edition" published by shinglee. it rocks, except the stuff is damn cheem & incomprehensible. uncomprehensible. non-comprehensible. NEVERMIND. my english always sucked anyways.

& yes i shall go now, & shut up. maybe i'll go borrow love @ harvard, & watch all e episodes that haven't screened yet, then gloat when my daddy comes back & tell him everything that will happen. HA. okay brilliant idea. (btw, to clear things up, when i watch serials & painfully silly idol dramas, be they chinese, english or korean, my daddy watches them with me, kuz my mummy says they're an insult to her intelligence. heh. & oh yes, my daddy watches movies with me too. & tennis games, football games, & any other sports. except golf, which he watches himself kuz i cannot find amusement in watching a sport which does not involve running & screaming & excitement & tension & suspense. )

my family's absolutely funky & i thank God for giving them to me. wootz.

2005-11-30T23:54:00.000+08:00

no idea why i decided to blog. or what i plan to blog about. ahh well.

so i've found my absolute dream racquet. no actually tis not, its just some random passing fancy. basically, its teh head nano titanium s4. its head size is slightly smaller than my current racquet, tensions slightly weaker, length slightly shorter, & weight lighter. all of which are kool & suit my way of playing better!

i like my ncode very much, yes, its an old faithful & all that, not that old but like sortuf. ima gonna change my grip to a grey-coloured one! with more absorbence. im just bored of it, slightly. so im actually saving up to buy the head racquet myself. yeah, im serious. i'll buy it next year!

then i'm going to buy another racquet the year after next. heh, e ambitions i have. great, daring & wonderful. wilson this time of course. or maybe voikl, just for a change! but no matter what, ima NOT going to get prince. wootz.

so back to e point. ima gonna go to queensway next week, buy tennis shoes! & check out prices of my dream racquet. except by the time i save up enough money i'd have another dream racquet. gargh.

so today was pretty kool i guess, training was funkeh apart from the weirdo guy that coach brought along who thinks he's all that when lynette's absolutely right. cheryl (is that her name?!) or angela could thrash him anytime they felt like it. dargh.

then coro for lunch, & plaza sing for arcading! pretty kool, unfortunately, i was broke so THAT was relatively uneventful. grrr. & then a long journey home. I FINISHED LORD OF THE RINGS - THE TWO TOWERS!!! give me a pat on the back people.

then i went home & guess who was online, JIA WEI. its like wow wee, poor dude who i was rumoured to like in p3. hahaha funkeh memories. so it was fun chatting, & you know God really does work in wondrous ways, i was praying so hard for a tennis coach & turns out, jia wei's dad coaches part-time, kinduf. its absolutely marvellously beauteous. asked him to bai-tuo his dad a bit, even if cannot coach can suggest ppl who can coach me. & e coincidences that happen! he saw me in the mrt today.

and apparently i've grown fatter. heh. not that i dont admit it, really. if you consider the amounts i can eat & the number of times i eat and the time i can go without eating (1 hour) you'll understand perfectly why.

im in a starifical mood & life kicks too much ass to be true.

next year's gonna be busy but kool i suppose! activities i think i'll have
- cca, twice a week.
- smp, once a week.
- piano lessons, guzheng lessons, each once a week.
- music, no idea.
- tennis lessons, once a week.
- nyaa service, once a week.
- csp? i suppose. maybe considered with nyaa, once a week.
- church & youth & stuff & mustard seed & stuff like that!

& just to wrap up, teh lyrics of WHAT CHILD IS THIS.

verse 1
what child is this, who laid to rest;
on Mary's lap is sleeping?
whom angels greet, with anthems sweet;
while shepherds' watch are keeping

chorus 1
this, this is Christ the King;
whom shepherds guard & angels sing;
Haste, haste to bring him laud,
the Babe, the Son of Mary

verse 2
why lies He in such mean estate;
where ox & ass are feeding?
good Christians fear for sinners here;
the silent Word is pleading

chorus 2
nails, spear shall pierce him through;
the cross be borne, for me, for you;
hail, hail the word made flesh;
the Babe, the Son of Mary

verse 3
so bring Him incense, gold & myrrh,
come peasant, king to own Him;
the King of kings salvation brings;
let loving hearts enthrone Him

chorus 3
raise, raise a song on high,
the virgin sings her lullaby;
joy, joy for Christ is born,
the Babe, the Son of Mary

2005-11-27T21:59:00.000+08:00

today was starifically fabulous, really. teh church outing!

so basically we went to marina south, on this nice grassy place perfect for flying kites & stuff. hung there, played some games where i was actually CARRIED OVER & between a bunch of PINK RAFFIA STRINGS because we were playing some spiderweb game. i was squealing like heck but it was fun i suppose. except poor guys that had to carry me, they'll probably break a lot of capillaries. heh.

then, the highlight of the day, teh dinnuh. giggles. it was great! twas like in e style of a fire, then above it a ring-shaped grill & a pot right in e middle so it was steamboat-cum-bbqgrill. lurvely, absolutely. i ate loads & loads & realised that a lot of ppl eat less than me but nevermind, e food really rawked. i mean although they give you only a certain # of live prawns & crabs, i dont eat those anyways so it didnt make much of a dif.

e chicken was great, & THE SHELLFISH OMGAWSH THE SHELLFISH. i hope i cooked them enough kuz if i didnt i'll get stomach upsets tomorrow but nevermind it tasted wonderful while it lasted. absolutely stupendously pretty. i boiled my cockles for ages, then grilled em so they should be alright, they were basically chowtar & almost crunchy. lol.

its really very worth it for twelve bucks.

then, e arcade was lurve. once more i died very early in time crisis, but it was fun while it lasted! & daytona which rawked arse except i kept on overturning myself & thus losing e games gargh. not e point though. @ least i didnt keep driving to the pit & wasting years like i did last time lol. & i did overtake catherine once in a while!!

so basically today was wondrous. i really do like church now, & not just kuz of these outings, of course. but as in church in general. in comparison to shanghai. of course in shanghai i didnt ATTEND church so much, but youth was nice. nothing compared to this though, people make you feel welcome & belonged. heh.

so i'll go watch rome now, new series on hbo, abotu the secret lives of e roman people. to let us understand that under e glamour, glory, & guang-hui, lies secrets, betrayal, and SCANDALS. grins. i think i'll like it. heh.

I NEED TO GET NEW TENNIS SHOES.

2005-11-25T00:28:00.000+08:00

so i thought i'd blog. rather long-winded one, sorreh!

where have all the pasar malams gone, i WANT TO EAT!!!
i reckon food is one of God's greatest creations. or e sense of taste + smell. drool.

have been reading ecclesiastes lately. some people say its depressing, but i dont really think so. its just pessimistic & its very true, loads of people feel that way. i particularly like chapter 3 verses 1 - 8, the whole chunk about how there is a time for everything.

today's meeting thingum @ madeline's house was pretty kool. we kept on running off the topic discussing the most irrelevant stuff but that was fun too i guess, there's just no way to keep to the same track for the whole of 3 hours or so! ladida.

and i guess i might write, after all. despite flunking english & lit, writing isn't too bad kuz in a way it makes me feel, useful. & like im doing something or another to help, instead of just attending youth. which is kinda why i didnt feel that comfortable going to youth in shanghai, just sitting down there & doing bible study or singing but not really belonging in that sense. which is why feesh/thomas & i would pon & hide out in the bushes outside discussing any topic under e sun.

life rocks, for now.

i reckon my morale just got a rather good boost so i'll go for training tomorrow. although they probably wont be there like last week, also thanks to the open day. i'll go kaypoh and check it out but must come home & practice piano & do piano hw so ARGH.

i cant, absolutely cannot do quiet time @ home. i dont know. there's just so much stuff around me that i cannot place my concentration onto my devotionals, or e Bible @ hand, my material. i just skim through it, make some random notes, while playing muzik & chatting, then stopping to play hearts on the computer.

which is why i've switched to doing it @ mcdonalds. early in the morning, get a coffee, just sitting down there - its strangely calming, there're very few people, & not much sound apart from the tv playing chicken little over & over again. & @ a corner, a bunch of aunties snipping the ends of towkay & chatting. i like the sound of that. & how happy people @ mcdonalds sound, from the babies getting balloons; to the people @ the counter shouting to the people @ the back for two mcchickens, put more vegetable! in chinese.

& i can concentrate over there, get immersed in whatever im reading or studying. which reminds me, i dont really like the purpose-filled life, its a bit on the slow going side. it just doesnt stick with me, i tend to skim through the surface. i like reading apologetics more, as well as explanatory texts, bible study stuff. devotionals are great, but not this particular one i guess. i wanna subscribe to everyday with jesus or something of the sort.

& i desperately need to go to tecman soon, or the nice christian bookshop in great world city. wonderful places, them. will find someone to drag along, attempt to get sponsorship from mum (who most definitely will not sponsor) & go shop my ass off. yay.