~World of Mylene~

2012-01-25T07:06:00.001+08:00

On Geraldine's birthday (actual day), we decided to go out for dinner at Kashmir, an Indian restaurant. King of Bastards turned up, much to our surprise, cause nobody invited him, and the whole night, he made an asshole out of himself. Firstly, throughout the entire dinner, if he wasn't playing with his phone, he was sleeping. Then, when Geraldine told him her grandmother had a stroke, he asked her how old her granny was, and when she replied "78", he said, "Oh, it's about time". WTF??? Already majorly pissed off at that, then when we went to Java for dessert, he slept. THE WHOLE TIME WE WERE THERE. He didn't talked to anyone at all. And then he kept making excuses after that, saying that he was very tired cause he never slept the whole of last night. TIRED THEN DON'T COME LAH! NOBODY INVITED YOUR ASS ANYWAY WHAT! Grrr.

On Saturday, I took a trip up to Dublin with Chris and Sarah on Saturday for the SMSI's CNY dinner (Geraldine took a later bus, we took the early morning one). We reached Dublin in time for lunch, where we ate at Elephant and Castle, a cafe on Temple Bar which is famous for their buffalo wings. We had that, and I had a steak sandwich.

The wings were yummy, really addictive. The steak sandwich was good, but the steak was abit too hard for my liking. I think it's cause I ordered medium-well, but the waitress probably heard "well" only cause that was how my steak came out. Pricey place though! Or at least to me haha.

We spent the day shopping. My iPhone stopped working last week so I had to tag alongside Sarah. The sales in Dublin weren't great- alot of stocks got wiped out already. Still, I managed to get 2 plain, basic cardigans in black and grey from F21 (2 for 12 euros), a shimmery, silver top from Pull&Bear (9.99 euros) and a country dress from F21 (7.99 euros). Not a bad haul, actually. Sarah and I stopped for an afternoon tea of Nutella-Banana-Chocolate (failproof crepe combo) crepe from Maud's. We met Geraldine after that and went to Imperial Chinese Restaurant for dinner. The food was not bad. Met up with SW and the rest of the Dublin people. I made chocolate cornflake clusters, thumbprint cookies with a blackcurrant jam center and brownies for SW and gang, and passed it to her at the dinner. We rushed for the 10.45pm bus back to Galway. I was so, so tired when I reached home, I could barely climbed the stairs into the house.

I spent Sunday morning skyping my parents, then popped over to Dunnes for some stuffs for CNY baking to give to King of Bastards because he was hosting Tuan Yuan Fan that night. Made chocolate cornflake clusters, brownies and sponge cake for them. Baked till 7pm (when dinner was supposed to start at 7pm) and so I reached late, around 7.30pm. And KoB had a SUPER BLACK face, which Geraldine said was cause we were late. Wtf?! We ate and played Wii till almost three, then we cabbed back. And after dinner, KoB slept on the sofa. Snored like the pig he is.

2012-01-16T11:11:00.002+08:00

I'm officially 21 today. TWENTY ONE. TWO ONE. I feel old.

We had a birthday dinner on Saturday night to celebrate mine and Geraldine's birthday. I originally planned to make a chocolate biscuit cake for Geraldine's birthday cake, but then I woke up in the morning to a facebook PM from S (Geraldine's boyfriend) who told me to get a particular type of cake for her birthday and say it's from him. And because I knew that that cake DEFINITELY could not be found in Galway, I decided to make it instead. I had already bought the ingredients for the chocolate biscuit cake but not the ingredients for S's cake so I went out to get it. AND GERALDINE ASKED ME WHERE I WAS GOING -.- Suay max. I was hoping she wouldn't be awake because it was 9 in the morning. I had to lie that I forgot to buy some ingredient for her choc biccie cake. So I went out to get it, came back home and made it. AND the chocolate biccie cake (pic above). Big baking day haha!

We made mee sua (as we did last year). We ate, played some card game, drank (I only had cranberry and vodka). We cut Geraldine's cake(s) first, then waited until midnight to cut mine. Due to my inability to eat my own baking, they bought me a chocolate fudge cake from Morton's of Galway. How we knew of that shop is a pretty funny story. We were camping at the CSI cafe one afternoon, waiting for them to give out free leftover food from that day, and these group of women came and sat next to us with a box from Morton's and took out this absolutely sinful and delicious-looking chocolate fudge cake and started eating it. We were practically salivating over the cake. Everyone kept glancing over and looking at the cake, and we actually wanted to ask them for a slice haha. Luckily the free food of the day came out just then. Anyway- and this is rather embarrassing- I wanted a group photo. To remember the night. And the guys refused to pose for a nice one. I begged them to just take ONE nice shot, and we can do stupid stuffs on the rest, but that CR (King of Bastards) got all of them to pretend to yawn whilst the photo was being taken. And so when I went to look at the picture on the camera and saw their pose, I put the camera away, sat down, and started CRYING. Like I just couldn't stop myself, and the tears just started trickling down my face. Everyone was looking at me kinda awkward, and Geraldine came over and hugged me and kept telling me, "I know it's cause of the photo, but just ignore them", and I kept replying, "Nono it's not cause of the photo, I'm fine". I just kept crying and crying, all throughout the birthday song, blowing of the candles, and cutting of the cake. I kept trying to stop myself, but I think because I was particularly emotional that day (quarter-life crisis really hit me), and the fact that the guys did a BORED pose on my birthday group photo tilted me over the edge.

On hindsight, I think the pose had an impact on my behaviour that night too. If they had made a monkey face, I would have brushed it off as childish, stupid. But they made a YAWNING pose, a show of BOREDOM. It was my birthday party (and technically Geraldine's as well), and they were BORED. I was fucking hurt at that insinuation. And it was CR's idea of a pose. Fucking bastard.

On my birthday, I woke up and went to church, then came home and skyped my parents the whole afternoon. And then, around 6pm, Kok Cher and Aslam came with a plateful of profiteroles with fudge sauce and ice cream. They came to apologise, and said that they felt bad for last night, and that they hoped their little dessert would make up for their behaviour last night. I was super touched. I really appreciate gestures like that. Apparently they already decided to do this last night. No input from the other two though, CR's housemates.

The rest of the night, I spent reading TDCJ's offender's orientation handbook so I could get an idea on what Junior's life is like in prison.

And that was how I turned 21!

2011-12-30T00:21:00.001+08:00

2011 is the year that I consider myself to have grown up the most. So many, many things happened to me this year that really changed my life and mindset, but I'm glad to say that they have made me so much more mature and ready for adulthood, especially now that I'm almost turning 21. In about 2 weeks time, to be exact. I can't believe I'm almost 21- I've actually lived 2 decades on this earth already. And if I live till 80 (which I hope so!), I have already lived a quarter of my life! That leaves me with only 3/4 more to go!!!:/ I'm suffering from a quarter-life crisis here.

2011 passed very quickly for me. I can still remember when I was in London with my mummy and brother on NYE 2010, too tired to wait up till midnight to welcome in the New Year because we had to get up that morning at 4am to catch our flight from Dublin to London. Time really, really flies. But I've realised that not only can I not slow it down, I also can't catch it, to make it stay just for that moment longer, because trying to catch time is like trying to hold water in your hands- the tighter you try to grip it, the faster it trickles away. So now I'm trying to learn how to really savour the moment, to fully appreciate the present.

The next 1/4 of my life holds major life-changing moments for me, and right now, I don't feel quite so prepared to handle them when they happen. But only when you are outside your comfort zone are you then forced to grow. I only pray when the time comes, God will be beside me, guiding me.

I never had the habit of making New Year's resolutions- I tried one year and failed miserably. And I only had a couple of resolutions. But I shall make one this year, just one- TO ALWAYS BE HAPPY. Really, life's too short to be otherwise.

2011-12-28T00:19:00.000+08:00

I spent a week in Melaka with my family, over the Christmas season. It was so that I could visit my relatives there, and also for the family to have a change of environment, especially for my father who had been stuck at home most of the time.

We opened our presents when the clock struck 12 midnight, and I got the most presents hahaha:) My sister said it was because I was away so everyone thought of me the most and hence I got the most presents. We left for Melaka in the morning, where we decided to bunk over at Di Gu's house. After dropping our stuffs off at his place, we drove to Durian Tunggal to attend my cousin-in-law's family's Christmas BBQ. There was alot of food, and these incredibly yummy matcha red bean log cake and blueberry cheesecake from the famous Yeast Bakery! It's lucky I wore jeans, or else I would have able to stuff more food into my system lol. And when we got back home, Ah Jin gorgor brought us to the Portugese settlement to see the Christmas decorations that the Portugese people put up in their village. They really put in alot of effort decorating their house for Christmas! The whole street was twinkly-bright from the Christmas lights that the Portugese used to decorate their houses with.

So that was how I spent my Christmas Day. I spent Boxing Day with Di Gu and his family, travelling to Port Dickson to check out some Eagle Ranch resort that my mother is interested in collaboration with, and to play at the beach. End up we didn't go to the beach cause it was so friggin' hot, so we loitered around the shops and sat under coconut trees. After that, we changed 'hotels', going over to my Tua Kor's house to stay. Tua Kor made us dinner, and I think I ate like 6 XXXL sambal prawns o.O

The next day, we had chicken rice balls for breakfast. Thanks to Aunty Lily who queued up before 9am to get it for us. The shop is apparently so famous that people queue up for the chicken rice balls way before it opens at 9am! I have no idea what the shop's name is, or where it is located too haha. Then Tua Kor brought us out for lunch at Pizza Hut where we ate some 7-cheese pizza that was soooo good! The KL SPs came over in the afternoon so we took a car ride down to the beach (making a stopover for fruits #healthylifestyle). We went back in time for dinner (which Tua Kor and Aunty Lily cooked).

Jubie jiejie had a day off on Wednesday, so she brought my sister and me out for shopping at Pahlawan. She treated us to bubble tea at Chatime (I ended up drinking 2 cups that day!!!) and lunch at Secret Recipe. AND she bought us accessories plus a football jersey for my brother! She's such a giving and loving person, so glad I have her as my cousin-in-law<3 haha. Because we had a late lunch, we ate satay for 'dinner', and then we went for SUPPER at 11pm at Capitol Satay Celup. It's really awesome, and there was a long queue outside even though it was 11pm on a weekday night. Luckily Tua Kor knew the owner, Uncle Raymond, so he gave us a table almost instantly. And he gave us this huge tray filled with mega-assed sotong, prawns, scallops, clams, abalone, and other types of seafood, all of which he charged us only 80 cents per stick. Zomggg how to earn $$ like that!!! We had a wonderful time eating and eating until about 2am.

So if you noticed, I've been spending alot of my holiday EATING and EATING. My stomach is seriously embarrassing me now. And I'm worrying about the dangers of carrying a spare tyre now- heart attack, Type II diabetes etc. But I tell myself it's only for 3 weeks, after that I'm going back to Potatoland. So this semester, Kingfisher is going to see more of my face!!!

2011-12-21T15:00:00.001+08:00

This Christmas break is a holiday like no other, and not in a good way.

For the past month or so, I kept getting this feeling that something wasn't right at home. Despite my mother's constant reassurance that everything was fine back home, I knew things weren't, but I didn't probe. My exams were coming, and I didn't want to be distracted, though in the end, I got more distracted thinking about what had happened or could be happening. And when I touched down 3 days ago, I discovered what it was exactly.

I saw my father. He was wearing a cap, but I could tell that he was bald, and his left eye was swollen, with the eyelid almost shut. I just went numb with shock, and in my mind I kept thinking, "Ohmygod what happened what happened". He got emotional when he saw me, and broke down in tears and hugged me. In my entire life I've only seen my father cry once, and that was at my grandmother's (his mother) funeral. And he told me everything, about how on 30th November he had to undergo a cranial-facial surgery to remove a malignant tumour in his left ethmoid sinus. He had underwent chemotherapy before that to remove the cancerous growth but it was unsuccessful so his doctor had recommended surgery. Ordinarily they could have just accessed the tumour through his nose but because the tumour had spread, they had to access it through his skull. My father removed his cap and showed me the sutures on the top of his head, ugly brown stitches that made my heart break at the sight of them. Everything was going well, and then, the week before I was due to be home, he got a severe eye infection that had to be operated on again. This time around, the hospital stay was such a traumatic experience for him, because he had to be put on a drip constantly and made to take IV antibiotics every 6 hours. They inserted needles into the back of his hand till it swelled and the veins retracted, which made it difficult and painful to insert more needles in. The antibiotics hurt when they entered the body, because they entered by a bolus dose each time.

And as I listened to my father's story, I cried. For him, for the immense pain and suffering that he had to go through, for my mother who tirelessly took care of him despite her rheumatoid arthritis problems, for my brother and sister who had remained so strong during this difficult time for the family. And throughout this whole episode, I had been in Ireland, oblivious to it all.

I understood the reasons why my mother wouldn't tell me all this. It was my exams period, and she knew I would worry and she didn't want me to be distracted. I couldn't do anything from so far away anyway. But I still feel horrible, that I haven't done anything for my family throughout the whole thing. My mother stayed with my father every night for the 2 weeks that he was warded in hospital. My brother became more mature, more responsible and understanding. More guai and tia uwei. My little sister had to stay at home alone every night- she, who is afraid to go out and throw the rubbish at night. She also took it upon herself and went around town everyday buying Christmas presents on behalf of my parents for the rest of the family.

So this holiday, I'm going to devote my time to my family, to taking care of them. I'm going to spend time with them, especially since I'm only home for 3 months every year only. I thank God that my father is recovering well now, and I pray that he'll be back to fighting fit health soon.

2011-11-14T06:04:00.001+08:00

SO.SICK.OF.STUDYING

I'm so bored of studying. But this bad when you consider that actually, I haven't really been studying. All I've done is just coop myself at home and do a thousand random nonsense on the internet and NOT face my notes. There's 3 weeks left till exams and I know SHIT about endocrinology, molecular medicine, genetics etc. Omfg fml:(

Everyone else has been hard at work, though. Mugging every single day. And I'm the only one WANTING to study but in reality not accomplishing much at all. Haiz:(

I just pray I pass all my exams lol. First class is impossible if you don't work hard for it, and right now, I pretty much don't deserve first class with my current studying attitude. That's why, from tomorrow onwards, I'm gonna go study in the library already. I can't stay at home anymore, because I can't concentrate and I can't stop eating junk food.

5 more weeks till I go back to Singapore, wheeee:D that's the only positive note on this blog post.

2011-10-14T04:42:00.001+08:00

I made a batch of these cupcakes for the Carbry girls on Monday. The cupcakes were a disaster of sorts- I ran out of cocoa powder, so instead of 3/4 cups, I put in 1/2 cup of cocoa powder only. So to make up for the lesser cocoa taste, I decided to be creative and rolled up my leftover chocolate ganache into chocolate balls and stuck those in the center of the cupcakes. I envisioned a cupcake with a molten chocolate centre. Fat hope, the chocolate ball melted! Luckily though, it made the center of the cupcakes chocolately, which is more than I can say for the rest of the cupcakes. The texture was moist, but the taste was bleh. So I whipped up a chocolate fudge frosting that was TOO SWEET (darn that stupid recipe!). Thankfully though, the sweetness made up for the bland cupcakes and I got raving reviews from them. Phew. See that cupcake at the bottom right hand corner, so oddly sprinkled with chopped hazelnuts? It was a failed attempt on my part to beautify my cupcakes, cause I thought they looked so plain with just the fudge frosting. Should have kept my itchy hands to myself haha.

In the end, I decided to give the remaining cupcakes to a friend, whose cupcake (that I made and he brought home) got stolen from the refrigerator, where he left it. I didn't know it was his birthday the day before, so he thought I had given him a 'birthday cake'! Hahahah talk about coincidence! This picture was taken from his facebook, which he posted up together with a lovely thank you note. It's times like these when I feel that all the effort that I've put into my baking is really so worth it!:)

2011-10-06T17:16:00.001+08:00

"Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do."

RIP, Steve Jobs.

2011-10-02T09:09:00.000+08:00

I made the above 2 chocolate delights for my Malaysian friends' housewarming party!:))) Chocolate cupcakes with a chocolate ganache frosting, and chocolate mousse! They were so appreciative of it, and kept gushing over how good it tasted. Such sweethearts<3 So I had a happy happy Saturday!:)))

2011-10-01T16:44:00.002+08:00

2011-09-26T08:25:00.005+08:00

Just last Friday (about a week and a half ago), I got an email from a professor saying that I've been selected (together with 2 others) to represent the school in some Anatomy competition.

You can only imagine how incredulous I felt initially when I read that email. Why, of all people, would they choose ME?! I didn't do that well in Anatomy, and overall my grades weren't that fantastic either. Sure I may have gotten first class, but I barely scrapped through to get first class. The school must have alot of (blind) faith in me.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, it was some essay competition that was going to be held on Saturday, 24th September. I spent the whole of last week preparing for my essay, drafting it and memorising it. It was so incredibly stressful. You may think, 'So easy what! Just memorise and regurgitate!' but for me, all the planning for the essay's structure was terribly stressful, having to make sure the essay flowed coherently and that it's not just a paper where facts are thrown randomly about. I hope I've done my best for the essay though- I 'gave up' a week's of studying to prep for it!

It was a 2 hour paper (I was rushing through it like mad!), and after it was over, I went to town to eat lunch with the gang and shop for baking supplies because one week of camping at home preparing an Anatomy essay really made me itch to bake desperately. And since Hooi Tzing was having a potluck lunch party on Sunday after church ended, I grabbed the opportunity to bake!


Cheesecake brownies. It was meant for the party but the gang pounced on it and this was all that was left.

Red Velvet cupcakes cooling

Red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting and 100s and 1000s!

Baking urge satiated!:)))

2011-09-16T03:13:00.001+08:00

If there's one thing I constantly strive for, it's recognition. Everything I do, I seek recognition for my efforts. I willingly work hard to produce the best results I can get, and when someone pats me on the back and says, "Good job!", it just makes my day. I have a dangerously low self-esteem level, and I suppose that's the reason why I constantly yearn to be recognised. It makes me feel valued, like I'm actually useful, purposeful.

I think everybody yearns for that recognition, but I don't think anybody seeks it as much as I do. It frightens me sometimes to think that everything I do, I subconsciously do it to either please someone or rise up to someone else's expectations.

That's why when I bake, I love it when people eat it, compliment its taste, and come back for seconds. Best if they finish the cake asap because it's so good. I don't know why, I seek gratification in the knowledge that I can do this to make someone happy, and this is turn makes me feel better about myself. Suddenly, I don't feel so worthless anymore.

I know that I'm paranoid and have no self-confidence. Sometimes I tell myself that I'm better than what I think I am. But this just sounds so conceited to me. Maybe it's my Chinese genes, but I cannot bring myself to boast to others about myself. That's why I cannot sell myself at interviews or in job applications.

There's such a thin line between self-confidence and conceitedness.

2011-09-15T08:00:00.000+08:00

Recently, for my housemate's 21st birthday, I made and assembled a chocolate banana cake. It was a layer cake, with chocolate cake, chocolate mousse, sliced bananas and topped off with chocolate ganache. It was a cake with many potential pitfalls- whipping cream is tricky to deal with, I've never baked anything that was in the cake before, and I've never assembled a cake like this before. I had no idea how to deal with mousse (or even make one). So I did alot of research beforehand.

I made up my mind to use the recipe for Awfully Chocolate Banana Cake from Aunty Yochana (http://auntyyochana.blogspot.com/2006/07/awfully-chocolate-banana-c_115252156264968965.html). I decided not to use her chocolate sponge cake cause it was too troublesome to make, and also because some readers commented that their cake came out lopsided. So I used a moist chocolate cake recipe from some blog (but I forgot the url!). I pre-tested this a day before (Friday)- the cake received a rave response from my 6 friends. I decided to go ahead and use Aunty Yochana's mousse and ganache recipes, since there weren't any bad reviews about those. I made the 2nd chocolate cake on Saturday afternoon. While waiting for it to cool, I made the mousse (making sure to chill the bowls and beaters, to watch for the thickening of the whipping creams, and to pour the gelatine while it's still hot into a bit of the cream mixture first before putting in the rest of the cream to prevent gelatine granules from forming). Then I realised that the coffee granules- which I was supposed to mix with hot water and add to the mousse- WEREN'T DISSOLVING. So I had a coffee paste, which was grainy with the crushed coffee beans. I was afraid of putting it into the mousse, in case it made the mousse grainy. So I ended up omitting that. I had to omit the coffee liquer too because my housemate (whom I'm making the cake for) is Muslim. Once everything was mixed, we found the mousse rather soft and liquidy, so I stuck my beaters in fearlessly and beat for another minute or so. LUCKILY the mousse didn't turn into butter and water, but harden up into a nice, dense foam-like consistency. Whew. The cake turned out very thin, so we couldn't only cut it into 2. I spread the mousse on, and left it in the fridge to chill over dinner. After dinner, I made the ganache. The Impatient Me left it to cool for a while, before immediately spreading it over the cake. BAD IDEA. Apparently ganache, after it's cooled down and left to stand, will thicken up, making it easier to drizzle and spread over the cake. Aunty Yochana didn't mention this (she simply said to wait for it to cool down) so I had a super difficult time ganache-ing the cake initially because it was dripping all over the place. It was only halfway through that I realised it was thickening up and becoming more spreadable. Wth. Aunty Yochana is NOT a thorough recipe writer, and even some of her readers commented that her recipes are not for beginners. So the cake was finally done! Yay!

How the cake looks like inside. Haha, nothing compared to the one Aunty Yochana put up on her blog.

The cake met with positive reviews, with one of them single-handedly eating almost half of it by himself over the course of 3 days. They forced some down on me but I thought it didn't taste as fantastic as what they were saying (I never eat my own baking). And yesterday, my other housemate finished the (stale) chocolate cake #1 even though it was rock solid because she likes to eat hard things.

I think my goal for chocolate banana mousse cake is to make one that's as good as Awfully Chocolate's one, but I've no luck searching for recipes anywhere. I only used Aunty Yochana's recipe because no other website had a recipe for this sort of cake. Hopefully the next time I make this cake, it'll be waaayyyy better!:)

2011-08-13T12:25:00.000+08:00

Meeting up with my fellow council exco-excos last Monday opened up a box of memories that I would much preferred to have kept shut and hidden away in a dark corner of my mind. These are memories that remind me of a year worth of experiences that had shaped me to become most of what I am today, and unfortunately not in all ways good. Council for me was like the world's worst roller coaster- some ups but mostly downs. And when I went home that night, I thought about these people who shared that one eventful year with me. I switched on my laptop, and inserted in my thumbdrive that contains all my council files. Everything. I went through each file one by one. Some were ordinary stuffs like a powerpoint on how to get reimbursed, while others were 'top-secret' ones, like which councilors had gotten demerit points and for what. There were pictures too, loads of them, from my council campaigning period till the 42nd SC's investiture.So much memories.

I don't think I've ever spoken much about my council experience, simply because once it was over, I didn't really wanted to relive it. Thinking back, I had a good start- I got the treasurer post which I wanted, I had a great comm, and I even got the ad-hoc of my choice, Grad Night. I was really quite excited about council. And I don't really remember when, but then it all started going downhill.

Firstly, I had to deal with snide comments everyday about my weight from the guy councilors. It didn't really bother me at first, then it started getting to my self-esteem. Quality gems include "Don't jump down from the stage, you'll cause an earthquake" to "Eh you sure you can squeeze in between these 2 cars, you're so fat" to the classic "Why you eat so much, no wonder you're so fat". (Regarding the last comment, I will dedicate one whole post one day to it.) So I started isolating myself away from these people, which didn't do me any favours because I was always seeing them at council events, and getting away from them meant either not attending council events or leaving early sometimes. I started getting depressed, about both my weight and school work which suffered a hell lot from the amount of time I was putting into council. There were days when I just ate one granola bar for the whole day. At my lightest I was 54kg, down from my original 64kg when I entered JC, but the average Singaporean girl of my height (1.61m) was like 49kg or something, so I was still considered fat. During my grad night ad-hoc (which was the seniors' grad night), I went wearing a bubble dress. Sartorially-speaking it wasn't the best fashion choice, but it also wasn't an excuse for all those so-called 'warriors' to start commenting on how fat I looked, and why I shouldn't ever wear bubble dresses. And I think slowly, over the year, my self-esteem plummeted to an all-life low. That greatly affected my council performance, which is my second reason for a sucky council experience.

I daresay I was good councilor at the start. I did my work diligently, I helped out for many events. There was a steep learning curve initially but I would say I picked up the basic skills at a relatively fast pace. Then all the figure-bashing came into place, and my year-end results were the worst results I've ever scored in my entire life- a sea of 'E's, 'S's and 'U's. And struggling with all these problems affected my council performance, because I cut down on my time spent on council activities and attempted to refocus on my studies, to pull my grades up. And that resulted in me getting 2 demerit points, from one of the bitchiest, pettiest and most childish teachers I've ever had the misfortune to come across in my life. A simple miscommunication resulted in one of these points, and the insufficient amount of time and effort I was putting into council resulted in the other. So I practically spent the second half of my council term trying to earn these 2 points back.

The third reason I had such a terrible council experience was because I had a terrible teacher-in-charge. Remember the bitchy, petty and childish teacher I was talking about from 5 lines ago? Well, this is the male version. There were times when he acted so unreasonable, I wanted to just snap back at him. Case in point: He said I was not helping out enough at events, and said how I should follow the example set by "good councilors" ABC and XYZ (names obviously censored) who help out "so much at events by carrying chairs". WALAO LIKE THAT ALSO CAN! I'm the one who has to arrange the budget of these events, make sure the councilors do not overspend, and get these councilors reimbursed for whatever items they paid for using their own money. If I am not there carrying chairs, does that mean I'm not doing anything? And yes, I often don't stay late helping out, because my parents set a 12am curfew for me, but if simply being there and doing these shitty jobs is what constitutes a good councilor, then I really have nothing to say. These 2 said councilors are always around helping out carrying chairs and doing 'saikang', or shitty jobs, and their exuberant personalities mean they cannot be missed, and perhaps that's why it seems like they're doing so much more than others. I have to concede while I do stay back to blow balloons or whatnots before an event, I usually don't stay till late, perhaps leaving at 11pm or so. BUT what really made me mad was this one particular incident. He decided to organise a council retreat, and because my mother worked in the travel business, he asked my mother to plan the itinerary, and come up with the price. But because the total bill came over 3000 dollars, we had to go through the online balloting system. He assured my mother that all would be fine and that he would take my mother's deal. None of us expected another travel agency to also bid for the deal, and to offer a lower price than my mother's. So naturally, this SOB had no choice but to give the deal to the other travel agency, because the school was sponsoring part of the trip and he had to choose the cheaper price or he'll have to answer to the principal. No one blames him for his decision, least not my mother because she understood that this was a fair bidding system, but what made me furious was the fact that he didn't even give a word of thanks to my mother for her (wasted) time. He simply told me to tell my mother not to continue booking, because someone else had offered a better deal. He had been on the phone with my mother quite a few times to discuss the trip, and he even told her that she could start booking the chalets because the trip was more or less finalised already. We weren't expecting much, but a call to my mother to apologise for her wasted time and to say how he never expected things to turn out this way etc. would have been just fine. This may be a business deal, but you are dealing with your student's mother- a little personal touch is somewhat required, you know. This is not a faceless travel agent you're working with. In the end, it was one of the exco-excos who took the initiative to snail-mail my mother a letter of gratitude for laying out the foundations of the trip, and to apologise for the way things turned out. I boycotted the trip- a huge negative sign in my direction- but I couldn't be bothered. My mother didn't deserve to be treated this way.

There were other things as well, like how the two mean-ass teachers would treat councilors they formed a bad first impression of harshly; how the female one would constantly flirt with the guy students. Council opened up my eyes alot, and made me grew up fast. The politics were nasty, the back-stabbing and gossiping downright dirty and disgusting, but I learnt alot. It taught me what the real world out there was like, and how to deal with all these pitiful excuses of human beings, and at the same time, showed me that real Samaritans do exist. I don't ever want to relive the council experience, but I'm glad I went through it.

Some may think I'm overly sensitive and dramatizing many events, but I assure you, everything I've said is true. I suppose the reason I've finally decided to open up about this is that I'm ready to move on. I'm not going to bear any more grudges against anyone and I won't hate anyone anymore. Confronting the hurt for one last time made me realised that I'm much stronger now, and I'm not going to allow my JC experiences from shadowing my future ones.

2011-08-05T00:59:00.000+08:00

The reason I've been rejecting my friends' invitations to go out the past week is because of this: I'M HAVING A VERY BAD BREAKOUT. It's concentrated on the area below my chin and at the sides of my chin (both wtf) and aside from making me socially introverted, the breakout has also made me moody and depressed. I attribute it to my incoming period and the hormonal imbalance that it never fails to cause. So it's not that I don't want to go out with you guys, I'm just not in the right mood to do so.

I feel like such a spoiled, unappreciative brat of a friend- with me being away and all, I ought to spend more time hanging out with people I get to see only 3 months out of every year. And yet, this past 2 weeks have been sooo bad for me. I feel so emotionally charged, and it's all the bad emotions that's hyped up. The cakes that I baked the past week also reflect my down state- they didn't turn out as well as they usually do.

To cheer myself up, I've been looking at pretty things, in particular, pretty houses. Actually, these houses aren't just pretty- they're drop-dead gorgeous. Stunningly, breathtakingly beautiful. I literally gawked at my laptop screen. I'm a sucker for old European, Mediterranean and British Colonial architecture and interior designs, as well as country-styled/farmhouse ones. And it seems that the world is filled with people who owned my dream house(s). Sadded:(

My parents have agreed that, within the next 2-3 years, we will move to a new house. Our current house is surrounded with awful and snobbish neighbours; the house is 4-storied high with 3 flights of stairs which my rheumatoid arthritic mother has problems climbing up and down with; the house is getting old and problems such as water heater breakdown is cropping up; and because inflation has resulted in our house value increasing a modest amount, my father is considering selling it soon. Of course, all these planning are still in the early stages, but we are adamant to move out soon because my mother doesn't really like the neighbourhood. So now, I pray that my father's business will do exceedingly well so that we can have sufficient money to move into a new house.

I think I've subconsciously begin to design how my bedroom would look like already. Should I go for country, or my beloved Venetian, or perhaps vintage French? I've realised that I like rooms with characters, not simply some modern-looking schtick (which actually is also a sort of character, as I'm beginning to realise haha). But I'm still counting my chickens before they hatch- if my father gives me a renovation budget of like 1K or something only, I'll be hard-pressed to even afford authentic Venetian blinds, let alone a whole room!

2011-07-09T17:10:00.001+08:00

I'm halfway through my summer holidays and I can honestly say that I've accomplished nothing much at all. It's amazing how time flies when you are doing nothing at all. My brain's happily rotting, and my father grew so concerned over my state of inactivity (both physically AND mentally) that he asked me if I can still study when I go back to Ireland. Er hello Daddy, I spent 9 months last year rotting at home and yet I still managed to survive one year of med school, I think I should be fine lah.

And speaking of med school, Year Two looms ahead in 2 months time. I can't believe it- I'm 1/5 on my way to becoming a doctor! And there I was all those years, dreaming about becoming a doctor, wondering if I can scrape the grades to enter med school.

I don't want to become just another run-of-the-mill doctor. I hope that I will never become sick of my job, that I will continue to love being a doctor. So many times I've seen doctors in the public hospitals during my attachments there moaning and complaining about their professional lives and urging people to NOT join the medical profession. Who's to say I won't become like that in the future? But I sincerely hope I will NEVER become like that, that I will continuously be enthusiastic and passionate about what I do.

If I love what I do, I'll never have to work a day in my life.

2011-06-24T23:40:00.000+08:00

Happy day again!:) My brother booked out today for the weekend and he announced that he got Best Trainee Award!!! I'm so proud of him. His POP is next Thursday, and though I can't go, I'll be proud of him from home.

Congratulations, Fat Boy!:)

2011-06-24T01:01:00.000+08:00

MY FIRST YEAR RESULTS ARE OUTTTTT!:) Mad happy cause I got 1st class honours!!! I shouldn't really feel so happy because it's only for Year One and I barely scrapped through to get 1st class (I got 72.05; >70 is 1st class) but STILL! I can graduate from med school saying I got 1st class in one year AT LEAST (if I never get 1st class again, which I hope not!).

So thankful for my results, considering all the shit I went through during my exam period. And worrying about all my personal problems. Thank you, Lord! Thank you for helping me through first year of med school, thank you for letting me meet such wonderful course mates, thank you for giving me such lovely memories to remember throughout my life. I'm so glad I reconnected with God over the past year thanks to regular church-going and cell group meetings. Faith really helped me pull through the past 9 months.

Off to bed now, it's past 1am now! Happy girl:D

2011-06-12T01:55:00.002+08:00

I happened to chance upon the Desiderata (latin for "desired things") one day, quite by accident. I don't really remember the exact details, but I do remember that I wanted to search for something else and then- lo and behold!- it popped up in the search engine. Through sheer curiosity I clicked on it, and how grateful I am!

The Desiderata is a 1927 prose poem by American writer Max Ehrmann, and it is widely used in a devotional because it talks about how one should live his life. It's neither pushy nor condescending, but instead, in a gentle tone much like how a mother would speak to her child, reminds one to "be on good terms with all persons", "listen to others, even the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story", and ultimately, to "be yourself". The poem ends with a beautiful (half) stanza: "With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world."

The poem spoke volumes to me, and I strive each day to live by it. I truly think Max Ehrmann has, in this poem, captured the true essence of what it means to live. I've reproduced it below for your viewing ease- I hope you'll enjoy it as much as I did.

Desiderata by Max Ehrmann

Go placidly amid the noise and haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.

As far as possible without surrender
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons,
they are vexations to the spirit.

If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain or bitter;
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.
Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs;
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals;
and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself.
Especially, do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love;
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment
it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe,
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be,
and whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful.
Strive to be happy.

2011-06-07T01:54:00.002+08:00

Cutest emoticon ever:

╭∩╮ （︶︿︶） ╭∩╮

I think I like it cause it has a bo chup face. I wish I can be bo chup about certain things in my life.

2011-06-05T22:34:00.001+08:00

" I need a favour from you. I want you to help me tell him that I like him. "

" Wait...what?!! Why the sudden decision to let him know that you like him? "

" I wanted to give up on him. But then I saw how much that bitch likes him. I'm not going to lose him to someone like that bitch. I'm going to fight for him. "

2011-05-30T01:01:00.001+08:00

So I'm back home for the summer!:) Just arrived 2 days ago- the flight back wasn't as bad as I expected. The airplane food was kind of blah thoug- I seem to recall better quality fare on my flight to Galway last year.

Cruising down the streets of Singapore, walking around my house, looking at my stuffs- I keep getting this strange feeling of familiarity, like I never left this place at all, as though I've just seen all these yesterday. Yet I know it's been 9 months since I've seen these stuffs. It feels as though my sense of time had become warped. It's such an odd feeling, mind you.

The morning after I touched down, my brother brought me to NEX (some new mega shopping centre near my house) to watch the newest Pirates of the Caribbean. I've never watched a single POTC before, never understanding the hype surrounding it, but that day I fell in love with the franchise. The movie was good (in my terms) and now I wanna watch all the POTC movies!

My sister's taking her Chinese O-levels tomorrow, I pray God grants her favour to do well. She's been super hardworking this whole year and achieving grades she always thought was impossible for her to achieve (A2 in Add maths from someone who got C for PSLE maths and an average of C5 for maths her whole sec sch life!!!) I'm mighty proud of her, and whatever grades she gets in the end, I know she had done her best and that's all that matters. Hope God will bless her!

I'm going to Malaysia this whole week, wheeeee:) miss everybody back there and of course, the food:) though I will have to be mindful of what I eat, I've gained so much weight since the start of this year that I wanna die:( have to use this summer to lose some (or hopefully ALL) of the excess weight bleh!

Still jet-lagged after 2 days, haiz.

2011-05-12T23:59:00.000+08:00

ONE LAST PAPER TOMORROW!:))) Happiness! Then it's my Portugal/Spain summer holiday and then HOOMMMEEEE!

I'm so bored of studying that I decided to blog, but I didn't know what to write, so I decided I shall write about something very trivial!

I was out about town last Saturday and decided to pop by Boot's and I found these from Rimmel:

They were quite cheap (relatively, for a brand like Rimmel) so I decided to buy them on a whim. I painted my nails on Sunday while waiting for my laundry to finish. AND THESE ARE HOW MY NAILS LOOK LIKE TODAY, AFTER 5 DAYS:

Ignore my ugly feet and toes please and just look at the colour of the nails!

The colour was still so bright and vivid and NO CHIPPING!!! This, even after I spent Tuesday walking about town for like 2 hours, and Wednesday walking to suss out a new house (total journey time for that: approx 45 minutes). I was wearing ballet flats on both occasions too, NO SOCKS. On second look the photo doesn't really do the nail polish and top coat justice, because the colour is really chio in real life! And the chipping durability is awesome, what you think is chipping in the picture is really just my lousy nail-painting skills.

I'm super impressed by the durability of the nail polish! Or maybe it's the top coat that is good. But either way, I am still loving how gorgeous my toenails are! All my life, I've been making do with those cheap HK or China made nail polishes that you can get from the pasar malam or HDB beauty shops for around 1 sing dollar per bottle, and those chip instantly like the next day, and the colour also isn't so gem-like and vivid. You really get what you pay for in terms of nail polish quality!

I'm converted. No more cheap and lousy nail polishes for me anymore!!!

P.S. This is not an advertorial. Though I wish it is, then can get sponsored more Rimmel nail polishes haha (:

2011-05-01T06:02:00.001+08:00

Another drawing for Chris! It's Jessica Rabbit again! I think I only draw her cause she's the easiest babe to draw. This is uncomplete though- I haven't added in her cleavage yet, and Geraldine coloured her hair afterwards, so the final drawing looks much better than this! FYI, Chris is also a huge tennis fan, hence the racket in her left hand. It was supposed to be a whip. Will take a pic of it on Sunday night (when we have his surprise party!) if I can!

I chiong-ed the entire Sweet Valley Confidential book this afternoon, and was sorely disappointed!:( There were loads of discrepancies in this book, e.g. Lila Fowler's father is GEORGE, not RICHARD; at the start of the book they said that Jeffrey French was married (Jessica was talking to his WIFE) and then in the end he is apparently "still unmarried and unattached" lololol. And Enid Rollins is apparently a gynae now, at the age of 27. HELLO?!! No ordinary doctor has ever become a full-fledged consultant and owns a private practice by the mere age of TWENTY SEVEN!!! Not least an American who has to go through GRAD SCHOOL. You have to complete your residency first, then internship, then SHO, registrar- I rest my case. Also, Francine Pascal, for gawdknowswhatreasons, gave complete makeovers to some of the characters' personalities (Elizabeth and casual sex?!! Class clown Winston Egbert turns into a complete asshole and dies??! Jessica falling for Todd?!!) And Lila Fowler hardly makes an appearance in this book- no role whatsoever, this is blasphemy, I'm telling you!

Francine Pascal needs to re-write this whole book, or better yet, get one of the ghostwriters on her team to do the job. While I appreciate that FP has finally decided to personally dole out a book, I'm incredibly disappointed by her- and for that matter, her whole team's- lack of effort to take note of the details of SV to ensure continuity in the book. Screwing up something as simple as Mr Fowler's name is NOT acceptable in any way. Jeffrey French from married man to unmarried man within the course of the book WITHOUT any explanation whatsoever- wtf was the editorial team doing seriously??!

But since I cannot do anything about this now anyway- the book's published, the storyline's set- I'll write my own story about what happens ten years later, when everybody's 37 years old!!! Will do that in another post, have to go study now @#(*@^)!*

2011-04-30T07:32:00.002+08:00

Been watching the Royal Wedding on TV, and getting more and more jealous as I watch it. Diamond tiara, horse drawn carriage, Prince Charming... I want a Royal Wedding too! Apparently Europe has several monarchies (albeit smaller ones) still around- shall take advantage of my 5 years here to sniff my Prince out hahaha.

Went mad shopping in town today- I think I must have spent close to 200 euros. And I took an impulse walk into Eason's and GUESS WHAT I FOUND!!!!

..............................

It was 9.25 euros, damn ex, but it's Sweet Valley!!! 10 years on!!! I haven't read it yet, but as any other normal reader I flipped to the back of the book to read the ending and there were quite a few huge shockers! Will tell you more about them when I've finished the book, but I think only SV readers will know what I'm talking about.

Super tired now, after chiong-ing for renal last night. Chris' birthday is this Sunday, we are planning a surprise for him! Geraldine bought his present and a card for him today. And since Chris is so horny, I decided to draw him a sexy babe:

Jessica Rabbit! Of "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" fame. Chrissy-poo is the most manja nickname I could manipulate from his name haha.

Okay, going to watch Big Bang Theory now, fastpasstv finally uploaded episode 21!!! I waited for almost a month for it!

2011-04-29T00:11:00.003+08:00

ONE MORE MONTH AND I'M HOME:)

Renal finals tomorrow, why am I still blogging!!! Mad sian now of studying.

If my daddy sees this, he'll kill me.

2011-04-27T05:41:00.001+08:00

@Amy Lyn: I wonder which posting you are talking about haha:) anyway, thanks for the compliment!
@Talia: Hey girl, glad you enjoy my blog so much! Your comment really made my day:)

I'm going to change my blog template soon- blogger has come up with lots of nice, new ones, so much better than what they used to have. And you can customise alot of it to your own liking, without having to worry about all the html shit which techo-noobs like me have trouble dealing with.

Saw this great picture today:

I'm facing so many personal struggles now that sometimes, I wonder where to get motivation from to keep fighting. And in my darkest hours, it sometimes feels like even the Lord isn't there for me (which is silly because He is always there). Don't you find it difficult sometimes to even trust and believe in God's will? Even when you know He is always watching over you and doing things for the best of your interests, you'll sometimes wonder why He isn't helping you to conquer this battle. And that's where the above picture with its lovely quote comes in. God has equipped you with the necessary 'weapons' to fight whatever wars that are raging in your life right now. He isn't helping because he doesn't need to. You have it in you to WIN. And there is no LOSING when God is there- your perceived failures are in fact, BLESSINGS in disguise. And that's what will make you a stronger person.

Saying all these is so easy- I often have to struggle to remember them myself.

We can't see the future- we can only comprehend the present and ponder the past, and that's why we can only place our complete trust in Him, that all things will work out well in the end.

This blog post may be too pro-Christianity for some people, but I choose to seek God for my source of motivation. Motivation abounds everywhere, and different sources work for different people, but most importantly, find one that works for you, that will never falter in its purpose. And for the athetists and agnostics amongst my readers, I share with you this quote that is my wallpaper right now:

2011-04-22T22:01:00.001+08:00

So our crazy Dunaras decided, NO! Dunaras test was not enough to fuck up our wireless connection, it better fuck it up more, so up came Dan's Network!

FUCK YOU DAN, whoever you are. Because of you, my skype afternoons with my parents often degenerate rapidly into frustration hell. Grrrrr. I take forever to load web pages sometimes, I can't download torrents, and please not let me remind you of my skype connection.

Anyway, onto a lighter topic.

The Portugal/Spain Summer Holidays 2011 tour group came together for the first time last night to discuss our trip. I finally managed to book ALL the accomodation! *proud of self haha* Hopefully they will turn out good. We are going to watch a bullfight too!:) so exciting. I can't wait to eat the food there- I love mediterranean cuisine!

Home in slightly more than a month- looking forward to it:) I can't wait to eat all my lovely local delights. I am soooooo gonna grow fatter than I'm already now.

P.S. I dunno who you are Aifa, but MORNING!:)

2011-04-18T23:13:00.002+08:00

Today on skype, my mother told me an interesting bit of news from home. My younger sister had (dunno what she was doing at that time though) swore aloud, "FUCK!" My younger brother heard her and of course, being the big mouth that he is haha, went to casually let slip to my mother about it. My shocked mommy went to berate my sister, admonishing her for swearing, while my brother the hypocritical two-faced one turned around and said, "Aiyah, why you so shocked, she scold me also use fuck everytime what." which of course, only made matters worse.

Awwwww my lil sister is growing up! But just as I was basking in the warm feeling of knowing that my baby sister wasn't a baby anymore, my mother continued, "She say you also always use fuck."

WHAT THE FUCK?!!!

Now okay, even though I admit that I use the word fuck, I use it only for 2 occasions: in my blog writings and in my thoughts. I NEVER SAY FUCK TO ANYONE. Not in arguments, not in complaints, and definitely not in daily conversations. The worst swear word I say aloud is SHIT. As furious as anyone can make me, even though in my mind I go "KAN NI NA you fucking bitch/bastard, how the fuck dare you do this kind of stupid fucking thing where the fuck is your stupid fucking brain", out loud I will say "What the hell! Why you do this kind of thing?!! Aiyah, haiz, never mind lah..." *ZOMG damn proud of my internal self-censor*

Anyways, off topic already, after my sister so blatantly told such a HUMONGOUS lie to my mother about me to redeem herself, I got abit mad at her and didn't want to speak to her on skype. I told my mother that I NEVER EVER used the word fuck in front of her, she probably picked it up from my brother (though that I didn't tell mommy cause I don't tattle on my siblings one okay). Luckily my mother said, "I know, I remember you always like to swear 'idiot' alot." Yes, Mommy.

I can't really remember where I picked up swearing (in my head), but I do know that I use it to vent out my frustrations against people and situations whom and where I cannot or don't want to openly speak up against. It's sort of my internal escape. So as vulgar as my thoughts are, my words are however incredibly PG. Maybe it's because I don't want to make any ememies, or I don't want people to think badly of me, but I can't bring myself to say the word fuck. Maybe I don't use the word because it doesn't go together with my sweet nature lol! Haha kiddinggggg.

2011-04-17T07:45:00.001+08:00

Terrence and I were chatting on skype and talking about this coming Tuesday's CVS finals, and I said that I needed all the good luck I needed, and he replied that I didn't need luck- I needed skills and GOD'S WISDOM. He went on to say that we should pray for everything, and when doing so, to have the right heart, ask for the right thing, and to not have any hidden sin- we'll have a powerful prayer then.

I bemoaned the fact that my nightly prayers always don't seem so powerful- I always pray for good health for my family and friends, happiness, world peace, a better world, and for God to bless all those who have helped me in one way or another. And Terrence replied, "You should also bless your enemies, people that you hate or do not like. They (enemies) will be happy, and God will be happy."

And it struck me, there and then, that I have never, in the 9 years since I started doing nightly prayers, asked God to BLESS MY ENEMIES. By "enemies" I mean people I do not like, or who have wronged me in one way or another. Have I, up till now, still never truly forgive those who have made me unhappy, or who have wronged me before? Deep down, do I still bear grudges for the way they treated me? Or am I just simply just a bitter person?

I would hate to think of myself as a bitter person, and when I think about it, I don't feel any contempt for those who have hurt me before. So why not bless these people too? From tonight, my enemies will be included in my prayers. I will ask God to bless them too.

"But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;" - Matthew 5:44

Thank you Terrence, for showing me how to become a better Christian!

2011-04-13T07:33:00.000+08:00

NABEH I can't deal with the stupid Dunaras internet anymore, it's pissing me off so bad. They keep doing some stupid "Dunaras test" thingy which fricking slows down the internet so that I either take forever to load something like facebook or I can't even access the internet. And the torrential downpour that seems to be happening every night makes the whole situation worse. It took me forever to load this blog post page, but I needed a place to vent my frustrations zomg. My vocab normally does not resemble one who was brought up in a longkang, but damnit, I'm super frustrated at the slow internet speed. THIS IS ELEVEN YEARS INTO THE 21ST CENTURY C'MON, I DON'T HAVE TO WAIT ONE MINUTE FOR MY WEB PAGE TO LOAD!!!

Dunno what shit you are testing.

2011-04-11T19:15:00.008+08:00

I'm addicted to 2 songs right now- Wang Lee Hom's "你不知道的事" and Taeyang's "Wedding Dress". You can check them out at the links below:

Wang Lee Hom's "你不知道的事"

and

Taeyang's "Wedding Dress"

So after slacking 10 days away, I'm back to my books:( hopefully I can do well for finals, but seeing as I screwed up the past 2 times I took the exam on this new format, my hopes aren't high.

HOLIDAYS QUICKLY COME!!!

I recently went to Tesco's and this drink below was on offer at 1.80 euros:

It's Apple Mint juice from Tymbark and I was intrigued by the flavour so I went ahead and bought it. And lo and behold, it tasted like COUGH SYRUP!!! Horrors! It's not bad a drink cause the taste of cough syrup isn't repelling, but I expected something refreshing and sweet. 1.75L more to go :X

2011-04-03T18:10:00.000+08:00

The silver lining in the black cloud that my computer created when it decided to break down on me last week is that I have become more daring in my technology endeavors. I downloaded free trials for AVG, Microsoft Office and I'm even attempting to download a torrent!!! It actually started but Dunaras blocked torrent downloads KNN so it's going very very very slowly >:/ I downloaded Photoshop but it was incomplete so I uninstalled it.

Anyways, the 6 of us went out on Friday to Kappa-ya for dinner and GUESS WHO WE SAWWWWW:) It's a certain somebody out with his on-agin-off-again girlfriend! They were obviously out on a secret date and didn't expect to see anyone familiar. When we walked into Kappa-ya and saw them, there was an awkward 2 seconds of silence and eyeballing. Luckily we were abit late for our 8pm reservation and they were just about to go, so the situation wasn't as bad as it could have been haha.

Less than 2 months before I go home!:)

2011-04-01T17:22:00.005+08:00

My laptop broke down last Friday, and I spent 4 days without the use of a computer (and survived hahaha). I almost gave up hope on it ever being repaired- I was too cheap to go to the pros and had my senior CR try and fix it for me. Even then he was skeptical about its success, so I readied myself for 2 months without a laptop until I went back to Singapore where I can get it fix at a Sony dealer for free under warranty (told you I was cheap).

THEN CR GOT IT FIXED.

Haha HAPPINESSSSSSS:))) I'm so grateful to him, he even cycled to Dunaras at 2am to drop it off at Terrence's place. Maybe to him these actions mean nothing, but to me, the effort made to help me meant a lot to me, and irregardless of what stuffs people here have been saying about him, to me at least, he's been a good friend!:)

Anyways..... SPRING IS OFFICIALLY HERE!:D

Gorgeousness:) pictures taken from around school!

2011-03-21T05:29:00.005+08:00

All you people who love food should really go check out http://eat-all-you-can.tumblr.com; it's like food porn max on that website haha.

And speaking of people who love food, this reminded me of something that happened over the weekend. I won't divulge details, but I want to say this: To all you people who have small appetites and are in the (rather annoying) habit of picking at your meal and finding it customary to leave pieces of food on your plate after each meal, please shut your fucking mouth up whenever you dine with someone who can finish her burger and chips and stop going on about how big the portions are (when "big portion" is clearly a relative thing) and how fucking AMAZED you are that she can actually finish the whole damn plate. What the hell are you trying to prove with your stupid tirade?!! Yah, you are a skinny bitch, I'm the fat chick cause I have a big appetite. That bitch totally ruined what would otherwise have been a lovely night out in town grrr.

2011-03-15T04:32:00.004+08:00

I love using the handicapped toilets, i.e. the toilets meant for handicapped people. Quite apart from the fact that they are almost always cleaner, bigger (which means you don't have to do some sort of contortionist stunt while reaching for the toilet paper or to flush) and have the sink just right next to the toilet bowl, they are also- for lack of a better word- more PRIVATE. In other words, you can do just about anything and NO ONE (not unless suay suay someone is walking by) KNOWS. You can pee, shit and fart without having to worry about whether the person in the cubicle next to yours will silently snigger and then tell the whole world later how they "heard the person in the toilet next door fart until damn loud". You can also make a phone call without other people eavesdropping on the conversation, or worse, having to whisper on the phone and having whoever you are talking you know you are in the toilet because of the tell-tale echo all toilets seem to have (and also because you are whispering). And you can even have sex!

LIKE THIS LOL!

There's even space for you to take a photo of you and your unborn child in the toilet!

Oh yeah, handicapped toilets rawwkkk.

2011-02-28T22:51:00.001+08:00

PARIS NEXT WEEEEK!!!:D I'm so excited! I've been to Paris before, but I don't mind going there again- you can never have too much Paris!

Okay, maybe you can...

It'll be 7 of us going and we're gonna squeeze into a mini-apartment which is located on a sex street lol! Anticipating the fun yeah!:D

2011-02-26T21:31:00.004+08:00

I dunno if you can see this clearly, but I completed NIH's Web-based training course “Protecting Human Research Participants”! And I did pretty well, if I do say so myself:)

Last night I learnt how to play HK mahjong! And it's surprisingly fun. I'm still a noob though- there's so many tactics to learn, and I'm still unclear about all the "pong" and "hu" things.

2011-02-17T01:07:00.004+08:00

It happened again to me this afternoon. Massive Binge-ing. I complusively consumed shitloads of Oreos and SkyFlakes, totalling approximatey 1000 calories. Even when I was not hungry. Even when my mind kept screaming, "STOP FUCKING EATING!!!" My body refused to stop.

I was so afraid; it felt like there were 2 persons in me, one controlling my mind and the other, my body. As the mountain of snack wrappers piled up beside me, I kept forcing myself to take a look at how much I'd consumed and to stop eating. And I only stopped when I decided to write this blog entry, to focus my attention elsewhere.

There's no point in wallowing in the guilt of the calories- what's done been done, and I'm not one to resort to bulimic means to try and lower the increased figures on my daily calorie counter. But it highlighted something painful to me, and which I suppose is time for me to confront: my love-hate relationship with food.

Throughout my life, I was never thin. I was never fat fat either- my BMI at its highest was ALMOST overweight only. I was 1.61m and 64kg, a BMI of 24.7 (overweight is 25- 29.9). So I suppose you could say that I was chubby. But when you are surrounded by skinny, small-sized Asian girls, the comparison is drastic. It didn't help that I had big boobs, a generous serving of thighs and arse, and a face that packed on the pounds first before the rest of my body got its share.

Still, I was contended with my body. I put on the weight when I was in my early adolescent (14kg in 2 years!) and till I was 17, I never felt compelled to do anything about my body size even though there were occasions that I wished I was skinner. My love-hate relationship with food already started then, but it wasn't anything serious. My friends in secondary school never found my weight or size a problem- they called me 'curvy' and told me I was lucky I could fill out corsets generously. So my body size was not an issue to me back then.

Until I went to JC.

JC was supposed to promise me a better time- I was out of a convent school, there were boys around, and it was just 2 years. But it rapidly degenerated into hell for me. Amongst all the shit that happened, one of them was that I got teased and bullied every single day about my weight. Even after I lost 5kg, I was still considered "fat" and "obese". A particular group of guys were at the heart of all the jokes about my weight, and they would say stuffs like, "Are you sure you can squeeze through those cars, you are so OBESE.", "You better not jump down from the stage, wait an earthquake will happen!", "You shouldn't eat, you are already so FAT!", "You shouldn't wear such a short dress, you are so FAT." and "I think for you, size XL lah." (even though I eventually wore a size M) I dieted strictly and lost weight till I was 53kg, but eventually I put back 5kg during my A-Levels when I was so stressed I ate non-stop while studying to keep myself awake and for that sugar high.

And I think till now, 2 years on, I still remain scarred by them. Whenever I walk between 2 cars, I'm reminded of them. I hate dresses because of them. I'm obsessed with squeezing into the smallest size I can squeeze into, because of them. I hate myself for being this way, and I'm trying to change my ways.

Sometimes, I see a chubby girl with her boyfriend, and I think to myself, "Will I ever find a guy who can love my body just the way it is?"

2011-01-18T17:17:00.002+08:00

Thanks God for a slack 2nd sem:) I haven't been studying much since I came back from my Christmas holidays exactly one week ago. I hope I won't have to suffer the consequences of this week's worth of fun.

It was my birthday over the weekend!:))) I'm officially TWO-O now, no more a teenager! And as I start a new decade of my life, I've spent some time reflecting on the past 2 decades that I've lived through (though granted that I hardly remembered much from the first haha). And I'm so thankful to the Lord for my life. I can wish to be smarter, prettier, richer and all that, but I've been so richly blessed in my life, I can't ask for more without sounding greedy. What do I lack that isn't superficial?! I have a wonderful, supportive family, amazing friends; I'm on my way to becoming a doctor, which was what I wanted to be since I was 8; and I have the Lord in my life. I really am so truly blessed.

Today, I read a poem on facebook posted by some Malaysian Muslim friends. You can see it here:

http://www.iluvislam.com/karya/puisi-kreatif/1498.html?sms_ss=facebook&at_xt=4d34cc2f0364066a%2C0

And even though it's meant for Muslim girls, I still found the poem very meaningful.

2010-12-06T04:42:00.004+08:00

This is such random timing, but while studying for finals, I suddenly remembered the existence of my blog, and proceeded promptly to search for it (I always forget my blog address haha). And reading back my past entries made me smile. It made me realise just how far I've come, how much I've been through.

I've been in Galway for almost 3 months now! Settling in was difficult for me- all the admin shit, homesickness and basically just trying to survive by myself in this place frustrated me and made me depressed. But after about a month, it got better and now I can confidently say that I'm pretty much fine by myself here! I relish the independence this whole experience is giving me, but at the same time, I miss my parents babying me in my life. I shouldn't be saying this- I'M TURNING 20 SOON!- but I guess a part of me will always be a child, still manja-ing my Mummy and Daddy.

When I first arrived in Galway, I never expected myself to still get culture-shocked. I mean, I went on a 'preparatory' summer holiday to UK and France- the European lifestyle shouldn't surprise me much. But the shock still came- the people's faces, their lifestyle, their idea of fun (drinking and getting wasted), house parties etc.- it's all so different from what I'm used to. The lifestyles in Singapore and Malaysia are realllyyyy different.

Sometimes, I get food cravings. I will suddenly miss all the hawker foods, the Melaka foods, and then I'll go online, look at pictures of these foods, and visually satisfy them. So now I know just how much one can really miss Singapore/Malaysia food. My mother laughs at me over Skype- she always goes, "See, I told you you will miss these foods one! You'll grow fat when you come back hehe!" whenever I bemoan my cravings to her.

I've met lovely friends here, people who have made my settling in that much easier, and whom I feel so incredibly blessed to have met. I can hardly imagine my life now without them.

And now, the Christmas exams are impending- a reminder that (1) I have to get back to the books, and (2) I am almost halfway through 1st Year. It's amazing how fast time flies. In less than 2 weeks time, my nuclear family will fly to Ireland, to visit me and we'll holiday together:) I'm so excited at the prospect of seeing my family that I can't study well. I keep anticipating their visit. I miss them so, so much.

Here's to Monday, the 13th of December, 11.30am. I'll officially be done for 1st sem then.

2010-09-03T23:59:00.003+08:00

Remember my soft-shell crab craving from a few posts back?!! Well, I satisfied it last Tuesday!:) It was at a farewell lunch of sorts for me, organised by my mother's 2 best friends, Aunty Wai Leng and Aunty Casey. We had lunch at Ichiban Sushi at AMK Hub, courtesy of Aunty Casey. And I had the soft-shell crab and chicken in ginger sauce set meal!:) Yumsyumsyums. Then we went over to CoffeeKaki for after-meal drinks, this time courtesy of Aunty Wai Leng, and I had blueberry cheesecake too mmmmmmmm:) okay fatty fatty sighs:(

And last weekend was my farewell party with my father's side of the family, aka the SP family! My parents booked a house for the whole extended family in Kukup to celebrate my farewell. It was some sort of package thingy, with meals all included, and a ferry trip to see a nature reservoir and fishing farm included. It was so much fun!:D Maybe because of the lovely company. And William gorgor proposed to his girlfriend that night, in front of us all, by surprise! Like none of us knew about it beforehand, not even his own mother! Ahhhhhhh I'm gonna miss all of them D:

In less than a week's time, I'll be out of Singapore! I'm both excited and nervous at the same time. Excited because this whole thing represents a whole new chapter of my life- I'll be starting my life anew in a foreign land with foreign people; nervous because I'll be taking a giant leap out of my comfort zone, being in a new land without my family and friends with me.

It'll be hell of an adventure, I suppose.

I'm like, only 60% packed. And I leave in 6 days time. And I'm going to Melaka for a day trip on Wednesday still. Oh, the fun of it all!:D

I suppose since there's no turning back now, I have to soldier on forward! In a way, I find myself incredibly fortunate to be able to experience an overseas education. Not many people can afford an overseas education without a scholarship, and I think I'm very lucky my father's business picked up this year and generated enough income for him to be able to afford me a medicine education in an overseas university. I know I'm so lucky, and that's why I'm determined to make the most out of this opportunity given to me. I want to do well there, and graduate successfully. Whether I come back to Singapore or not, what I want to do after graduation is another matter altogether, but I just hope I can graduate successfully from university. And academics aside, I hope to do fun things there, things that I can't do in Singapore. I have no idea what at this point, but I'm not gonna go there and come back being the same old Mylene.

It's time for a new me, as I enter my twenties!

2010-08-11T14:45:00.002+08:00

I'm really going to miss Malaysia when I go to Galway. And by that I mean I'll miss my family there, and the food. I'll miss that kampung feeling Malaysia always gives me.

I"m a Melakan girl, I'm sure my friends would know that. And I'm lucky in that sense, because Melaka is so rich in culture and is such a foodies' haven. AND it's just a 3 hours drive from Singapore. Melaka is not so cosmopolitanised (is there such a word?!) like KL but has a nice balance between the old and the new. And there's no monsoon season too!:D

2010-08-06T17:22:00.003+08:00

Despicable Me was soooooooo good; I love the show so much. It's not even from the traditional animations powerhouses Pixar or Disney- it's from Universal Studios, and yet the graphics and all (I can't get too detailed- I don't know how haha) was good and even though I watched it in 2D, I still enjoyed it very much. Jaclyn was generous enough to loan us her Movie Money, so in the end,our 3 tickets cost like $6.50 woohoo~ And Joy brought gummy worms, Hello Panda and Sweet Peanuts so we saved on popcorn too haha.

BUT, like Dr Sheldon Cooper, I am a "Go to the movies without popcorn?! Listen to yourself..." kinda person- I love sweet popcorn. The unhealthy kind popped in saturated fat and coated generously with sweet, diabetes-inducing caramel.

Yeah, that's my favourite kind of popcorn.

I don't mind the air-popped kind- it's tastes light and doesn't leave your tummy feeling dense afterwards, unlike the sweet popcorn. But cinemas don't sell them, do they? And I HATE salty popcorn; I don't like salty things in general.

2010-08-06T00:04:00.004+08:00

OKAY I SPENT $270 ON SCHOOL BOOKS TODAY.

OMG.

I went to NUS Co-Op today to meet Shima, who had kindly agreed to lend me her NUS student discount card to purchase my med books. And even after the discount ($30!), the books still amounted to $270. Ohmytian. Med school is draining my family's finances dry. I'm gonna work hard to earn back the money, I swear. I shall slough at a public hospital till I'm about 30, then I shall open my own practice. That's the plan now- maybe I'll want to specialise or something, then it's HOSPITALS ALL THE WAY TILL I'M 40 then private practice. I die die also want to go private- must have the best of both worlds.

I had a lovely European holiday- went to Newcastle, London, Paris and Edinburgh. Two weeks of glorious holidaying- the only thing that brought me back was my family. I lovelovelove travelling and I think one of my life's goals is to travel as much as I possibly can on whatever budget and spare time that the Lord will grant me with. I hope to visit all the countries in the world!:D Someone please give me money to travel.

I came back to dump my books at home before dashing out to meet Joy and Jaclyn at 5pm at Bishan- we went to Dhoby Ghaut because Joy wanted to go to Daiso. Had Thai Express- I had the curried soft-shell crab thingie, which was yummy!:D Actually, to be honest here, I heart soft-shell crab, so I'm probably not being very objective here.

I REALLY LOVE SOFT-SHELL CRAB OKAY, despite its origins being so cruel and all (like the crabs are captured and cooked when they are at their most vulnerable) but it tastes so damn GOOD and CRUNCHY and the deep-fried batter is omgdelicious- I'm craving one as I write this right now.

Tell me those crabs didn't look good. I WANT ONE NOW.

It's like 12.32am in the morning, which means my soft-shell crab craving will have to go unsatisfied as of now. But considering that I just ate it for dinner, it should only be appropriate that I consume this artery-clogging, it-will-all-go-straight-to-the-thighs-kinda fatty food again only after one month. Oh dear Lord, the pitiful life of a woman. Why are all the delicious foods so bad for us?! Unfair world.

Okay, I seriously have to sleep now, I've a 10.40am movie date with Joy and Jaclyn tomorrow at Bishan. We are gonna watch Despicable Me! Yes, that movie with the iconic "IT'S SO FLUFFLY I'M GONNA DIE!!!" line.

Haha:)

2010-07-08T16:27:00.002+08:00

Ahhhhhhhhh Germany lost:( They didn't play well last night at all. YES, I did watch the match; I went to bed at 11pm and got my brother to call me up. It was pretty disappointing the way they played, but I suppose all the nerves got to them. It's alright, the team is still young! Save for my Ballack sobs. And I don't know if Klose will come back for Brazil 2014, seeing as he'll be 36 then. So now I'm rooting for Netherlands to win the World Cup!:) Spain is good, no doubt, but so is Netherlands! They've been the dark horse of this tournament, killing their opponents without much fanfare or hype. I hope they'll do well! And I hope Germany will get 3rd place too! Mueller will be back, so yeah, the chances are good.

I'll be leaving in 6 hours time! Nervous, excited hmmm. I just came back from a bout of last-minute mad shopping at Novena Square to get stuffs. I pray I don't forget anything!

Alright, this will reeaalllllyy be my last post before I come back. Arrivederci!:D

2010-07-07T22:40:00.008+08:00

I finally got around to taking some pictures of my laptop! Waaayyyy looooonnggg overdue, I know! Check out the lovely pixellated pattern thingy woo~

Haha okay, moving on...

Should I or should I not stay up to watch the Germany vs Spain match?!! It's at two freakiing thirty AM in the morning!:/ But seeing that I'm flying to UK tomorrow night, I suppose I can catch up on my beauty sleep on the airplane haha:) I'm so nervous because tonight is such a crucial match for Germany, and for Spain as well, but I'm an Alemaniac and I really hope Germany wins!

I'm so excited that I'll be gone for 2 weeks backpacking around the Euro region, but I'm kinda scared too, because I'll not be with my immediate family (I'm travelling with my Big Aunt and her friends) and backpacking means no nice hotels that I'm used to- it means living in dorms and hostels and having a common bathroom. Eeeks:S Okay, call me spoiled but I'm just reeaaally particular about bathrooms and the idea of a shared bathroom with strangers just doesn't appeal to me much. Guess I'll have to learn to survive out there! Another thing I'm very worried about is that I'll lose my bag, which contains my passport and money. OMG, I'll just die if I lose my bag! And these Euro countries are famous for their thefts and scams and whatnots- when I was in Italy, there was this whole group of gypsies who surrounded my uncle and tried to distract him while one of them attempted to cut his bag and take his stuffs. Scary much. I hope nothing bad will happen and ruin my maiden expedition to a foreign land!

That said, I still haven't finished my packing yet! Minute details are what's bothering me- have I forgotten to bring an umbrella, or perhaps my spectacles case, or eye-drops etc. I'm getting pretty absent-minded these days, what with me not having to study for the past half-year, so I'm really scared I reach there and am like, "What the *!(@^# I forgot my _________!"

So I guess this blog's gonna rot for the next 2 weeks or so, till I'm back and settled in and can actually find time to muse over what to write for a blog entry.

Arrivederci (:

2010-07-04T13:17:00.004+08:00

GERMANY WON!!!:DDD My brother and I were literally screaming in front of the laptop everytime they scored. We had to make do with some random Spanish channel which nobody watches and therefore we could get uninterrupted streaming. Germany was awesome and Michael Ballack looked so proud and happy and as handsome as ever:) And though I don't like to admit this, it's true that Germany's playing tactics are different and for the better now that Ballack's injured and unable to play, because he is really defensive-minded and wouldn't have approved of the fast-paced and quick-attacking game-playing tactics that Germany is employing now.

On the other hand, I'm quite pissed off at some people who have taken it into their responsibility to update people every 5 minutes on how the games was progressing, and actually dissing Argentina like they know shit about football. What was worse was that these people are those fans (if you can call them that) who support whichever football team is winning. So you get them saying how good Portugal is and dissing those teams that Portugal beat, then when Portugal lost to Spain they went on about how Spain is good and their new favourite and started dissing Portugal. Some freakin' loyalty you have. Alright, I understand that there are some people who have no favourites and just watch neutrally, but these persons above that I'm referring to are definitely NOT neutral watchers. They are just a bunch of idiots who jump on whatever bandwagon that seems to be winning the race.

That said, Argentina did NOT play a lousy game. They may have relied too heavily on the golden 3 strikers and completely left their defence open, a costly mistake which Germany exploited, but they put up a good fight. Argentina came through after a difficult qualifyiing campaign in which the whole world doubted that Maradona could even get the team in the final 32, and then when they started winning everyone was like, "Argentina is our new favourites to win the World Cup!" and now they lost to Germany and Germany suddenly becomes the "new favourites" and Maradona's being slammed suddenly. Why so double-faced?! For me, I applaud how Maradona instilled that sense of team-building into his team, how he made them play for the love and fun of the Beautiful Game. Granted that Argentina has their own faults too (terrible tempers, Maradona being too loud and proud), they however do NOT deserve all the shit people have been giving them.

In case people don't know, I'm an Alemaniac; been one since 2002. Argentina is my second favourite, and though yesterday's match was one I only hope to see in a semi-final or final, I was very happy that Germany won. The past 2 times they came very close to winning the World Cup, and in 2006 when they lost to Italy 0-2 in the semi-finals, I didn't watch the final because they weren't playing in it. So I'm really hoping they will win this time around, albeit without Ballack. That doesn't mean that I'm not sad that Argentina lost- I really wanted Maradona to succeed when the whole world was looking down on him. So I hope that he gets to stay on as Argentina's coach. He has achieved much more than what many have thought was possible.

2010-07-03T11:48:00.005+08:00

Haha because I'm too lazy to take photos of my new laptop and mouse, I went to google it and here they are! The pictures are not accurate- remember how I said that my laptop has a lovely pixellated pattern wherelse those online are plain? And my mouse has the same pattern as the one featured above, except that it is white in colour, not black.

So yay!:D

Excited for tonight's game! (:

2010-07-02T16:33:00.003+08:00

Poor England. I don't think they have recovered from losing so stupendously to Germany. Their national newspapers slammed the England football team so badly that I actually feel sorry for these arrogant, rich brutes.

World Cup break for the past few days, and which coincided with my completed Sims 3 download, so for the past few days, I've been in front of the laptop obsessively trying to reach the top of my career, getting married and making babies at the same time. Sims is SUPER ADDICTIVE. Anyone who plays it will know that time really flies when you are Sim-ing. I spent 5 hours straight playing it on Tuesday. The fact that I felt like crap ever since last week when I came down with sore throat and a nasty cough made me all the more determined to control someone else's life and make sure it's perfect for them. I guess that's the appeal of Sims- running someone else's life as you deem fit, as how you would like your own life to be. And if you are sadistically ruining theirs, you take comfort that the consequences of your evil intentions are borned by these characters and have no impact on your real-life whatsoever. I suppose in every Sim we create, there's perhaps the person that we aspire to be, or always wanted to be but under prevailing circumstances are unable to become. And if you are just creating a Sim to ruin, then I suppose you are using that character to live through all the evil in you that you can only unleashed in there, to bear the brunt of the risks and mistakes you would like to commit in your life but are afraid to for fear of bad consequences.

I luurrrvvveeee Sims. Been a fan since 2003 <3

2010-06-28T23:19:00.003+08:00

GERMANY!!! <3

Okay, so they lost to Serbia, but that was a fluke, and we know it, because they THRASHED England yesterday! :D 4-1! I was so happy! Even though it's bad for the English because they really wanted to try and win this World Cup, but who ask you to play so lousily in the group stage and let USA top the group! If not they would have played against Ghana, and most probably win, and Germany will still beat USA, and both sides advance to the quarter-finals.

That said, I applaud the Englishmen for a wonderful game yesterday, and like everyone out there, I believe Lampard's goal should have been allowed. Poor Lampard- 33 shots at goal and none in. Goal-line technnology= opening a Pandora's box; FIFA is dumb ttm mans.

So Germany meets my other fave, Argentina, who sailed through with a comfortable 3-1 win over Mexico! I'll be happy whichever side goes on, but it's so sad that they have to meet so darn early in the tournament. This is at least a semi-final-like match. But then again, Germany had to meet England in the knockout stages, and that sort of a match is also semi-final-like.

And we are not through with semi-final-like matches yet; Spain meets Portugal this Wednesday morning (Singapore time). But Spain is so poor thing; they have to meet either Portugal or Brazil either way whichever country tops Group G.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh this World Cup is turning out so unpredictable! Key events that prove this point, starting with the GOOD-sort:

#1: In what is only their second feature in the World Cup, the New Zealanders went home undefeated. All the more amazing when you remember that they lost all their group matches in their World Cup debut. So yay to you, Kiwis!:)

#2: That injury-time goal by Landon Donovan in that match against Algeria. Totally unexpected.

#3: Portugal scores 7-0 against North Korea. Seriously, SEVEN goals.

#4: Germany thrashes England 4-1. I'm being biased here, but seriously, no one would ever have predicted a score like this...

And now, for the BAD sort...

#1: 2006 World Cup runner-ups France draws 1 game, loses 2 games (one of which is SOUTH AFRICA lmao) and finishes bottom of their group.

#2: 2006 World Cup CHAMPIONS Italy draws 2 games (one of which is with New Zealand!) and loses to Slovakia and following in the footsteps of France, finishes bottom of their group.

HUMILIATING TTM.

#3: France loses to South Africa, Germany loses to Serbia, Italy loses to Slovakia, Spain loses to Switzerland.

#4: Lampard's goal that was not awarded thanks to FIFA's insistence in March on not pursuing research and experiments in goal-line technology, the assistant referee's cock-eye and the referee's quick and ultimately stupid decision to listen to the cock-eyed dude.

There'll be more as the World Cup progresses, but that's all I can think about up till now. Ahhhhhh I'm so glad I get to enjoy this World Cup; if I had been borned a year later, it's CTs for me now.

2010-06-14T13:25:00.005+08:00

Okay, I officially changed my blogskin yesterday!:) I like that it's simple and nice.

Aside from changing my 3 year old blogskin, yesterday marked a new "milestone" of sorts for me- I got a laptop of my own!:D It's a Sony Vaio E Series laptop in a a gorgeous shade of pearly-white. It was pretty much a spontaneous decision to buy it, but nonetheless, a good one!:) I don't have pictures of it now though, and those that I found on the internet show only a plain white cover, while mine has lovely, pixellated-looking one.

Okay, I'm off to watch Japan vs Cameroon now! I'm so proud of Germany; they beat Australia 4-0! Even though my Michael Ballack is not playing, nonetheless, I'm sure they'll do well!:)

2010-05-24T15:47:00.003+08:00

Imma gonna change blogskins soon; I'm getting tired of this one already. And if it wasn't for the fact that I don't know how to write a new template from start, I would love to create my own blogskin, cause I can't seem to find a nice, new one that is reflective of the person that I am today.

And I earned $96.80 within 2 days selling my cupcakes wheeeeeee! Though if you count net profit, it's probably only around $65 D:

2010-04-22T13:37:00.003+08:00

MY BLOG IS DEAD.

HAH.

I guess within the last 2 months since I last blogged, my life has changed very much. Perhaps the most life-changing one was that I was not even SHORTLISTED for NUS Med. Like wtf. I can say that now, but back on 1st April, I was depressed, disappointed, and angry at myself for being such a failure. In other words, BITTER. Everyone that I knew who wanted to do Med got shortlisted at the very least, along with some people who NEVER wanted to Med in the first place. And to make things worse, people I know with the same results as me got shortlisted, the Dentistry interviewers were like, "OHHHH why didn't you get shortlisted" and the Irish Med interviewer went, "How can you NOT get shortlisted?!!!"

Thanks, man. That totally made me feel better about myself.

But of course, once the tsunami of depression went away, it leaves behind a trail of acceptance. I guess I wasn't fated to be in YLL. Yet there still is a part of me that always goes, well if you had worked harder maybe you would have gotten that one stupid A and gotten shortlisted...

From any student's point of view, I guess I can say my results are not bad. Not the best, but nonetheless, acceptable. The Blemish will always be there, but at least it's in singular form, not plural. But knowing that many many many others achieved so much better grades than me makes me feel insignificant sometimes. I guess I didn't worked hard enough. I have been duly punished.

But looking on the bright side, I get a chance to study overseas:) It's VERY expensive, but I don't suppose you can put a monetary value on a dream, can you? I'm thankful that I have great parents who can support my studies financially (we are talking 500K here :S) and who have given me the blessings to pursue my dream. My parents were great last night while they were being interviewed by the Irish Med interviewer, and I hope *fingers crossed* that I can get into one of the med schools there. If not, then hopefully my ISAT results won't suck and one of the Aust med schools will want me.

On to happier (albeit trivial) things, I'm going to UK this July!:DDD Of course I'm excited; I'll be going to London, Scotland, Paris and maybe Ireland. Exciting!:) But I can't go to Japan as I wanted to in May; the Jap embassy refused to grant me my visa because they said that I didn't have any proof of air travel tickets and accomodation. I'm so sorry Geraldine, Audrey and Dilys:/ Maybe I will want to convert to a Singapore passport soon.

2010-02-21T13:12:00.002+08:00

Singapore has no CNY spirit:/ In previous years when studying occupied most of my mind, I never really took notice of the CNY festivities once I come back from Melaka, but this year, with my mind blissfully blank, I've started to notice the difference in the way Malaysia and Singapore celebrate such festive occasions.

In Malaysia, garish red lanterns and CNY banners are everywhere and it seems everyone is in the mood of celebration. Maybe because I live in a kampung, the mood is more vibrant, but I noticed even in Melaka Town, some semblance of CNY was in order even though most shops were closed for the Lunar New Year. It's like an atmosphere of CNY still lingered on. But the moment I reached Singapore, it was like whatever leftover CNY spirit that was there simply vanished. Dead blocks greeted me, and all around, Singaporeans were just going about their daily chores like it was just any other ordinary day. Save for the occasional red decorations hanging here and there, it seemed like Chinese New Year never happened in Singapore.

Maybe I'm wrong. After all, I did reach Singapore on the 3rd day of CNY, when festivities are dying down and school and work was starting the next day (i.e. prep time was in order). And, one may argue, it's not like Singapore never made the effort to celebrate the Lunar New Year. In the weeks preceding the festive occasion, shopping malls and supermarkets have been decked out in the customary red and gold decorations and touting CNY sales. Popular CNY songs replaced the ordinary pop soundtrack of shops. River Hongbao was one of the best it has been in years. Photos on Facebook show that Singaporeans still celebrate CNY with as much of a CNY spirit as one can possible muster.

But somehow, the feeling still doesn't seem right.

Anyway, I had a wonderful CNY, despite the fact that I broke out in hives due to some allergic reaction which I'm not aware of and came my period on New Year's eve. There was a fire which I took no part in its dousing because I was recording the entire footage:) I will learn my lesson and carry a videocam around with me nowadays because videos taken by digital cameras are just too sucky in quality.

I'm recuperating at home now, because my cutaneous mast cells still produce histamines occasionally and then my skin gets all red and blotchy and bumpy, not to mention terribly itchy. Surprisingly though, only my legs and butt gets affected, and occasionally my shoulders and back. The legs and butt are the worst though. My lips also became swollen on the eve, giving me those desirable lips collagen tries to imitate, and my face got all red and splotchy. Thankfully it got better as the day passed, so I didn't look like some diseased individual on the first day of the New Year. My mother tried some traditional method of rubbing pepper paste on the affected areas with a ginger, but it wasn't very effective.

I've been watching alot of Jap shows recently; I felt it was time to cool off my Super Junior addiction. Since Korea's so hot, and I never like liking something that alot of people like (makes me feel like a groupie, which I hate), I decided to go for the Japanese. Ooooh boy, no regrets, I awakened my love for Kenichi Matsuyama. I liked him in Sec 3 but then Leeteuk (and Kyuhyun and Siwon and...) came along and stole my heart, but now I've decided to maybe go back to Kenichi hehe. I watched Detroit Metal City (Rosa Kato's so pretty!) and he's so cute in it! And I watched the Jap version of BOF and the movie too haha, but Jun Matsumoto's not my kind of guy, though he's hot, I'll admit. Gonna go Jap hot guys hunting soon; I remembered in the Jap version of Hanakimi there's this really really cute angmoh-looking Jap guy, must go find out who he is haha!

The weather's killing me lately; like the original I-hate-the-sun Geraldine, I don't fancy it much nowadays too, and have been staying indoors as much as I can. It's like when the sun's rays touch my skin, I go "#*(!&#$@% UVA and UVB #*@)!&#$*! SKIN CANCER (#*!&*#@ PIGMENTATION BLACK SPOTS *!#&*@#&" and feel myself melting.

2010-02-07T01:02:00.003+08:00

The feel of walking to your neighbour's house, with a loaf of home-baked banana cake, still fresh and warm from the oven, and giving it to them- it gives me a lovely, fuzzy sensation one normally experiences when anticipating the action of gift-giving. And I like it. And watching their smiles of delight- I would love for that feeling to come back again.

For the first time since dunnowhen, I followed my parents out for Chinese New Year shopping. Not for clothes, but to buy things to give relatives (as in the traditional ritual of giving gifts to relatives). I enjoyed myself so much; the act of just immersing myself in the hustle and bustle of the supermarket crowd as people hurried around to do some last-minute shopping, of revelling in the festivities (think gawdy red decorations sprinkled with gold glitter, noisy clang-clang CNY songs, tarts and cookies with enough butter in them to gurantee you high-cholestrol for the rest of your life) building up to the actual New Year day, lifted up my spirits and actually made me feel excited about this year's CNY. Normally I would be fretting over some post-CNY homework/test, as Singapore teachers are so fond of giving, but this year is different. This year, I'M FREE. Of the usual school shit (for the time being, of course). So I actually do feel excited about the upcoming CNY, and intent to, of course, enjoy it fully.

Sometimes, the immaturity of certain individuals makes me feel so frustrated. They think they are right, but when I look at it from their perspectives, I see that they always fail to consider alternatives, what-ifs, and in-the-long-runs. And when I try to explain to them, they get angry and argue that I don't understand them. They insist on doing things their way, and would accept no other methods. And even when you try to seek a reasonable solution, to try and find a compromise of sorts, they will just brush you aside and continue with their flawed ideals and stubborn insistence that these ideals cannot be wrong.

Come on, you are just a kid.

2010-01-15T23:21:00.001+08:00

AND MY LAST TEEN YEAR OFFICIALLY STARTS TODAY!:)

2010-01-14T13:16:00.004+08:00

Okay I'm back from my 3 days of work attachment at NUH! It was super tiring; doctors walk so fast! These 2 years of rushing to the bus stop to catch 156 daily have served me well.

While some people have been attached to nice departments like pediatrics or gynaecology, yours truly here has been assigned to the foreign sounding department of gastroenterology and hepatology, which in other words means digestive tract and liver. So I spent 3 days surrounded by everything to do with our alimentary canal and liver, and of course picked up many medical jargon related to these:) Bet I'll forget everything by next week haha. So before my memory fails me (which it NEVER fails to do so these few weeks after the 'A' Levels), let me try and summarize my days there:

Day One:
Arrived at 8.15am (work officially starts at 8.30am), and tried to find the Medical Affairs Department. I found it fairly easy, and prided myself on my efficiency, and then got LOST trying to find the gastro department. I spent 30 minutes rushing around the hospital trying to find it. Finally found it at 9.05am. The doctor I was assigned to, Dr David Ong, was doing ward rounds with the team, so I tagged along, together with 2 other guys (one from NJ and the other RJ). It's gastro dpt's turn to do general medicine, so the wards were pretty far apart, hence accounting for the many walking around the hospital that we did. After that followed Dr Maxine around for follow-ups, and then spent the afternoon talking to this doctor with weird eyebrows, and an ultra friendly Indian MO from Mumbai University.

After work, i rushed to Orchard to meet my friends for dinner, and then they gave me a mini surprise birthday party!:DDD haha I'm super touched, and very grateful to know that they made the effort to remember and celebrate my birthday with me. (And today I'm going out again to meet Joy and Kaylyn for dinner to celebrate my birthday!:D)

Day Two:
Ward rounds in the morning again, then spent the rest of the morning in an endoscopy room with Dr Eric Wee (super NJ senior, in which "super" is an indication of his age and not his superiority; he was pretty unfriendly to me) looking at people's oesophagus, stomach and duodenums, and once, this ah ma's colon haha. Still got shit inside. Very eye-opening, and there was this nice nurse who explained alot of things to me, like telling me that duodenum is divided into 4 sections. And I noticed that the scope seem to be able to reach only D2.

Nothing much happened today though.

Day Three:
Ward rounds in the morning, then went to see a liver biopsy with Dr Thwin. He brought us to a gastro motility room too (no point elaborating what it is here). I spent the afternoon in the clinic with Dr Ong (we rotated so I got the last day's turn) and I helped changed the bed sheet's twice! Yeah! Super fun, better than sitting there just listening to the patients only. Because Dr Ong was on bleeder's call, after clinic he had to rush to do an OGD on this emergency patient, so I rushed along with him (poor feet) and this emergency guy, he ate about 4 hours ago, so there were still food debris in his fundus! And through the scope we could all see it; he ate something white that looked like rice from some angles and kway teow from others. Tumour board meeting after that which was interesting initially, then became boring, and I left before the last patient was being discussed. It was 6.30pm already can!

Haha, fun but tiring 3 days!

2010-01-04T00:12:00.005+08:00

I'm trying to find a job!!! But yet I don't want to give up my life, as dull as it seems now. I'm looking to do something that is totally un-ME, something like waitressing!:D I know that's not where the dough is, but the experience will be quite fun, I think. Rather than teaching, though that's more rewarding in a certain sense.

Haiz, I think I made some people disappointed at me, and others mad. I'm so sorry, but I really had no choice.

I'm trying to add people on MSN now; suddenly I'm on it, and nobody is! My MSN online people are so few boo:(

I burnt my silicone spatula the other day while making caramel custard:( the caramel was bubbling vigorously and I panicked and quickly grab some random utensil to stir the sugar syrup, then sssssss! My spatula melted right before my eyes. Luckily it didn't get into the syrup and destroy it, but the whole thing's disfigured now and I need a new spatula! Gonna go buy one tomorrow!

I'm supposed to go to the zoo tomorrow, but I can't:( I need to go get a letter from my doctor saying that I've had chickenpox in 1994, for some job attachment thing. Haiz. So now my Monday to-do list includes:

-Get letter from doctor
-Buy spatula!
-Look for job!

while my friends are off partying at the zoo with Ah Meng's grandchildren.

But on the bright side...

Guess what day's coming!:DDD

2010-01-02T23:36:00.004+08:00

HOW DID EVERYBODY FIND MY BLOG!

--> elizabeth: Of course I remember you!:) so many years of Malay together!
--> grace: I like Leeteuk:D Eunhyuk's nice too though!
--> gerry: How you find my blog! Sheesh! I thought it would be quite difficult to find haha! Dont eat imitation China Shin ramen! The Korean's one is much nicer!

Speaking of Korea, I was quite excited to go to Korea, but now thanks to XXX, my mother's pretty pissed off and is NOT letting me go for my supposed grad trip. Haiz. And it's not fair to say, oh my mom's one is better, cause it's not compared to the rest shown, but someone's work etiquette disgusted her and she feels that if even my supposed friends don't trust me, then they aren't real friends after all. It sounds messy here, but I can't go into details, now that my blog isn't so much a private diary as a PUBLIC BLOG after all.

Oh oh oh I finally met besties today!:D After so long! Which best friends meet only once a year! But now we are all free from the A Level monster, we won't do that anymore.

And though I don't know how to show it, and since I've always been better with words, I guess what I really want to say is that I'm immensely grateful for their friendship. Granted I have many friends, but not many make me feel like I'm truly someone they like. And reading the letters that Joy and Kaylyn wrote to me totally made my day, because they were so heartfelt, and showed me just how much of a friend I am to them. And I really appreciate that.

That's not to say no one else is my friend. I love many people, both from SN and NJ, especially my NJ classmates who've journeyed through these past 2 years with me. I love my friends, but I'm not good at showing it. And having been hurt by friends since young, I don't let many people close to me, so rarely does anyone know who I really am.

Yes, I'm sorry, what you see is definitely NOT what you get.

2009-12-30T11:08:00.002+08:00

I BOUGHT SUPER JUNIOR'S SECOND ALBUM FOR 2 FREAKING BUCKS!!! WOOHOOOOOOOOO~

Haha this is old news actually; I bought it about 3 weeks ago, but still~ I know I know, I have the second album already which I bought in Korea, and it's the original album somemore, not the China-made or Taiwan-made ones that we have here (FYI, the 2 dollars album was Taiwan-made) so it's in Korean, but still! No aunty laments please; this is a damn good buy!

I LOVE SUPER JUNIOR!<3

My brother bought me Super Junior-M's first mini album for my Christmas present!:) haha he said it took him forever to find it. I'm starting to think Hangeng's kinda hot too.

But what's wrong with Koreans!:((( Yesterday, I read in The Straits Times that Koreans are sending their young children for therapy and acupuncture sessions and making them eat weird medicines in a bid to make them grow TALLER. Apparently, Korean society has been heavily influenced in recent years by Westernized ideals and nowadays, Koreans believe that a tall person is considered good-looking and more likely to succeed.

WHAT A LOAD OF BULL. SERIOUSLY.

What's wrong with these people! I mean, I can understand their pride at being a homogenous society and their resulting difficulty to accept foreigners unlike themselves (save for westerners, as usual), but this! This is incredibly superficial:( so sad. Granted though, this is a new phenomenon, and perhaps it won't last, but still:(

Haiz, my January's packed with stuffs. I've got to learn driving, and do job attachments, and hopefully, go on my graduation trip. And, I've been looking for overseas volunteer opportunities, but none so far. Anyone knows!

Oh, and I just came back from Yunnan about a week ago! It was an incredibly fun trip, I must say. I wasn't expecting too much, but the trip actually turned out pretty fun, and I got to see 4 different minority groups in China. Yunnan has 52 out of 56 minority groups living in it! How cool is that:D The only regret that I have of the trip was that I didn't socialise with the teenagers there, until like the last day, and they turned out to be quite nice. People shy mah:(

2009-12-11T00:21:00.004+08:00

I'm wasting my life away at the moment. Doing frivolous things, not planning for my future... And I actually LIKE the feeling. Boo:( what's wrong with me!

I've done some idol-chasing the past few days= SUPER JUNIOR!:))) I'm mad about them, no thanks to Joy and Kaylyn. And haha, we all like different guys in the group, so no fighting!:) It's like a probability thingy which worked out well for us. I've watched the Sorry Sorry MV countless times now! But omg, I thought the lyrics were waaayyy weird. And do they know that Shawty means nice assed woman! Why are they singing that in the song! Haha amused. Leeteuk looks older now. Boo. Maybe it's his shorter haircut. I don't know, but he looks positively AGED.

However mad I am over Super Junior, I cannot be classified as a fangirl though, because my loyalty lies with Super Junior ONLY and no other bands. It's like I know of friends who are mad over everything Korean, and fervently follow news of alot of Korean entertainers and amass every item Korean in origin. The only thing I will spend money on that is Korean in origin is its FOOD. Especially the Shin ramen! The Korean version is spicier than the China version, and waaayyy tastier, with springier noodles to boot. But unless the Koreans work out a solution to their problem of racism borne out of their countrymen's pride of being a homogeneous society (to be fair, they are not the only country facing such a problem (aka japan), and with a shortage of Korean women in the rural areas of the country, nowadays many Korean men are marrying wives of non-Korean origin, resulting in the country being forced to find ways to solve such racism problems), I won't even consider marrying a Korean!

And even then, SuJu will be disappointed to know that till date, I only have 29500 won worth of their stuffs (19000 won for their second album, 2500 won for a small pack of card calendar , and 8000 won for a desk calendar with their photos), so I guess I'm not much of a worthy fan after all:/

2009-12-08T20:09:00.008+08:00

It's time to revive my blog!

I went clubbing for the first time in my life:) And I got in free because I wasn't aware that you had to pay an entrance fee, so I was like coolly walking in and nobody cared! Haha, it was quite a different experience, what with all the sticky, sweaty and some smelly bodies all mashed up against each other on the dance floor. I couldn't hear properly after I got out of the club. And really, I think wasted people look incredibly uncool and unglam. There were many people puking at the grass, while others were chattering rubbish and swearing shit with their friends, and I'm sorry to say, I was quite disgusted by the sight of them. I mean, come on, have some self- control, even if you want to have a good time.

Anyway, Christmas is here!:) I'm looking forward to a good Christmas this year, after all the shit of the past year that I've been through.

2009-04-10T17:53:00.003+08:00

I know I must take full advantage of today to study, but for some reason, I can't seem to bring myself up to the task of completing all my undone homework. Something is bothering me, so I guess I shall rant it out here (after all, that's what a blog is for, right?)

Yesterday, after we collected our PW results, a friend of mine (whom we shall just call Q) started crying, because she hadn't gotten an A. And in that overwrought state that she was in, she spat bitterly, "This school has always let me down."

Perhaps some of you may view it as a purely irrational comment stemmed from disappointment and anger, but because I've known her since PAE till now and everything in between, I found myself agreeing with her on 2 things: (1) this school has let her down, and (2) this school has let me down too.

Maybe I'll run into trouble with the school authorities for seemingly 'defaming' the school, but then again, what I'm about to write has been repeated many times over blogs, forums etc that should they want to sue me, they will have to sue at least a thousand more others whose sentiments I'm merely echoing.

For the whole of yesterday, after I came back home from school, my mind kept replaying her words , "This school has always let me down." For some reason, it impacted me in more ways than I care to think about. Her words kept replaying in my mind so many times that I felt compelled to ask myself, "Why?" And so I started thinking.

When I first entered my school, I felt like I had stepped into a fairytale: Life just seemed so magical. It was a surreal experience, and for the first time in my life, I actually enjoyed going to school. I actually loved it so much so that, after my 'O' Levels results came out, I chose not to go to the greener (literally) side, even though my results would have made me a shoo-in for that school. I fought with my parents to let me stay. I had truly believed I had made the right choice.

Now, one year later, I find myself asking, had I really made the right choice? Because after those magical moments, it seemed like a veil was suddenly removed and the real side of the school came out. In my darkest of moments, when I'm locked up in my room crying my heart out, I sometimes curse myself for having been so naive and foolish, for not having chosen the other school. How could I have been so blind?

I have such rubbish teachers (save for my chemistry teacher, who is really God's gift to the class) because the school has given the better ones to the IPs; a school administration that doesn't work effectively and efficiently to solve the most basal of school problems (class projectors that don't work, clocks that read the wrong times etc despite repeated feedback from the student body), the school's unprioritised way of spending money (tearing out the floor tiles and replacing them with new ones just so that they will match this new sculpture; creating mega windows in the classrooms just so everyone can see the "cute kids"; all these money could have been used to buy new and advanced projectors and clocks, thank you very much). These, and a whole lot more problems that have plagued me since, were why I was so affected by Q's words. Maybe it's just me. I don't know. But I felt like the school loves creating illusions to lure unsuspecting students and then reveal their true nature after the students have been safely trapped. I know, cause I was one of those unsuspecting ones.

The school has let me down in so many ways, and I can recall the numerous incidents when I have felt disappointed by what I thought was but actually wasn't. I felt for Q when she said that sentence, because I understood where her feelings stem from. And I felt angry a the school, because of the unhappiness that they have caused so many of us. How can they be so BLIND as to not see that their own students are unhappy with the way they are running the school? Why do they keep ignoring our comments and coming up with nonsensical rebuttals to try to argue their case? Do they take us for idiots who cannot see what is really happening?

I'm desperately unhappy. Sometimes, it seems so far away, the feeling that I was happy to come to school everyday. So far so that I sometimes question myself, "How the hell did you ever felt that way?" I want to get out of this place. I want to do well for my 'A's and quickly flip to the next chapter in the Book of Life. It's too late for regrets now. I can only move ahead.

If you see this, and feel compel to complain about me, go ahead and make my day. Send me to a counsellor too, if you want. But I haven't told a single lie in this post.

2008-12-25T22:56:00.002+08:00

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYBODY!:)))

Firstly, I shall apologise to all those who had sent me merry wishes on my phone; I'm in Malaysia now and it's freaking expensive to send smses back, so I shall take this opportunity to wish you people A VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS!
Christmas this year was spent in Genting Highlands. We were promised fireworks at the Christmas countdown, but for some reason, it never materialised. In the end, we did our own version of it by showering each other with bottled snow and silly strings (which resembled rubbery spaghetti).
I barely slept on Christmas morning; me and my cousins roamed Genting till near dawn. But I still managed to get some shopping done:) but I can't use the clothes till Chinese New Year though haha.

I'm dreading going back to Singapore; mountains of undone homework still await me and I've got so much things to do. This whole holiday just seemed to pass by in a flash, and before I know it, school's about to reopen soon. I'm so NOT prepared for J2 life. I'm barely coping with J1 stuffs as it is. This whole year has changed me life upside down. There were the good times, but mostly bad. And I'm praying that 2009 will be a better year for me.

I cannot wait till my A levels are done. I want to get on with my life.

2008-11-12T00:59:00.003+08:00

PW is ovverrrrrrr, though I know I'm rather slow since it's been over for almost a week now. I screwed up a part of my OP, but I pray that it will not affect my grade as much as I think it will. I'm super proud of NJC088:) We've been through a lot together- we've had our fair share of disputes and tiffs, as well as more enjoyable memories- and I'm really hoping it pays off for us. But come what may, I guess I have to say that I'm really proud of my group mates!

And just when I thought my life couldn't get any busier, it does. I find myself so busy these days that I don't even have time to train. There are grad night meetings, meetings with teachers for orientation and treasurers' stuffs, KI IS to do, grad night stuffs to settle as well as its finances...

I've never been busier in my life.

In a way, it's good, and I relish this buzzing around with so many things to handle at a time- it keeps me on my toes and rids me (at least temporarily) of my laziness and tendency to procrastinate. But sometimes it can get so tiring, especially when things don't go the way you want it too, and people don't cooperate with you when you need them to do so the most. I can list at least 10 councilors whose necks I want to strangle. I get cranky easily these days, and when I do, my urge to throttle some people grows very strong.

On a brighter note, I went to watch a movie on Monday:) My second movie this year (the first was Batman) and I can't believe it was High School Musical 3! Not that it was my choice, but Madagascar 2 only comes out on the 13th November and I couldn't watch Tropic Thunder while dressed in uniform since that show is M18. Haiz. I've never been a HSM fan, maybe because I didn't even watch the first 2 instalments of the show (though I know some songs from it), and then I had to go and watch HSM3. I was told that there was negligible relation to the first 2 shows, so it didn't matter that I hadn't watch them.

The starting of the show was horrible. Singing while in the midst of an intense basketball match?!! The characters broke out spontaneously into song and dance at the most inappropriate times. The show got better towards the middle however, and the ending was good. So I suppose it's an okay show. I can definitely see its appeal to the tweens though. But what I cannot stand is that these people don't seem to need to mug intensely in order to get into prestigious universities! They even have time to rehearse everyday after school for a musical! WTH.

HSM is a feel-good show, I guess. You lose yourself in this wonderful, crazy world where people dance to show their emotions, and everybody has a hidden talent which is always recognised. Schools have absolutely darling teachers who are interesting and make a special effort to be there for you and there is a lovely flower garden that always seems to be in colourful bloom at the top of your school.

The ride to fantasy is great, but the fall back to reality was always a little hard for me.

Maybe I sound too cynical for my own good; after all, HSM is suppose to mirror life in that opportunities are abound and dreams can come true if only you believe. But sitting there after the movie ended, and watching the credits roll, I was filled with a strange sense of despair. The kind that goes, "Why isn't my life like that?! Why can't it be like that?!" and left me wanting to throw the popcorn the guy sitting in front of me had left on his seat at the screen and cry, "You LIAR!"

Life's a blessing, yet there are too many times when I feel that it's a curse. It's wrong of me to think of it this way, and since I'm perfectly healthy and capable, blessed with a great family and nurturing environment, there are still many opportunities awaiting me out there and there is no reason to be so pessimistic especially when there are so many unfortunate people out there.

But my pessimism has its roots from 7 years ago, and it's hard to break a 7 year old habit.

2008-10-23T22:48:00.009+08:00

Well, now that academics have been (temporarily) shoved to a corner, my life consists of mainly 3 things now: PW, soccer, and baking.

PW is screwing me up real bad. Our group did something that was deemed unforgivable in the eyes of our teachers, though it really was an honest mistake and we've been sloughing like shit to make up for it. But apparently, we are still "unprepared", despite the fact that we've been practising for many times:( But never mind, we can do it! I have total faith in my group mates.

Soccer training's super hiong nowadays, but I'm enjoying it. Though I skipped training today due to...er...some private reason. But I like our current "coach", mainly because he actually teaches us something useful, and not like some XXX who totally taught us shit and didn't even bother about us, leaving us to train alone.

OCS visit yesterday, which also doubled up as an informal class excursion. Haha it was quite fun, especially the laser quest thingy. It was sooo cool trying to shoot that guy down. And the army food. Yum. Those stories of army guys living in unsanitary conditions and eating measly food seemed a thing of the past. Judging by the Portugese Curry Pasta ration that I had, and the Mushroom and Chicken Pasta, I think these guys are having it good, seriously. And the food were RATIONS. Though the rice sucked. The noodles were much better than the rice and potatoes. And there I was, foolishly having visions of men eating 'magic' bread that will supposedly expand in your tummy when you drink water to make you feel full. Hah. They even have INTERNET CONNECTION. Still, I suppose what I'm seeing is merely a small part of what OCS really is like, and it's probably the funnest part. And this is OCS only.

Remember my previous post, where I talked about baking chocolate chip cookies? Well, I did them (a hell long time ago actually), and they looked disastrous (though they actually tasted pretty good). That's the third time my cookies failed on me. They freaking didn't look like cookies at all. They were all plump, pillowy and THEY SPREAD. When they weren't supposed too.

Cookie batter. Apparently, it wasn't supposed to be batter-like, but rather, like a dough.

How my cookies happily rose and spread to form cookie pillows.

Unfreakingcookielike:/

So I moved on, from cookies to....MUFFINS! And I manage to bake a very successful batch of PLUM & RAISIN MUFFINS!:DDD

The gorgeous muffin batter

Rising in the oven, and browning in a lovely manner

Eating the muffin!:D

And contrary to what most of you say, PLUM AND RAISINS make a delectable muffin combo, and it tastes better than what you swakus think.

Next up, CUPCAKES! I managed to get a hold on a cupcake recipe book, and I thought I would try out some of them. My first attempt was Very Vanilla Peanut Butter And Chocolate Chip Cupcakes. Long name, yeah. The first batch was so successful, I subsequently baked another one 3 days later!

The cupcake batter, with peanut butter and chocolate chips.

Cupcake batter sitting in the wells, ready to be baked:)

Rising in the oven.

These belonged to the first batch of 12 cupcakes.

These are 6 from the second batch of 12 cupcakes. (Note the considerable increase in the amount of chips used.)

YUM:D

Banana Cupcakes were what I baked next, only because there were 3 lovely yellow bananas sitting on the kitchen table, uneaten.

The batter in the oven

Banana Cupcakes:D

So what's next? Apple Crisp Cupcakes and Madeleines. Madeleines are incredibly tricky to make, but I'm researching on the best methods, so hopefully, when I finally get down to doing it, it will turn out fine:) My father has promised to bring me shopping this Saturday to get some baking stuffs, mainly: a 12-wells muffin tin and a madeleine pan. Yay!:)

Saturday flea market shopping woo~ Can't wait.

2008-09-29T22:15:00.002+08:00

Okay, so I haven't posted in a looooong time. My bad. And I just wanna say (cause I'm too lazy to tag) that I MISS YOU TOO MAIDEE! We must have a class outing soon!

Grrrr I swore I would work harder for promos after my disastrous CT results, but look where that got me. In deep shit AGAIN. Dang. My future lies on an edge as steady as an elephant on stilts. It's too late for regrets now I suppose, but it's just that I've never felt so screwed up in my life before. I don't recall even 'O' Levels being this difficult. Just what is it that changed? I can't seem to figure it out.

On the brighter side, now that promos are over, I can get down to doing several things that I've put off doing. Like making stawberry jam. Oh wait, but strawberries aren't in season now right? And I've been eyeing this receipe for chocolate chip cookies that is just so darn simple. Like really really simple. And I think I'm gonna get down to making it soon.

Procrastination never got anyone anywhere anyway.

Friday's trip to town for a bout of shopping, or in particular, to the site of the super-hyped-up F1-dunnowhatcomesafterthis was an outlet for the pent-up emotional stress that has accompanied me for much of Term 3 and 4. I really had fun with the Funfan-something, shopping at Bugis and camwhoring at Subway and Gate 3 of the F1 racing track. Walking the entire day turned my legs numb by the time night befell.

Reality looms ahead though- PROJECT WORK. What a screwed up subject. I'm never gonna advocate this subject- I think it's a waste of time. It has benefits, and I'm not gonna dispute that. It's just that its syllables makes it such a dry yet demanding subject. But I have great group mates, so I guess I can't complain much.

My random ramblings aren't making any sense, are they? Boo.

2008-09-04T00:43:00.005+08:00

Term 3 is overrrr, and goodness me, what a term it has been. So let me list down all the memorable events that has happened to me these past 10 weeks:

Event #1- Common Tests!
Two words: Totally screwed. I freaking got a DDUC. And promos are looming ahead.

Event #2- Class outing (with extremely poor attendance)
Our second official class outing turned out to be a group outing with a mere attendance of 7 people. Including me. Haha but we had fun in Sentosa, playing a very memorable game of Frisbee and then during half-time, Cheat. Yes, we never finished the full-time game. Wilson met us for dinner, and I ate my lovely suanla lamian with extra extra vinegar!

Event #3- NDC 2008/ Dark Knight/ Beijing 2008 Olympics
Banner painting sessions, show painting session, late night rehearsals... Our first ad-hoc after being invested and it was great! The theme was Working Magic, and the banner looked super nice! We had a hard time cleaning up afterwards- paper streamers and bubble soap mixture do NOT mix well and do NOT make for easy cleanup. But the uncles and aunties made it seem so easy! TDC had a uber looong meeting and during the entire time they had their meeting, me and Jaslin (who had to wait for Audrey and Geraldine respectively) ended up parking our asses in front of the orange tables' tv and singing national day songs. Over and over and over again. Until we got bored and restless and sorta kachiow the tdc meeting. Audrey and I cabbed to Cineleisure after they were (finally!) done, and ate at Suki Sushi with Grace, Melinda, Audrey Ho, Dilys and Clarice. After that, we went to watch the Batman show, which was SUPER SUPER GOOD. It's the first time I'm watching a movie in a cinema this year, and it was really nice. Now I understand the whole hype about the Joker. Heath Ledger really rocked in his performance this time round. Even his performance in Brokeback Mountain couldn't rival this. So Heath, where ever you are, rock on! Beijing 2008 Olympics Opening Ceremony at night, which was a truly spectacular show, until of course, it got tangled in the web of scandals and deceit. I'm sure everyone knows about the lip-synching incident. While I feel that it is a despicable thing that the organisers did by replacing Peiyi for Miaoke merely because she was unfortunate enough to not look as good as Miaoke, however I guess I can understand why they did that. I mean, hello! They were putting up a show for over 1 billion viewers in the world; of course they would want to portray as flawless an image as they can of China. The international media kept condemning Beijing's actions, which I felt was quite unfair to Beijing. Imagine if the organisers had gone ahead and put Peiyi on. What would the international media have said then? I'll bet they would then have gone on and on about Peiyi's looks themselves and questioning the orgainsers about their decision to put her in what can be considered this century's greatest sporting spectacle, rather than focus on that incredible voice of hers. Hyprocrites. I'm not saying I support the organisers' decision; all I'm saying is that I understand where that decision was coming from.

Event #4- Beijing 2008 Olympics
I spent most of the long National Day weekend watching the Olympics, and for the 2 weeks I got swept up in its fever. The victory ceremony dresses don by the (scarily similar looking) Chinese girls were gorgeous! If only I can get my hands on one. Pity I missed the Today In Beijing episode in which Jade Seah said the F-word. But China did a great job hosting the Olympics. But I wished they hadn't done it at the expense of those hutong people.

Event #5- Wengger's Birthday Outing!
Yay I finally went out with Kaylyn, Joy, Yijun and Jieyi! To celebrate wengger's birthday. We ate at Far East's long john's silver, but haha, our lunches all came from different shops. We went to Isetan after that Yijun and Jieyi tried on this trenchcoat-like dress! Haha Yijun in a DRESS! We managed to take some photos of them in their horrendous garb before the salesgirl stopped us. And I bought a nice Topshop blouse that had a 50% discount woo~ After that Jieyi and Yijun just left, and we were like chasing them, cause we haven't taken a group photo! Anyway we then went to Taka and camwhored and shopped around before going home.

Event #5- TDc 2008
As I'm typing this, I'm still praying that TDC didn't go over budget. TDC was fun, fun, fun! I wore my half-priced Topshop blouse that I bought at Isetan on Wengger's birthday outing with leggings for my hotseat segment. Initially Maxine was supposed to be my fellow emcee but then, IT RAINED. And everything went helter-skelter and in the end, Geraldine had to sub in. And everything was impromptu and arrgghhh I screwed up alot. But I really wanna thank Geraldine for volunteering herself because if she hadn't, I would have had to gone up alone and she being there helped calmed me abit. And even though she had to prepare herself for it only a few minutes before we went onstage, she did a great job and I really don't know how to thank her. It was memorable, to say the least, and we dashed from the hall to LT5 in all unglamness, but I wouldn't have had it any other way. And Shirley, you are a rawking emcee okay!:) Went back to St Nicks after that. Kaylyn couldn't come, and that lousy Joy was about to leave! I didn't see Cherylong, but I saw Adeline and Cheryl laogong and Evelyn! Whom I miss miss miss! And Sara, Inez, NicP, Valerie, Alicia, Olivia and Joanne! But I didn't see Maidee:( but I saw many others too. It's amazing how we have moved on after St Nicks; and it's interesting to learn who took which path.

Emcees Galore!

Jaslin!

s11!

Adeline and Cheryl laogong:)

Group photo!

Event #6- Exco Exco JTS
Finally, after like dunnohowlong, we had our Exco Exco JTS! But Chenchel and Grace couldn't make it:( Anyway, juniors had to wear PINK (!), thanks to SOMEBODY. We ate at nydc at Holland Village, and later, Häagen-Dazs chocolate fondue for dessert, which the seniors very nicely treated us juniors too! We talked alot, and gossips!:) Yay I love Exco Exco!

Juniors (in pink!) and Seniors

My lovely Comm (minus Chenchel)

Chocolate makes us happy:)

Treasurers <3

Another Treasurers Pic

2008-08-20T23:03:00.003+08:00

20.08.2008
Once in a lifetime day
And the birthday of Kaylyn Ang!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY WENGGER!!!:D

2008-07-06T23:21:00.004+08:00

Yay yay CT period is over (or was over, for more than a week already) and I've really been enjoying myself during this "buffer" period procrastinating on school work, catching up on treasurer and grad nite stuffs, and playing my beloved Runescape. Which is hullooooo NOT a retarded game okayyysss. I finally completed the Dragon Slayer quest:) which was super exciting and if it wasn't for the fact that my brother made me carry a full inventory of salmon, I would have died fighting that monstrous fiery thing. The stupid thing kept blasting me with fire can and didn't even give me a chance to fight it. Anyway, completing it made me gain alot of combat levels, so wheeee:) Currently I am very busy fishing and cooking (yes, on Runescape) and trying to save up to buy my rune(g) plate or helm. Which costs like a freaking 400++K.

Anyway, last Monday was 08S11's supposed scheduled class outing but in the end very few of us came and it turned out to be more of a group outing. We lunched at Carl's Jr where I had my lovely beef chilli cheese fries with extra cheese and chilli:) and left for Sentosa after that. We camwhored alot (you can check out the pics on Ah Cheong's facebook) and then Yuhui had to go. So the rest of us played cards and then Frisbee, which was very very fun and we squealed alot trying to catch the Frisbee. Then after that we were supposed to have a half-time, but we started playing a card game that resembled Cheat and we never resumed the game haha. We met Wilson at Vivo where we had our dinner at Food Republic. I love the suanla lamian with extra extra vinegar (2 and a half soup spoons, to be exact). It's the best, next to Crystal Jade's. And I took the MRT with HOHOHO and Wilson, but Hohoho's stop was like one stop away. And me and Wilson were talking the entire train ride from Harbourfont to Serangoon which surprisingly was very short and we were like, "Aye, reach already ar?" And I ate the Macademia Fudge I bought from Candy Empire which was disappointing. Granny Macs from Ginger Factory in Australia still has the best fudge. I wanna go back to Australia:( I miss that place. I know people usually miss more high-class places, like Italy or France, but I miss Down Under. Bondi Burger:( Macademia nuts:( Noosa beach:( Unpretentious chocolate fudge:(

Saturday was the Yellows POP, which I attended. And Joy, Jaclyn and Jocelyn were at the staircase landing gossiping for so long that we totally missed the front parts of the parade! Even though we came quite early. Yay congratulations my MELODY on your posts! You deserve them:) Jiayou kay? Haha you will always be my favourite SP! And congrats too to Rachael Pung, Edna Mode lookalike and OIC! Its quite sentimental especially since we've grown up with the Dark Blues and Yellows. The food was quite okay this year: apple strudel, mcdonald's hotcakes and mango pudding. But where was the sponsored pizzas that were stated at the back of the pop booklet hurr?! Haha but it was a blast, which I would have enjoyed more if I wasn't sick. Yeah, like wth, I fell sick on Thursday and so this whole weekend, when I'm supposed to be enjoying myself, I've instead been recuperating AT HOME. Bleah.

I cut my hair today, and the auntie gave me more fringe. But I look, as usual, retarded everytime I get a new haircut. I hate visiting hair salons, almost as much as people hate visiting the dentist. Hairstylists just can't get the hair style that I specify right. But I suppose I don't mind them much now that I'm older.

Okay, I'm off to play Runescape again now. My character is in need of a new hair style since her current one's been with her for 5 years now. And the barber shop is all the way in Fallador, which is very far from where she is now, which is in Varrock. Now that the graphics are better in Runescape, it seems a good time to get a new hair style.
I just hope she doesn't look as retarded as I do now.

2008-06-12T00:40:00.003+08:00

Grrrr I hate studying. It's the June HOLIDAYS damnit, but I feel like I'm preparing for my 'A's for something. I haven't been really productive though, cause I'm just not in the studying mood. And my father brought us out for lunch, so practically my entire afternoon was off. Then I went to play soccer with my brother and sister, and that effectively killed off the evening. Bleah. Anyway, Ryan invited me to CJ's council investiture yesterday along with some others but YAY! It means I can see pokkie! And ZY! (you know who, joy:D) Yayness! Haha. Today 2 funny things happened.
Farnie event #1: My father, brother and I were talking about recyclable bags and the conversation went like this:
Father: Nowadays must keep cloth bags cause supermarkets will surely not give plastic bags one day.
Me: You know the Anya Hindmarch "I'm Not A Plastic Bag" bag? It was created as a recyclable bag, but then people put plastic bags in it so totally defeat its purpose lah!
Brother: Haha why no one create "I'm Not A T-Shirt"? Or "I'm Not A Pants"? Or "I'm Not An Underwear"?
Father: Or "I'm Not A Bra"?
Me: Put bra and underwear for what!?! No one to see!
Father: No, they should put, "I'm used to support 2 lumps of fat".

Haha then me and my brother were like, "So lame!!!" and chortling with laughter. Then my father continued.

Father: Actually breasts are overrated. Just 2 lumps of fat only what. I think God knew that, thats why he added a dot to each then so much interest in them.

Now you know why I turned out the way I am:D

Farnie Event #2: Someone emailed me asking if I wanted free contact lens which were of my degree, and after I emailed back saying yes, the person asked: "Btw, you have the same name as my primary school mate, did you go to St. Nicholas Girls' School?" And of course I did, but after much correspondence apparently this Mylene Lim that she knew graduated in '87 or '88, before I was even born! It's so cool, there is someone named Mylene Lim after all! Mylene's such a rare name to find!

Okay, I have training at 8 tomorrow morning and here I am still on the computer. I will be soooo dead tomorrow.

YLTC

2008-06-06T20:22:00.004+08:00

Yeah YLTC is over and I'm glad to say I survived a 5-day-4-night camp in Kluang, Malaysia!:D It was a really different experience I guess, from what we as normal students will usually get to go through, and in a way, I suppose I should be appreciative of the fact that I've experienced this whole camp!

DAY ONE
I woke up super early to wash my hair in case I wouldn't have the chance too later on during the day. Played bridge and taidi the entire bus ride to Kluang. We had lunch at Taman Haiwan, which we reached around 12.30pm I think. After lunch the clans split up and some went to pitch the tents; some went to do the flag while I went to learn how to tie knots for river crossing, together with some others. I dunno what the names are, but apparently I couldn't manage to do the knot via the easy way, and can do it properly only by the harder method! Then Luther taught me how to tie some impressive-looking knot that looks like a loop for lasso/hanging people. So now I learnt 3 new knots today instead of 2:) Dinner was outdoor cooking with Dilshaad, Keith, Kenneth, Sheryl and Yuhui, which kinda sucked coz the food was so blah. We had rice, sardines, and some weird combo of garlic, onions and lady's fingers! Everything was edible but unappetizing, and where's a sambal belachan when you need it most! Nothing much really happened today, and at night we had some presentation thingy and we created our campfire items.

DAY TWO
Today we had some team building thingy in the morning, and we were split into 2 teams to do it. My team got stuck at the untangling game, which normally was supposed to be an easy task to complete but for some reason we couldn't do it that day. We succeeded only on the 4th try after many tiring, sweaty and acrobatics-like attempts:) Thanks to Jun Long who pushed for us to succeed no matter what (WITHOUT CHEATING), so yeah! After lunch we had kayaking, which was fun. It rained and I was afraid it would get called off, but thankfully everything went according to plan. Grace was my kayaking partner and she was good especially in the navigation part coz she knew how to stop the boat and changed its direction. And we managed to get a water bomb:D and we were pleased because then it wouldn't look so pathetic that we were returning to shore empty-handed. Everything was fine UNTIL Xiao Peng and Kwan Long decided to splash water on us. Then Qing Wei and Jun Long followed suit! And me and Grace were stuck in the middle. Then something happened and hahahahahahah!!!!!!!!! I can't say it here cause it's too embarrassing for Grace but it's really funnyX) Grace and I tried to squeeze island creamery out of the guys by pretending that Grace dropped one of her contacts because of them, but being the ungentlemen that they are they didn't even offer anything save an apology that sounded more customary than hearfelt. Dinner today was outdoor cooking again, and we had maggie mee! Yay even though it wasn't asam laksa but plain old chicken, but it tasted VERY good with an egg thrown in! Ahhhh heaven:) We had night walk today, and initially I was supposed to partner Yang Sheng but in the end I partnered Grace, which turned out to be a good thing cause we clutched each other for the whole journey unlike the guy-girl partners so we didn't feel really afraid and we weren't afraid of falling down too.

DAY THREE
We had internal navigation in the morning which was pretty okay except that SOME PEOPLE were total bitches and bastards and it totally pissed me off the way they were behaving. We had rafting after lunch. And my team's raft failed:( It was a super cool design but not feasible I guess. Anyway I went with Kwan Long and Qing Wei and I was the navigator:D Though not a really good one I must say. After that I had problems disembarking the raft and Qing Wei was nice enough to jump into the river and pulled me to shore. I think he enjoyed the mud bath too. We had a proper dinner today and at night was some leadership talk. We had to play some activity first and then there was some show played about this photographer with the National Geographic who always "Celebrate what's right in this world". It was inspiring in the sense that the contents of the show made sense, but cause the sound system wasn't good and we were all so tired so I guess it seemed kinda boring.

And Semangat's totem got stolen today.

DAY FOUR
We got to go out of the campsite today for some hike up a mountain and a city trail. We split into 2 teams and me and Keith were the ICs for our team, but I think I was a super lousy and slack IC cause I didn't do much, if anything at all. Our group did the hike first, and I hiked most of the journey with Keith and Dilshaad, both of whom made the hike very interesting:D And Berjaya B is so mean to me Xp Like what, I cross the river then the whole group can go?! Haha but it was fun and due to time constraint we couldn't climb up to the summit. Then it was city trail and we got Sofian and Bear for our instructors in charge which rocked since they know the place and we had a WEE bit of help. We decided to finish all the checkpoints first before eating, and we managed to finish all 10 in 1 hr 30 mins time:D Which was fantastic! So we had KFC for lunch and I ate like a glutton, shoving down spoonfuls of the chicken rice one after another and I ate 3 chicken. All of which I later regretted cause then I not only felt sleepy afterwards, I felt bloated too and it ruined my appetite for dinner and supper coz I was too full already. And gahhh I hate shoot-shag-marry, especially when you people give me such difficult choices! And somemore want kiss-shag-marry. We had mock campfire cause it rained, and we didn't do our mosquito dance, which though cool would have sucked since we didn't practise and would have messed up the coordination real bad. And there was a bat Xp! I wasted my calories on that really screwed up Ramly burger. Bleah. Me, Audrey, Keith, Dilshaad and Chenchel laid down under the stars on the grass and talked. Chenchel fell in and out of sleep haha. Me and Cheongy were like gossiping and filling each other in on what we missed of each other the 4 days that we didn't talk. And in CHINESE. Haha Keith couldn't make sense of what we were talking about. And we tricked some people into believing that Keith was Luther since he had his shirt covering his face, and I think they believed itX) I was slurring off towards the end cause I was falling asleep and I dunno what nonsense I talked to Keith and Ah Cheong. Anyway Ah Cheong decided to bring her sleeping bag and the 5 of us finally got cozy and warm and then................................

DAY FIVE
Hah yup we totally never slept a wink and we got woken up just as we were getting comfy. We had to run up and down the hill and did some belly-back thing which was GROSS since I was in the mud puddle and I got soaked. EWW. Then we went for a run and the 6 of us Berjaya girls were the only ones behind the instructors after a while because those behind had trouble keeping up, which was not their fault cause the road was HORRIBLE and I sprinted a lot on the smooth roads trying to keep up. So then the instructors asked us to do a cheer and after it they were like, "We can't hear the boys" and we went,"Cause there are only 6 girls with you now". But they refused to slow down and in the end we stopped and went on pumping position on the gawdawful, rocky and painful road to wait for them. Sree was apologising to us that he didn't want things this way but he had no choice but to do so. Then alot of people screwed up the head count thingy and we had to stay down longer. Ouch. We ran and ran and then had to do jumping jacks (which I heard had a laxative effect on some people), and pumpings and sit-ups and it was very tiring but overall manageable a task. I was super sleepy already and so I volunteered to play the war game thingy just so that I wouldn't fall asleep. But I totally sucked at it haha. We had a nice big breakfast and I chionged to change my clothes (since I haven't bathed since Wed night) and then off to Singapore:D

Haha so that was what happened to me these past 5 days:) Oh and our tent collapsed EVERY SINGLE DAY. It exasperated us really badly. And Grace, Pamela, Sheryl, Shirley, Yuhui and I had to squueze into a 6-men tent when we were told that we would get an 8-men one. And the 8-men one was so huge! And long! We had absolutely no leg space in ours. And no space to move about too. And I FREAKING HATE INSECTS, and Taman Haiwan is swarming with them.

2008-05-31T16:57:00.005+08:00

Do you really take people based on what you can see?
Do you really accept them for who they seem to be?
Or do you try to discover their other faces?

I've taken to blog/livejournal/xanga/whatchamacallits surfing recently, and I've to admit that I was stunned by what I discovered. The crazy clown I know morphed into a depressed, troubled soul online. That cheerful, happy-go-lucky persona so convincingly portrayed crumbled into a pile of tears, angst and hopelessness on the web page. And sometimes I am genuinely shocked that what I knew of a person wasn't who he/she is. And then I realised that if only I had looked a little harder, I could have been the signs.

The signs of a troubled soul.

As I look back on my interactions with these people, it surprised me how I could have been so blind. And foolish. That I failed to recognise depression when I saw it. That I failed to see how troubled that person was. Sure, the signs weren't glaringly obvious, but they were THERE. The once sunny smile became dimmer as the days went passed; the stoning and staring into empty spaces became more frequent; the bright eyes lost their sparkle.

All these shouldn't surprise me though. For much as I hate to admit it, I guess what stunned me most was the fact that they all sounded like me.

The happy face put on was to put others at ease. I didn't want to add to their troubles by giving them mine. And the only way to do so was to hide them. So I hid. Yet at the same time, I could feel myself sinking into despair as the troubles accumulated rather than receded. It was like sinking into quicksand. The more you fought it, the deeper you sank. It was horrible. Thankfully I'm past that now. But I don't know how to help these people. And I don't think they would want my help.

Online diaries have helped me understand a lot of people better I guess. After all, they are one of the better sources for understanding a person's true feelings. They were an outlet for venting one's frustrations and anger; to try to put into words one's emotions as aptly as one could, in all rawness and unabashedness.

Why do you think I'm such a kaypoh queen, always meddling with so many people's affairs? I have only one objective: to try to discover the many faces of a person. It intrigues me. I want to find out the "who" of a person, and not the "what", which can be so easily found.

Do I sound silly? Maybe I am. I guess that's one of my faces too.

I'm glad I can finally let you go. The emotional roller coaster ride you put me on has tire me. I want to stop now. Why don't I feel even a sense of remorse? Or unhappiness? Can it be because I never even really liked you in the first place?

My own heart stupifies me sometimes.

2008-05-26T22:49:00.002+08:00

I've got a nasty, itchy rash on
my left cheek, so the whole
thing's like red and bumpy.
It doesn't help that it's been
itching really badly, so the
entire day I was like slapping
my cheek just so that I won't
scratch. I must have looked
really weird. Anyway, today
was kinda FUN:) After chem
lecture I went to mug for
awhile in the library before
getting chased out. So I made
my way to the oasis and I
somehow found myself in a
CPU meeting! And haha
they were discussing
their workplan and somehow
the topics discussed went
really wild and dirty!!! And
I love this kind of meetings!
Haha CPU's got really horny
guys:D I actually kinda regret not
being the EXCO in charge
of CPU:/ I actually missed
one whole hour of chem
tutorial just so that I can
yak with them! But it was
worth it lah:)
YLTC talk was BOR-RING!
And someone made me
really gross out todayXp

2008-05-24T20:17:00.002+08:00

Yay investiture yesterday was a
total blast:) Thank you invest comm!
Minor hiccups were inevitable, but
on the whole it went very smoothly
and the only thing that was
disatisfiable in my opinion was that
there was too little time for
phototaking! They should give us
at least until after lunch before
we return to lessons! But I really
enjoyed invest:D
Now that Term 2 has come to an end,
it also means that I've been in NJ for
half a year already. One and a half
more to go! But these past 6 months
have really changed me and I've
experienced alot of things that I
normally wouldn't have the chance
to, and most of it is (noXD) thanks to
Council. But I've really enjoyed
myself these past 6 months and I
don't think I will change anything.
I guess the only thing I will change
is me. I've done alot of things that,
on hindsight, I shouldn't have
done and I feel really remorseful for
the way I acted in those
situations. I vow to be a better
person in Term 3! I have to be...
I'm officially a councillor now, which
means no more fooling around:(
The diamond-shaped badge will
give me away.

CTs are coming which I will sooo
screw up. How am I supposed
to be eligible for H3 at the rate
that I'm going?:/

2008-05-01T00:09:00.002+08:00

Life always throws you some
unexpected surprises; some twist
of events that just leaves you
completely dumbstruck when
you turn around and look back
on the things that have happened
to you. This is exactly how I feel
like now, at this point in time. I
am still in awe over what has happened
to me these past 4 months. FOUR
months and I feel like I've been
in NJ for years. So much has
happened. To start it all, I never
envisioned myself to be in NJC.
Right from the start it was RJ
all the way. My dream junior
college, located at a mere 2
bus stops away from my house.
And with an overall L1R5 of
4 for my prelims, RJC seemed
to dwell like a dream about to
come true. Then reality had to
strike me with a cruel blow;
I couldn't get into RJ even after
appealing. Like I said, NJC was
never where I envisioned myself
to be. Crushed though I was
intially, I slowly realised that
the Good Lord up there sent
me to NJ for a reason. Several
in fact, too long to explain it all,
and I won't elaborate, but really,
I am thankful for His wise
judgement and grateful that He
has placed me here, because
I won't be what and who I am
now if I were to be posted to some
other JC for JAE. Then, when I
picked up the application form
to run for Student Council, I was
adamant that I would get into
Terra HAT (ask me why personally;
it's a weird reason and I'm sure
that many of you already know).
Be it House Captain or not, I
just wanted a place in HAT because
I felt that my personality was
more suitable for HAT than
any other committees. But then
Terra HAT became the most
competitive committee to
run for, with the most number
of candidates vying for a place
in there, and I admit that I got
a little disheartened especially
after all the rumours that circulated
that seemed to suggest that
Ziyi was already 100%-guarantee
-plus-chop-get Terra House Captain
and that he had already chosen
someone in mind to be in his team;
and none of it all seemed to suggest
that I would have a place in the
team. So I did something that
(admittedly) surprised many;
I decided to run for Honourary
Treasurer. Yup, a post that nobody
can envision the super enthu,
uber chatty, loud and noisy
Mylene Lim in. Muahaha but then
again He decided to spring yet
another surprise on me, and I
got the post. HONOURARY
TREASURER. Till today, I
still can't believe I'm a
treasurer. Yikes. Better
get use to it though. Such
a foreign word to me. Never
mind, I will still continue to
support Terra HAT!

Yup, so ultimately, I did choose
to give up my chance to be in
HAT. It was a risk I took, and
I'm glad that at least, from
a certain aspect, it did pay
off. I will continue rah-rahhing
and I will be the noisiest
Treasurer NJCSC has ever
had!:)

Thank you to all those who have
constantly supported, guided
and encouraged me, all the
way from the day I picked
up my form up till now. There
are just too many of you, but
rest assure that each and
every single one of you
are remembered. You guys
believed in me even when
I distrust myself. Thank you.

2008-04-19T23:07:00.005+08:00

I'm one screwed up kid right now. Aside from
being super busy, alot of things has
happened in the past month that has
changed my perspective of alot of.....stuffs.
My mind is boggled and my brain is fried.
I can't think straight. And I'm sorry if I haven't
been the upbeat, cheery person I once was.
I'm just so tired. And life's just beginning.
Darn. I need to think some things through
real badly, if not I will just have a mental
breakdown. I think I'm on the verge of one
already. Sigh. Have faith in me, people.
Mylene Lim will return soon, once she
finishes recuperating from the stress,
mental agony and shame accumulated from
the past 4 months. It's gonna take some time
but hold on. You'll get her back real soon.
I can't believe I didn't even have the energy
to cheer for the soccer match:/

Everyone's so emo these days, it's hard for me
to smile amidst the frowns.

I can't believe the school's not even giving me
the chance to run for President. And if
so many people want to be in Terra HAT so
badly, why isn't anyone (aside from that
confirminhatalready one) running for
House Captain?!

BUT I WON'T SUCK UP TO YOU.
Let others make you shoik, but I want
to be chosen because someone has faith
in my abilitiy to lead, and not in my
ability to kiss asses.

I'm running for Treasurer and Terra House
Captain. Yeah, I know, 2 completely
different job scopes, but I'm a multi-talented
all-rounder:) Nah, scratch that.

2008-03-28T22:08:00.003+08:00

One week of campaigning is finally
over:) It was so tiring; I don't think
I've ever felt myself constantly
rushing against time so badly. And
nj was like my second home; my
school hours were like 6.30am-8pm:/
And sleeping hours were significantly
REDUCED! Not to mention studying
time. I failed the maths quiz and I'm
guaranteed to get 'nominated' for
chem extra lessons. But I'm mighty
pleased with myself cause for the first
time in my life, I took a bus to school
in the wee hours of the morning!:) 156
is reallllly slow in the mornings:/ Fiesta
tomorrow; am gonna go back to spend the
fifty dollars I was forced to buy last
year! Haiz, I can't believe I pon CCA this
whole week:(

P.S. Goodbye my friendly senior have fun
in Canada yeah?

2008-03-16T17:02:00.014+08:00

Today was super fun=). Went to watch zone
comp @ peirce sec in the morning together with
joy and we saw her C-I-R-E *hahaha* before
walking to amk mrt to go to orchard to meet
jieyi. We shopped around cineleisure where
we saw this girl in a sailormoon get-up!
She wore the skirt like uber high up her
waist and joy and I were like staring
at her with our mouths hung wide open.
Haha total visual entertainment. Not that
I wanna be mean (and since Singapore is
a free country and we are allowed to dress
as we please) but that girl really didn't look
good in her costume and the outfit itself
looked 2 sizes too small for her. Anyway
we braved the rains to go meet sara at
far east plaza and yakked until chery long
came, then went to long john to catch up on
each other's lives (especially love livesXP). And
I wanna give a shoutout to Lailai my uber
zai egeog teacher who, with her magical
powers, somehow managed to bless me
with some geog knowledge despite me always
sleeping during her lessons! Haha sara joy and
i were like, how did we get A1 for comb humans
lah! And I think it's thanks to the lethal
combination of Lily Tan's S.S. skills and
Lailai's incessant droning=)! Yeah!

Attention! I am 11cm taller than Miss Sara Yap
but due to the fact that I tried to act snuggly, I
ended up looking shorter than her! Hurrumph!

My loooong overdue bday present from Joy!
(the M&Ms were eaten long ago pokkie!)

Melinda and I with Mr Golden Balls himself!

Victoria had better not see this:/

Thank you to all those who voted for
FeedBeck!:)

2008-02-18T22:15:00.004+08:00

Dear 08S11,
Come what may tomorrow,
I hope that each and every one of
you will be happy, and will
continue to stay that way
always. These past one
and a half months spent
with you people had been
the ride of my life; to be honest
it has been the best months of
my life. You guys brought
such joy and sunshine into
my life, and I've never known
that happiness can be so
sweet and addictive. You
people gave me something
that I've been searching for
my entire life, and I will
always cherish this gift.
I haven't always been the
best of friends, but I will
do ANYTHING for the
class to stay. Thank you,
each and every 08S11-er,
for everything that you
have done for me.

2008-01-26T23:29:00.000+08:00

Im so sick and tired of trying to
be someone that Im not. This
whole pretending is killing me.
When will I ever learn that I
can never be clique material?
It's like, they are this whole
clique and Im just trying to
be a part of them. I think
only marmy understands
how I feel since she's like
the only person I really
talk to. Recluses in disguise.
How can I tell him that what
he discriminates against is
exactly what and who I was
and am probably still am?
That what he says always
hurts me. He will never
know I guess, because
I dont think I will ever
tell him. And they are
all together with him
in this thing. I should
just stick to my comfort
zone. I shouldnt try to bite
off more than I can chew.
Is this whole thing really
worth the pain and
insecurity that plagues me
every single day? The
worthlessness and pathetic
feelings I experience....
maybe Im just fooling
myself. Im just letting
myself fall into heartache.

2008-01-25T23:37:00.000+08:00

So yeah, I've gotten back my results, and
I thank the Lord that I can continue to
remain on in NJC. I hope that 08Sll can
stay...unless they choose to leave, of course.

2008-01-22T20:30:00.000+08:00

Ever since that incident 7 years ago,
I knew the dangers of emotional
attachment, be it to someone or
something. You run the risk of
getting yourself hurt. Badly. Maybe
that's why all these years I've never
really trusted anyone, because I
dont want to be emotionally tied
down to that person. I hated being
vulnerable. And now I'm
repeating history again. I'm giving
too much of myself to 08S11. Like
slightly more than a month ago I
was very disappointed that I
couldnt get into RJC; NJC was
never where I envisioned myself
to be. Now, I cant bear to leave this
place. I dont know what I will do
if I cant get back into this school.
I will move on, but I guess it will
be very hard. I want 08S11 to
STAY, just the way it is now. I want
TERRA. I want my current life to
stay. Which is why I am
awaiting my results with such
dread. Really, come what may I
will accept it, but unless it is
the way I want it then it will
be difficult. I guess I can only
hope for the best but prepare
for the worst.

2008-01-16T21:04:00.000+08:00

Yayness thank you to all those who
made my bdae very special! Thanks
08S11 for celebrating it with me;
Geraldine for the yummy cake;
Cheryl Heng for your present;
Joy for specially coming to nj to
see me; and all those who wished
me Happy Birthday! Thank you ppl!
I love you guys! (Quick give me e photos!)
Sparks was quite alright; I didnt
know it was today if not I would
have studied for it or something!
It was alright; me and Jie NING:)
were like tikam-ing the answers
for the pen and paper section, but
she was so much more smarter esp
during the physics component! Then
the RFID was rough and I kena
pushed, shoved and scratched.
And no thanks to the same CHEENA
boy who not only contributed to
most of my injuries but he also
pushed me down during the running lah!
Idiotic over-competitive @%!#@&*!
And the B grp rocked coz their solar
thingy managed to move! Woo!

THANK YOU MY LOVELY ANGEL
FOR THE BOX OF CHOCOLATES!
I REALLY APPRECIATE IT
COZ I LOVE CHOCOLATES!

I think my angel knows me coz
guys dont usually give chocolates
to mo sheng girls right?
I will look like a whale once Im
thru with the chocs.
Lucky I ran 7 rounds during PE.
Make up for all the calories!

2008-01-14T21:17:00.000+08:00

Yeah in less than 3 hrs time I will be
SUPER SEVENTEEN! This yr will be
a lil sad since no one can celebrate it
with me in sch:( unlike last yr. Still,
may I be a wiser, luckier and better
person this time round!
NJC seriously needs to do something
about the synthetic black rubber-like
thingy on the field. The grass is fake;
is there a need for fake soil too?!! I
spent an entire hour digging that shit
out of the soles of my shoes yesterday
and trust me, it was NOT a pleasant
experience. It made a mess out of
my legs, socks and shoes during
war games. Get rid of that stuff
please!
156 was VERY VERY slow to arrive
today, and I fell asleep on the bus
home. Very unglam, since I'm
known to drool while I sleep. Then
even more unglam: I awoke with
a jolt to realise that the bus had
arrive at my stop, and I frantically
stabbed the button repeatedly to
ring the bell, and so the bell rang
THRICE and everyone was looking
at me as I jumped out of my seat
and dashed off the bus. UGGH.
I ran all the way home in horror.
And I had my first official afternoon
nap on a school day today! Afternoon
naps were a staple during my
secondary school years, so yeah!
Reliving nostalgic memories!
I think I have to stop here coz
I suddenly remembered that I
have chem homework. YUCKS.

And you, my irritating MSP
classmate can u stop speaking
malay to me??!!

2008-01-12T19:09:00.000+08:00

Orientation is officially over...and I
DONT WANT to start lessons. Bleah.
My thighs are aching really bad; I cant
even walk properly. And my shoulder
blade still hurts! Yesterday's dance
party was wild, but really, it's totally
not my scene. Like ppl were
gyrating their hips and stuff like
that and I was moving like a block
of wood. I dont think I will be like,
a clubber or something. I dont
drink and I cant dance. I'll
probably embarrass myself only.
Went stargazing and gossiping
coz it was so HOT literally in the hall.
Then went crazy and 'patriotic' and
started shouting tyraz cheers tgt with
Geri, HK, SW, TT and J! WOO!
Timetable sucks; I will spend most of
the time in school slacking and stoning.
Lucky no PE; PE seems to comprise
largely of running, an activity that
does NOT rank favourably on my list.
Good luck Joy! Teehee:)

2008-01-04T18:46:00.002+08:00

OKAYY so I've managed to successfully complete 3 days of JC!
Woohoo~ It's been killer, and I've nv stayed back in school
for so long b4. I MISS MY AFTERNOON NAPS! I miss SNGS! I miss
my friends! Everything here in njc is totally out of the
comfort zone that I've immersed myself in for the past
4 years. The food is so expensiveX/ Anyway looking forward
to tomorrow when I can go back to st nicks! I'm such a
noisy person but during the past few days the amount of
words that I said in a day would have put Mylene Lim of
2007 to shame. I hate the fitting-in part of school, when
you are not sure that you will find people who are
willing to talk to and hang out with you. I always
feel very insecure, so out-of-place when I see groups
of people laughing together and I'm alone there. Maybe
I shouldn't change jc because then I'll have to redo
this entire orientation-fitting in part. *shudders*
And, I got into KI, which was like such a surprise,
so chances are I wont change cause I dont wanna
take another selection test again. It was HORRIBLE.
I'm seriously starting to think that I'm biting off
more than I can chew here. Like, "Above all else, the
mathematician is objective. Discuss." WTH??!! I wont
know how to answer lah!

P.S OMG LAH ONE OF THE GIRLS IN MY ORIENTATION GROUP
HAS A CRUSH ON AN OGL! GO FIGURE.
(I WONT SAY WHO THEY BOTH ARE)

2007-12-31T13:24:00.000+08:00

WELCOME BACK JOY!!!
Yay joy's coming back
to singapore today! gotta
give her her christmas
present....kaylyn and i
exchanged ours alrd! I
totally love the earrings
kaylyn gave me! Thanks girl!
Wore it to 6B's class gathering.
Speaking of the class gath,
everybody's changed! Pity
so many didnt turn up, but
the party was quite fun!
Saw so many people whom
i haven't seen in YEARS.
Anyway today is the last
day of 2007, a year of
many trials and
tribulations. It was an
eye-opening year,
fraught with experiences
both good and bad, old
and new. I'm ready to welcome
the new year, and I hope that
2008 will be a greater year!
Though what with
the rocketing prices
of everything and the
economy expected to fall....
Still, there are holidays aplenty
in 2008, and its a LEAP
year! Special special!

So Happy New Year!

2007-12-24T23:14:00.000+08:00

In less than an hour's time it
will be Christmas! Aside from
birthdays, Christmas is one of
my favourite times of the year.
The holidays had been a blast,
though too fast I must say.
Next year everything will
change for me. I can't say
that I'm really looking
forward to the change, but
I guess it's all part and
parcel of growing up. But
I'm so NOT looking forward
to collecting my results.
Anyway this is a random post,
so whatever. I hope Melody
gets my card by tomorrow
though.
MELODY: I sent your card
already, but if Mr Postman
decides to slack on the job,
sorry if your card reaches you
late!
MERRY CHRISTMAS
EVERYONE! MAY YOU
HAVE A WONDERFUL
TIME DURING THIS
FESTIVAL OF GIVING
AND RECEIVING!

2007-11-22T15:27:00.000+08:00

Today my sister got her PSLE
results back. I won't disclose how
much she got though. I remember
my time, when I had to collect my
own PSLE results. I don't have
any recollection of any fear, tension
or nervousness. A rather stark
contrast to what I felt when I
had to collect my O level Chinese
results, when I was near
breakdown state, all trembly
and cold. Still, what I remembered
from both occasions were the
tears. Tears were aplenty in the
hall today, as well as the
inevitable joy of several
students, but what got me thinking
was, why must some people's joy
be others' sorrow? Everytime I
see a sobbing, sorrowful face
after the collection of results,
it always gets me thinking:
Did this person deserve her
sorrow? Was it her fault she
got the results that she got?
I am thankful that till date
I have no reason to cry over
my results other than for
happy reasons, but that
feeling of fear never left me,
that somehow, one day, I
will be like that, disappointed
over my results. What with
my O level results coming
out soon, I guess I have
reason to fear. I hate this
competitiveness, this
rat race that I am being
subjected to. I can't stand
parents who go, "Aiyah, my
child did very badly lah....he
only got 256." And this, my
dear readers, is exactly
what a mother once said
to me, and I quote, verbatim.
Like wth?? Parents such as this
deserve to rot in hell. Today,
I overheard a girl who was
crying telling her friend, " My
father will surely beat me one."
May that father rot in hell too.
Still, don't you think that luck
plays a rather crucial role
here? Exams are so
subjective, especially
language exams, and it is
no wonder that many parents
go to temples and places of
worship to pray for blessings
for their children.
Ultimately one has to accept
that whatever the results, life
still goes on. There will always
be a second chance, a way for
things to get better. Many successful
people in the world today didn't
succeed just because they passed
their PSLE, or any other major
exams for that matter, with
flying colours. I don't deny that
academics smarts help, or at least
open more windows of opportunities.
But at the end of the day, what comé
may, do your best in whatever you
do and you will have no reason
for regrets. Also, intelligence is
partly genetic, so the next time
your parents scream at your
results, tell them this fact.
Just don't tell them that I
said it.
Till next time people!!!

2007-08-30T23:47:00.000+08:00

I simply have to blog about this.
It is phenomenal.
Absolutely incredible.
THERE IS NO SCHOOL TOMORROW!
And it is prelims! English compo!
Who would have believed it??!!
Certainly not I. So when Kaylyn
called me up to inform me about
the shocking news, I thought she
was pulling my leg initially. She
never was a good liar. BUT then
I received Alicia's SMS! And Alicia
is supposed to be RELIABLE and
TRUSTWORTHY!! Turns out that
yes, there is no school. Reason
being? POWER FAILURE.
Many reckoned it could be due
to the torrential rain that has been
plaguing our island religiously
every day. Haha but this means
that I get to have a "night off" from
studying...which is also the reason
why I am able to write this after
a drought of posts.

2007-07-07T14:05:00.000+08:00

Yesterday was probably one of
the most emotional days I have
experienced this year. The SNSJ
Reddds POP. I guess I have to
face the fact that I am no
longer a SNSJ member.
4 years just seemed to whizz by
and I can still remember when I
was in Sec 1 and the Greens were
in charge. As a squad we really
grew up together and I am
so proud to be a member of
the Reddds. I think my
presents looked kinda
cheapo:/ I received very
lovely presents though and I
thank those who wrote me
such beautiful letters and
gave me lovely gifs, like
the darkblues' scented
seashell box thingy!
Thank you:
HONG2PAI2
For all the lovely memories
and friendships forged. All
the scandals and gossips!
My squaddies are the
numero uno in gossiping
cause they know so
much juicy news! And
we are probably one
of the most emotional,
shameless and lovable
squads! Reddds forever!
NC2'04
My lovely mcomp group
with Dior, Jeannie,
Debbie Tan and Joy! I
remember how Debbie
and I love to squabble
so much and Debbie
always loved bullying
Jeannie! And our
Incredibles Family!
NC1'05
CHAMPIONS for
mcomp'05! My
lovely l xilei,
no2 jesmine and
no4 yinyee! I am
so proud of my
no2 and no4!
And my darling xilei
for all those training
memories and then
our annual outings!
Haha this year it is
me and xilei's turn
to plan! Cant wait!
Thank you guys for
everything.
PRINCESS CLUB
Whee the club that
was created because
we must be equal!
Initiallwe were a royal
family and then we
all decided to be
PRINCESSES! So
Taizifei says this
to my fellow princesses:
Nubi aka Wangpo aka Wangfei
Whee pokkie thanks for
the 4 years of fun,
laughter and special
memories! I love u!
Haha I know you are
still waiting for wangzi
aka QIU SHENYI!
Gege
Haha we werent so close until
last year but I love you! Thanks
for all those slacking sessions
in the sj room when we
would do nthing but talk and
talk and talk! And how we
love to SHOP! And we
must go out together ok!
Kongquegongzhu
Peacock Princess aka
Chicken Backside! Haha
the most aunty of the
lot! Thanks for making
me laugh with your
aunty antics!
GongZhu
Haha I remember how
we were deciding whether
you should take gongzhu
cause some NUBI dunno
run go where! Haha
thanks for always
making me laugh and
slacking with me in
the sj room always!
Melody
My darling SP!! And
my longest corresponding
one! I LOVE YA LOADS!
Thanks for all the
letters (I kept every
single one of them)
and especially the
particularly beautiful
one yesterday! Stay in
touch ok and jiayou
in everything you do!
I will definitely come back
when you hand in so
must remember to invite me!
I guess that's all then. And
I would also like to thank my
bnco group ALGO for that
lovely bnco that I went through.
Without you ppl BNCO would
never be what it was.
I LOVE SNSJ!
PS. Why is it that in alot of
letters alot of ppl wrote that
they will always remember
me for being very entertaining?
Thanks though for all the
compliments, like how one
person wrote that my
presence always made things
seem alright and another
wrote that I always make
her laugh with my antics.
Thanks peeps!
PPS I have Jaslin Yip to thank
for really making me cry. She
was crying and crying and
I remembered how I was
gonna miss her so much and
then I started crying. And
then I continued crying
while hugging xinrong too
cause we had so many
memories back in sec one and
I was gonna miss her so much
too. Jaslin like abit open the
floodgate lah. Thanks la jaslin
yip:I

2007-06-20T22:17:00.000+08:00

Malaysia trip was FUN!
I had to miss one day of
jtc but that's ok:) On
Friday I was in Melaka
and I bought presents
for my friends and my
Shakira juniors! Like
I promised Jesmine,
Brenda & Rachael!
Shakira instructors
included too! And I
saw a baby monkey!
Poor thing was kept
in a cage. It was so
adorable and the way
it clasped my finger
with its tiny hand was
sooo cute. I wanna own
a monkey! Was @
Jonker Street for the
opening of the Lim
Association's new
building. Apparently
all Lims are descendents
of Dragons! How cool is
that?! Saturday was KL
day and that night I
went for this event
commemorating the 21st
birthday of this Indian
lady whose father is some
tua pai doctor cause the
event was sponsered by
Magnum. And Sunday was
GENTING day! I miss
Genting! It was so cold
after lunch with the wind
blowing nonstop and my
hands froze when I was
sitting the Cyclone. And
yes I finally managed to
sit Solero Spaceshot! The
ultimate coolest ride!
Vertical drop! It was
exhilarating to be up
in the sky and then
BOOM! You drop! At
night we attended some
magic show thing where
I fell asleep halfway but
the show was great. Then
me and Grace and the
sampat Pei Sze went to
sit the unfrightening
indoor coaster and the
bumper cars. There was
these two guys there and
they were the sultry bad-boy
kind of cute, and Grace sorta
liked one of them and she
kept looking at them. Oh
and I sat that Pirate Ship like
what, 8 times?! And Grace and
Pei Sze kept looking at cute guys!
Pirate Ship is infested with them!
And those two kept pointing
out them out. Oh and the Lim
clan just cemented our
reputation as the worst and
most feared Pirate Ship people
cause we purposely kept
screaming and yelling and
Yvonne shrilled like a banshee.
And at the bumper cars we met
these group of Singaporeans and
there was this one girl who
recognised Grace coz earlier on
in the day Grace had whammed
that girl's bumper car hard. She's
from ITE Simei and she wears
colored contacts! She was with
this bunch of people and there
was this one guy wearing
green and white striped long-
sleeved tee who was kinda cute
and Pei Sze went nuts over him,
lamenting that he had a baby
face and his hairstyle was cute.
Grace had left for KL coz she
had school the next day. Pei Sze
decided to ponteng school. And
at 1am plus Pei Sze and I went
for KFC and guess who we saw?!
That girl and her friends! Haha
but no green/white guy. When
Pei Sze saw them she rammed
her entire burger in her mouth
and couldn't talk! Later as we
waked around the indoor theme
park we saw those two sultry
bad-boy cuties and one of
them was smoking. Those two
seemed on a personal mission
to kill me after I banged them
both during bumper cars, and
then me and Pei Sze were like,
let's go and ram them back!
Ohohoh and guess
what my guy cousins wanted to
tell this waitress? "Waitress,
I want a hot milo. Must be as
hot as you." HAHAHA.
Monday I went back to Melaka
and shopped but I bought
only a Roxy purse. Ate Bak
Chang:D Dinner was with
my second uncle, aunty, my
cousin and his wife and kids.
Tuesday was back to Singapore
day and I was soo not looking
forward to it. I wanna go
back Genting! O levels are
screwing up my life. My
sweet sixteen ain't sweet no
more. Methinks it just
rotted and turned SOUR.

2007-06-05T16:34:00.000+08:00

Recently I have been scouring
through websites, blogs, friendsters
and all those stuffs trying to dig
out some information about
people. Firstly, try as I might,
I can't find anything about BATTERY.
Secondly, I found out about this
guy who posted on youtube a
video about the berita news, in
which I "starred", in my
famous hot pink shirt. Thirdly,
I realized that Mo Fan Bang
Bang Tang isn't such a bad thing
to watch, but still NOT INTERESTED.
Aside from these I realized how
shameless some girls can be
on friendster. On some popular
HK actor's friendster, some
girls went absolutely nuts and
wrote mushy love notes to
him, going gaga over how
cute he is and all that shit.
Then I caught a comment made
by some guy, and it goes: i love u
n iwant sucksssss......ur dick.......muah...
No joke. Please dont be like me. I
actually went to check this friendster
out and was confronted with
pictures of the MALE'S PRIVATE
ANATOMY PART. Freaking gross.
Seriously I just do not understand
why girls can go crazy over some
guy they have never met in real
life and still proclaim: I love you
to death. I cannot understand the
whole logic behind it. Why love
some guy who doesn't love you
back? Why worship him when
you are non-existent in his life?
Yeah, these male stars themselves
all say that they love their fans and
all that shit, but how can you
take them seriously? Of course if
you are in it for their talent, then
that is another thing. But I doubt
this is the case most of the time.
For heaven's sake look at Sanjaya!
That guy can hardly sing, wears his
hair like some deranged poodle on
a bad hair day, and looks like his face
just got ran over by a lorry. Still some
girls went nuts over his underdog
story and cried when he got his
long-awaited dismissal from AI.
Ok so he is NOT cute. Yet he
still garnered crazy fans. Methinks
this is all a passing fancy. Sure,
I have had my fair share of
crushes but I always knew deep
down that they were just passing
fancies and would not last. It is
pathetic to go wild over some
guy who knows nothing about
your existence on earth. I would
rather go absolutely nuts and
write mushy love notes to
someone who will appreciate it.
Still, what would a star do without
these samseng char bor? No
money and no fame lor.

2007-06-03T14:45:00.000+08:00

I love sales. Really.
Bargains are on my list of
loves too. Just ask Yilin.
But it was for RM2 only la.
So yesterday when I went
for the sale by the Melwani
Grp, featuring items such
as Zara & Calvin Klein, I
was hoping to get items
at a steal. Imagine my
disappointment when I
found out that the items
featured for $10 were
junk items thrown into
some bargain bin, all
messed up and crumpled,
quite like what one would
find at some dinghy, lousy
store. All the clothes
featured on the rack were
similar, just placed at different
locations. What I found at
Rack A, I would find at
Rack B 40m away.
Everything was priced
at 29.90...for members only.
Non-members have to pay
34.90. Like wth. I was sorely
disappointed, having been
so hyped up about going
there initially. SALE was
such a ripped off noun there.
Many shoppers were seen
leaving without any purchases.
I even overheard two women
commenting on the lack of shopping
bags on those leaving in the lift.
The clothes on sale were
in such plain, ordinary designs
and the sizes so small I would
have mistook it for a fancy
hankerchief had I not seen
the 'TuaPai' name there:
GUESS, MNG blah blah.
There was no accessories,
no bags, no shoes on sale.
PITY. Not worth going,
despite all its prominent
advertisments in Life.
High hopes failed expectations.
And they even had the gall
to advertise: ALL ITEMS
@ $10 to $39.90 only.
AHchooAHchoo I'm
allergic to BULLSHIT.

2007-05-30T21:07:00.000+08:00

The trip to N.Sembilan was a
great escape from the impending
reality that faced me in S'pore.
Initially I wasn't too excited
about the prospect of going there,
but I dont regret going for it now.
It seriously rocked. Nothing like
4 days of fun with great friends,
juicy scandals and alot of bitching:)
Like ermmhemm.. BATTERY. Ok
but I feel quite sorry for her
sometimes. The feeling of not being
included, the feeling of being
unwanted, the feeling of knowing
that you are being bitched about and
can do nothing about it...Thats sad.
PITY PITY. Shi Jia and Yilin spent
like SO much. I didn't even reach
RM30!! Kampung Lonek was
really a kampung, and I loved the
KAMPUNG SPIRIT! How everyone
seemed to know one another. And I
miss my foster family:( Esp Aby and
Ah Boy. I threaded my first LIVE
worm for fishing there MYSELF,
forced myself to eat the curry even
though there were ANTS floating
inside, rode a bicycle after 3 years,
and bathe with icy cold water at
7.30am in the morning! I loved
eating with my hands; I'm getting
to be a pro at it. Two weekends
spent with Malay families has
made me embrace their
culture even more and I feel
like a Malay sometimes:) I was
not used to the tall buildings
when I reached S'pore; I was not
used to shitting without swatting
pesky mosquitoes away; I was
not used to eating food not
contaminated with insects of
some sort; I was not used to the
clean environment after living
for 4 days in a house where
Mr Frog thought it acceptable to
set up home outside the toilet,
where ants crawled like nobody's
business, where the floor was
constantly streaked with mud
and insects. Yet the most ironic
part is that I actually didn't mind
all that. Anybody who knows me
knows that I HATE insects. I cant
stand them, yet within these 4 days
I somehow came to accept them.
Not that I am professing to be an
insect fan or something. Really I
am so glad I went for this trip.
Aside from great newfound friends,
strengthening existing bonds and
scandals, I think I gained alot
during these 4 days. And like
what Yilin said, an alumni trip
would be really great. And now,
excuse me while I go cram for
that stupid 'O's.
PS Sorry ITCHY for using up
almost all the TIGER INSECT
REPELLENT!! HAHAH!

2007-05-20T17:12:00.000+08:00

Today marks the end of the
"Homestay across Communities"
Programme that the Harmony
Centre @ An-Nandhah Mosque
hosted for us. Basically we just live
with local Malay families. My foster
family consists of: Pak Cik Ramlan,
Mak Cik Iwani, Syura and Nasha!
They dressed me up as Hang Tuah
(like so cannot make it lah) and I
had to go onstage somemore decked
out in the costume! So paiseh! Oh and
Suria came and interviewed us!
Haha me and Yilin cheated and wrote
scripts and made the reporter hold it
for us as we speak:) And I wrote my
script myself! Dunno which GIRL had
the reporter write the script for her...;p
Many thanks to Syura and Nasha for
helping me! We played games the
entire afternoon and then we had
goreng pisang! Me and Yilin gobbled
down the yummy crumbs and polished
off the half of the container of this indo
chips. And then started moaning "aiyoh
the calories...." Took a bus to Geylang
Serai and went scarf shopping @ First
Lady! Yilin and I went mad trying on
all the scarves! We wrapped it around
ourselves and posed in front of the
mirror! Cik Iwani bought for us our
favourite scarves! Whee~
After that we went for dinner!
Had ayam penyet and sirap limau! So
sedap! And we ate @ the aptly named
SEDAPURA! The chilli was spicy and
very good! I loved how it flamed up
my mouth instantly! The drink was
good. Yilin and I didnt know that we
could take the drink with us, and we
gulped down everything before we got
up to watch the show. And then we
saw Syura taking her drink along with
her! Yilin saw two cats and screamed
both times. The Indo show we watched
is a "cultural" performance called
KUDA KEDANG. They had spirits enter
these dancers bodies, then whipped
them, had them eat glass and step
on glass and eat burning charcoal!
Very fascinating. The second dancer
who got "cured" was damn hot! He
looked mixed. Whatever. After that
we cabbed home. The taxi driver
sucked lah! He scolded us the moment
we entered the taxi for godknowswhat
reason. Cik Iwani got mad and shot
him down (verbally lah) and when we
alighted the cab he went,"Sorry lah
jangan marah"(dont be angry) Like
whatever. I know his name. And
cab number. Watch your ass MR
NG TAI PHONG SH 7192R!
Went home to watch the
rerun of the suria news Berita
something. I squealed when I
saw myself TALKING! So
embarrassing!! Yilin squealed
even louder! It's so weird
seeing yourself on tv! Speaking
in MALAY! Wengger saw it and
she smsed me saying about
my HOT PINK shirt! Historically,
the first scene where they showed
me, I screamed because my
'songkok' dropped. :Z The
next morning we lazed in
bed and watched a disc
which showed Syura singing
and dancing! So talented lah
she. Then we watched the
episode of "Missing" in which
Pak Cik Ramlan acted in!
Haha Syura told me that
they smeared axe oil under
his eyes coz he couldnt cry!
And the girl they buried was
actually a doll! Ate a heavy
lunch and then it was back
to Harmony Centre for the
debrief. When I came home
Straits Times called me and
interviewed me about the trip.
Dunno when it will be published
though. Haha I dont regret
going for the trip! And I
cant wait until next week when
I will stay with another family
in Negri Sembilan. Till then,
I have to study for my
malay oral tomorrow, and
then there is lit test and
integration test too. DIE!

2007-03-25T19:58:00.000+08:00

The workshop ended yesterday
and yeah, it was overall better
than I expected. Woo. Many
cried yest but me sara joy and
yijun STILL kept our no-crying
pact. Man we are strong. More
than 10 people went up to talk
and many came in pairs so that
they wont be discounted as one.
I hate to say this, but wth i shall
say this anyway. I resented the
way one person made it sound
as though she were the
representative of all those who,
to quote her, "didnt have the
moral courage to go up and
speak". Do you actually know
what IS moral courage?? What
the hell do you mean by that?
Did you ever take into consideration
that maybe people choose not to go
up and speak because they DO NOT
have any regretful thing to say in
front of the audience about the
relationship between them and
their parents? I am not discounting
the courage of all those who went
up, but I hated the way she made it
sound as though those who didnt
go up were big time cowards and she
was "apologising" to their parents for
their daughters' cowardice. You SUCK,
to quote yet another phrase from you.
Geezwheez. Oh and another person
pissed me off totally yesterday. If
I give you the full details she is sure to
know I'm talking about her, because I
realise that ALOT of people I know (and
dont know) read my blog even though
they dont tag. Let me just say, for
memories keepsake, that she very
OBVIOUSLY did not included me,
joy and kaylyn into her group for the
studying thing. It may sound petty here,
but the full story is too long to blog
about. I think I wasted my money
buying her that myuk pouch for her
b'day. She so obviously doesnt
deserve it. Should have just given her
some rubbish I picked up from the
DUMP.

2007-03-23T22:59:00.000+08:00

Second day into the training
workshop. I dont deny that
it is actually useful in a way,
but I'll try to make it work.
For me.
Sara, Yijun, Joy and I
kept our pact on not
crying. OKEY..... And
Ms Jacob came up to
me and Sara during the
mindmap thingy and just
went, "I have selected you
to represent our class in
the Interclass debate comp."
Yijun and Inez were chosen
too, and so was Cheryl but
she didnt confirm it. Whee!
I havent debated in a LONG
time, so I just hope I dun screw
things up for the team.
Really, I dont see how
picturing my parents' dying
and their funeral can help
me score and succeed.
Maybe I'm just not getting
it; maybe it's because I
refused to picture the
scene; maybe it's just because
my relationship with my
parents is perfectly fine.
No need for regrets and tears.
I hate it when he manipulated
people's minds. Or as Sara calls
it, "a brainwashing session".
I hate it when people manipulate
my mind. Though there were
some things he said that were true.
Like how we hide our real selves
behind a mask. I do it so that
I dont get hurt. God knows how
many times I have let down
my guard and poof! Someone
gets too close to my heart and
then completely destroys it.
Behind every cheery face lies
a scarred heart. And I think
it's true. It's scarred, but it keeps
beating. Because if there is one
thing I learnt early in the game
of friendship is that forgive,
learn and MOVE ON. But you
know the worst kind of love?
It is when the person you are in
love with is a friend. So near yet so
far seems to aptly describes this.
The worst way to miss someone
is when they are right beside you
and yet you can never tell them.
Too many of us stay walled because
we are afraid to care too much....
for fear that the other person
might not care at all. Many find
it difficult to pluck up the courage
and just say, "I like you. As in,
not just LIKE you, but like LIKE
you," You know how sometimes
the woman's intuition tells you
when someone likes you? You
just know it. It's just so frustrating
when someone just seems to
display signs of liking you, and
then goes around hugging other
people. Then gives you a hug
which means so much to you,
but you know that it is just
another hug to that person.
YOU would know what I'm
talking about.
If you like someone, go for it.
As the trainer puts it, Life is
too short to waste on awful
memories. Carpe diem people!

*~World of Mylene~*

RIP, Steve Jobs.

YLTC

~World of Mylene~