:O :O :O :O :O :O STARS! LIVE! IN! SINGAPORE! :O :O :O :O :O :O

Decent tickets start at $88! :O

songs that speak of loss

In the morning in the winter shade
On the first of March, on the holiday
I thought I saw you breathing

Sufjan Stevens - Casimir Pulaski

To condescend: if you want to be truly emo on a less superficial level.

pictures

Photos of: Ugly Cupcake, arrival hall.
Took a picture with Shihui too! (Hey send me the photo!)

of unemployment

I'm listening to the recordings that the Melizo acappella group made during choir camp.
<3<3*#~~Memoriies neba 4gotten worxx*~""<3<3

But seriously, I'm starting to miss lots of things!

For example, I really miss baking. This afternoon, after returning home from church, I made troll cakes. They are kind of like the the bastard children of a hedonistic muffin and an errant cupcake, and have become extremely un-photogenic and wildly unattractive due to the occurrence of several unfortunate chiasmata during pastry meiosis, but I think they'll taste good enough to be eaten for supper despite prior knowledge of their calorie-dense morsels. (Although it is anticipated that guilt will ensue the morning after.)

Will blog more with pictures once I actually get a chance to eat them! Am awaiting my sister's arrival from Hong Kong and gesticulating frantically at the glass panels in the arrival hall and taking pictures and looking at photographs and rummaging through shopping bags and yakking about stuff in general and unpacking and repacking bags to prepare for my trip and eating lao po bings at the same time and practising on the piano for the programme tomorrow and looking for empty water bottles for games and wishing that saturday will arrive sooner and and and there's also a need for me to catch my breath.

Oh, and actually some children I've met so far are so cute, they make cute-o-meters and cuteness receptors go on overdrive, but it seems this is only true for people aged 5 and below. And, I've figured out how to stare at bratty kids into silence. Yessss! *\O/*

the weight of water above

I miss studying.


However, I do like to waste my time in a productive way too. Time to plan out my baking schedule, make friends with neighbours, prepare Christmas cards, fill up another sketchbook, read about ugly animals, paint surrealist landscapes, run after cars, annoy family members, and play with cats downstairs! :D

But I do like observing the passage of time, if only in actuality one merely dreams.

nice rice

Just got off the phone after talking to Esther! We thought there was something wrong with the reception, because our calls got cut off at least three times in the span of one 5 minute conversation. My mum was like, "there's something wrong, it makes her sound far away" and I was like, she's like 2500 km away so that is unsurprising.

Anyway, I've just completed the main part of the design for the t-shirt for this year's camp in church!

I'm also going to provide piano accompaniment for DVBS :O

Sister's really excited about the kitschy watch she bought from HK, which has a picture of chairman mao with a cool hand that raises itself to a salute every second.

I have to fly Turkish Airlines to Tel Aviv with a transit at Istanbul, and it's gonna be a 12 hour flight! The thing with medium-to-long haul flights is that there's nothing much to do on board while waiting to reach your destination, and the cabin crew always serves you breakfast at unearthly hours that makes everything that goes down your throat feel as if they have a outer covering of fuzz and grits. At least there'll be a lower probability of me encountering cranky babies/terror tykes on board because it isn't Japan/Australia/Hong Kong/Korea I'm flying to — flights on SIA to these places are the worst, because the children are rarely cute and barely tolerable. (I know, I know, I'm horribly prejudiced so shame on me.)

I think I shall aim to complete Jakob von Gunten on board, while listening to Turkish pop on the radio. If I wanted to get any more continental I shall have to don a pageboy cap, which would be horribly unsuitable for a flight of course, or any on occasion whatsoever.

I have only one album of prom photos on facebook yo

I've just returned home from camp with YFC at KCP :D It's a privilege to have a campsite that I can see from my kitchen window. (I'm being literal here.)
I found the camp really enriching, since it's gonna prepare me for CCIS along orchard road! I guess my Christmas this year is gonna be a really special one!

The first day of camp coincided with grad night at orchard hotel. I ended up deciding to go as a mortician from Las Vegas on his off-day to spare myself the hassle (and hair product) that was dictated by this year's theme.

Here are some selected photos from that night. The rest are on facebook because I love the facebook uploader on iPhoto. (No, that didn't make sense.)


The menu. Comment.








"smiling"



Cheekit's gothic nails! They're black.


The phototaking lasted till the school gates.

let's pretend we don't exist, let's pretend we're in antarctica

My sister went out to shop at Muji yesterday. My sister went to watch a movie today. My sister will be going out with her friends for the next couple of days. My sister's leaving for Hong Kong this Friday and she's going to Disneyland and will be shopping at H&M. My sister's going to stay in an expensive five-star hotel that has wall-mounted plasma screens and fluffy pillows that only exist in my distant and hazy memories.

I came back earlier than her yesterday. I stayed at home to clear my books today. I will be dragging my reluctant ass over to prom tomorrow and will be spending the next couple of days at camp. I will not be leaving for Hong Kong this Friday. I'm neither going to Disneyland nor H&M in the near future. I'm going to daydream of pillow menus and downy duvets while I find myself waterlogged in most lukewarm and lamentable ennui.

In short: I have no life.

HOWEVER, I did have loads of fun yesterday! It was Shiyun's birthday and we went on a food trail. How's that for originality? :D




We painted the town red eating good food and taking loads of photographs! I'll upload the rest of the photos to facebook.

Anyway I'm going to possibly the most exotic place so far in my life soon and can't wait for the 29th to come! Wheee

Mixtape for a rainy november

late-onset rant

20 seconds ago, I was entertaining the thought of abandoning the humanities forever. What does sitting around debating Plato, waxing lyrical about the relevance of classical Greek rhetoric, and having periodic existential crises mean to me? Would I care whether you care about the ethic of reciprocity and theories of literature? (Also: don't you bother to trim your nose hairs? Why that contemptuous, condescending attitude? Can't you try to understand the syllabus you're teaching? What? You don't know the books you're doing? Oh, now you're talking about "pecking order" and no, wearing green does not mean I hail from *there*. We have more than two schools here in Singapore. And yes, you do teach in the same school as those nice people over there. Um, hello? Omniscience malfunctioning today?)

And then I realised that I'm just associating someone I've never understood with things I've tried to understand so I'll just forget about that entire debacle, although when I'm bored and disenchanted in general I end up replaying situations and editing-in alternate endings.

Anyway I really miss being in school. I don't mind dedicating my life to researching cancer and diabetes because my family's medical history has all the drama of an Italian soap and maybe I'll be all like "my great-grandaunt struggled with [obscure cancer] and I want to find a cure for it", and then demur that I've found some leads and I'll work at the lab over the weekend. While at a dinner party wearing fancy cufflinks. With a belt that matches my shoes.

I'm being random today again!

I would love to have a cheesecake that had actually been baked.

new blog!

http://theonewiththebignose.tumblr.com
It's like a scrapbook. For when I'm too lazy to type out long posts. :)

by the window in the sky

Have just taken butt-numbing, ass-deadening bus rides to and from Bishan and Changi on 53. Why is it that the probability of getting to sit on the comfy plushy seats on the older 53 buses always has to be inversely proportional to the length of journey? Why? Why? It leaves me mystified.



We played monopoly and the game of life simultaneously at the viewing mall to while away the time after saying goodbye to the zhang brothers. Monopoly lasted a few geological ages (as with every other game of monopoly)! Suumph. I view it as more similar to social drinking than anything else, because I can't really appreciate in on a deeper level, and it's more of a "why not, since everyone's playing it" kind of thing. Anyway, we ended the game after about a couple of hours because we all got bored eventually.


3 a.m. apple pie at McDonald's, because it's apple pie and it's tested and ready to lead in a dangerous world.


Kailing pretending to be luggage... uhhh...



Saying bye to Zhaojin and Jingya, with Cheekit giving out the cards to them. Lots of flash photography ensued.



And we went for breakfast and walked to the T1 viewing gallery afterwards to watch the sunrise. I like the last photo because it reminds me of this album cover that I really like.

I am hereby pleased to announce that

I SURVIVED THE O LEVELS AND I LIVED TO TELL MY STORY!!

I hope I survive today too, because I've just returned home from watching the collaborative showcase at Lasalle and I'm so zonked out, and train rides these days are stirring up too much of my misanthropic tendencies, and I realised that I have an accent that will place me nowhere, so I'll have to either turn to Singlish or speak like an ABC, or forever devote my existence to pursuing the life of a hermit. Also, I'm going to see the scholars off at the airport later, so I'm bringing a truckload of books to keep me company throughout the witching hours, hence warding off any of those pesky dionysian/chthonic ideas that the night is so often fraught with.

Actually, I felt rather underwhelmed by the fact that we've completed the O levels, because the invigilators started talking about the A levels today and I realised that our "break" isn't really that long after all. But still! It's still cause for celebration! *\O/*

a closing

Wow. My earlier statements have been rather prescient. It's raining now, and has been for the past few hours already. If I didn't have Bio tomorrow, I would be making brownies using half a kilo of truffles that had been melted down into a dark mahogany slop due to a tragic environment-matching mishap. I think I'll save that for the weekend.

I'm gonna sleep reaaally early today because I know I won't be getting any tomorrow, with the ambitious plans to stay overnight at the airport to send the scholars off and all. I'm gonna aim for 40 tomorrow, since it's biology, after all. It's kind of like a prerequisite to securing a nice A1 (OK maybe that's not entirely true), and it'll be nice to end the O levels like that.

Well then. Thank God I've been going through things quite smoothly. Hopefully I'll make tomorrow's paper the best yet. :D

romanticise this

Swifts

Fifteenth of May. Cherry blossom. The swifts
Materialize at the tip of a long scream
Of needle. 'Look! They're back! Look!' And they're gone
On a steep

Controlled scream of skid
Round the house-end and away under the cherries. Gone.
Suddenly flickering in sky summit, three or four together,
Gnat-whisp frail, and hover-searching, and listening

For air-chills - are they too early? With a bowing
Power-thrust to left, then to right, then a flicker they
Tilt into a slide, a tremble for balance,
Then a lashing down disappearance

Behind elms.
They've made it again,
Which means the glove's still working, the Creation's
Still waking refreshed, our summer's
Still all to come -
And here they are, here they are again
Erupting across yard stones
Shrapnel-scatter terror. Frog-gapers,
Speedway goggles, international mobsters -

A bolas of three or four wire screams
Jockeying across each other
On their switchback wheel of death.
They swat past, hard-fletched,

Veer on the hard air, toss up over the roof,
And are gone again. Their mole-dark labouring,
Their lunatic limber scramming frenzy
And their whirling blades

Sparkle out into blue -
Not ours any more.
Rats ransacked their nests so now they shun us.
Round luckier houses now
They crowd their evening dirt-track meetings,

Racing their discords, screaming as if speed-burned,
Head-height, clipping the doorway
With their leaden velocity and their butterfly lightness,
Their too much power, their arrow-thwack into the eaves.

Every year a first-fling, nearly flying
Misfit flopped in our yard,
Groggily somersaulting to get airborne.
He bat-crawled on his tiny useless feet, tangling his flails

Like a broken toy, and shrieking thinly
Till I tossed him up - then suddenly he flowed away under
His bowed shoulders of enormous swimming power,
Slid away along levels wobbling

On the fine wire they have reduced life to,
And crashed among the raspberries.
Then followed fiery hospital hours
In a kitchen. The moustached goblin savage

Nested in a scarf. The bright blank
Blind, like an angel, to my meat-crumbs and flies.
Then eyelids resting. Wasted clingers curled.
The inevitable balsa death.
Finally burial
For the husk
Of my little Apollo -

The charred scream
Folded in its huge power.

— Ted Hughes

It's 3.30 pm and I'm looking out of the window watching the swallows play beneath the nebulous shadows of the clouds before the start of another rainy spell.

hush yo fussin'

Eep. Chemistry MCQ was not-so-great. However, it is by all means a dramatic improvement from 27/40 for prelims! And I think I'm still in the "safe" range (<5 marks off). The process, however, left me rather devastated at various times because in my panic, my frontal cortex sometimes crawls into a shell somewhere and hides.

Since the trend so far has been that one paper will be difficult and the other will be easy, I'll now attempt to memorize the textbook by heart. Just kidding.

exporting loneliness

Two more days to the start of the worrying wait for the O level results! Earlier, I hastily assembled a reading list to get me through this volatile period of sharp vicissitudes and psychosomatic turmoil, but realised that I'll never get through the pages of confusion stemming from the indulgent use of streams of consciousness that is Ulysses. Here's a gratuitous upload of a picture of Marilyn Monroe reading Ulysses.


It's those moments where you go: if Marilyn Monroe could (insert intellectual activity), so can I.
(yes even though the photo looks rather posed)

Anyway, I'll be reading The Bell Jar once again (after a conversation with Judith about it), one of the Robert Walser books that I've recently bought, and this collection of essays about eating alone, leaving me room to squeeze in another book. Not that anyone would be wildly interested, or anything.

I think I shall now go stare at the ceiling, to prepare myself for some corny but necessary mental carpe diem thing tomorrow morning.

ambitious holiday kitchen projects

Because my ever-growing list of "recipes to try" (I have a category of bookmarks just for this) is getting wildly out of hand, I'm trying to seek closure for some of these items and end their lives of quiet desperation. I'm quite an impulsive bookmarker too; there goes the recipes for homemade Greek Yogurt and wedding cake, along with the sadly aspirational macaron projects. I'm choosing the easy ones that won't require intimidating ingredients.

Roasted garlic and onion jam
French egg custard
Autumnal vegetable chowder
Chocolate pudding
Apple cobbler (Somewhat intimidating but imagine bringing it to christmas parties and surprising everyone etc. etc.)

Will blog about the ambitious holiday reading list soon.

tilting our plates to catch the light, and apologising to the ladies that we spilt mee siam all over.

xkcd

It's annoying how all the mistakes I make when practising for mcqs always make me appear as if I suddenly had all the IQ of a prawn sandwich. I'll have to triple and quadruple check now, if I'm not already frozen to the table by the time I'm done.

And! — anyone wants to come with me to Lasalle on Thursday for Eliz's dance showcase? (Not as if I'm insecure by myself. It's not like I someone there anyway. Sure don't come la. It's okay. I'm sure everyone has more important things to do on the last day of their exams. Don't feel too pressured. No, no, don't be sorry.)

(OH who am I kidding?)

Tomorrow holds greater promises!

(I can't believe there are people who go door to door selling small boxes of ice cream of average quality for $9.50.)

love and communication

I've written four essays today in 3 hours and I feel pretty darn good about it. I'm pleased for every essay, except of MND's passage-based part (ii) because I dislike Bottom immensely but the passage-based setters apparently decided to impose their own preferences on us, so I had to deign to begrudgingly accept their own imperialistic attitudes and pretend to enjoy his presence in the play in order to appreciate and fulfill the requirements of the question.

I went out with Jeremy, Christabel, Xinyi and Rachel to Takashimaya after the papers to procure the much-celebrated shopping vouchers for tomorrow's bride! If I climbed into the skin of her mother-in-law, I would advise her, out of some genuine concern, to immediately head for the basement's food section for all the nourishment it can bring. This whole wedding thing is really quite exciting. After that, we went to Kinokuniya to bum around and look at books, reminding me of the cyclic nature of my ambitious holiday reading list and the futility of it in the face of fatalism, etc.

And as if Went-to-Town Syndrome didn't get me (sore legs, aching feet and general lethargy), I went for my sister's passing-out-parade thing at the camp for band majors at CCAB later in the evening with my mum, and felt so deprived of rest that I had this minor existentialist panic attack while eating satay? because I didn't know whether the satay was real or merely an illusion? but it tasted great anyway?

My mum also realised that her son would be, in future, inept at getting around on his own because he didn't realise that Newton Food Centre was not within comfortable walking distance to Serene Centre and that mecca of honest and decent ice cream. Also, my worst fears have been confirmed — I've been holding chopsticks the wrong way since nearly 13 years ago when I first picked them up. Urgh, I can't snicker at western-types who can't pick up their sushi with chopsticks now!

sweet moon, I thank thee for thy sunny beams

The play within the play!

so children could understand

Let me now declare my undying love for TKAM, because it's hard for it not to elicit an emotional response from readers: I love how Mrs Dubose's mouth "seemed to have a private existence of its own". I love how we can find and contrive out symbolism in almost everything. I love how unreliable Scout is as the narrator. I love how Mrs Merriweather reminds me of someone I know. I love the ending, and its visceral and poignant images from Scout's reminiscence looking down her street from the front of the Radley yard. I love the theme music from the movie.

It's also difficult to overlook the progress of racial equality, from "baby-steps" following prejudice in Maycomb county, to living through seeing USA electing its first Black president. It's a great time to be alive.

Clytemnestra is a pretentious name for a dog

HAHA I have always loved this gag. I wish they wouldn't keep on showing the lamer ones on TV, because they're becoming staler than that french loaf in my fridge that my grandfather forgot about.

an aside

I know it's my own problem, but...
SHEESH I wish *someone* had acute laryngitis RIGHT NOW. LIKE, RIGHT NOW. Until the end of this year. A virtual one would be supremely awesome as well.
I also need selective amnesia because the more I replay the scene the more annoyed and pissed off I get.
Blame it on hormones. I've got something against enthusiasm presently.

(Hey, I feel better! Catharticccc....)

and you can do it like that

Social studies is tomorrow and woe — I'm not feeling extremely prepared despite all the studying.

In other news, I've finally solved my phone woes by... getting a new phone. It's the C902. You know, that cybershot one. I've managed to convince my parents by talking about how I've done research on the internet and cross-referenced to the newspapers for more information, and I gave an optimistic projection of how much I thought it'll cost ($98 after trade-in, yes go on, mock me for my naivety) that we realised was a tad to presumptuous upon glancing at the actual display at junction 8, because as the seconds ticked by while my dad looked at the actual price tag, I realised that both of us were contemplating on the fact that it would cost less to get an iPhone, for crying out loud.

Though I now have a new phone, my parents said that this was going to be my christmas present. Well, merry christmas me. Not only that, they're putting my request for a new wardrobe on hold. (By wardrobe, I mean the thing that you put your clothes in, not the "Winter 08/09" or "Summer 2009" kinds.) This wardrobe is currently held together by elephant glue and approximately 10 cm of wire. The runners and ball-bearings for the drawers are gone, so my grandfather, being the 1950s-type handyman he is, used vaseline to lubricate it. I feel that my quality of life is being worsened. I know that adults can be mean, but I didn't know that they could be this cruel.

you can do it like this

I'm started to love exams again! Not so the mindless studying and last-minute panic textbook-referring, but more so the independence and long stretches of free days to study. We don't have to go for morning assembly, deal with subversive juniors or fight a war every recess time just to eat! It is an amazing feeling.

And after taking the paper, we can coolly walk out with a bottle in one hand and sweater in another, and feel all-important and most-intelligent-and-capable-indeed, and comment on our performances. (Of course, in reality, no one coolly struts out because most people end up running out of the hall to thaw their frozen hands against the wan sunlight, and then struggle with pencil cases and mathematical sets and awkwardly protruding long rulers and flexible curves, all this while talking/screaming/laughing/crying about the paper at the same time.