Love this song yay <3



And this too <3

Okay it's now back to life as usual.

I hate mondays

So today I woke up a few minutes later, ate disappointing food for breakfast, lost my balance while falling asleep standing up on the train, and basically zoned out for a good part of the day. It amazes me how I'm still alive here because one of these days I'm seriously gonna lose it. And snap while doing PW or something. Maybe my mental breakdown will involve a hole punch and green foolscap. But anyway you get the idea, I'm spiraling into certain disaster/tragedy/melodrama.

HENCE, when I return home on late days, I'm going to cut-off all communication with the world outside of me and "forget" that I actually own a mobile phone. Ha.

(Anyway, I went out with the usual CTITW posse and we basically forgot about the world's heady descent into certain economic doom and chaos and etc. and went to Kovan for drinks and pasta and chocolate fondue. Otherwise I would be undergoing electrotherapy right now and imagine how inconvenient it would be, trying to type with your arms strapped to a treatment table.)

oh so depressedxx sobxxz

Yesterday, I came back home at 9.30 pm. And then I finally sat down for dinner.

I am not sensing any impetus to treasure JC life! Especially when my eye bags are large enough to hold my textbooks and hide sweets for lectures! And when I feel permanently super-glued and stapled to the bed every morning when I wake up! I hope I can take up temporary residence at some quiet corner in the LTs and tutorial rooms where the light barely reaches so that I may hide my deathly cadaveric state to avoid alarming my tutors and ruining everyone's day.

Happy birthweek Angeline!! May your backpack stay relatively clean for the rest of the year and may PDPs rush to kiss your feet in a desperate bid to drag you into them! (More photos from the lunch and outing on facebook!)

I've just gotten back home from roadrun around Bedok, an eternity-long choir audition, and dinner in what felt like a convectional oven. I feel so refreshed now after a nice bath!~

Anyway OMG I'LL MISS ZANDOR/BETA TO BITS!!! <3 <3 <3 !!!

Roadrun was only good when I got to the finish line. Throughout the entire run, I couldn't find the group I was supposed to run with so I ended up panicking a little and increasing my pace towards the end. Anyway, I only managed to find Andrea and Jeremy (who immediately dashed ahead of me) and when I reached the end, the lines on the track seemed to be doing hoe-down in front of me and the next thing I knew, I felt my legs give a little and saw a woman giving me a Robocop stare as if trying to will me into not collapsing.

On hindsight, I now think that was so embarrassing. However, I'm content with my position (a prime number! Yay!) and the fact that I've received the first ever certificate in my JC life is mildly thrilling.

My entire day reads like the blurb at the end of a severely stultifying novel.

After a long and dreary day in school several galaxies away, Samuel returns home after being caught in the lashing rain. Looking forward to seeing his grandmother after her week in hospital and spending an evening cooking up a storm in the kitchen, he enters the front door only to find everyone too busy with everything else to really notice his arrival from the distant lands. Before he knows it, he is caught up in a frantic whirlwind of wheelchair-pushing, cold food-eating, washbasin-unclogging, sick sister-waiting, plumber-calling, surprise visitor-welcoming, unrealised expections-angsting, Microsoft Word-debugging, clashing events-rescheduling, last minute gift-making, sudden realisation of homework-panicking, JC system-demystifying, and tension headache-treating!

But what did this all really mean? And why would he care anyway? The truth is far more complicated than he could ever imagine.

"BRILLIANT... unlike any other novel in this or other years." — Boston Sunday Globe

"EXTRAORDINARY... read it for yourself" — Newsweek

the rain knows

press pause press rewind and then fast forward

I survived the first day of lectures! The economics introduction was actually interesting, confounding all my preconceptions of utter boredom and the purpose of my mint-buying. History was, uh, deafening. (My lecturers so far do not have very pleasant voices.) Chinese was very trying for both the lecturer and everyone else, because no one in their right mind really wants to do Chinese — the people in the row behind me were taking photos, and my seatmate draped himself over a span of two chairs in a sort of halcyon repose while getting some shut-eye.

Just a few minutes ago, I came across that old photograph of XM Chorale while checking updates on facebook. You know, that distinctive photograph taken in 2004 that lies sandwiched between a gleaming glass plane and a heavy felt back, secured only by pastel coloured heart-shaped clips? That frame that stands on the piano as if a last vestige from the "golden ages", reminding us of the passing of time?

It causes me to think how time is so fluid, like water, an entity so icy and devoid of emotion that it passes through the slits between my fingers without thought or a shred of sympathy for the effort I take in squeezing them together to cup them. I guess I really miss leaning against the soundproofing panels to hear the noise disappear into silence that in a sense promises me comfort and security, like the solace people find in warm baths.

OG14 is love <3

I feel really exhausted now and can't wait for lectures to start next week! My history notes are riddled with typos and as you may know this drives me nuts because I'll end up concentrating more on trying to figure what the point should be than it's real meaning and implications etc. etc.

OK, O Night was ultra fun! There was a band performing at the end of O night and we were screaming and jumping and dancing and head-banging and body-slamming (just kidding! maybe not the last two), and we didn't even have dinner before that!

The band played Zombie by The Cranberries too, which is totally like my favorite 90s anthem zomgrofl.



Actually the highest point in my opinion was during the battle of the titans at the field. I wasn't playing, but I was cheering at the front with others from OG14 and shouting our lungs out! I think that really drained much of my energy and I ended up feeling slightly tired during the rest of the evening.

Anyway we totally brought the house/canteen down with cheering! I can't scream or do that "whooo" thing that everyone else does when they're cheering and I'm totally in envy of everyone else who can!

Time to mug for history~~ since I have notes already. (ha-ha.)

MAD GIRLS LOVE SONG

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)"

Sylvia Plath

I'm currently reading The Bell Jar and loving every page of it. I'm also starting to read something I found lying around in my house, The Stuff of Thought by Steven Pinker. It's mainly about semantics and examines communication and language and meaning. Thrilling stuff, I can tell you.

Anyway, I had mass dance at the fountain of wealth a while ago. It was hyper fun, as usual. We cheered like crazy, as usual. It's nice to feel some incipient sense of belonging after a long bout of post-O level doldrums.

I can't make up my mind about which PDP (aka CCA) to choose!! I'm going to request taking recreational tennis as a 2nd CCA because (a) training sessions are minimal, (b) I'm interested in picking up tennis, and (c) I wouldn't have time to exercise on my own when school starts, unless you count MRT Seat Jostling as an extreme sport.

I'm looking for PDPs that will provide leadership opportunities and will not be something I dread attending. So it's either debate or choir or photography (drawback: may not get into the photography branch of the AV Club) or that UN-thingum or journalism and creative writing club or something totally random and unexpected like swimming or drama or Chinese cultural club. Yeah.

Blue night over the sky
Blue night over me

Second day of orientation was super hyper fun!!!!~~~~xcfdgxcdfg!@&1s,

We had this chronorace in the morning which was really fun towards the end because everyone was cheering by then. After lunch I began to feel really woozy and sleepy, and kind of stoned through OG time. Following that, we had mass dance! The last one we did was super fun and amazing, and it was really spontaneous too. It felt like that traditional National Day train line people do in Xinmin, just that this one's more like a few hundred times better.

I'm also really glad I got accepted into KI class without having to go for the interview along with Andrea, thank God. I'm really looking forward to KI lessons and all the discussions that will transpire when looking at various subjects. Even though it sounds like an ineffably dull and nerdy pursuit when I put it like that.

I'm looking forward to spending these two years in TJ! :D

I'm back from the first day of orientation! At least our talks only lasted part of the morning... and was interspersed with cheering sessions to keep us from freezing in time within the cryogenic chamber that is the auditorium. I think I was fortunate enough to be seated at the back row against the felt wall panelling that trapped enough heat to keep myself remotely warm, somewhat.

I've met many other people, and finally got to talk to someone who's also interested in Ivy League colleges to get away from all the banality in Singapore! Most of the people seem nice so far; some are a little bitchy in a not-so-funny way that it pains me to see them try so hard all the time. Well, I got past sitting for the KI aptitude test this afternoon too — hopefully I'll see some favourable results pinned up on the staff room notice board tomorrow.

Anyway re: my repeated failures in achieving a certain childhood dream, I'd prefer not to talk about it anymore. Yes it was freaking saddening when the finality of it all sunk into me while on the train today (while contemplating the injustice of it all when 20-pointers from supposedly more prestigious schools could get in using their CCAs, but evidently with less than half of their aggregates I still can't), but there are more important and worthwhile issues at hand to busy myself with! Such as my PDP choices ("no we don't call them CCAs in our school, they're called PDPs")!

However when doing school cheers, something in me tells me that the words I squeeze out of myself are all half-hearted and lame.

Living my own life is a just side-project when I'm not attending to Certain Friend's emotional crises, even when there's the South China Sea separating us. =P I'm blaming the heady rise of technology for this.

I'm actually kinda excited about tomorrow! TJC here I come!