this mess is not hot.

Thanks to everyone's busy schedules, I can't even go to Malacca next week now. (My mum suggested having a bumboat ride or a trip to sentosa but I'm so emotionally affected by this piece of news, I refuse to elaborate further.)

OK I will have to now DECREE that my nov/dec holiday are sacred, and by hook or by crook, come rain or shine or freak monster typhoon-tornado-massive-earthquake-serious-volcanic-action disaster, no matter how or what, even if there's a nuclear threat or another financial crisis or the possibility of contracting some HxNy influenza strain that will eat away my guts and liquify me from the inside out, I AM (1) GOING TO GET ON A JET PLANE PLANE, (2) FLY OFF SOMEWHERE AT LEAST 10 HOURS AWAY FROM SINGAPORE, and (3) ACTUALLY HAVE FUN IN THE PROCESS.

And I'm getting increasingly enticed by the thought of disappearing mysteriously in that country and not returning.

holidays, mango lassi and contemplating with Plath

Have I already declared my undying love for Nick and the Candlestick by Sylvia Plath? The more I think of the foetal fragility of Nicholas Hughes as the "miner", the more visceral the appeal of the poem to me. I want to print a billboard-sized edition of the poem and camp in it.

Anyway I've finally dragged my ass down to Kinokuniya this afternoon to get a copy of Plath's Ariel and shall read depressing poems at night and cry myself to sleep, eventually cutting connections from the outside world and gassing myself. NOT.

CAP starts tomorrow! I've been waiting for this moment since sec 2 okay! I'm not sure what I'm in for but the councillors were going on and on about how it changes your life but I being the commitment-phobe am somewhat defensive still about emerging out of NUS on Friday with a new identity as Poet and CAPper but more preeminently CAPper.

I shall leave you guys with the Maryam show from the days of yore. Starring my Lit tutors! It so rocks. I actually laughed really hard. They have hit serious comic gold. Love it.

the pause button descends like a messiah for the half-crazed

Today was a blast — an awesome, much deserved ending to a crazy term marked by stress-induced periods of insanity and manic depression. I skipped soccer with Andrea today to walk around the tracks during PE, got picked on by my history teachers again, and had an absolutely amazing literature lesson that felt like a scene from Freedom Writers, much to the hilarity of Jamie. Save for the awkward silence at the end of chinese lesson, today was probably the best ever in my JC life.

Anyway, lit today was held at the recital studio, and we read out the poems we wrote that were based on the idea of "Wordless Thought" — a phrase taken out from First Hour by Sharon Olds. It was conceived in the moody darkness of the black box theatre while contemplating the thought of how we can even conceive the notion of colour without the sense of sight, and ended up spending today's literature period in the recital studio, sitting around and dying in the beauty of everyone else's pieces. I absolutely loved one line in Andrea's (female) poem which declared how yellow is the "feeling of a retriever's fur as it curls up to you", or something to that effect.

Sakinah suggested that we should read out our pieces without revealing what colour it was about. I'm actually relieved that mine was somewhat successful because the rest could guess the colour despite my use of imagery that was relatively-colour neutral. I'll post it at the end of this post for everyone to make a guess.

However, it was Bertram's piano composition which wowed everyone and cemented his virtuoso status. He explained that it was about the shades of blue that were united by a common chord, and Ms Nansi even swore she could hear a thunderstorm in the piece and dragged Ms Woodford down from her lesson to listen to all the immense and unbearable beauty that was going on. It bedazzled and brought us to utter stupefaction, and even more so the second time he played it.

Was chilling out in the marquee before choir started too, and I realised quite painfully how the moment would never last forever, so I captured the feeling and stored it somewhere in my head/camera phone. How poignant huh. Anyway Ms Tham brought the most delish organic cakes from Cedele — talk about rapture! Also, the new committee was announced and spontaneous phototaking sessions ensued amidst the bustle of farewell gift-giving; I realised how much I'll be missing my seniors because they have become so ubiquitous with choir.

I must also congratulate the new committee! :) I really can't wait to work with everyone and I'm looking forward to a hyper-exciting year ahead!

Anyway, my poem. Here it goes ––

Choreograph the clouds to the rumble of faraway thunder.
It is not only your fingers that dance that slow dance.
The hairs on your nape become agents for electricity, conducting a low
vibrato which undulates down your back, a brush down your spine –
a gesticulating wheat field.

That smell reminds you of washed linen bed sheets flapping against the wind,
the soft crackle of creamy eggshell breaking, freshly cut grass and pulling out splinters ––
all the laughing and the crying.

A wandering moth’s rice paper wings hit hard against the walls, with
the chicory and cornflower wallpaper you remember from childhood.

It is the sound of a fiddler tuning a mile away,
as you hunch in the wicker chair, feeling for a shoulder to
share the moment with.

I like the idea of setting up the poem's pace and rhythm with the image of a slow dance to the rumble of thunder, but somehow the opening lines don't quite seem to have a flow about them. I also dislike the ending, but still managed to veer away from the whole "shoulder to lean on" cliché that I feel quite good about :)

quickies

Hi guys, thanks for the well-wishes on the tagboard and everything! Would reply to every single comment but tomorrow's Rationalism and Empiricism "In-Class Assignment" looms like a dark ominous cloud amidst clear blue skies that herald the advent of holidays, rejuvenation, frolicking among pastoral images and room for a much-needed "personal renaissance", of sorts.

Anyway, Reflections X was a major success, and everyone's flowers are still alive and well on my very cluttered desk, which I am now tempted to refer to as "The Lair". I watched the drama production on Saturday too and my goosebump-count was somewhere in the thousands, and especially so in the sub-arctic conditions of the spanking new black box theatre. But when someone read "Boats" by Cyril Wong as a monologue, my hair erector muscles went on overdrive and I went into a state of near-religious bliss while thinking that this is probably the best 15 bucks I've every spent in my short and so-far prosaic life.

I made pesto to toss with spaghetti for dinner, and served it with an enoki and parmesan omelet-frittata thing. Would feel like a highly-accomplished and motivated individual if not for the mountain of work that I will now attempt to scale.

Side-note: I'm really gonna miss the J2s and Hairspray and concert prep and the craziness in general, now that there's a choir-shaped vacuum in my schedule which I will now attempt to fill up with cookie dough ice cream.

HAIRSPRAY WOW

I've completed my chinese worksheet and history tutorial and packed my things for tomorrow! But the madness doesn't seem to end! :( There are so many things to be done on Monday and I feel really lousy when I think about it again.

Anyway I'm EXHAUSTED. I need to be institutionalized and lobotomized and then sedated to be cured of the trauma.

REFLECTIONS X TOMORROW! I love the whole Hairspray aesthetic, it's really campy and rife with irony; I could die happy in a giant powdery compact.

bagels

I'm hungry.

This morning, I had Fage 2% yoghurt with a strawberry conserve and I added my own fresh strawberries and honey. After college day emceeing and the events that ensued, I decidedly binged on walnut cake and eclairs and lychee tarts from the reception. For lunch I had wonton soup. For dinner I had raisin bread, my grandma's goreng pisang, a whole orange, an apple and some grapes.

I've not been eating well in a very long time. I have never eaten breakfast sitting down since school started, I do not know what goes into my lunch usually, and dinner is a 9pm Nutella-and-bread-and-fruit affair. With such a diet you would expect me to lose like, 10 kg, but nooooooo the lack of sleep has only forced upon more weight and misery on me.

Besides the usual reportage of my banal existence, light has finally descended upon the bleak and foggy lows of my sleep-deprived life. After attending the CAP briefing, the June holidays suddenly seem a lot more exciting, I chose art, contemporary dance and drama, among other things.

And I'm sleepy; I shall force myself to sleep now despite failing to complete my history homework still.

Picture me smiling beatifically as I inform you that I've got the humanities scholarship and am going to sleep tonight in love with the fact that this isn't a dream like it was before and happy dilemmas are here to stay :)

This is my to-do list. I laugh. I mock. Everyone has naive expectations of me completing everything.

1) KI essay on Science
2) Notes on Martha Nussbaum on Aristotle on Empiricism and Rationalism
3) Warm up exercises on Rationalism and Empiricism
4) Economics essay
5) Chinese essay
6) History Research Paper on the End of the Cold War
7) Memorize Hairspray and that Maori song about rainbows
8) Japanese Occupation tutorial readings plus comparison tables
9) Cold War essay elaboration
10) Maths tutorial
11) GPP
12) Something which I can't recall
13) Something which I can't recall
14) Something which I can't recall

ugh ugh ugh

Mothers' Day 2009

For mothers' day dinner this year, I decided to go with the chic and simple. After a so-dismal-it's-funny lunch, all everyone wanted was to eat something that didn't have black fungus all over it.

In line with the whole idea of eating sustainably as part of being more environmentally-aware, I did a vegan-inspired meal by tossing vegetables in olive oil, garlic and rosemary, then roasting them in the oven until they emerged with amazing caramelisation. My mum contributed a fruit salad with apricots and grapefruit segments, my dad brought out this Japanese sesame dip and I put on the playlist that I synced onto my iPod and we all had a great dinner. (And my sister, who can't cook, cleaned up.)

Some Other Spring

It's already Sunday afternoon and here I am, trying to hold on to as much as I can of the weekend as possible. But it is all transient and futile, since time escapes through my fingers like a stream of water that must head to its destination. (cue Confusion-period philosopher with thin long beard) Such is life.

Anyway I've been hyper busy lately and JC life has given me a new awareness of time that I waste doing unproductive things, such as reading the Sunday comics while sharing a Kinder Bueno bar with my sister.

In preparation of the sustainable and vegan Mothers' Day dinner that I'm making later (rosemary, olive oil, sea salt and grilled vegetables yum), I'm compiling a jazz playlist with Nina Simon, Billie Holiday and the like while reading a book on experimental writing techniques. And I shall go for a jog along the canal soon.

I'm making full use of my holiday and no one's going to ruin it again.

I'm done with the UNAS essay.

shoobie doobie doo doowah skaddledeeyoo
dubbuh dubbuh woo woo wap dabba dabba bap
ba ba ya,
doowa diddle deedle day-doh wah yay
skaddle-dee da da ya
shoowopa skaddle-dee da da ya
brrrmba dabba deebie deedle ska
uh huh yeah yeah yeah

COFFFEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE~~~~~~~

won't you take me to funkytown

I enjoyed every moment of it, from the nervous tingle at the start to the goosebumps I got during Os Justi to the last few bars of Tanchame when everything fitted together beautifully and I felt great about being in a choir that was truly brilliant and sincere to our music.

We weren't given a gold medal based on their standards, but this does not negate the fact that we've been the best choir we could be for those fifteen minutes on stage. We were awesome, and this is not denial speaking—it's easy to tell whether you have done your best by the first reaction you get when you step off stage, out of the spotlights. Today I was beaming when we stepped down, because I felt that our music was constantly being made fresh, everything we rehearsed for was nicely put in place, and I actually had fun singing for SYF.

So this year, I'm not going to look at SYF as a failure, but rather, as the best experience I could ever ask for with any choir. I've learnt to look beyond the final result as the be all and end all of everything, and I've felt how this experience can transcend disappointment and all other perceived societal expectations.

In other news, I've been told that my application for CAP in June has been accepted! *\O/* Am freaking freaking freaking thrilled but trying to be, y'know, cool about the whole thing and all. (Goes to rehearse perfectly composed expression for official breaking-of-news by teacher tomorrow)

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

SYF. IS. TOMORROW.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

And this evening after eating a sunflower seed and walnut loaf, a plum and a pear, I shall revise my scores and watch Fruits Basket and then sleep and wake up and remember to bring my vanilla muffin for breakfast after tomorrow's morning run. And tomorrow I will be part of the choir that epitomises the dizzying heights of brilliance and choral fabulosity.

I'm still worried and nervy and excitedddddddddddfr1u265r*!&^@

Oh but I cannot, simply cannot, wait to ravage my chocolate hoard after tomorrow.