i can’t quite figure out

for some strange reason, whenever i get weird, disturbing dreams i always have to record them down somewhere. inevitably the blog ends up being the closest substitute to a dream diary thing.

if i thought the dreams i’ve been having were disturbing, i was wrong. this dream takes the cake for most disturbing, most weird and involving the most number of people from the many different stages of my life.

i can’t remember everything, but basically there was a brutal murder, and T.T. Durai (don’t ask why!) was suspected because he was seen speeding away from the scene and making up some lies, or something. but somehow we just knew it wasn’t durai.
i can’t remember who “we” were, actually. but i know people i knew from 34 and stnicks were involved. or rather, i can only remember gayle and maybe vanessa from 34, while jy, beek and dawn koh from the stnicks group of people made their appearances. and dawn was some sort of a queen or wife of a king/leader/judge or something. and i only managed to meet her in the toilet during one of the court hearings?
and there was this part where we were watching a video of the murderer leaving, but the mystifying thing was how the murdered managed to not only change his clothes in a split second, but also his appearance? and i was urging the police officer or whoever to check the time of the video, but i don’t know if he did that.
and there were random scenes where some teacher wanted me to bring my file for checking so i was lugging it around everywhere. and me at a china sweetshop attempting to buy those egg sweets and sour tape, thinking it was pretty cheap but it ended being too expensive for me and i had to borrow money (208RMB) from my cousin lingjia.
and the court case was quite weird too. it apparently was such a big thing that everyone involved (though it beats me how we were involved) just had to give up studying for the prelims for one week? i recall wondering if they would push the prelims back by a week for us.

and the murderer was never found, because i woke up. it was just such a weird, creepy dream that it just stuck in my head and i had to blog it out before it slowly dissipates from my brain.

the room is now practically an oven because the fan’s spoilt. i sense impending rashes… how am i supposed to do tutorial 36 (which i am pretty much clueless about) the tutorial 34/35 class assessment, study for role of government in econs (oh wait no tutorial tomorrow!) and history tutorial in this sweltering oven of a room? gah.

xxx mints aren’t that good. i want my altoids.

there’s something about you now

studying today has so far been limited to typing out insignificantly tiny fragments of the origins of cold war history notes.

slept at about 1 plus last night, almost immediately after da chang jin, which is like my must-see drama now. it’s a strangely compelling korean drama. all the intrigue and the poor, betrodden main character just makes you want to watch it. even if you’ve missed like 90% of the episodes before. and the fact that most of the women and men there all look the same because the women have the same hairstyles and clothes, while ditto for the men, and with the same sort of scruffy beards and all. i can either watch it at 7pm and miss tong xin yuan, or stay up till about 1am (which i usually do, anyway) to catch the rerun. decisions, decisions.

maybe i should just be watching less tv since i’m supposed to be studying my head off (which i think i’m still not doing enough) but i guess i have to take it slowly. i’ve already deprived myself of excessive computer usage (blogging does not count) and i don’t think i should further deprive myself of one of my few highlights left in life. especially when i can technically do work at the same time, anyway.

spent the whole morning debating over whether i should go for tanya and sammi’s birthday party after all, since it appeared that i was the only one going and i had no immediate mode of transport there. i congratulate on my genius, however, on thinking of asking aunt joey (aka my third aunt and the kids’ godmother) to give me a lift there. and in the end lingjia (my cousin who lives in the unit that is beside but also not beside our unit) went too, so it wasn’t too bad.

we all hadn’t gotten them presents yet, so we went to plaza singapura to get them (and so i could collect my dorothy perkins jeans). we spent a total of like 130 bucks for 6 different presents for the both of them, and about 10 bucks for wrapping paper and scotch tape. a bit mad, if you think about it. but oh well. had a last minute wrapping frenzy in the car, and surprisingly we managed to finish wrapping everything when the car pulled into the apartments. hehe.

only managed to see tanya (who’s attaching lah’s to practically every sentence) because sammi was nowhere to be found. the place was positively teeming with kids of all ages (up to about 8 or 10, they all look the same to me) and sizes. i must say that my aunt is quite the party planner, actually. she always has these nice goodie bags, a pinata for the kids to play with, pretty good food, music… she even got a mini bouncing castle thing for the kids this time. kinda made me wish i was a kid who would know how to enjoy myself again. we were quite bored so we left quite early. i’d rather have tanya and sammi to ourselves, where we have their undivided attention apart from their toys and colouring books and everything. hehe.

slacked the afternoon away before going to toa payoh for dinner. had a not-too-bad chicken chop which came with nice coleslaw. then we headed to j8 so we could buy macaroni&cheese from liberty market, which has become my brother’s new favourite food after trying it today. ended up doing quite a bit of grocery shopping. honey bunches of oats as a stopgap measure before i buy my favourite milk-carton breakfast cereal thing. on hindsight i shouldn’t have, considering that we’re going to parkway tomorrow, which has a cold storage… darn. bought XXX extra strong and extra fresh mints as a substitute for altoids, and more peach mints.

and speaking of altoids… have i moaned and groaned about how my bottle cleverly leaked onto my bag, melting and destroying my last batch of mint altoids. argh. as if that wasn’t enough, i had to dream about altoids. i dreamt that i saw them selling for a buy-one-get-one-free offer somewhere, but each set of 2 cost 18 bucks when it should have cost only about 5 bucks. and i even recall asking or wondering if “buy one get one free” meant that i could get 4 tins of altoids at 18 bucks. lol. must drag myself down to cocoa trees one day and make use of my 15% discount i got from the ndp coupons and buy myself altoids. best mints ever. in fact, i almost wish it was christmas or something, so i could ask people to buy it for my christmas present. haha.

and there was also the cca dream, where synapse merged with memories of my weiqi days. first the j1s finally published the next issue, with a whole promotional blitz complete with a giant life-sized version of synapse. but it was kind of a flop, especially since i managed to spot a major typo on the very last page from over a couple of hundred metres away. and somehow the synapse people went to the ICB building or whatever it’s called, the place which houses the singapore weiqi association and where we used to go for competitions sometimes. weird dreams.

it seems silly but i have to say that i was quite disappointed to see cher’s msn nick as “where did all the anvils go?”, which i take to be a reference to the anvil-sized hints thing JKR mentioned in her interview. maybe i’m reading too much into things but i just didn’t think cher would put something i perceive as somewhat insensitive in her msn nick… but i guess i’m just being a militant, delusional h/hr shipper taking things too seriously, as usual.

well, like something else in life, i’ve accepted that it’s probably never going to happen, though i can’t stop myself from harbouring miniscule amounts of hopes of “maybe”. in any case, h/hr is still my ship of choice. so what if it never happens? the (once) beautiful relationship they share(d) cannot be denied. and that’s what shipping is all about, isn’t it?

wait a minute. i just remembered that we have to cram in doing a history tutorial cos ms ng is taking over econs tutorial on monday. yikes. i would say, there goes our early monday, but then again i’ll probably end up staying in school or wherever to study, anyway. must stop thinking that monday = early day = play because now early day = (more) time to study.

you are my sugar rush

i get a high whenever you’re around
sweeping from my head to my toes
i gotta get my feet back on the ground

cos you make me go
out of my way
crossing the line
making me say
what i have in mind

you make me so excited
and i don’t wanna fight it
i start to blush
you are my sugar rush
ain’t nothing better baby
is it for real or maybe?
i start to blush
you are my sugar rush
[a-teens: sugar rush]

inspired by mark’s sugar rush madness after consuming large quantities of chocolate from the extremely fudgey brownie baked by vanessa for denise and jieyi, our two birthday girls :)

happy birthday denise!
happy birthday jieyi!

practically everyone (or maybe just me) were utterly exhausted at the beginning of the day. i was so tired that it really felt like it was taking lots of mental strength just to stay in school. and apparently i was so tired that when i fell asleep during econs, i had no idea that i was doing that. a dreamless sleep, and no indication that i was sleepy… quite different from my usual bouts of sleepiness.

but morning break revived me. shared a giant $2.80 plate of horfun with denise. it’s quite worth it, actually. you pay $1.40 but still eat your fill. hehe.

and then there was the birthday brownie vanessa baked. it was so very deliciously and sinfully fudgey, and topped with more chocolatey goodness in the form of m&m’s and chocolate chips. it’s almost death by chocolate. the best way to eat it? a chunk of the crusty bits, a bit of the fudgey bit, topped with an m&m or two… mmm. kudos to vanessa for baking it :)

maybe it was the sugar high, but i managed to keep awake for the whole of history lecture. for like the first time this term. can’t figure out why i’ve been so pooped lately. i guess all the mental stress has been translating to physical exhaustion, or something.

poor brain and hands had to go through two timed practices (gp essay and history source-based) in a row. i guess i shouldn’t be complaining considering that we have to do three hours worth of essays during the prelims, but still. the callus on my thumb is getting pretty gross. maybe i should go and buy a pair of performance gloves or something to write with and prevent “injury” to my hand.

didn’t study in school after all. two words – too tired. took 72 home with aiping for the first time in a long time. it feels like ages since we 72-ed together. funny how people can bond when taking the same bus, eh?

came home, got a bit lazy and caught up in more mugglenet/shipping debacles (emerson of mugglenet is so insecure about h/hr shippers he dedicates a wall of shame special to them. how very mature of him) before going to sleep, effectively making me miss the 7pm and 8pm shows. oh well. the biggest downside is probably the fact that i haven’t studied at all today. erm the perfect word to describe this flashed briefly in my head, but it has disappeared for now. darn.

and the irony of the words i penned for my gp essay – we should never be satisfied. is this good advice? the deluded writing about not being deluded. ha. and i used such a horrible example. it’s so bloody tvb-ish. it could have been a good essay but i botched it. just like everything else.

i want the a’s to be over, but i also want 34 to be forever. the best and worst times of my life at the same time. i guess it all balances out in the end.

e.e. stands for

extremely exhausted.

must be the softball and basketball taking its toll on me.

the day started on a most funny note (no pun intended) when we sang the national pledge instead of saying it. we’re so bored that we can’t even just say the national pledge normally. so far we’ve done it in mandarin twice and in malay once. haha.

national day celebrations in aj this year is a picnic in the field. boring. amAJing race was way more fun. i still remember how we were so kiasu, reading up on info and reccing the place beforehand. haha. and of course, the fact that we won something :)

was comparatively very awake during history lecture today, though for some reason my international trade notes had the effect of lulling me to sleep. walked around the track for pe since i couldn’t do weights and stuff cos of my slightly sore arm.

and then we played softball :D it was tres fun, probably because we got to play a real game for the first time. can’t remember which side won, but it doesn’t really matter, does it? as long as you enjoy the game and yourself. i really do like the feeling of the bat connecting with the ball. such a pity that we’re not playing softball anymore :( and mr koh was amazing la. he hit a home run-ish ball at his first try. and it wasn’t even a home run because he could simply just walk home. haha.

played a bit of yahoo pool with denise before she forced a forfeit and gained extra ratings cos i couldn’t play with ms lee looking over my shoulder, could i? and that was the start of our yahoo pool obsession for the day. played with her during the lit break before history tutorial, and i lost miserably :( the first time was because the cue ball went in after the 8-ball, the second she won fairly and the third one saw me potting in the 8-ball prematurely. argh. and the bad girl was gloating over it as she came out of the library (i was at the free access room since i wasn’t allowed in the library in my pe attire). and the way she just suddenly caught the flu or something and started sneezing and blowing her nose and all is quite scary. take care, denise!

got our other source-based answer back, and i was quite pleasantly surprised to find that i got 18 out of 25, a one mark improvement from the previous one :D surprised, because as usual it felt like i had written crap. but like gayle says, maybe she isn’t really too much at content at the moment? but at least it feels good to know that should my essays fare too badly, my source-based questions can usually be relied on to give my history grade a boost.

played basketball with the guys (sans dwayne and hsienjun) and vanessa before the gp timed practice at five. i think i enjoy my role as the usually immobile block of wood waiting for the right passes and rebounds. hehe. but it struck me as to how injury-prone i can be. was just trying to run around when my feet did its weird sideways thing. if it had been a sudden movement it would have spelled a sprain. scary. and all i can say is, thank goodness the ball gideon launched at me bounced off my right arm and not my left. i can only imagine how painful it would have been, considering that my right arm went a bit numb after that… yy and denise also joined us later. fun fun fun. i want to play more basketball. it should be our pre-prelims relaxation activity. hehe.

and it’s quite scary. my “wound” from my blood donation went from perfectly normal to super bruised in just half a day. it’s an ugly green bruise that makes it look like i’ve been abused or something. it’s getting quite sore now, and there’s also the mysterious red spot thing near my “wound”. weird. and haha. am looking at the HSA website now, and they’re actually calling for more female donors. ironic, considering that the only people who donated blood in our class were the girls – all the girls except denise, georgia and gayle. haha.

okay going to do maths tutorial and hope that exhaustion won’t overtake me and see me fall asleep at the table.

i gave my life away

or rather, part of it. namely, just the blood part. it was quite exciting really, my first time donating blood. i’d meant to go after school, but ended up going during lit break with aiping. and i admit that i was initially quite apprehensive about it, even after signing the form, taking my blood pressure and having my finger pricked to see if my blood had enough iron in it.

in fact, that was probably the most painful part of the whole blood donating process – the stapler-like thing poking a hole in my finger. it really wasn’t painful at all, probably because of the painkillers they injected (though i didn’t know it at that time) first. i was admittedly quite fascinated by the whole process, so i ended up watching the whole thing.

you would think that inserting a whole tube into your vein would be painful, but it wasn’t. it was just the sensation of having something inserted there. and it didn’t hurt, until the nurse (who resembled madame hooch – i didn’t realise that until maryam and yy said so) somehow got it into her head to prop up the tube with some gauze. then it became uncomfortably painful – i could feel the tube thing sort of poking my vein. according to aiping, i looked like i was in great pain. haha. it wasn’t that painful, it was just tres annoying. and maybe the expression on my face was so pained that the nurse decided to give me the “ice treatment”, which basically involved putting a pack of instant ice over the… hole? or whatever you call it. the instant ice was pretty cool, i think. you just have to press something somewhere and it becomes cold. i wish i had one of those for those uber hot days.

after holding the ice pack over my donation site for about 10 minutes (where me and aiping ended missing maths lecture.. hehehe.) i finally had my arm wrapped up in their colourful patterned gauze bandage thing. it comes in three patterns – pink with hearts, green with dinosaurs and purple with flowers. i got purple :) which i think is the nicest. hehe. and oh. i think someone up there wanted me to donate blood today. how else do you explain my impending flu suddenly disappearing? from sneezing like mad on monday and having an ultra-blocked nose yesterday, i just miraculously recovered this morning. cool, eh? hehe.

i guess i was pretty tired out by yesterday, for reasons i know not, because i was extremely exhausted this morning. fell asleep in my dad’s car as usual, but it felt like it was only 5 seconds of sleep before we reached school. and i was quite expectedly falling asleep during history lecture again. i have no idea if it’s because i’m more tired than usual, or if it’s because SEA history really just bores me to sleep. or maybe a combination of both.

had lunch with yy and maryam at macs again. i’m going to gain lotsa weight before i have time to try and lose them again after the a’s, seriously. had a quarter pounder since i wanted the beef and needed the iron to replenish whatever i lost donating blood. only managed to go through a few pages of origins of cold war notes before i succumbed to sleep. it was so terribly ironic – i was falling asleep while recopying out stuff that were too untidy because i fell asleep during the lecture. am planning to retype those notes because all the short-forms used really annoy me. and in the end me and maryam ended up going home at four plus, cos we both really couldn’t keep awake anymore.

work, work. though i’m so sleepy that i’m liable to fall asleep pretty soon.

this seems real to me

darn. quite an unproductive day today, i think. all the work i’ve done since i’ve come home is just the testimonial thing we’re supposed to write. from the amount of time i’ve spent on it, it would appear that i had lots to write, right?

unfortunately that isn’t the case. it’s more like i have to spend lots of time thinking about what to write, cos i don’t have much to write about. academic achievements/awards: none. sigh. and i totally crapped up stuff about being secretary/vice-president/president of synapse, in a pathetic bid to make it look somewhat more impressive.

but my crapping skills didn’t really come into play until i reached form b, where we were supposed to write about what courses i would apply for in university and why, discuss why i chose my cca and what we learnt from it, and what makes me unique, blah blah blah… i was stumped at the third question which was about external achievements, because i basically have none to speak of. and we’re supposed to answer all the questions. surely i can’t just write that i have no external achievements or interests? so it’s been left blank for the moment.

then there was having to choose 3 out of 6 different qualities which i think are my strongest qualities. i chose leadership, perseverance/determination and initiative. and of course i crapped a whole lot of rubbish out. and i can’t admit that i was entirely truthful either. the general gist would be correct, but of course i would gloss over or polish up a few details… terrible me ;)

but i really pity ms ng when she has to try and read my handwriting, considering that i was using my ultra-thin tipped 0.5 signo gp pen. so i have loads of tiny tiny words, all squashed in between lines and looking remarkably similar to ants all over the page. good luck to her.

horribly sleepy now. had another bad sleeping spell in history lecture today, where my brain would extrapolate itself and various other thoughts at the wrong time. like when ms ng was talking about indonesia with its diverse ethnicities, and i just somehow thought of china and fell asleep the moment i thought about that. weird, but true.

i was quite surprised when we got the previous timed practice for the singapore source-based question back, because i managed to hit level 5 despite writing what i thought was a bunch of utter crap. then we had our second timed practice, where we were “evicted” not once but twice, and we ended up having to complete it in the cafe. lol.

studied with maryam and yy at the amk macs after pe. ended eating a big mac and having a taste of the double cheeseburger. more beef adventures. ha. i wouldn’t mind studying there actually, if not for the fact that they keep replaying that music video of taufik and rui-en singing that national day song ad naseum. now i know what maria meant when she said she heard that song too many times already.

okay i just fell asleep at the computer again, only to have my mum wake me up and tell me to go to sleep. at least she didn’t notice that i was “blocking” (what my mum terms blogging, after ms ng said that i was doing that too much). shall go sleep now. terribly unproductive day. sigh.

i’m not giving up

studying in school today was quite productive, i guess. finished reading and summarising the case study on the philippines from tarling while waiting for gayle’s lit lecture and timed practice to end. we headed for the disgustingly noisy reading room before we got chased out because some teachers were having some lessons there or something. but it really irks me that the J1s are so annoyingly noisy. they might not have prelims but we do, okay. how are we supposed to study in school when the J1s are making a ruckus everywhere?

at least it was rather quiet outside the audi, though arthur lim’s lecture to some sportspeople did prove to be somewhat annoying too. managed to finish writing notes for part 1 of international trade, before mark, jasper and jeanette came, effectively distracting me and gayle from studying. haha.

ah it was so funny this morning. see, mark and vanessa both had new shoes, but funnily enough, when ms ng saw me she was like… “new shoes?” i said no, i’ve had them for ages and that two people have new shoes but it isn’t me. so she went to the next person (georgia), looked down and went “new shoes?” again. hahaha.

and ms ng started the day off on a panicky note for me, by reminding us that we had no time left to study and that it was “too late” even if we started studying history now. but if it’s too late, so when do we start studying? weird. i honestly would love to plan out my studying, but the fact that we have somewhat uncertain amounts of homework doesn’t help.

the rest of the lectures zoomed past, though i must admit that it’s lucky we don’t always get catherine ng for econs lectures, because her lectures go into serious overtime. econs lectures always manage to eat into other lessons, somehow. and winnie tan’s so funny! to make sure we would file all our econs essays, she made this cover page which says “my econs wu lin mi ji” which roughly translates to “my secret econs martial arts manual”. lol. and there was a very nice quote on the other side.

“Do not look back and ponder over what might have been. Live today to the fullest and make it beautiful so that it will be worth remembering.”

one of two quotes i’ve seen today that are really meaningful, in my opinion. i’ll keep them in mind :)

snifff. been in a sneezy mood all day, which means that i sneeze at least 4 times in a row instead of my usual 3. and that i’m sometimes stuck in limbo between feeling hot and cold, where i feel warm but my nose doesn’t feel the same way. if i could will my flu away, i would. i have no desire to be sick now, not with all the homework and studying we have to do.

i’m lifting you up
i’m letting you down
i’m dancing till dawn
i’m fooling around
i’m not giving up
i’m making your love
this city’s made us crazy
and we must get out

this is not goodbye she said
it’s just time for me to rest my head
she does not walk she runs instead
down these jagged streets and into my bed
[maroon5: must get out]

fire burn, and cauldron bubble

fire burn, and cauldron bubble (25 Jul ‘05, 10.47am PST)

hehe saw this at block 11 while me and gayle were walking to outside the audi to study.

i can practically start a collection of such photos already, lol.

unintentionally funny.

unintentionally funny. (23 Jul ‘05, 5.44pm PST)

taken at kovan mrt. not sure if it was intentionally done by someone, but it was amusing enough to warrant a photo.

and here’s to check if html tags like the almighty br tags work.

(they do! yipee.)

lost.

i just seem to have this awful knack for losing library books. especially those from the dune series. was trying to find children of dune for reading material before the parade, when i discovered that i couldn’t find it anyway. incidentally, today’s the due day, so yay me. i can’t find it at home, so i can only hope that it’s stuck in 228 or somewhere in school. just like dune messiah, which mercifully managed to hide itself in some dark corner of my locker.

the ndp was pretty good. i apologise for the lack of paragraphing in my moblogged-entry, but i wasn’t sure if html tags worked. it definitely feels quite different watching everything there, instead of watching it at home. seeing (and hearing) the airplanes zoom past, watching the parachutists land safely when they were previously mere specks in the sky with red tendrils of smoke trailing them before, watching the whole military contingent of tanks and vehicles rumble past, seeing all those floats light up, and seeing all the costumes (both the nice and awful ones)… it was all quite nice, really.

but the seats were quite cramped and all my stuff kept “suiciding” to the seats below. and like i mentioned earlier, it was drizzling quite heavily earlier on, and my poncho was happily ripped, so there wasn’t much point wearing it. but thankfully the rain cleared and the weather became almost delightfully cool, so it wasn’t very warm despite being surrounded and stuck in the middle of a few hundred people, most of them clad in the recommended red.

the pre-parade part was somewhat lame and boring, mostly consisting of the padang wave and the “singapore wave”, with the wave starting at the padang and being continued via video-conferencing at various other places like tampines, jurong east, marina and yishun. except that sometimes (or rather, most of the time) the people weren’t enthusiastic enough. or perhaps not responsive enough. imagine how awkward it would be if it was like that on national day itself…

the parade was considerably better, mostly consisting of what i’ve already mentioned above. some of the costumes were cool, but some were downright… awful. i pity the poor guys who had to wear the costumes with the wobbly skirt things. they’ll be blackmailed for life should any one of their friends manage to snap a photo of them in that. seriously.

and oh, when they said “rehearsal” they really meant rehearsal. s.r. nathan was obviously not there, but they couldn’t even get taufik or rui-en down. although maria did think that the replacement was prettier than rui-en and the pseudo-taufik did a pretty good job of impersonating taufik. lol.

we didn’t want to get caught in the middle of all the people in the mrt crowds, so we headed to suntec city for a breather and to cool down, because it had become quite uncomfortably warm. and of course, to head to the loo. we got inspired by someone toting a yami yoghurt cup, so no surprises as to where we headed next ;)

then maria dragged me into topshop because they were having a sale. but it was all still too ex for our puny pockets, anyway. then we went to dorothy perkins, which was also having a sale. i saw a really really nice pair of dark grey jeans for only 23 bucks but they didn’t have my size. i got another pair (that wasn’t as nice but still nice) at 56 bucks, though. like finally, a pair of jeans that doesn’t threaten to fall off without a belt. though i still need to lose a whole lot of weight. been gaining and only maintaining my weight recently. must be all the beef i’m eating. and the painful lack of aerobic activity since i can’t run and haven’t been swimming. i can only hope that the weight i’ve gained is possibly muscle mass that i have very hopefully increased from my brief spells in the gym during pe.

and i haven’t done any work or studied this weekend, although i haven’t really relaxed or slacked apart from watching the first episode of full metal panic: the second raid or going to the ndp, either. but thankfully this weekend is somewhat free from homework, at least when you compare it to the last weekend.

so i have sunday left to do these:
- revise the nightmarish C.R.V. and do the timed practice
- do/finish maths tutorial 35
- do the summary and aq for the awful tpjc compre paper
- revise international trade so i can churn out a decent essay during econs tutorial
- read the tarling notes?

for some reason i can’t wait to go back to school.