the mixtape in my head

don’t know why i’m doing this when i really, really should be studying, but i guess i had to kind of get them out of my head.

so anyway, ten songs in my head that i haven’t ‘featured’ before. if you like what you’re listening to, just click on the title of the song to download. hmmm, i would actually comment on each song, but i’m not so free, la. haha.

but yeah as usual i think i’m very terribly screwed for this sem’s exams. am currently oscillating between feeling inexplicably nonchalant and insanely stressed.

and as evidence of how insane i am, i managed to find the time to buy a deep red psp yesterday. well, it did get like delivered to me in hall, but you don’t want to know the amount of time i spent trawling forums and websites for the best prices… and then for accessories afterwards.

okay, back to studying. need to pace myself and my coffee/red bull intake so i’ll last this week of exams.

–––––

Walcott, don’t you know that it’s insane?
Don’t you want to get out of Cape Cod, out of Cape Cod tonight?

vampire weekend, walcott.

–––––

Looking for a diamond in the black coal
It feels good when you strike gold
Diamond in the black coal
If you never look then you’re never gonna know

sanctus real, black coal.

–––––

I can’t waste time so give it a moment
I realise, nothing’s broken
No need to worry about everything I’ve done
Live every second like it was my last one
Don’t look back, got a new direction
I loved you once, needed protection
You’re still a part of everything I do
You’re on my heart just like a tattoo
(Just like a tattoo, I’ll always have you)

jordin sparks, tattoo.

–––––

But I don’t care what they say
I’m in love with you
They try to pull me away
But they don’t know the truth
My heart’s crippled by the vein
That I keep on closing
You cut me open and I

Keep bleeding
Keep, keep bleeding love
I keep bleeding
I keep, keep bleeding love
Keep bleeding
Keep, keep bleeding love
You cut me open

leona lewis, bleeding love.

–––––

Right before my eyes
I see your face
And it makes me smile

I want you to stay
I feel like I’m lost without you
And life just can’t be the same

course of nature, right before my eyes.

–––––

We can’t go to sleep cause we’ll wake up older
We can’t let these nights steal away
And I don’t want these days to ever be over
We can’t let these nights steal away half our lives

sanctus real, half of our lives.

–––––

I pictured you in the sun wondering what went wrong
And falling down on your knees asking for sympathy
And being caught in between all you wish for and all you seen
And trying to find anything you can feel that you can believe in

May God’s love be with you
Always….
May God’s love be with you

I know i would apologise if i could see your eyes
‘Cause when you showed me myself, you know, i became someone else
But i was caught in between all you wish for and all you need
I pictured you fast asleep
A nightmare comes
You can’t keep awake

joseph arthur, in the sun.

–––––

Oh oh we need each other
So what’s the fighting for?
Oh oh we need each other
Please don’t close the door
Oh oh we need each other
Through all the highs and lows
Oh oh we need each other
‘Cause no one’s meant to be alone

sanctus real, we need each other.

–––––

I’ve been twisting and turning in a space that’s too small
I’ve been drawing the line and watching it fall
You’ve been closing me in, closing the space in my heart
Watching us fading and watching us fall apart

Well I can’t explain why it’s not enough
Cos I gave it all to you
And if you leave me now
Oh just leave me now
It’s the better thing to do

It’s time to surrender
It’s been too long pretending
There’s no use in trying
When the pieces don’t fit anymore

james morrison, the pieces don’t fit anymore.

–––––

Fuck you, fuck you, love you
and all you’ve been through.
I said leave it, leave it, leave it
It’s nothing to you.
And if you hate me, hate me, hate me, hate me so good that you can let me out
Let me out, let me out, let me out, let me out

damien rice, rootless tree.

–––––

the last sigh is the last word spoken

as usual, my mind and body is rebelling against the concept of me sitting down to study for exams. it just doesn’t want to.

what a convenient excuse, eh?

but it’s strange… i mean, logically (is it?) i should be able to control whatever i think or do. like if i don’t want to sit down and study, it’s all a matter of willing myself to do it, right? mind over matter, as they say?

but what if my mind still stubbornly says NO, i don’t want to study? how does it reconcile with itself that it has to make me sit down and study somehow?

argh i don’t know what i’m talking about. but are you ever truly in control of what you think or do? or does your mind have well, a mind of its own? i mean, you do what you do because your brain tells you to. but what, exactly, controls your brain? you? the brain itself?

i must sound like a confused, muddled fool, possibly cracking from the stress of not being able to force myself to study as much as i should. or rather, need to. but i am truly confused. it’s weird. i feel like the answer to my crazy confusion is actually quite retardedly simple, but i just can’t quite figure it out.

erh well… i don’t know. and i suppose i just hope that my brain won’t self-destruct like that during the exams itself. i would be so, so screwed if that’s the case.

anyway, like i mentioned, my body is as usual doing its best to protest against exams. i’m either having bouts of irritable bowel syndrome again, or i’ve been food-poisoning myself because i keep having random episodes of diarrhoea. (yeah, TMI, i know.)

and my right arm is also merrily self-destructing. my wrist sort of creaks (the feeling, not the sound, fortunately) whenever i flex it, in a very weird way because i can also feel the creaky feeling near my elbow. my elbow hurts like hell whenever i write a bit, which means there’ll be literally hell to pay when i put down my pen after each exam. great. and my shoulder is also still horribly sore and tender despite all the salon-pas i’ve put on. gah. can’t wait for the exams to end so i can go to a sinseh or something to get it massaged or whatever. as painful as that would be, at least i won’t experience it again… hopefully?

hmmm actually i have loads to blog about. from politics to cute bunnies to man u. but i guess that will be for after exams. so for now all you get is me whining about my lousy body and increasingly senile mind. hmmm wait i think that’s all that i really write about, anyway. haha.

okayyy. shall go back and try to study again. and it’s been a while, so here’s music again…

You were my first mistake
And even if that’s true
I would take that punch again
If it would bring me back

I thought I’d changed for you
It turns out just not enough
Distance and telephones
I’m no good at being alone

The last sigh is the last word spoken
Everything else is bent and broken
I would still be there for you
The twilight of the love I cheated
Forget everything that I thought I needed
I still remember this

I shut my doors to you
And you still got through to me
Did you give up everything
Just to find there was nothing left

Well you seem to disappear
The closer that we got
Did I do the vanishing
Or did you just swallow me up

The last sigh is the last word spoken
Everything else is bent and broken
I would still be there for you
The twilight of the love I cheated
Forget everything that I thought I needed
I still remember this
Last kiss

The last sigh is the last word spoken
Everything else is bent and broken
I would still be there for you
The twilight of the love I cheated
Forget everything that I thought I needed
I still remember this
Last kiss

seven mary three, last kiss.

they disappear as reality is crashing to the floor

i need a break after re-copying some of my christianity lecture notes and before moving onto the dreadfully large piles of readings, so here i am.

what i don’t like about the exam period is how it always makes me regret not going to the chiropractor, sinseh or whatever to get my thumb/wrist/elbow fixed. if just rewriting some lecture notes is enough to make my wrist (and me) groan with pain, i definitely am not looking forward to three continuous days of frantic writing for two hours. i think i usually survive because of the (little) rest in between paper, but no such luck for me this time. and thank goodness (or not) for the adrenaline rush (aka stress) of exams, because i only really feel the impact of two hours of writing torturing my hand and wrist when the paper ends.

ugh, even as i type, i can feel my shoulder start to ache… bah. who knew that one lousy thumb sprain would make my entire arm go bonkers? it’s almost hard to believe i’ve managed to survive three exams with my lousy excuse of a right arm… here’s hoping for exam number four. and i swear i really will go get it fixed this holidays. and dear friends, kindly bug me to go and do so if i show signs of “forgetting”.

although i guess i shouldn’t really be whining so much considering how much pain my grandma should be in :( apparently she had a slipped disc the whole time she had her leg problems, and for some reason they didn’t fix it during her last operation. so she’s having another one this wednesday… in NUH this time, so i’ll probably try and go down to visit her. and it always makes me quite sad to think of how my grandma’s becoming older and more fragile, especially when she’s always been pretty strong and healthy for her age… argh okay better stop here before my thoughts go there.

once bitten, twice shy. yeah right. for certain, no, many things, that seriously doesn’t apply to me. no matter how many times i tell myself to not do this or that again, i still keep doing it, whether consciously or not. in fact, i just seem to only learn from past experience only in the sense of refining my ‘technique’ – the technique of how to “better” do the same thing all over again, that is. i know i have to stop because there are only so many chances that i get, and more importantly, because i shouldn’t be doing it (or at least that’s what people tell me), but as always, i just get inexorably drawn to it… put simply, i just can’t help it. and i don’t think i’ll be stopping anytime too soon. not until i seriously get kicked in the butt. then maybe i’ll stop.

and yeah the above applies (in a very general sense) to quite a few things in my life, some major, some minor. procrastination for assignments and studying for exams being an obvious example, of course. actually, as much as i say i need a really bad result for one assignment to kick me to a stop-procrastinating mentality, it’s so not true.

if you know me, i consider a B- to be a terrible result to get. but even after two B- assignments (SEA and total war), i’m still procrastinating as much (if not more) than ever. somehow i always manage to convince myself by justifying my bad results with non-procrastination related reasons (e.g. effendy wrote good comments but gave me a B-, that jerk; farrell is a bloody strict marker, everyone else didn’t do well either). plus i use the excuse that i do alright or even well for my other assignments anyway, so procrastination isn’t a problem… i’m starting to wonder if there’s a procrastinator anonymous thing i could join.

and ta-dah! more procrastination, from nowhere at all! ha. anyway, i got my deviance paper back today. i got a B, which i guess is not bad considering how crappy the paper was. hmmm as such i predict a B or at most B+ for deviance this sem… which might really spell the end of my brief dalliance with sociology. as much as i do like it because of the way it opens up my narrow view of the world, i also feel that i’m not exactly cut out to do well in sociology, in that i can’t express myself or my thoughts and analysis properly in my research papers. it’s not like history, where it comes almost naturally to me.

plus, the pragmatist in me just doesn’t really want to do modules i won’t do well in, for fear of pulling down my CAP. considering how this sem looks unlikely to turn out well and that the same will go for the rest of the sems, i guess it’s better to be safe than sorry. but then again, i’ll just see if there are any other interesting soci modules that may catch my eye…

and oh yes. i forgot to complain about how the exam schedule clashes horribly with football fixtures. man u versus barcelona in the champions league this and next week, and the potential title-deciding match with chelsea this weekend… i suppose i have to give myself less breaks while studying in order to assuage my guilt (what guilt, really?) of watching all these matches. but then again, from past experience, exams are no barrier to my watching important man u matches. can’t remember which sem it was, but i went home just to watch a man u-arsenal match. haha. it’s just that the last few sems man u wasn’t in the semis of the champions league… oh well, thank goodness for sopcast/tvants :D

okay, i think that’s enough procrastination for now. back to the wonderful world of the crusades, reformation and other exciting personalities and events of christianity in world history… not. probably the only saving grace of this module is that barring any unforeseen unconsequences, i should be able to do quite okay for it. can’t say the same for the rest of my modules, though.

I would fall asleep
Only in hopes of dreaming
That everything would be like it was before
But nights like this it seems are slowly fleeting
They disappear as reality is crashing to the floor

i pictured you in the sun wondering what went wrong

bah, not another migraine. and it’s one of those kinds that never seem to go away. i just woke up for the second time since sleeping at about 10pm, and when i opened my eyes to find no persistently throbbing pain i thought whew, it’s gone. then i sat up and realised that damn, it’s still not really gone away. just a whole lot less painful. which is why i’m going back to sleep after more medicine, even though i’m very not sleepy. but better safe than sorry, i don’t want to be plagued by migraines all day tomorrow. or today, actually.

and now for some miscellaneous updates… hmmm. oh yeah i totally restocked my room in preparation for the exams, yay. though on hindsight maybe i shouldn’t have bought so much considering that i have to move to the vacation room at the end of exams. oh well, shall worry about that later.

and oh i feel silly for even blogging about this, but heartland mall popular rocks! they actually have the uni needlepoint pen (and the refills for it!) that i really like but can’t find anywhere apart from big bookshop at harbourfront. and this has totally saved me a trip to harbourfront because i needed to stock up before the exams.

i’m getting more and more excited about my new room. even though it’s a good three months before we can actually get the flat. and apparently it’s not going to be very big, just slightly bigger than my hall room, according to my mum. darn. i was hoping for something like the room i share with my sister, so i could really make it my room, like my own little haven or something. oh well, a room of my own is better than nothing so i’m not complaining… too much. haha.

i should probably drop by ikea sometime during the hols to get some ideas for my room, and hehe i can’t wait. and i’ll have to also start saving up for a beanbag. i want a nice, comfy one for me to chill out on in my new room. unfortunately the good ones are almost outrageously expensive :( hence the need to save. or maybe i can just dip into the GST offsets and whatnot given to us by the gahmen. as much as we’ve been saying not-so-nice things about it the past few days or so, the greedy, capitalist part of me can’t help going, free money! haha. what a way to seal our lips eh… however temporary that is.

ah. raymond lam’s song in drive of life just came up in my itunes… and damn, i need some charrayness :( i wish tvb would seriously let them pair up again. just so we get to see more of their chemistry. in the meantime i’ll probably rewatch drive of life… after the exams, that is.

alrighty, time to go back to sleep, as un-sleepy as i feel… and oh i have no idea when i put joseph arthur’s in the sun in my phone, but it’s been stuck in my head ever since it popped up. went to download one of his greatest hits album after that. i hope it’s good, too.

[btw, does anyone want to help me keep my R4 cartridge thing for my DS so i effectively cannot use my DS at all? it's been oozing procrastination/lazing vibes like mad and i have to sadly confess that i haven't really been able to overcome it. sad, but true.]

on hindsight…

blogging from my phone cos i’ve already hibernated my laptop… which is unfortunately easier said than done because there’s like no enter key on the phone. and yeah i didn’t realise it until now, haha.

OH. i just figured out how to do it. haha.

anyway, just wanted to say that the earlier entry was most definitely a product of hormones, because i’m feeling decidedly less emotional now.

okay, really am going to sleep now because my eyes tell me that i need to.

and whoa at the huge thunderstorm now.. the wind’s making creepy howling noises.. and this would be the perfect weather to be sleeping in hall, sigh..

only fooling myself

why is it that words always fail and disappear on me just when i seem to need them the most?

……

……

……

ah, forget it. none of this actually really matters, does it?

or so i tell myself, except that my brain just stubbornly refuses to let it go.

why do i always do this to myself, really?

okay la whatever. this is rubbish. i am rubbish… or at least, this is what something is making me feel like right now.

or actually, i don’t quite know what to feel.

i hate this feeling.

damn hormones. this is why i hate that time of the month.

for some reason, lifehouse songs always seem to comfort me when i feel like this. i guess they’re not my favourite band for nothing.

anyway, i also just wanted to say that as much as i wanted the assignments to be over so i could study for the exams, the actual sitting down to study my brains out for the exams is much, much easier said than done.

and heh. now that i’m at home, i wish that i was back in hall. i want the solitude but most of all, i want my comfy hall bed. yes, i know i’m weird.

sigh. since i’m feeling oddly sleepy, i guess i’ll just sleep early tonight and hope tomorrow will be better…

as usual, i can’t wait for the exams to be over.

except that it means i’ll have to deal with the anniversary book project, then.

damn it. maybe what i really can’t wait for, is for this life to be over. as suicidal as this sounds (which i am assuredly not), eternal rest doesn’t sound too bad, sometimes.

except that i kinda believe in reincarnation. or at least an afterlife… damn, again.

okay, whatever. i don’t understand and i don’t want to think about it. for now.

and i won’t disagree

argh. i don’t even know where to start. basically i’m starting to feel very frustrated and extremely jaded about lots of stuff. so yes, this is going to be one of those whiny, complaining entries for me. don’t say i didn’t warn you.

without going into detail, i think it’s nuts how some people seem incapable of managing their own life and having to rely on someone else to do it for them. and it gets pissifying when i get awoken from my meant-to-recover-from-migraine sleep to get chided/slammed for things that i don’t think is entirely or even really my fault. your confusion becomes my mistake. now, how does that make sense? at least i don’t have to really think about this until after the exams. if the fallout from this incident is going to be nuclear then let it be, as long as i get to concentrate on my assignment and studying now.

and due to recent developments, both in and outside hall, it seems that i might not be staying in hall for all four (and a half?) years of my university education after all. my parents are buying (bought already, actually) a flat in our block for my grandma, and if all goes well, i might get a room of my own in the new flat.

which is great because my sister doesn’t really like sharing the room with me (with complaints ranging from me snoring, sleeptalking and waking her up when i forget to turn off the loud mode on my phone) and it solves the problem of me not being able to study at home (which is about 50% of the reason why i’m in hall. the other 50% is being able to wake up one hour before lessons start, as well as no curfew and lots of freedom, etc.) and i still get the benefits of home (no more surviving on instant food! TV!). and if i manage to get my license and a car to drive by then, life would be very very nice indeed. well, we’ll see.

well, that’s the ‘outside’ reason. i’ll leave you to figure out the ‘inside’ reasons… haha.

and sigh, while i’ve enjoyed the general slackness (relative to last sem, anyway) of this sem among other things, grades-wise, this sem looks terrible. i’ve done okay for my midterms, but i think i will be dragged down by the horrid papers i’ve churned out so far. i don’t think i had any convincing arguments for any of them, which also made it hard to write, on top of my usual tendency to leave it to the last minute. don’t know if the problem is with me or the none-too-interesting questions, but then again the questions vanessa were doing for empires seemed more… stimulating? the writing is another thing, but at least i could sort of think of stuff for those. and i don’t even take the module! haha.

but yeah deviance is gone because i think i hardly addressed any theories and it was a crappy paper on the whole, my christianity one is screwed because of my lack of examples and i think halfway-confused argument, and the east asian one was a huge mess too. arghhhh. now i’m left with samurai and i’m quite determined to write it well. except that i can’t decide which question to do, and am somewhat reluctant to immerse myself in all the reading… funny, i enjoyed doing that for the dictators essays last sem…

in any case, i guess i should brace myself to say hello to my first sub-4 CAP for the sem… and behold the downward slide my grades will take from now on… okay la i’m being a bit too pessimistic but i prefer to think negatively. at least it’ll be less painful should it really happen. like if you expect a B and get that or even a B-, it’s not so bad. but if you expected an A or A- and get a B instead, that seriously just takes the air out of everything. just like it did for dictators last sem… yeah, i still can’t get over that. haha.

oops. my blogging got interrupted by xiaoxuan (better known as ah foo to me) and serene coming to my room (i can’t remember for what, now) and we ended up reminiscing and sharing about school experiences. like random moments from kindergarten all the way to jc… haha. and i didn’t realise it until now that i can actually recall a lot of childhood memories in fairly great detail. though i can hardly remember any kindergarten friends, haha.

okay, time to go sleep now or i’ll end up falling asleep during the second half of christianity lecture. again.

stuck-in-my-head-song-of-the-moment (:

Ignorance is bliss
You’d always hear me say
But at times you can’t deny
Those eyes lookin’ your way

Let me begin by saying what I mean
It’s a crime against the heart you know
To be somewhere in between

Well don’t be shy
I’ve got an open heart and hand
And I just might have to confess just where I stand

‘Cause lately you make me weaker in the knees
And race through my veins baby every time you’re close to me
Take me away to places I ain’t seen
They say you’ve got a hold on me
And I won’t disagree

Rock a bye my baby
Don’t be blue tonight
Oh I’m on my way
And I’m gonna make it right

‘Cause I’ve got the feeling
You’ll be needing love
And of all the lonely hearts
You’re the one I’m thinkin’ of

I’ve been told it’s gonna take an iron hand
To break the mould and stand above all of the rest

Well lately you make me weaker in the knees
And race through my veins baby every time you’re close to me
Take me away to places I ain’t seen
They say you’ve got a hold on me
And I won’t disagree

I’ll be thinking of that evening
When there’s nothing for me to do
And I’ll be wondering if by some slim chance
You’re wondering too

Lately you make me weaker in the knees
And race through my veins baby every time you’re close to me
Take me away to places I ain’t seen
They say you’ve got a hold on me

Oh lately you make me weaker in the knees
And race through my veins baby every time you’re close to me
Take me away to places I ain’t seen
They say you’ve got a hold on me
And I won’t disagree

kate voegele, i won’t disagree.

that original feeling never went away

whee! finally got my belated 21st birthday present from my parents – a new phone! specifically, a nice and shiny n82 :D

i’m totally digging my new phone and its features. like the 5-megapixel camera (no need to buy digicam now!), the 3.5mm earphone jack at the top, the auto-rotate thing, wi-fi connectivity and its bucketloads of memory and RAM.

the only downsides are the buttons – they’re a bit too tiny. reviews have mentioned how the keys can’t really be seen or whatever, but that’s not really an issue for me since i roughly know where which key is (actually, doesn’t everyone? aren’t almost all keypads laid out virtually the same way?). and also i’m suffering from i’m-too-used-to-my-old-phone, because i keep pressing the menu button instead of the green ‘call’ button, and for some reason i keep thinking that the media button is the ‘c’ button.

anyway, i just really like my new phone, as much as i also kinda miss my old one. so to show off the camera of my new phone and to reminisce about my old one, here’s a photo of the old phone taken by the new phone… haha.

pretty nice, huh? btw, i resized the image but if you want to see it in all its huge, too-big-to-fit-on-a-normal-screen goodness, click here, haha. too bad my phone can’t take a photo of itself and i have no other respectable camera around.

but oh yeah, there’s actually a gorgeous black version of my phone. too bad starhub didn’t have it, and in any case my parents’ voucher would have expired by whenever the black version comes into singapore, so too bad. but i still like my phone anyway :D

in other news, i think i’m becoming worse every sem. i handed in my deviance paper late, which was bad enough, but the paper was also awfully written. at this rate i think i’m gonna do badly for deviance :( which is sad because i really do like it. on the other hand, i’m starting to feel a bit jaded with soci. as much as i like it, actually doing it is not really really my thing. i still don’t slip into it like i do for history, which really bothers me.

throw me a history question and even if i don’t know enough about it i can still formulate something. but for soci, i feel really out of things sometimes. like i’m not grounded enough in everything, like i roughly am for history. i probably should stop making comparisons between soci and history, but well… i don’t know how to evaluate soci on its own merits (or lack thereof) la.

anyway, it’s also scary how the exams are coming. like in three weeks. and there’s still the samurai assignment to go (which i haven’t started – no surprises there) before i can actually start studying. which i have a lot to do of, as usual… damn it. whatever happened to resolving to procrastinate less? sigh.

alright, time to finish up the east asia and christianity tutorial readings… but some parting words. damn, man u drew with middlesbrough. but then again it could have been worse, if rooney didn’t put us back on level terms. i still think we’re gonna retain the premiership title – chelsea and arsenal just don’t have what it takes to win it this season. although i am rather ironically still hoping that we can just hold on… and hopefully also win the champions league. hopefully. that would really really make my day, season and year.

yeah, this year has been pretty good to me so far… mainly for just a few reasons. it might be too early to say anything yet, but ah who cares, i’m just gonna enjoy it while it lasts (:

and oh yeah, i quite like natasha bedingfield’s pocketful of sunshine album. the title pretty much sums it all, the songs are mostly sort of happy (non-angsty might be a better description) and i suppose good for my current moods (seeing that at least 90% of my other songs are the angsty kind). i really quite like the following song, but be warned, it’s quite the pop song. but it’s pretty nice, so give it a listen (:

That original feeling never went away
That’s why I’m standing here today.
Whoa Whoa
So many up and downs
And nothing has changed
That’s why you know I’m here to stay.
Whoa Whoa

So put your arms around me
And then stay there forever
Let it always be this way
You and me together

So put your arms around me
And I’ll never let go
I know they’re easy words to say
But I mean it more than ever

Yours is the kind of love
makes nothing else feel good enough
And I’m never gonna give you up, oh no, oh no.

natasha bedingfield – put your arms around me