The night before Prom itself, I had a semi-nightmare that everything about prom went wrong. I woke up feeling a bit worried. The rest of the day was spent watching Dexter, coupled with a mad rush around 3pm to get showered and changed into my dress and stockings. Finally around 3:50 I met Stephanie and Toh at Far East Plaza, and there we wandered to the hairdressers. To my dismay the hairdresser I made an appointment with was missing, and I was stuck with two confused and evidently lost hairdressers who didn't really understand much English. The joy. After helping me translate a little, Stephanie went off to another hairdresser's.

As I sat seething in the chair, I started thinking about how everything seemed terrible enough to ruin the rest of the night. I started to get even more pissed when the girl doing my hair was curling my hair into tight small curls, not large and loose like how I originally wanted them. I began thinking about how this must be some sort of screwed up karma for the thousands of ants that I've killed in my room. Finally after the girl was done, I waited a while for Stephanie's hairdresser to finish. Then the 3 of us walked to Isetan Scotts for the makeup.

The makeup with a bit of a disaster too. For instance whenever the girl did anything to my eyes like mascara and eyeliner, they'd start tearing and the makeup would smudge. It was terrible. Anytime she touched my eyes, I felt my body react through sudden jerks which I had to fight hard to suppress. During the times she wandered away, I would stare out of the window at the people walking by. I noticed something peculiar. Any men that were walking by the window would look at me, and meet my eyes. The women on the other hand, upon spotting me would quickly avert their eyes. I'm not really sure where the different genders reacted to disparately.

After the makeup session, the girl helped me put on and adjust my veil. Then it was a rush to Pacific Plaza where I arrived just in time to get into Mr Hadi's car. Leaving Orchard Road, there was a jam. Later when we arrived near Fullerton, there was also a jam. All in all, traffic was quite a nightmare.

At the ballroom himself, I first met Lex and Ted Kin and started talking to them. Then I later met more and more people I recognised and before I knew it, full blown camwhoring had started. We later shuffled into the ballroom and I sat at table 14 with Daryl, Gen, Ted Kin, Darren, Emil, Shao Xiong, Mai and JC. After the dinner was over, we also ended up celebrating Chun Wui's 18th birthday with a nice NYDC cake. Then commenced more photo taking where I ended up with my most beloved picture of all night:


YAY!!! (look how far apart we are standing ): )

After deciding that my feet were killing me nice and throughly, I followed Kyle and Jon Pang up to their room to collect my flats that I had dumped there earlier. We ended up staying in the room as more people (and 80% of the KKK) started streaming in. Finally after about 30 minutes+ we started walking out and walked from Fullerton to Clarke Quay. After deliberating for a while if we wanted to go to Arena where everyone was or go to a quieter place. We ended up going to the quieter place - Clinic. I ordered my usual Vodka Lime there and was happy sitting there talking about rubbish with Nic, Jon Pang and CNE when Yihang smsed me asking me to go for the post post prom party.

A while later he came along and I finished the last bit of my drink and followed him, Clement, JTek and DLai to take a cab to Holland V where he opened up Color Bar for us to laze about. A short while later, the !nk people came - Jiayun, Daryl, Chong Wee, Gen, Kaijun and Brendan. After a foray to the nearby 7-11, alcohol was acquired in plentiful amounts and some of the guys started drinking. I wandered downstairs to rest, needing a break from the excessive mental stimuli of the night's events. After a while, more and more people started arriving downstairs, seeking to be away from the 3 non-!nk guys upstairs who were getting increasingly inebriated. A typical !nk rubbish talking session commenced, with the main theme being gossip.

After a while we went upstairs and encountered a drunk DLai and JTek flopping about the floor. Every few minute JTek would protest that he's not drunk, then promptly die the next second and become unconscious for about half a minute. It was the most amusing thing I saw in ages. He also tried walking down the stairs, which was a really scary prospect in case he fell down. Somehow, the two of them survived the night and the 3 of them, plus Clement, went back around 6am on the first bus back.

After they left, we gathered around the table (sans Gen who left for home around 4am) and started talking about how we all first met and became friends. Thinking about something that happened recently (in a 1 year ago versus 18 years of our lives way), yet had created such a strong bond in us made me think about how sad it was that after this year, such gathering would be few and far between again. Still it felt significant that we had all opted to stay together, awake thoughout this significant night.

Around 7am, we left Color Bar to go eat breakfast at Crystal Jade. I had a rather sad Beef and Fish congee. The congee was savoury, but the meat tasted poor and badly done. We also started speaking a bit in Cantonese there. Finally after breakfast around 8am, we started leaving for home. Kaijun and I stayed about a bit longer because we were getting a ride from Yihang's mother. It wasn't till about 9am that I finally got home and showered, and oddly enough I didn't feel that tired so I went to upload pictures to facebook. Finally around 10am, some 24 hours after I woke up the previous day, I started to read Everything is Illuminated and felt sleepy shortly after. And thus ended my nocturnal adventures for 2008 ACSI Prom.

-----

Tomorrow morning I leave for Cambodia - so see you guys when I get back on the 5th of December. Bye!

The last 24 hours have simultaneously filled me with the greatest of joys of my young life and its experiences and the melancholy that is reality. In order to deal with these two disparate emotions as best as I can, I shall deal with the latter one first before dealing with the former so that in my absence it shall be a happy post that greets readers.

I first heard about the Mumbai terrorist attacks on the car ride to Fullerton Hotel. Hadi gave me a ride in his car, along with Cheam. All day I had been sequestered either reading/watching Dexter at home/getting my hair done/getting my makeup done, and has not heard the slightest peep of the world outside. Hearing it on the radio, in the middle of a jam, was almost surreal. In that instant I felt a flood of Melancholy flow over me and seep into my pores. Passing by the large screened led television outside a building in a CBD, I was assailed by images of a plane flying smack into the twin towers some 7 years ago.

There I was all set to engage in a night of frivolity, and there were these people who were terrified into an inch of their lives, and forming new scars of emotional terror. I felt ashamed for being so insensitive and uncaring. I felt sad that I was unable to do anything. I couldn't jump out of the car, change into some cheesy spandex suit and fly off to beat the living hell out of the perpetrators. Instead I was just a silly girl, sitting in her prom dress with layers and layers of makeup.

We soon reached however, and the general euphoric mood of the ballroom soon pushed any such negative sentiment to the back of my head. And thus I forgot all about life outside the confines of the hotel, my thoughts more centered upon the early death of my camera's battery and how much shoes were beginning to make my feet tired. This continued till almost the end of the post-post prom party at Yihang's Color Bar in Holland V.

We had just returned from wandering to Cold Storage when we saw the newpapers just delivered to the doorstep, and someone brought it up. Daryl and Chong Wee immediately started attacking the papers. It wasn't till I wandered near however that I saw the headline and I the forgotten emotions came back to me again.

As I sat semi moping in one of the chairs used for hairdressing, watching JTek and DLai flopping about on the floor in a semi drunken/exhausted stupor, I thought of a few things. One was that I remember I cried when I heard of Sept 11 and saw the repeated videos of the planes crashing into the towers/the towers buckling and collapsing. Most striking however, were the images of people who opted to jump out of the upper levels of the towers. The images conveyed emotions, feelings and thoughts that words would never have been sufficient enough to convey.

The second thought I had was that no matter whatever I became in life, I could not save anyone. I could change nothing. This thought really really struck me and made me upset. I was just a human being, a person to be filled with hopelessness and to futilely rail against the cruel mechanisms of fate and destiny. Forget all those rubbish motivational things people say, that I Can Change The World, Make It Into A Better Place, because I can't. No one can. Any faith placed in the ability of humanity to Save The World is only bound to be replaced by disenchantment and disappointment because at the end of the day we are just mere humans. It is the unfortunate circumstance that we have been alotted in this life. That doesn't mean however that we are unable to change things on a micro scale, and perhaps even a macro scale - it simply means that when it comes to the bigger bigger picture, we are powerless to end the everlasting cycle of human suffering and conflict.

Another piece of news also came to me today, that of JTay's mother passing away. I had known her and him far before I had even heard the name ACSI. The last time I saw and talked to her however was before I left church some 2 years+ ago. She used to be my old Sunday School teacher. The last time I had really spoken to JTay was some time ago too, when I first came to ACSI and he tried to talk me back into going to church. I saw him yesterday during prom too, and said hi to him. I can't even begin to imagine what he's going through now, and my heart really goes out to him. So please, keep him in your prayers and thoughts tonight.

I just realised JH linked me on our other blog, so I guess the time has finally come from me to introduce twigs&tweed to the random people who read this blog. I was at first a bit reluctant to reconcile the two because one blog features my personal world and the other is my outside frivolous world that I think about when I need a break from Bigger Thoughts. While they are both parts of my and my personality, I sometimes feel ashamed for engaging in such thoughts when I know that everysecondsomeonedies/someoneisbeingrapedatthismoment/someoneiscryingnow/someoneisgoinghungrynow.

Okay why does this make me sound depressed again -_________-

Whatever it is, twigs&tweed, meet thechartreusetiger!

Today I attended someone's 18th birthday party. It was quite unlike any other one I have attended before - there was a DJ, loud music, a 'bar' and a swimming pool - a potent mix when teenagers are thrown in. Even though I was eventually joined by my classmates and two girls I met there, Tian and Clarissa, I have not felt so 'out' of it in ages.

I really couldn't understand the behaviour of majority of the people there. They were dancing, drinking, and in general being happy and having the time of their lives - and I was sitting in a corner talking to people. I even felt annoyed as I saw them staggering about from too much drink. By the time I left the place with Jim, Charles, Lex, Elliot and Joash, I had encountered 2 girls who had drunk so much they flopped over and died, countless others who were clearly wasted, random patches of puke and some girl pissing in an alley. I also lost my respect for the people I saw dry humping on the dancefloor. Apparently I also missed an epic make out session between S.Y. (not Suat!) and random guys (which I thank for the preservation of my sanity and sight).

I was definitely not the only one there who felt uncomfortable with how the party went, yet somehow the whole thing really struck a chord with me. Part of it was when I knew I was getting annoyed and people told me to 'chillax', something which only served to make me more annoyed. They say you learn something about yourself everyday - today's lesson is the understanding that I could never live in that manner.

Still, the party brought about little blessings. Like how I talked to a few people I never really talked to before when school was in progress. Mr Intense Stare was also there, with a dye job that someone described as 'a golden monkey', and that made me giggle. But all in all, I hope I don't have another such experience again soon.

Running is like blogging. Once you stop and accumulate lots of fat, you don't feel like running anymore because there is so much more effort needed to get back to prime condition. And I am a lazy person. NYEH.

-----

IB Exams ended on Thursday, 10:00 am on the 20th of November for me. This is an idea of the physical mess is created:

November 3rd


November 16th

November 20th


GOODBYE MESS! YOU WILL NOT BE MISSED AT ALL.

-----

As some of you might have noted, I was dealing with a hypocritical troll on my tagboard (hello troll if you see this, I do believe you need a better use of time - may I suggest volunteer work so you can do some soul searching?) during this period as well. I chose to not carry out any action, choosing to see what happens. The results brought tears to my eyes, both of an amused and sentimental nature.

"SC(A)
yo melodie! exams almost over! time for tequila!

anonymouse
Dear SC(A), why you say time for tequila. you elitist bastard bear dog. is jolly shandy not good enough for your ass. huh huh huh. i am a mccain man

anonymouse
actually i would say that the ULTIMATE drink would be the bacardi breezer. such a kick, unbeatable high. its INSANE

SC(A)
what a fag you are anonymouse. what a coward hiding behind an unidentifiable internet name. i dare you to reveal your true identity and challenge me to a drinking contest of the fearsome breezers.

SC(A)
face to face if you dare!

anonymouse
oh you elitist brog (beardog), using such great poly-syllabic words like unidentifiable and internet. why you not say iDuNkNoWz and wEbZ.

FloopyDick
*Flip**Flop**squirt*

anonymouse
that would have been more normal and less upper-crust. ooh i despise the way you subtly look down on people like us. tsk. (i am unafraid of these radical alcoholik, i am a true gangsta) yo yo yo

anonymouse
ah FloopyDick, what a stroke of genius. HAH GEDDIT STROKEE OF GENIUS LIKE STROKEEEEE ( @i hAv sUcH gR8t sEnZ oF hUmoUrZz)

FloopyDick
the world use dvd now. no space for my floppy dicks. my size too small.

pohkee
did i hear somebody say floopy dicks?"

I'll really miss the madness during Math Studies.

-----

On Thursday after the paper, I met with Daryl, Kaijun and Chong Wee at the Spaceframe. We then ended up taking a cab to Raffles City, because Kaijun is a bum/the bus stop was exploding. There, we ended up bumming around various locales like the really fail toy showcase on the 3rd level. They sold fake doll food for $10! Can you believe it? $10 will buy you plenty of real life food, much less fake doll food -____- what a damn waste of money.

After a while, Sir Brythain came and we went to Sushi Tei for lunch. (I feel like listing, so I'm going to start now)
- I ended up distributing the Salmon Roe that came with my rice to everyone
- The Tuna sashimi was really good
- We had some interesting pineapple and chocolate dessert
- Sir Brythain treated all of us (thank you Sir!)
- Sir Brytahin regaled us with lots of dodgy humourous stories about previously unknown school life
- We walked from Raffles City to Takashimaya's Kinokuniya
- Played word games alone the way like thinking of words that had 'wwo' and the like in them (which I was fail at)
- Kinokuniya had 20% discount for members, so I bought 5 books :D
- Then we wandered to Borders, where I bought 2 more books
- After Sir Brythain left us, we wandered over to Mos Burger to bum
- At 4pm we all started to leave for home


So this is the sum total of books I was acquired in recent months that I have not posted about:

1) Everything is Illuminated (reading this now)
2) The Decameron (also reading this)
3) Genome (non-fiction)
4) Canterbury Tales
5) In the Country of the Young
6) Every Visible Thing
7) Forgive Me
8) Love in the Asylum (finished reading it on Friday)
9) The White Tiger
10) Prozac Nation
11) The Memory Keeper's Daughter
12) Jim Giraffe
13) The Corrections
14) World Without End

15) My Mistress' Sparrow is Dead (also reading halfway/not in the picture)

----

At night I was out with my classmates to drink at Angel's Share. Everyone in our group chose the Free Flow option, for S$47 (+ tax). As usual when you have teenagers and alcohol, you have wasted people. Time time it was Lex, Mong and Nic who were wasted. Cheryl appeared to be wasted - but she kept protesting she wasn't. Not sure what to make of that.

I had 4 1/2 drinks because I didn't want to get drunk. The first was a mojito, then a black russian (which I hated and gave to Nic), a peach margarita which was really nice and sweet, a sex on the beach - which was also really nice and finally a tequila sunrise. I ended up being the person who drank the 2nd least, the person drinking the least being JLC. Which is good, because we both escaped unscathed from Hangover Hell.

Then Chun Wui, Elliot, Lex and I took a cab home. After we dropped Lex off, he apparently had some druken encounter with the guard, which I found really amusing. So oh well. So that's it. The end of IB with a night of random drinking and failed drinking games.

-----

On Saturday I went with my parents and brother to his school to buy new uniforms for him. As usual he started to act up from having to wait around, so after his measurements were finally taken I brought him outside to sit on a bench. After a while, he stood up and pulled me gently to the side. As I stood up and followed him, he led me to a playground that was hidden at the side. There, he sat on the swing and I joined him. As I was swinging away in a swing that was way too small for me to sit in, I started to think about how long ago it was that I played in a playground. I felt old and young at the same time. The thought of university scared me.

My brother stopped and went over to the rest of the jungle gym, so I climbed up and joined him. I tried to play with the monkey bars and epic failed. As I nursed my aching joints, I felt a bit sad, because in Primary school I used to be really good at the monkey bars! Giving up recess time to go play on them. One time the bar came loose and I fell down. That really hurt. I was snapped out of my reminiscing by my brother sliding down the slide, so I jumped down and went to sit on the see saw. As I was bouncing around (it was one of those with the springs) my brother came on joined me on the other side. He was so heavy that the see saw became lop sided, and it took a great effort for me to bounce him up on the other side. I felt a bit weirded out, because it hit home that my brother was now physically larger than me, even if he lacked about 10+ years of mental development to balance it out.

Prompted by a phone call from my mother, I led him back to the bench area. Waiting there however, he got bored again and pulled me along. What followed next was quite interesting, because it is unprecedented in the behaviour of my brother. From leading me to the playground, he now led me to the bike area where there were some small DMX bikes and he climed on to play with them. So I tried to join him, and failed because the bikes were too small -_________-

Then he stopped and led me upstairs. At the 2nd level however, there was a grille blocking entry. After I told him it was locked, he led me back down and to another staircase near the general office. It turned out to be open. He then headed for the computer room and opened the door where there was some people around. After about a minute there, he led me out again and down the corridor to where the bathrooms were. He tried the locked grilled staircase again, then walked back to play with the cold water from the water cooler. Finally he led me back to the computer room area and we took a lift down where my father was now waiting with the car.

The thing so unusual about this was that my brother seemed to be showing me around his school, like telling me 'This is my school! I want you to see it!' without speaking at all. For someone with an IQ of 50, this is an incredible feat because it shows both intellectual and emotional cognitive thinking- and I had never seen such a side of my brother before. The whole experience left me feeling touched and 'AWWWW!'-ing internally.

Then today he threw and epic tantrum, scratched my arm and tried to bite me twice. Bye bye tender feeling.

-----

I really need to sleep.

I know I said I wouldn't update, here's a short post of videos that cheer me up and make me LOL in this really stressful period:

1) Potter Puppet Pals, Gay Eskimo




2) WISHMASTER




3) I'm a Punjabi Girl in a Punjabi World




WOOF. Back to Biology.

If you are ever so inclined, the latest batch of Diana pics are out on my flickr (failed overexposed ones excluded).

-----

I'm more than almost halfway through my examinations (6 papers done, 7 to go)! Yay. I can't wait for this rubbish to be over (and oddly enough it doesn't even feel like the exams have even started :x) Oh well - just one more week, one more week.

"150 years of History to study for tomorrow."

An urban legend (I presume) from the Darwin Awards tells of a couple who got frisky while camping out one day. As they were getting their groove on in a clearing, lighting suddenly struck the girl (because she was riding him and therefore a higher target) and killed her instantly. The surge of electricity also had another effect, that of melding their naughty bits together so they guy couldn't separate himself from his now dead girl. Then apparently a bear came about and started eating her, while still stuck on the guy.

Then there's another story (which is quite true) of how this woman was one day walking about in Singapore when lightning struck her. Most unusually she was not in the vicinity of any tall buildings, so she made an easy target, and before she knew it she was ejected from her body into *insert your name for afterlife here*. No matter how unusual the circumstances, they were made odder by how the lightning had burned off her blouse. Upon further inspection the authorities determined that she got struck by lightning because she was wearing an underwire bra (I'm not kidding!), hence her blouse got burned off and the chest area singed.

I don't know why I know so many morbid stories about females being killed by lightning. No male ones. Anyway this is linked up to the rather terrifying experience I had today in the wee hours of the morning. I slept rather late (I blame Milan Kundera, an haunting writer) and as such when today's torrent of rain/monsoon hit, I had not sunk into the deep sleep zone yet. In the middle of my rather odd dream about being chased about a departmental store with clothes (which made me think of commes des garcon) only in red and black , a sudden loud shout of WARWICK!!! sent my heart a-pounding, adrenaline a-coursing and I found myself awake at 3:00am -___________________________________________________-

I woke up just as the thunder was ending it's low guttural rumble. I could still feel it's effects on my room, with my window grilles shaking about and the hiddel rafters rumbling. Outside the rain was pouring away with winds whipping the trees about like little toys (and they're about 50 years old I wager), and the sky kept flashing at frighteninglyquick intervals. So I rolled over and switched off all my electrial plugs for the laptop. Then I went back to sleep.

I had another odd dream of being stuck somewhere in Telok Blangah with Justine and Joash. We were wandering around trying to find out way back home and those two were making silly noises as usual. Then before I knew it, another WARWICK!!! woke me up. It was 4:45am. (No, don't ask me why thunder mainifested itself as WARWICK!!! in my dreams) This time the sound was equal to that of a large car accident, like a car plowing through the walls of my room or something and I woke up terrified. By this time, adrenaline from the first WARWICK had mixed together with the adrenaline from the second WARWICK and I found myself unable to sleep. Plus I was hungry.

So at 4:46am in the morning I started scouraging for food around my room. Then at 4:50am I wanted to go use the bathroom and drink water, but I was terrified that lightning would strike my house and I'd die because I was touching water. Then I started envisioning the article covering my death, something like 'IB Student Dies Because She Was Stupid And Touched Water In The Middle Of A Lightning Storm'. At 4:55am I went to the bathroom and quickly dried my hands after washing them, with soap of course. At 5:00am I started reading William Trevor. As I read, the lighting storm was still as fierce as ever. Every flash of lightning made my heart leap a little, in anticipation of a screamingly loud thunderclap, but mercifully only about 5 loud ones happened.

By 5:30am, when I finished the William Trevor story, it had stopped storming outside. Instead the fierce gale had turned to a mere drizzle. Comforted by the thought that I would not be rudely woken up by unpleasant sounds again, I forced myself into an uneasy sleep. Only to be woken up at 9:30am by BBC blasting.

I just did a rather interesting (and useful) quiz, not one of those WHO IS YOUR LOVER FROM HARRY POTTER TYPE?!?!?!?! type of quizzes. It said that my religious view is that of an Orthodox Quaker.

According to SelectSmart.com's Spiritual Belief Systems quiz, my #1 belief match is ORTHODOX QUAKER. What do you believe? Visit SelectSmart.com/RELIGION

For some reason that makes me face palm. It makes me think I'm associated with the red necks who all voted for McCain and Palin. Reading through their respective stances from that website though on doctrinal issues, "but sacraments to God are most often considered to arise from inward experiences, a personal encounter with God, rather than church ritual", makes me see the similarities. This however does not change my views towards contemporary views towards matters like homosexuality and abortion which can be considered somewhat liberal.

Urgh, need to get back to doing work.

I have a new best friend. It is called log. Not the sort of log that the frog from frogger hops onto, but the log that does some mystical magick shit on the gdc and pumps out the answer to stupefying indices! My new best friend is awesome. I just met him today too, via an introduction by Hadi, and I've already used him twice for my first paper (Math!) today.

Who knows, this might even blossom into a romance.

2 days to IB exams:

My heart is back to it's old tricks again. The chambers beat hurriedly, like they are tapping their feet anxiously waiting for something to happen. I feel the flow of blood around my body increase in speed, little jetstreams coursing through minute-far-too-small veins and arterioles which get faster and faster each passing minute.

It is like the anticipation of waiting for a lover that you know will leave you.

Someone give me this as a present pleaseeeeeeeeeee!!!

This is a corner of an envelope that came for me today. It's side looks like someone with bloody fingers wiped their hands on its whiteness, hoping to exchange it's stain for purity. Hoping to exchange disappointed pain for a clean slate Come 2 months later, an envelope from the same destination will be making its way from the UK to Singapore, into my letter box. I anticipate it will be something painfully thin.

Such a thought settles uncomfortably into my consciousness - but I continue trying anyway.

-----

Here's a copy of the IB exam schedule for however needs it. Prayer for my exams is also very welcome :D

Personally, the experience of the IB exams (preparation and all), is so different from that of the O level exams that well, honestly it doesn't feel like I'll be sitting for the biggest and most important exam of my life in 5 days.

In the month running up to the O levels, I was studying in school everyday with Estelle, Dawn and Jacqueline. We would usually hide in one of the rooms in the library, where it was less cold. In between, I'd pop out to see teachers almost everyday, from my SS teacher, to my Geog teacher, to my Lit teacher and even the Math teacher. This time however, the only teacher I've consulted so far was the Econs teachers, and man does that make me feel like I'm slacking now.

Similarly with about 1 week to go to the exams, a feeling of 'OMG I'm so sick of studying, let's get this over with!' crept into my consciousness. Now it's 'Eh I have an exam next week? Really?' and 'OMG I'm so sick of studying because it's been one endless stream of exams since June'. Oh gosh -_-

It's a little terrifying to think that I still feel so nonchalant to towards the IB exams. Sure, I worry about individual subjects like English, but the idea of IB exams approaching as a whole has completely abandoned me. Nevermind that I know they are approaching, the idea just hasn't been fully integrated into my consciousness yet. This however, might be some sort of clever unconscious ploy by my psyche that I'm not fully aware of. Part of the reason why I did badly for the prelims was that I was so stressed out and worried that I couldn't sleep or eat well and felt perpetually sick during the exams. It got to a point where I just stopped writting in the middle of exams to rest because I felt like fainting. So maybe this is a clever ploy, like by being unaware, I feel less stressed. Who knows.

Whatever it is, damnit, I'm no where as well prepared as I was for the O levels. Oh well.