h-h-hello

Dye or Dirt?

2012-02-02T01:03:00.002Z

Today I finally washed a pouch that I bought from Sapa, Vietnam. I had previously been using it to carry around my diary and a pen, and other small things. Today as I hand washed it, copious amounts of blue dye came out (come to think of it, maybe it's the local natural dye they use for colouring their own clothes dark blue), colouring the soapy water blue. Now hours later, after it's dried, I realised the fecking thing has actually changed colour: it's now several shades lighter, sort of like a turquoise kind of colour from dark blue. Amazing. Of course now I'm left to wonder whether it was dirt that made the pouch so dark coloured, or whether it was simply layers and layers of caked dirt because those villagers weren't exactly known for their high state of cleanliness.

I'm back to being super frustrated and dissatisfied with everything that my life entails again. Nothing new really, it's sort of like my 2nd default setting (1st being satisfied at merely coasting along life). But I'm more frustrated this time because of this one person I know, who's been depressed for quite sometime, is still depressed and in my view, refusing to help herself. She refuses to go for counselling, refuses to take medication, flat out refuses to do anything that might alleviate the problem. And it's affecting my friends, her flatmates. Am I being harsh on her? Yes, totally. Considering that I fight with depression all the time, it might seem rich coming from me, but on the other hand if I'm not hard on myself to fight my depression I'd just let it win all the time - and spend my whole life looking on from my bed. Depression can only be solved within oneself, and if you're refusing to address it even after such a prolonged period (anything more than 6 months), then well you're just letting it win, so in a way I think it is kind of fair to say that you're just wallowing in yourself and not doing anything.

Of course being the coward I am, I'd never say it to her.

I'm sick of all of this.

Brie My Baby

2012-01-27T10:10:00.002Z

Before I left home today, one of the first things I did was to drink a cup of tea. Tea where I'd left the teabag inside the cup to stew for what seemed like ages (I'm more of a 3-4 minute tea bag person) as I guilty washed up all the dirty dishes I'd used yesterday. Now I don't know how long I took to wash those dishes up, but I'm sure it was more than 4 minutes. So by my definition, I had a pretty damn strong cup of tea. Except during class just now, I only heard about 50% of the words everyone said, and the rest was background noise. The only word that really stood out was when someone said 'middle eastern' and 'conspiracy theory' pretty near to each other, like in a sentence or something. And only because it was a class on economic policy, so words like 'middle eastern' and 'conspiracy theory' stood out. What, a conspiracy economic theory? To get them to buy up the whole of the UK, like they already are? Anyway so needless to say, 9am class was an utter washout. I also noted today that Murray Mint, has dandruff in his hair, but that somehow doesn't make him any less hot.

So anyway I washed up the dishes this morning. Now for some time, we've been having quite a mouse problem. The fucker has been in my room, eating my honey almonds, scattering the crumbs all over my high heels, and shitting all over my luggage and floor. Recently however, after the fucker appeared in Tiff's room on Sunday night, she went ballistic and bought a bunch of glue traps (with express delivery, she is most proud to add). So anyway Tuesday night, after I came back from Wild Times, I heard a bunch of scraping sounds. True enough as I came up the flight of stairs, I actually saw the fucker. EXCEPT: I saw really only half of it. The back bit. And it was half under Flat 3's door, and it seemed to be stuck.

So i screamed. And screamed. And Tiff and ZW came out and screamed more. And the mouse panicked and started forcing itself more through the little door gap, until it's bum disappeared and all we saw was it's tail. And then that made us scream more, and that then made the mouse struggle more, and blablabla ad infinitum. But of course some of the screaming made some sense. For example, some of it was: "JOSHUAAAAAAA! BENJAMIN!!!!!!!!!!!! OEIJ! OIEJ! WHATEVER YOUR NAME IS!!!!!!" (said by me, the names of the guys in Flat 3 upstairs), but most of it was "AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH" (said by everyone) and "OH MY GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD!!!!!!!!!!" (I think said by Tiff and me). And as we stood there screaming our heads off, we wondered why NO ONE SEEMED TO REACT. It's like if you scream in London, no one can hear you.

ZW managed to call someone, who then got in contact with the guys upstairs, and FINALLY they came down. And as they opened the door to 'rescue' us, we screamed more as we finally saw the full mouse, stuck to the glue trap. The first thing O said as he lifted the glue trap to look at the mouse was, "HAHAHA IT'S SO SCARED IT SHAT ITSELF". No shit, there were 3 girls screaming non-stop at it. If I was the mouse I'd be scared too. And then that's when they told us the bad news: it wasn't just A mouse we were reckoning with, it was multiple mice. Like a mice family. 'Cause they'd just killed one last week. Anyway we left the guys to dispose of the mouse. They said they'd leave it on the ledge and let it freeze to death, just like they did to the mouse they caught and killed last week. At night as I lay in bed, about to sleep, I heard the loudest singular SQUEAK I heard on Earth. I had just been contemplating at the moment whether to go use the bathroom. I decided against it and somehow went to sleep.

The next day, O and B came, and set up a bunch of glue traps in a row under their door. True enough yesterday morning, we woke up to a yet another mouse stuck. Except this time they didn't remove it straight away, electing to leave it stuck there till night time, when they got back to school. As I cleaned up the mess the mice left outside our flat last night with the vacuum cleaner, I could see it struggling and freaking out with the wail of the vacuum cleaning approaching. I wonder if you can suck a mouse up a vacuum cleaning, come to think of it. But I didn't.

Which brings me to this morning. So I was cleaning up the dishes, with my usual token Yellow Rubber Gloves. And those gloves + water + clean dishes = SQUEAK SQUEAK SQUEAK. So I spent my entire time washing up in utter terror. I started singing to myself a made up song which was Christian gospel-ly. I thought of the mouse suddenly running out from under the sink and eating my toes, to take revenge for it's fallen comrades. I was freaked out beyond comparison, all the while conscious of the fact that DAMNIT IT WAS THE GLOVES.

So that's been my life thus far: swing dance and mice.

I also read Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild in less than 8 hours, from midnight Thursday to evening Thursday. It's a fascinating, fascinating book on the nature of youth.

"So what do you usually do?"

2012-01-23T22:19:00.005Z

I always get asked this question often, along with "so where do you usually go?". And everytime, my brain sort of dies because honestly I don't have the foggiest idea what exactly it is I do or where I go. I mean I go to the gym, I go Waitrose. I exercise and I grocery shop. But I'm pretty bloody sure that's not the answer the asker usually wants. So on review of my life I've compiled a few facts:-

FACT ONE: I am a very boring person. All I do is spend time sleeping and slothing at home. I don't even study. I sort of just hack away at bits of the iceberg that is SCHOOL and spend the rest of my time in a totally inefficient manner, that makes me get frustrated at the end of the day.

FACT TWO: I like my comfort zones. Shopping? I go to Oxford Circus. Sometimes if I feel adventurous/am near school, I actually go to Covent Garden! Shocking innit? You'll never catch me near South Kensington. This also means I spend at least what must be 70% of my life at home, in my small 5m by 3.5m room. I've been to Portobello market 3 times, and at the same time never been to Spitalfields, that's because Portobello is Familiar and Comfortable (relatively). I also totally form going-out routines and patterns.

FACT THREE: The only thing I go out really is because I have a reason. Like I want to go to the V&A, or something. But even that I must plan about a week in advance. Which reminds me, I do want to see the Taylor Wessing prize at the National Portrait Gallery pretty soon. Often, studying is not a good enough reason. I need a pull factor to get me out of the house first, then only I can linger and stay and study. Often this reason is school or having to meet friends.

FACT FOUR: The currently most exciting part of my life is Swing Dance.

FACT FIVE: I do go out alone, for shopping, films, seeing exhibits. I don't mind being alone, and often enjoy it, but it also means I do it seldom because my inertia is just so massive.

Anyway I totally had a brain fart today. After spending hours bumming around at home, I finally left to run some small errands (post office, get prescriptions, look for an eyebrow pencil), just as the sun was setting. So anyway I bought hydrocortisone cream from Boots and the cashier asked me "when are you going to use it?". I sort of went "uh nuh-ooooooooowwwwww?" and gave her a really blank look. She then gave me a really confused glance and said, "I asked, WHERE are you going to use it?". Cue whale face
(-_________________________-")

I just booked a ticket to watch Confucius at the BFI by myself in Feb. Can't wait to feel Asian and go OH YEAH at a movie, unlike the pretentious shitfest that was Shame, which I saw last week.

A New Year

2012-01-23T00:11:00.002Z

Just came back not too long ago from Flat 8, where ZW and I went to celebrate Chinese New Year's Eve, the day of the traditional family gathering. I made my awesome chicken wings, after marinating them for almost 24 hours, and I'm pleased to say they were wiped out by everyone. I grin inside as I think about it.

Flat 8 (esp Jean!) cooked up a veritable feast. They made siu yok (roast pork) and char siu (bbq pork), and there were traditional favourites like dried shiitake mushrooms. Made me think of him, where they usually have shiitake mushrooms with hair moss. Hair moss is a strange thing, because it looks literally like a pile of hair. When I was younger I think my uncle used to scare me by saying it was the hair of naughty girls. It tasty mainly because it's very good at absorbing and holding onto the thickened oyster sauce it's often cooked in. Mmmm.

There were 8 of us in attendance, mainly because Tiff was too tired and decided not to turn up. The table was nicely cramped full of food and people. For dessert, Hui Min and Jean made tang yuan (glutinous rice dumplings), which was really tasty and a nice surprise, and we ended up having a debate about WHY it was traditional to eat it. We ended up resorting to wiki. We really are half-assed Asian people.

After ZW and I came back, I started cleaning my room. I basically didn't clean it since coming back from Morocco, even though the mess was bugging me. Now for once in weeks, there is nothing on my floor that isn't actually supposed to be there - well except the two packets of Special Tea I have under my desk, because there's no space to leave it in the kitchen. I feel very pleased with myself, especially since I beat cleaning it up BEFORE midnight, because it's bad luck to clean the floors on the 1st day of Chinese New Year. (Not that I seriously care about such things, but it seems rather twee to adhere to them now) It's something about sweeping away the good luck that a new year brings.

So anyway, hopefully this means I'll get good luck for this new lunar year. Been feeling blah the past few days, and hopefully that rights itself after today, oho.

Dry Cleaning: £4.99

2012-01-21T15:42:00.003Z

On my way back home today, I finally picked up my dry cleaning. The dry cleaner's shop is in reality, 30 seconds from my house, but on the other side from school. So I never really walk by it on my day-to-day path. This meant I manage to leave my sweater there for 2 weeks, despite them actually taking just a day to clean the damn thing. The more I think about it, the more I feel intrigued by my own behaviour, because I managed to deem a 30 second walk as "too far". That and I suppose I had no urgent need to pick up the sweater, what with it being so warm nowadays. Also for some reason I remember them telling me it would cost £6, not the £4.99 I paid.

Anyway today I went to the UCL Chinese New Year fair. It turned out to be something of a misnomer, for it was more of a Singaporean fair. I swear of the lot there were no Malaysians, no China Chinese, and no random other Chinese people, it was just Singaporeans. As a consequence I ran into loads of people I hadn't seen at all. I even ran into Gen from school, which was really nice. We ended up going out for coffee at the super hipster No. 114 coffee place along Tottenham Court Road. I initially went to the fair with Shu and Hui Min, and Jeff's family (their ex-JC teacher). I swear their daughter, Sophie, was such a heartbreaker. She's 2. Everywhere we went, people were cooing over her and taking photos. Even the girl doing the Wushu performance from Imperial (which was excellent and extremely enjoyable to watch), noticed her as she was doing her routine, and gave Sophie a smile. Also Jeff's mum was highly entertaining. She dragged me to go to the bathroom with here, and there she spoke about things like doing makeup and her red skinny jeans (all in Mandarin of course). Nice lady, nice family.

After I left Gen, I got slightly lost in UCL as I tried to find my way back out to Byng Place, because I wanted to go to Waterstones. I'm just thankful that LSE seems to be better planned out than UCL, with it's random appearing courtyards. At Waterstones I walked about a bit, enjoying the feeling of being surrounded by so many books. I just bought the BBC History magazine though, because I've got a massive backlog of books here at home. Aiming to read Into the Wild after I finish Parting Shots. I wandered into the FOPP bit and found the second hand DVD section. Picked up This is England for £2 and at the counter I impulsively bought A Town Called Panic for £3 (£5 w/o any other purchase). Remembered how last year I was trying to find a cinema near enough to Jeygrove Court that showed A Town Called Panic, but it only showed in all sorts of odd places.

Going out tonight to celebrate Hui Min's birthday at a dinner place. Need to remember to wrap her gift.

Love me or leave me

2012-01-19T19:07:00.002Z

I have come to the conclusion that every single awful day I have in existence is primarily of my own doing. That and I seem to always be my own worst enemy, etc. etc.

Today as I walked back from school/Sainsbury's, I walked by the fruit seller (I just learned his name is Adel Shah) and said hi as usual. He stopped me and started talking in pidgin English about how he was sick today and had to close his fruit stand for 3 hours. Then he took out his wallet and pulled out an appointment card, telling me he next had an appointment on 30th Jan. I flipped the card around and then I very awkwardly realised that it was for a NHS specialist sexual health clinic in Archway. Then he took out his medicine and showed it to me. I took note of the name, because I'm curious like that, and when I came back and googled it, wiki said it was sometimes used to cure STDs.

I don't think he realised exactly what kind of information he was revealing when he showed all those things to me, because he barely speaks English.

In other news, I've been pigging out on Lindt Mild 70% Cocoa.

Skypeskypeskype

2012-01-17T14:06:00.002Z

Got off skype with my parents a while ago, and something my mum kept saying is bugging me. She said she didn't think I was well enough to do a masters degree, because I'm already so stressed out over doing my bachelor's. Which I have to admit is a pretty good point. And as I dithered about my room half thinking about my GV227 project proposal, I couldn't actually think of a reason why I wanted to do a masters other than the fact that I WANT TO DO A MASTERS.

In other news I'm going out for social dancing again tonight at Wild Times. Looking forward to it.

NATWEST AND WRIGHT'S

2012-01-11T12:08:00.002Z

So it's been 2 and a half years since I've been living here in this (apparently) Emerald Isle. I just finished my cup of Wright's Bar tea and DAMNIT I WANT MORE, except I'm sure my weak system will die from lactose intolerance and caffeine overload. What the hell do they put in their tea anyway? It's SO GOOD and for just 45p. Seriously. It's way better than all the teas I've had in the world, Moroccan mint tea included. Though I do remember having some sort of caffeine OD-sort of shivers before.

So anyway NATWEST, is a PAIN IN THE ARSE. Because I'm on a basic account I now can't withdraw ANY money from a cashpoint that is not Natwest, RBS or Tesco Cash. WTF. There was one day, I was feeling sick and hungry, and it was raining, and I had to frantically call Dex to come and give me cash because my card wasn't working at ANY cashpoint and I started panicking. As a result I've now taken to using Waitrose's cashback scheme, and drawing more money than usual at cashpoints that I can actually use. Fucking buggers, the lot of them. On another note, for the first time today, the Natwest cashpoint in school gave me two £5 notes. When I first came there were talks to put £5 notes in cashpoints, and how they were planning to do pilots in special machines located at places like Waterloo station. Once when I was taking 1 down to tutor in Bermondsey way back in 2009, I remember seeing one of those machines with a special '£5 NOTES DISPENSED HERE!!!' sign. Now it's London-wide it seems. Meh I feel weird to think of all the time that's passed.

I woke up at 11.11 am today

2012-01-10T11:29:00.004Z

Some time ago (perhaps last year) my Dad told me that as you get older, time accelerates. Not quite saying I'm that old now, but it sure as hell feels that way as I marvel at the fact that I've been in uni for 2 and a half years. That and I'm still not sure what I've been doing when I think back on the previous term of school. Perhaps that's why I keep a blog, because my memory is like a sieve - attempting to keep some sort of record [any juicy, darker bits are written down in diaries].

Also I just lied, a big proper lie, for the first time in ages to my flatmate. She asked me to help her annoying friend do something. I refused. Haven't I told her enough times that I utterly detest that girl? PFFFFT. I am now playing my music very softly to pretend I'm not home.

A picture of the henna tattoo I had done for 60 dirhams (€6) in Marrakech:

I freak out a little everytime I see it, because I forget it's there.

Maroc + New Year 2012

2012-01-09T17:47:00.003Z

So as mentioned in my last post, I was away in Morocco 'celebrating' the new year. More like the new year just happened to fall during our holiday. So New Year's was spent in Fes, where everyone (Paul, Cheam, Jia and Yihang) sort of said NO SHOWERING before 0000 hours and I had to shower at 0015 hours instead. I don't know why I remember that fact the most. That and the riad we were staying in, riad verus, very nicely served this super sweet cake to mark the new year. And then the next day, on new year's eve, I fell dog sick for the next few days and said "I want to depart from my body" at least once an hour. SO summary:

Morocco - 29th Dec to 8th Jan
Fes, Meknes, Casablanca, Marrakech
£700 max spent
5.5/10

+ Medinas
+ Food (initially), loved the well cooked tajines at the first restaurant - Sekaya - in Fes
+ Souks: always charming no matter which bit of the world you're in
+ Amusing language barrier (French, Arabic, Berber anyone?)
+ Traveling company
+ The hotel staff were very very friendly
+ Mid-day heat and lovely dark blue skies
+ Hammam: never felt so clean in my life
+ Camel ride: brief, but I liked it
+ Volubilis
+ Seeing cats everywhere, except when they startled me

- FALLING SICK, with flu then stomach flu: at least I think I saved loads of money and lost weight (minus at least 3 points)
- Casablanca: shithole city of the highest order
- Food: lack of variety, even if it was tasty; that and maybe it made me get stomach flu?
- Cold COLD showers at night, Morocco is not built for cold weather
- Taxi drivers always out to scam tourists
- Didn't get to see the desert, but this warrants a 2nd trip
- Getting harassed in Marrakech: first by some really black dude who shoves me right into a store, and then laughs at me when I get upset, getting almost pickpocketed in a souk near the plaza and finally some teenage boys touching/pulling my hair in a crowd for amusement
- Smokers, everywhere
- Feeling crazily dirty and dusty all the time

I bought 2 seasons worth of Curb Your Enthusiasm on DVD, and they greeted me when I came back. Mmmm. Had a slow day today with a 1 and 1/2 hour nap in the middle, really hope I can get back to my normal working schedule tomorrow.

Last Post of 2011

2011-12-28T22:54:00.005Z

Tomorrow, I'm headed to Morocco with Cheam, Jia, Paul and Yihang. Specifically Fes, Meknes, Casablanca, then Marrakesh.

In the shower I was thinking about the whole of 2011, and realised it was probably my most travelled year. New Year's itself was spent in Wurzburg, then I embarked on two epic trips during Summer: one a Scandinavian cruise and the other a trek/backpacking across most of South East Asia. Then recently I went with my mum to Austria-Germany, and we covered Vienna, Linz, Salzburg, Innsbruck, then Munich. Other smaller trips include two beach holidays, one to Malaysia and the other to Bintan. Then there was the trekking trip to Snowdonia. Lots of travelling indeed!

Spent today at the National Archives, being grumpy from a lack of sleep and low blood sugar. Had the world's worst possible cup of tea (what tea brand is worse than P&G tips?!) for £1.15 too. Only bright spot was that I got to do some of the work I wanted, and one of the security guards was really nice to me.

Two random images to round off this very short post:

This is the bike I cycled on all the way from Russell Square to Earl's Court on Christmas day, because there was no public transport. Almost got killed a few times, and crashed into a parked vehicle en route. Didn't cycle all the way alone though, met Jia at her place along Baker Street and cycled the rest of the way with her. Spent Christmas with Yihang's friends, watched Home Alone 2 and Contagion, along with 2 eps of Game of Thrones. Mmm.

And this was just a bit of the archival work I was looking at today.

AND another note: I just saw a mouse run by my room door. NOT COOL. This, I blame directly on my flatmate: see previous post. I flipped out yesterday when they told me, and only because I'd seen it run past me in the kitchen.

Merry New Year, I think.

Peace on earth and goodwill to all men: EXCEPT IF YOU'RE DAFT

2011-12-25T11:52:00.002Z

Facebook now is filled with all sorts of happy musings on loving the world and loving mankind. I however, feel quite the contrary but shall restrict my grinch like mood to this space. After all I seek to rant, not attract unwarranted attention from even more daft people.

Today is Christmas day. I came back from Munich on the 20th Dec at night. I spent the 21st being utterly depressed that I'd come to to find the house in such an utterly filthy and messy state - that and cleaning for half a day. Now I am by nature a messy person, but I restrict it to my own cave. Furthermore I am not a dirty person, I am instead totally OCD about dirt. So coming back from a very nice holiday, it was possibly the worst thing to greet me, although I did already mentally prepare myself for it. So point is: I cleaned up on the 21st to an acceptable level (Tiff'd have made it way cleaner though).

Last night however, I spent the first hour of Christmas cleaning up the kitchen. It was filthy again. I was very very frustrated, as I'd really cleaned only just days ago and the kitchen had fallen into such a state so rapidly. Then this morning I took all the rags out of the machine and discovered to my great displeasure that there were 10 rags. Now I don't know about you lot, but in my world when rags get dirty, my instinct is to clean them. And if you're not going to clean them, throw them away. But neither of this happened. So instead my kitchen is full of rags drying now. It's really too ridiculous for words and damn if this hasn't turned me into a grinch.

Snowdonia

2011-12-12T22:21:00.004Z

This post is ages overdue. It was almost written many many times, but then I always never got around to doing it. So for some reason now, something like 2 weeks later and when I'm sitting in a hotel room in Linz, Austria, I am determined to actually write this damn thing. Perhaps it's because I'm agitated over my mum pressurising me about tenancy issue from my old flat (yes, I admit I went into self-denial and she's right to do it, but that doesn't make me respond in a more reasonable manner), and just like how some people go running, I angrily pound out words on the keyboard.

That and I've been crazily busy since that time period.

So anyway flashback to the last post(s): I didn't get the part in the performning group, and was absolutely gutted. Developed something close to an associated-panic attack to swing that was thankfully adverted. Went back for swing class on the day we (WR, JK, Tiff) left for Snowdown to find that Tom had learned my name. Sue says (very nicely) that's because he and Cici were debating about whether to let me into the performing group. Sue also said that the reason why I didn't get in was probably because they needed someone to pair a short guy and I was too tall. Sue is really too nice. ANYWAY SNOWDON.

So afterwards, Tiff and I left to meet JK and WR at Euston station around 10:30pm. Tiff bought some really nice fries from Burger King. We arrived at Birmingham New Street around 1am and we settled into the 24h Mcdonald's next to the station to be like hobos. We encountered an interesting mix of people there, I must say.

First was security man, who I couldn't decide whether he was creepy or not. He was inside Mcdonald's and was standing near the door when I popped out for a bit to feel the cold outdoor air. On my way in, he smiled and said that I looked very pretty. Which was alright, but then afterwards he kept looking at me and watching me through the class, perhaps hoping to catch my eye and garner a smile for me or something. I don't know. Then was outright creepy dude, also of a vague central Asian origin, who sat in the adjorning booth and kept half staring at us, prompting Tiff to put her coat on even though it was warm inside. The last was outright WTF, a legit high hobo with shoulder length ratty orange (?!?!?!) hair who came right up to our table and kept saying something that sounded like "an-ya-se-yo" (hello in Korean?) for a good 2 minutes while we attempted to ignore him.

Around 5am we left the Mcdonald's to catch our next train towards Holyhead, getting off at Llandudno Junction. Essentially once we got on the next train, we all crashed and slept, getting up only near our stop. While we're sitting still, half waking up and waiting for our stop, Tiff got the idea to go wash up. As she walked by, the pessimistic thought occured to me, "Hmm, what if...?"

Well let's just say true enough, it happened. Tiffany was still in the bathroom as the train pulled into the station, JK shoved WR and I off the train, with all our stuff, while Tiff was still nowhere to be found. And while JK was walking inside the train, WR and I followed him on the outside. Then just as the train made a funny sound, I sprang forward to try and press the train door open as JK was becoming frantic on the other side. The door did not open. According to WR and JK, my first reaction was to raise up my right hand and wave to him as the train pulled away. Funnily enough, I don't remember doing that although it does sound like something I'd have done. Instead what I remembered the most was JK's face as it slowly dawned on him the that the train was about to move off with him and Tiff in it:- a mix of disbelif, horror and dawning anxiety, as he kept pressing the button to open the train door. It was at the point that I wished I had the presence of mind to take out my camera. Anyway his eyes were a bit like Munch's The Scream, if one can imagine that IRL. JK's mouth was a bit more of the open-in-disbelief sort.

WR and I walked off the platform, and I immeditately went to the train station attendant and explained our predicament to him, framing it more along the 'so, when's the next train from Bangor due?' line. Somehow, I found the whole thing insanely funny. Which I guess it was. Even though I was very tired and usually extremely irritable. WR and I ended up stoning in silence in the small waiting room, listening to the local yobs waiting for their train. Was amusing. When Tiff and JK finally came, we ended up walking to the local Aldi and Iceland, before ending up at another Mcdonald's when we found the KFC closed. The next train was 4 hours later. Tiff bought breakfast for all of us, as penance.

By the time we got to Betws-y-Coed, it started raining a bit. Deciding we couldn't ditch our bags at the tourism centre, which closed at 5pm, we ended up carrying the whole lot of it to our trek in Snowdon. Anyway it was pouring like fuck when we got to Snowdown. It was Singapore-monsoon rain style. But we were there, and had endured so much to be there, so we started climbing anyway - against all common sense. We were quickly drenched to the bone. When I climbled, my jeans actually turned shiny for a moment as all the water got simply wrung out by the action of my leg pulling my body up.

On our way up, we passed 3 groups of men coming down. They all looked like the real deal too: proper gear, mid 20s to 30s, all fit men (in the literal and not British sense). They all said they tried going up, couldn't, almost got blown off, and decided to turn back. To this we went "ok! We'll try anyway", and then they gave us the most amazed looks ever, a combination of 'wow, you've got guts/you're nuts/what's the number of the welsh moutain rescue team?'. After a while Tiff and WR called it quits, but JK and I wanted to push on. After leaving Tiff and WR for about 20 minutes, we finally turned back after having to stop multiple times because we almost got blown off the mountain. There is nothing quite like carrying 15kg on your back, weighing almost 55kg, and feeling yourself get blown off a mountain because of gale force winds (which we were warned off before, in case our foolhardiness needs more highlighting).

Somehow, JK and I made it off the mountain in one piece. We spent the rest of the time in the poor cafe at the base, sopping off water everywhere we went. I discovered everything in my bag was wet, but my worn clothes were somehow the driest since my hair and torso were spared (thanks Karrimor 3-in-1 jacket!) We somehow made it to the town area, and found a lovely discount store (Rock Botton, by Cotswalds I think) where the staff were really nice. They allowed us to hide there till our dorm opened, while hogging the heater. At the same thing, they even nicely lent WR a jacket that was defective because hers was all wet. I managed to buy a 5 pound pair of pants to replace my sopping wet ones. WR later bought a box of cabury celebrations for the staff from a local food and wine store.

The rest of the time was considerably more normal. Dinner we had to drag our asses out, and we had it in a small restaurant bar while being served by a spritely old man. There was a jukebox and WR was very thrilled. WR and Tiff were telling ghost stories, and Tiff died because she was super scared, changing beds with me. The next day I felt like dying, and went to rest after breakfast. We took a bus to Swallow Falls, then walked to the Ugly House and took a nature ramble through fields on the way back to town, some 6km away. Lunch was at a local chip shop where all the locals stared at us, and JK accidentally dumped a whole large shaker of salt on his food because he knocked the cap off.

Back in London, after more Monopoly Deal, WR went home and JK, Tiff and I went to Euston Chinese to grab dinner. Then, Tiff went home to run and I went home to die.

The end.

Linked In

2011-11-15T23:56:00.002Z

So I finally caved and got a linkedin account.

Actually I got it to attempt to figure out who G was, and of course I failed.

I'm starting to strongly think I'm one of those post-post modernist stereotypes who are overeducated, spoiled and utterly ambitious-less in life. Pah.

Babysitting is really tiring.

Da Da Doobie Da

2011-11-14T22:33:00.002Z

So I went for the first audition of my life today, for the Swing Dance performing group. They wanted 5 girls out of 8, and we had to dance with three different partners, will being videoed. I guess I could do worse but holyshiteventhinkingaboutitnowmakesmefeelallonedge. My track record with auditions is simple: avoid at all costs. Similarly with interviews, presentations and exams, I crack at the idea of being analysed for my skillz. Still as far as auditions go, it was not intimidating at all. Feel annoyed that I missed so much of the beginning because it turned out the class was learning the routine for the auditions and I had to catch up really quickly - thus making a ton of mistakes in the beginning of the routine. Learnt a few names of those friendly faces around class though, so that was worth something. Friendly guy I like to dance with is called Ulrich.

Meanwhile being the retard I am, I sort of ran away from guy-that-I-find-attractive when he offered to teach me the beginning routine during the break. I'm totally mentally facepalming now as I think about it. That and he's a really great dancer. Su and the Singaporean girl I met in class, were talking about the auditions as we left class and we agreed [let's call him] G (attractive guy) was the single most best dancer in class. He'd definitely get into the performing group. Ahblagrpadhcw8ru3902

Babysat on Fri, today (reason why I was late for swing class), tomorrow and Weds. Will write about it soon I guess, cause I'm still too busy kicking myself over G to think straight.

Southwark

2011-11-08T23:13:00.002Z

I've had this image kicking about my desktop for quite some time, waiting for me perhaps to do something with it. I took it when I was first trying to figure out how to get to Bankside from my old place at Hatton Garden. I was tickled by how Southwark tube station was changed into Katakana for some odd reason. I took a screenshot.

I now post it so I can delete it, and perhaps leave a small but yet sentimentally sad bit of my life behind me.

The Napoleonic Empire

2011-11-08T21:56:00.004Z

Watched the Ides of March yesterday - walked out feeling like I had been blown away. Superb acting, superb script, superb cinematography. Some might argue that it's a bit cliched, but it was a good rendition of a cliche nonetheless. Then I sped walked from the Barbican to Belgo at Holborn, where I had a quick meeting with Dex and gang, before rushing off to an immensely enjoyable swing dancing class. After class I met Cielo and Hadi for dinner, and we returned to bum about my room into the wee hours. Busy busy day.

Today's essay day (tis due on Thursday!) and this is how I roll in my new room:

Still no proper internet line.

21 Degrees Centigrade

2011-10-27T23:37:00.003+01:00

So after many calls, hand wringing and head banging, I have finally booked flight tickets to Morocco from the 29th Dec to 8th Jan. My ass is sore from leaning back in my chair too much, my throat dry from shouting so much (sorry Cheam) and my head spinning from receiving too many heat-radiation-waves from my handphone after talking so much. But, it is done, and woo hoo Jia, Yihang, Paur, Cheam and I are off to Morocco - for better on worse since it is a rather motley sort of crew (I almost spelt it as 'crue', Kurt Cobain would be so proud of me).

First world problems for the win.

-----

21 degrees centigrade is the average daytime temperature in Morocco for Dec to Jan.

SEA + China Part 1

2011-10-27T11:59:00.002+01:00

Oh gosh I forgot that I had this lying about, was writing as I was actually travelling, just forgot to post it up.

-----

26th August - Singapore - Macau
Arrived in Macau near the evening, to realise how smoggy everything looked. The taxi driver brought us past the new Cotai Strip, and we saw the Venetian from the outside. After checking into the hotel, we took the hotel's shuttle into town and walked about a bit before having dinner. I did not like dinner. Throughout, I felt a bit nauseous as I smelt the water of the nearby fish tanks, splashing their dirty water everywhere. My appetite was not helped by the fact that I kept seeing a promfet fish swimming upside down, righted only when it drifted into the air pump - shooting it across the fish tank - and then flopping upside down only moment later.

After dinner we walked around Macao, looking for the ruins of St. Pauls. When we went there, we were disappointed to find it in darkness, usually it's lit up at night. However it turned out we had arrived on the first day of a special annual light show. After waiting around for about 20 minutes, the crowds came en masse, and the light show began. It was a trippy light show. Quite cool, but trippy, and not very useful at all. Then we had a meal of dandan/shuang pei lai.

The highlight of the night however was wandering into the various casinos. The first casino was the original one, by Stanley Lai, the . Then we went to . Finally we went to two random small crappy casinos, all because I was looking for those old school slots machines where you pull the lever. There were none. Instead everyone was playing baccarat, to my disappointment. No recognisable poker or blackjack. It was also smoky like hell. Then, we went back to the hotel for the night.

27th August - Macau - Zhuhai - Kaiping
Kaiping is home of the Diaolous, a UNESCO world heritage site. Diaolous are essentially houses-cum-fortresses built in Southern villages around the early 1900s, when the Qing Dynasty fell apart/the Warlord era began and there was no law and order and banditry was rife. It was funded by money sent from overseas relatives who had dispersed all over the world. This made for some really strange buildings, who had semi-Western features, in addition to being towering blocks amongst the other small village buildings. I'd first known about them when I watched Let the Bullets Fly earlier in the year.

We first had breakfast on the Macao side, and then crossed the border into China. Looking at the hordes of Chinese trying to cross the border into Macao, we thanked our stars that it wasn't us. The queue had at least over a thousand people squeezed in under the hot sun. Sometimes it's easy to forget that China just has so many damn people. Opportunists sold their places in the queue for sums of money.

We took the coach from Zhuhai to Kaiping and arrived there at about 1pm. At the coach station, we were met by a singular tout, and we ended up hiring him. He drove us to the incongruously named Milan Hotel, which was a nice place and waited for us as we checked in. Then he brought us to eat claypot rice, a speciality of the area, in a small local store. The first sight we visited, an entire diaolou village, was closed as they were apparently filming a new movie there. Still, we walked about and saw a small museum of the area.

The next sight we went to was another small cluster of diaolous in Zili Village. Amongst the diaolous there was the one they used as a facade for the movie, Let the Bullets Fly. My parents and I poked around, but after a while the heat started to get to us, plus the interiors of the diaolous were the same after a while. The next stop was the Li Garden, yet another cluster of diaolous by one extremely rich family. These diaolous had marble staircases and special tiles. Finally we went to a diaolou that was more like a fortress than a house. It was also the location of the last stand by 7 brothers/relatives during the Sino-Japanese War. Shell and bullet holes lined the exterior of the tower.

The driver the dropped us in the middle of town, to walk around a bit before we took a taxi nearby our hotel for dinner. Dinner again wasn't very good, and I remember not being particularly happy about it. Went to a supermarket on the way back to buy some bread and drinks for the next day.

28th August - Kaiping - Wuzhou - Guilin
Spent a total of 8 hours on board the bus(es), most of it sleeping. The first bus was a local bus. Felt frustrated when the driver, who smoked while driving, kept blasting his music while the guy behind me blasted his own music. It eventually turned out as expected: a volume war, with me caught between. Somehow I managed to sleep and woke up to find the driver had (naturally) won the battle. The bus kept making random stops to pick up villagers along the way who had flagged down the bus, charging arbitrary prices. The sole bathroom stop the bus made revealed old skool toilets with no doors. After 5 hours, we ended up in Wuzhou only to find that there was no bus to Yangshuo as planned. Instead we booked tickets for Guilin and then had lunch, where we ate a really tasty chicken soup.

Then we took the bus to Guilin, where I fell asleep again. Driving into Guilin, I was reminded of Hangzhou. For dinner none of us were really hungry, but due to sheer greed I ordered a ton of meat for the hotpot, partly due to the fact that I was thrilled that I could read the menu properly. As I ate, watching how annoyed my father looked, I kept thinking about the tumblr blog "this is why you're fat".

The Chill

2011-10-27T11:52:00.002+01:00

Sitting on the floor in Dex's posh flat, I originally thought the underfloor heating was kicking in as I felt warmer and warmer. However a short while later I realised this was deceptive: it wasn't that the floor was getting warmer, it was that my leg was getting number and number, and for some reason that made it feel warmer. Oho winter 2012, here we come.

White Cabbage

2011-10-25T23:05:00.002+01:00

I don't know why but everytime I'm in the shower I get an urge to blog. But when I'm actually at my computer, I lose the urge. But then I really ought to force myself to, because I need to inculcate some sort of follow-through habit.

On Sunday I got it into my mind that I wanted to make my usual vegetable soup that I drink back home, the inclusion of soy sauce being only thing strangely really making it Chinese. I bought all the ingredients, but as usual forgot to buy the critical and main one: white cabbage. So off I went to Waitrose on a Sunday evening, 1 hour before it was set to close. As usual it was packed to the brims with people doing last minute Sunday dinner shopping (used to do that last year all the time, and spend an agonising 15 minutes hobbling home while overladen with groceries). Then I walked to the vegetable aisle and to my horror I saw that there were no more white cabbages left, only the weird green and leafy sort. I grudgingly picked up a random ass cabbage for the lowest amount.

As I was about to walk off disappointed, I suddenly remembered that Waitrose, being the middle-class sort of establishment it is always has an organic veg section. True enough, there were white cabbages there at twice the original price. Just as I was about to suck it up and pay 2x the amount for a bloody cabbage, I spotted a discarded Waitrose Basics white cabbage hidden among the organic ones. Some middle class sucker decided to pay 2x the price for an organic white cabbage. Hurrah! I had my cheap 68p white cabbage. As I walked back to the general cabbage section, I had a massive and silly grin on my face. I felt very very accomplished.

Then on my way back to the flat, I peeked at the veg seller's stand and noticed he had bowls and bowls of white cabbage sitting out -______- 2 white cabbages for £1. Well admittedly I wouldn't know what to do with so much cabbage (soup needs only half a head at one time), but somehow it detracted from my joy anyway.

At least the soup was tasty.

un homme et une femme

2011-10-22T16:30:00.002+01:00

I watched un homme et une femme last night, after spending ages before rolling about aimlessly on Tiffany's (my flatmate) bed while she watched the Law and Order episodes I passed to her. One 10am and two 9am starts every week never fail to make me feel like I am a million years old, although objectively there's just 6 real hours of academic time during those 3 days. So I just lay on her bed and sort of died, without actually sleeping, while Tiffany sort of laughed at me. My friday nights are happening, yo.

Anyway Un Homme is simply lovely. It is very very French, and very very charming. I don't know what else to say beyond that. Sadly it's proven to be one of the better movies I've seen lately. It's the London Film Fest and I'm being a film whore as usual. I've seen 3 films so far, one the pretty well known 50/50 and two more obscure ones, Mourning and There Was Never a Better Brother. 50/50 delivered the goods, but both Mourning and There Was Never a Better Brother failed to fully realise their potential. So I suppose, Un Homme was the movie (rather than Better Brother) that made my day yesterday.

Though of course I was attracted to Better Brother because I wanted to SEE what Baku, Azerbaijan was like, since I am focusing my History dissertation on it. It reminds me a bit of what I imagine Cuba/Iran to look like.

And on Monday, I watched Driving Miss Daisy with Dexter. Got to watch Darth Vader voice man in action. Cool.

BT/VM/3

2011-10-15T10:56:00.002+01:00

I have not fallen off the face of the Earth. Rather, thanks to lovingly decaying British infrastructure, I appear to have fallen off the face of the Earth.

First Virgin Mobile tells us they will take 3 weeks to come over and set up the internet. Alright. This was a week before I was due to return home, so it really was 2 weeks. That was livable, I suppose. To augment the many trips of going to Shu's/Dexter's/the Library, I bought BT Open, which sucked and sometimes worked.

Then last week the Virgin Mobile men came. They were a friendly, happy lot the two of them. First the set up seemed very straightforward, then it soon became apparent there was Big Trouble ahead when they had to take a ladder and access the cables from the outside. They'd been cut and disconnected, they said, evidently mystified as to why someone'd do that. We'll get Virgin to give you a call back.

So wait we did, for that proverbial call. Then it came one day as I was at Shu's house, this Wednesday I think, and I hit the roof. The diplomatic female voice on the other end of the line said it'd take "6 to 8 weeks" for construction to come and install the lines. WHY? I asked, obviously seething with rage and frustration. "Because we need to get permits and blabalabalabala".

I went to 3 and got a dongle (either a terribly bad or terribly brilliant name). But because my 5GB a month contract kicks in on Monday, I am brought back to a place where I was when I was 12. Dial up pay-by-the-data/time-internet. So as I type this I am surreptitiously thinking of how much this is going to cost me (it says 2.72MB for this sojourn already!) BUT GOODNESS IT HAS TO BE SAID. RAGE RAGE RAGE, I WANT MY INTERNETZ.

Goreng Pisang

2011-09-21T15:05:00.002+01:00

I've learnt something interesting over the past few days: Singaporeans (or maybe people in general?) have a bad habit of invading people's personal space IF they think they see dirt on another person. It's like a Obsessive Compulsive Thing, despite the whole Asians Like Their Personal Space thing. Ok maybe it's not a Singaporean thing, since one of the people who did it to me recently was my Korean pottery teacher, Ms. Lee.

So anyway yes, dirt. For the past two days I've been rocking what looks like a dirt patch on my right shoulder/back. It is not a dirt patch. Rather (surprise!) I've gone and gotten a tattoo because I felt tired of being scared of every damn thing in life, and wanted to push my boundaries and do something unexpected. So that dirt patch is really the new tattoo leaching ink out. However before I am given a chance to lie and tell all the adults around me that it is a 'old blouse, an old stain', they reach out and slap my back (HELLO FRESH RAW TATTOO-ED SKIN) in an attempt to brush off the dirt. It hurts. And sadly though I don't like lying, lying is just easier here. I could easily tell my dentist, my hairdresser, my pottery classmates that it is a tattoo. But then I'd have to do the whole Explain Why I Did It Thing, and Do My Parents Know? (yes they do, but my mum complains that it is ugly and I ought to have gotten a rose instead of a cross). Easier to just lie. And talk about other inane things, like the weather.

Today was my last pottery class. I glazed my pieces, and it was the first time today that I finally got around to using the spray gun. On a pot with a lid (I think that if I die suddenly, I want my ashes to go in there, seems morbidly fitting), I used copper dust mixed with water, and covered it with Shino White. The other piece I made, ages ago when Jessica was still around, was half Namoku Blue (such a beautiful glaze with such depth) and half Shino White again. I am eagerly waiting the results.

I had lunch with Diane, one of the pottery women afterwards. We went to the Tanglin food court and she treated me to lunch. I had pasta with chicken chop. In return I told her about chicken chop, Singaporean taxi drivers and their propensity to be anti-government and conspiracy theorists and about crime. It was all in all a very nice and good conversation. One of the best I've had in a while really, and all the better since I initially feared it'd be awkward. At the back of my mind I kept thinking about how sad it is that my net amount of speaking to middle aged British people was at least triple that of speaking to a British person the same age as me, nevermind that I'm surrounded by them in university. Pffft.

Then I got my hair cut, and found a goreng pisang store on the 5th floor of Far East Plaza. I have not SEEN goreng pisang in AGES. It's like all the places in Singapore stopped selling them. Goreng pisang is essentially bananas fried in batter, and it's bloody delicious. So anyway I bought one, even though I wasn't hungry at all. Then I bummed at some Taiwanese eatery, slowly sipping my milk tea (which made me feel sick - nice lactose intolerance) and read Brave New World as I waited for Ashraf to appear.

Dinner was at Skinny Pizza, where we both ate till we were stuffed. Then we walked about randomly, exploring the sad Toy Fair at the basement of Ngee Ann City.

I've been sniffing like mad all day. Sucks.

Tamara Drewe

2011-09-18T13:56:00.002+01:00

"You've got an infestation."
"Of what?"
"Jody."

-----

I don't know how it got only 3 stars out of 5 on IMDB, but Tamara Drewe is easily one of the most enjoyable and funniest movies I have seen in quite some time.

An Asian Travelogue

2011-09-18T12:14:00.003+01:00

I typed this up because the women in my pottery class, Diane and Christine, asked for it:-
Thailand
Phuket/Phang Nga
Phuket is the main area, with the more remote and expensive area of Phang Nga to the North. The main beach area, filled with backpackers, restaurants, bars and chaos, is Patong Beach. The nicer beaches are Karon Beach and Kata Beach. Tours brings you see James Bond island (where a scene from James Bond was shot in the '70s) and Phi-Phi island. Many opportunities for low-end shopping around.

Koh Samui
There is also another beach spot known as Koh Samui. I personally have not been here and don't know much about it.

Bangkok
Bangkok is massive, jammed, and a very chaotic city. It however, is a huge tourist hub. There is the Royal Palace, very nice and shiny, with the Vimanmek Mansion where the old Kings resided. There are lots of Buddhist temples here, if that's your sort of thing. There's Chatuchak market on the weekends, and Patpong night market for shopping. Bangkok is a launching off point for the floating market tours (tourist trap), the tiger temple (tame tigers, I wanted to see that but had no time), snake show, the River Kwai (of WW2 fame). You can ride elephants too if you want, but I think Phuket/Luang Prabang is a better place for that sort of thing.

Hua Hin to the North is apparently a nice beach about 1 hour away from Bangkok.

Laos
Luang Prabang
Luang Prabang was a little disappointing. It used to be the old capital, and there are lots of Buddhist temples around, in various unrestored states. The most famous/pretty is Vat Xieng Toung. All the temples cost about 2-3USD per person to go in, quite a rip off. There is also the old Royal Palace, which is worth looking around in. Then there's the morning alms ceremony where the monks walk large parts of the old town at 6am to receive alms. There is a Hmong market during peak season and a night market.

There are tours to the Pak Ou Caves and Kuang Si waterfalls. We didn't see the falls, but saw the caves. The caves were just caves with lots of bought buddha statues in them. There was also a whiskey village, were you can see one man brewing whiskey in a metal drum. He then puts weird stuff like snakes and various insects in them.

You can take elephant mahout courses there for a few days. That seemed interesting, but expensive.

Vientiane
There was not much to see or do in Vientiane. There are some nice Buddhist temples, but not much beyond that. There is also That Luang, a massive gold stupa. But it's just a large stupa that is gold.

Cambodia (visited Nov 2008)
Siem Reap
I loved Siem Reap. Home of the Angkor Wat, it is also nicely located nearby the Tonle Sap/floating villages. The town has a nice half rustic half touristy feel. There are night markets and handicraft markets. It's a fairly relaxed place. Lots of cheap silk the last time I was there.

Vietnam (visited Sept 2010)
Hanoi
Hanoi was very busy and hot. My family and I didn't like it, so we left for an overnight cruise in Halong Bay instead. There are the usual lot of cultural and military museums here, along with the infamous Hanoi Hilton where prisoners-of-war were kept during the Vietnam War. There is also the French Quarter with the old remnants of French architecture.

Halong Bay
Halong Bay is definitely worth going to. You can book a tour from Hanoi. They drive you to Halong Bay itself, which is about 3-4 hours away from Hanoi, one way. Halong Bay is essentially a bay filed with hundreds of limestone mountains, and is very scenic. A cruise brings you around the area, and lets you off to enter some of the tourist caves. The highlight of the trip is watching the sun set over the limestone mountains.

Hoi An
The nearest airport to Hoi An is Danang, where Silkair flies directly. Alternatively, Jetstar operates flights there, but require transiting through Ho Chi Minh airport. Hoi An is definitely worth going to.

The main attractions of Hoi An are threefold:- 1) My Son: old ruined Hindu temples built more than a thousand years ago by the ancient Champa kingdom. It's the Vietnamese version of the Angkor Wat. 2) Hoi An itself: the whole town is an UNESCO world heritage site, with impressive architecture built by the old Chinese immigrant settlers. 3) Tailoring:- good tailoring is very cheap in Hoi An, and there are many tailors there. I got a nice silk lined pencil dress for USD50 from Phuong Huy (http://phuonghuysilk.com/index.html). Some of the tailors can be a bit suspect though, with shoddy handwork/fitting. I've seen other customers bring pictures of runway outfits for the tailors to copy. Alternatively, there is also a beach nearby Hoi An itself, but I didn't get the chance to go there.

Hue
Hue was the location of the old Imperial City. However the Imperial City itself was damaged by multiple wars and fires, so the main structure is gone. Still the unburned parts are quite impressive. There is also the Thien Mu Pagoda and cruises down the Perfume River. Hue is also the launching off point for DMZ/Vietnam War tours, if you're into that sort of thing.

Hue is about a 2-3 hour coach ride from Hoi An (to the North). You can easily book passage from the tour agents in Hoi An.

Sapa (visited Sept 2011)
Sapa is very off the beaten track. It's about a 9 hour train ride from Hanoi (overnight sleeper). However if you're into trekking/seeing minorities, then it is very worth it. Sapa itself is just a launching off point, and you need to trek out of it to see the minorities. Cat Cat is supposedly a Hmong village, but it's really now a huge tourist trap. Instead, Ta Van is an authentic and easy to walk village. There are also special markets to see on certain days like Sunday and Tuesday, but I didn't get the chance to see them. Seeing all the minorities was very interesting, especially since they still largely preserve their traditional ways of dressing and living, except the one about the women learning English and obsessively following tourists around.

-----

I'll post about my trip soon.

Jetstar 514

2011-09-16T04:52:00.002+01:00

I touched down in good old Terminal 1 at 12:40am this morning, and felt a strange sense of happiness to be back. Like, 'hello home', and knowing that everything is Predictable and not Unexpected and Foreign and New (except when it's one of those many newfangled malls that keep popping up). The taxi driver that picked up us was a jovial and friendly Malay woman, who told us about her motorcycle racing accident, while avoiding a sleepy swerving taxi driver on the ECP on the way back home. She kept telling me to go get a driving license.

This morning, all showered and changed, I finally feel Female again after a while, that is, Feminine as befits my birth sex. Strange, but I never gave much thought to it while traveling.

Hello There

2011-09-13T05:24:00.003+01:00

I am still on the road, and currently in rainy Vientiane (it's been raining for more than 18 hours straight, I didn't know this was even possible in South East Asia). Tonight my Dad and I are headed across the border to Thailand, to catch yet another sleeper train to Bangkok (the 3rd thus far), hopefully the train will be more like the Lao Cai-Hanoi train than the Guiyang-Kunming train. From Bangkok we'll take a plane ride and get back in the wee hours (cheap budget flights) on the 16th Sept, making it a total of 3 weeks on the road.

It'll be nice to be home.

Panda Coitus

2011-08-21T15:11:00.003+01:00

Today I met up with Cheam for lunch, before watching Hadi's play, Family Outing. We ate at a place I had found on hungrygowhere.com, because I was craving steak. It was disappointing. In turn, I did a very Singaporean thing: I wrote a bad review about the place. Then, we met Debbie, Mel, Paul and Eliel at the National Library to watch the play. It was by far one of the best plays I've seen in Singapore (which comes to about 5 proper non-school plays). It had a really good script, with good acting, lighting and sound. Quite a change from the usual standard of plays where I ended up feeling like I want to slap someone.

Afterwards the lot of us went to Seah Street to eat crepes (Debbie's suggestion). Pricy, but delicious as hell salted-caramel-butter-crepes. And I'm not even a big fan of excessively sweet stuff. Then Hadi came and the shop was closing, so we went to nearby Mcdonalds for Hadi to grab a bite. Then we all went off to get home, and I took the bus to my grandparent's place for dinner. After a delicious dinner of vinegar pig's trotters (sounds gross but, I try not to think of it as pig legs D: ), I ended spending ages trying to fix up my grandma's newly acquired toy: a voice recorder/mp3 players.

The highlight of the night however was after I had succeeded in fixing the player and had gone upstairs to see my grandfather for a while. The awesomely cold air conditioning (my grandfather likes it vaguely arctic) was a fantastic bonus. Upstairs, he first started off by complaining that I had arrived late for dinner (well they eat dinner at 5:50pm, wtf?). Then he went into his usual round of telling me that 'I have some bad habits that I need to change' (which include anyhow throwing things, and anyhow buying things - directly translated from Mandarin of course), during which I tuned out and made Mandarin Assenting Sounds like 'ORH'. As it happens the TV was turned onto CCTV4 (hello cable), and we're both watching TV as he's talking. It's some Panda breeding programme in Chengdu.

Given that my Mandarin is dismal from a lack of use and general suckiness, I'm not sure how but I remember understanding that they were closely monitoring the urine of the female panda to check for it's ovulation. Shots of pipettes (cool stuff) and vials of acid yellow urine appear on the screen. All the while my grandfather is working down his list of Things I Need To Change. Then suddenly the screen actually shows PANDAS and I'm like AWWWW, but I realise they're separated by cages. I'm still half listening to my grandfather at this point and he blocks out the commentator's audio for a moment with his monologue, and then next thing I see the bars between the two pandas is lifted up and one of the pandas goes into the other panda's cage. At this point I'm thinking "oh come on, no way in hell this is what I think it is".

But it is. Next thing I know I'm watching stunned as one panda (PROBABLY THE MALE ONE) fucks the other panda from behind. No this is not happening I'm thinking, I wonder has yeh yeh noticed it? And for a brief painful few moments I think maybe he hasn't because it's still pandas fucking on the TV. The male panda opens his mouth and makes weird moaning sounds. HOLY SHIT. And then mid panda groan, the channel changes abruptly to some Taiwanese game show. All the while my grandfather is still talking, but he falters slightly during the channel change. Um.

Even though the pandas fucked for maybe 5 seconds maximum on TV that day, I think that memory is forever, disturbingly, seared into my mind.

The Golden Notebook

2011-08-21T05:11:00.003+01:00

There remains in my memory no other book which I have found so incredible, yet so difficult to read that I would not go through the experience again if possible. Lessing's The Golden Notebook is the first to fit into this ambiguous category: is it a good thing, a bad thing, or perhaps indicative of its remarkable nature? I don't really know.

The Golden Notebook was probably one of the most feminist texts I've ever read. Yet as Doris Lessing writes herself in the reader's guide that came with my book, she never intended it as a feminist text. It just was. Lessing's ability to portray human relationships, male-female sexual interactions in all their different shapes and messed up forms was mindblowing. She isn't one of those overwrought emotional writers which waste endless words, ink, paper on a simple interaction - her succinctness is probably one of the best I've seen. Yet at the same time due to the sheer mass of all her words, the density of content, made her extremely tiring to read. It was like eating a too rich cake. No wonder I could only plod slowly through.

Finally there is the aspect of mental illness: a theme I had not noticed as I read the book. Simply put, I had not noticed that it was there at all, because I legitimately thought that people did behave like that (and that it was acceptable). That idea, strikes me mostly more than anything else in the novel.

I guess I've found a book to add to the 2011 list.

Mints

2011-08-20T17:05:00.002+01:00

My favourite mints are Tic Tacs. They're sweet, smell nice (in an artificial way) and have just enough minti-ness in them to do the job when my breath feels gross. I much prefer them to the more popular Eclipse mints, although I have to admit that the tin the Eclipse mints come in is way more fun to play with since the metal is malleable.

When I dream of cold hot chocolate, I dream one the one I first drank when I was on a date with Patrick and we ended up at Far Coast. It was not too sweet and had a wee bit of minti-ness to it. I loved it.

I am reading Doris Lessing now, and she makes me want to write things.

Holland Village

2011-08-12T15:17:00.003+01:00

Bearing absolutely no correlation to anything in this post, I thought I'd load up a picture of a very charming desk I spotted on etsy.

-----

I spent most of today at Holland Village.

I met Sharyl for brunch, eating at Breko Cafe. I had a rather unsatisfactory pancake with Canadian-sausage meal, mainly because it was cold and started to feel greasy. It was good meeting up with her though, seeing as that I haven't seen her in over a year. It transpired she was going to Canada in a few weeks to study in university, which came as a pleasant surprise to me. Of all the friends I still keep in touch with, she really was the oldest one, from when we were both in Secondary 1.

After brunch, I went over to her house for a bit. Partly to help babysit, partly because I wanted to see her niece and nephew, partly because I didn't want to go home and return to Holland Village in a matter of hours. I learned something today: looking after kids is tiring. In the house there were a grand total of 4 adults (Sharyl, me, her dad, her sister) to 2 kids (one 3 year old girl, one 1 year old boy) and they ran everyone ragged. Not only that, I had trouble figuring out what was appropriate for the 3 year old's age group. When she said she wanted to go to the babytv website to play games, I wtf-ed because 3 years old is hardly a baby right?!? I really don't know. Then she said she was hungry and went to eat a sweet that her grandfather gave her, and that's enough to make her full?!? Then I realise I don't know phonics and all and was trying to figure out how to get her to spell 'dancing' and attempted to get her to write C by saying it in a S-sound way (it's like danSing right, come to think of it?!?). Then the 1 year old started crying like mad because he couldn't find his parents.

Ok good thing I won't be a mother any time soon.

Afterwards I met N Seow, and spoke to him as he was getting his haircut. After that I ate Chili at Wendy's because I was dying of hunger. Then when Kyle came to pick up Nic for his farewell dinner, I went home. I spent a good 8 hours at Holland Village.

Phuket

2011-08-09T14:57:00.002+01:00

I've been to Phuket 3 times in my life. First time was in mid-2004 with my parents. Second time was with my classmates in IB, in early 2007, to aid rebuilding work. Third time was the past few days, with my mum, to celebrate her 50th birthday.

Spent most of it doing nothing. Started reading two books together, The Golden Notebook and The Book of Tomorrow. Both acclaimed female authors in different fiction fields, both about women and their diaries. Both going along very different courses (hello Nobel Prize winner, hello chick flick author), providing a lovely illuminating contrast to the women in the novels. Went to the beach and as I swayed while wading in the sea thanks to strong monsoonal tides, I tried to imagine what it was like when the Tsunami hit. The lifeguard kept blowing his whistle to chase people who had wandered beyond mid-thigh sea water level out of the surf. Ended up shopping alot (because naturally of my mum). I wondered what happened to my beloved Danger! Mines! shirt that I bought in Siem Reap as we browsed the touristy t-shirt stores.

I ended up sending loads of postcards out. A roadside vendor in Patong Beach charged me 40 baht for a 15 baht stamp. Later, I stumbled upon a post office along Patong Beach and went in to get more stamps. I ended up stumbling slightly backwards in shock when I entered it. I had walked into the darkness of the post office to be greeted suddenly by 5 pairs of staring, idle eyes. It was the emptiest post office I had ever seen in my life. Most post offices it seems, tend to be packed with tired public, all struggling to get a piece of underfunded public services. At least this is the case of what I've observed in Singapore, the UK, Germany and France. Thailand it seems, is unique in more ways than one.

I realised the tasty 'White Curry' that my class was served on our 2007 OEP trip was actually a soup: Tom Kha Gai. I dreamt terrifying dreams every night. Once I dreamt of Shu falling down a muddy slope, and her slipping out my hands as she tumbled down a yellow-ey mud precipice. Then I dreamt of a tiny dog stuffed into a ball that opened in the middle, and me losing it as it ran out of sight. Another night I dreamt someone was spreading a frightful rumour about me, and I was doing my best to stop it. Then last night I dreamt of R, that we were friends and I touched his arm, feeling his smooth velvety skin. I dream in colour, feel textures, feel real emotion. I dream in bouts, sometimes I go weeks dreamless, then suddenly I can't stop dreaming at all.

I ate a lot of drunken prawns tonight for the celebratory dinner tonight. My mum turned 50.

Funky Forest/Do the Right Thing/Poltergay

2011-08-05T15:58:00.003+01:00

I spent today having yet another movie marathon with Patrick and Nic. We watched the immensely wtf Funky Forest (Nic's), followed by the rather bleak Do the Right Thing (Patrick's) and rounding out with my absurd selection of Poltergay. For dinner we ended up at Ghim Moh, eating at De Burg, some hamburger place at a kopitiam. It was then I realised that in a week and a half's time, Nic would be gone for Oberlin, that he wouldn't really be around anymore. That everyone was really going on their separate ways now. It felt rather strange.

Afrer, we ended up walking around Kent Ridge Park, and mucking about NUS to see the new campus. Then, they drove me home.

Oh! The Places You'll Go!

2011-07-31T12:28:00.002+01:00

This is the first night I've been home in what feels like ages. Somehow for someone who's not working, I seem to be spending a remarkable amount of time not-at-home and being busy. I had to seriously rack my brains just to recall all of this. Another wisdom tooth removal tomorrow D:

Sunday (31st July): Had a quick lunch at home before dashing out to meet Hidayah and Ianthe at Vivocity. Amazingly I took just 30 minutes to reach despite having to change both the bus and the train at least once. Eyed Red Army Cameras at Page One, despite the fact that I haven't touched my Diana in ages. Watched Winter's Bone with my parents at night, and a bit of Liang Po Po before I got fed up and switched it off.

Saturday (30th July): !nk gathering at Jia's place. Put too much salt in the zucchini almond I had brought. Arjun picked me up, and Steph sent me back home. Having friends who drive is excellent.

Friday (29th July): Had lunch with Arjun at Al-Ameen. Tried iced horlicks. Had my favourite butter chicken with garlic naan. We then wandered to Udder's and I had a green tea ice-cream. Went to Bukit Timah Plaza to buy groceries for the !nk potluck on Sat. Went home, showered, and left immediately to meet Nic at City Hall. The train was horrendously crowded, goodness. Finished reading Of Mice and Men on the way there, was quite blown away by how well it was written. Had a really salty Japanese soup at The Soup Spoon. Watched Mong's play, and had drinks with Mong at the KKK afterwards. Mong drove me home, driving at a scarily breakneck speed.

Thursday (28th July): Pottery class in the evening. Spent the day with my Dad, watching Wu Xia and then viewing Requiem, an exhibition at NAFA on war photography during the Vietnam War. Ran into my Dad's friend, and he joined us for the photography exhibition. Went shopping around Tanglin Mall and bought myself a mini Lego aeroplane kit. Decided to buy a pink Nanoblock pig kit for Jessica, as a gift. She hugged me in appreciation. Probably the least disastrous Pottery class thus far, with my coiling going well, guess I'm getting better.

Wednesday (27th July): Reached the office in the nick of time to catch Mr. Tan before he left for court. Spent an amusing time at court with the clients, remembering the old case. Got mistaken for an actual lawyer by another random lawyer, and had an entertaining time talking to him as I waited for the case to proceed. The case ended up getting settled out of court, for 34k. Had lunch with the client's at Furama. Spent the rest of the time hanging around the office, then following Mr. Tan as we went to Challenger to buy a portable hard disk. Ate popiah.

Tuesday (26th July): Had pottery class and spoke quite a bit to Jessica, a girl who's the same age as me, visiting from New Orleans. Promised to go for Thursday's class in order to see her one last time.

Monday (25th July): Celebrated Shu's birthday with the LSE people.

Sunday (24th July): Had brunch with Hadi and Cheam. Afterwards, I went swimming at my Uncle's place with my Mum, before the whole family gathered for a nice steamboat dinner. Played with my Uncle's new massage chair and spilled a wee bit of juice on it.

Saturday (23rd July): Spent the day at home, not doing very much in particular. HM dropped by for a wee bit.

Friday (22nd July): Movie marathon with Nic and Patrick. Had lunch first at Cedele, then watched Sandcastles (not worth the time) followed by Citizen Kane (lived up to it's reputation) and then Rocket Science (hipsterrrrr). Ended up walking around botanic gardens at night, using my handphone's puny flashlight for illumination.

Thursday (21st July): Visited my Uncle at the office, and found out about an old case I worked on in 2009 finally going for assessment of damages the next week. Had lunch with him at some bento place nearby. Went home and bummed.

Wednesday (20th July): Pottery, followed by pilates as usual. Painted my pottery pieces. Spent ages sanding down a badly done piece.

Tuesday (19th July): Went for Pottery in the afternoon. Visited my grandmother in the hospital at night. She checked out the next day.

Monday (18th July): Went to return costumes, took out stitches, bought Shu's gift. Visited my grandmother in the hospital.

Sunday (17th July): Watched Your Highness with Shu at night. Had a small supper/coffee time with her after in Coffee Club at Wheelock afterwards.

Saturday (16th July): Met Ianthe and Steph at North Bridge Road, to rent costumes. Ended up renting a silly quasi-Arwen costume in honour of the intended LOTR marathon Ianthe wanted to host. On the way there, I had a rather entertaining conversation with the taxi driver over chicken parts, HDB flats and studying overseas. Played some Call of Duty. Ate a delicious celebratory meal her brother, Ian, cooked. Watched 2/3 of the extended edition of The Fellowship of the Ring.

Friday (15th July): Met my grandmother in the morning, so that she could pick up a free luggage from a travel agency. Had lunch with her at Tampopo in Liang Court. While leaving the carpark, my grandma drove into a divider, knocking off a bit of the car. Watched Harry Potter at Shaw with Ianthe, Steph, JH, Liselle and another HM.

Somewhere Out There

2011-07-25T19:14:00.003+01:00

When I was younger, pre-laptop times, I'd watch the night sky from my open air kitchen as I ate supper. As I got older I was more pressed for time, and often brought my supper to the computer to eat. I stopped spending time looking at the sky. Not that there was much to see though. When Google Earth first came out, you could barely see Singapore because it was covered with a massive cloud for good reason: Singapore is a very cloudy place. This cloudiness of course, affected any proper attempt to stargaze. That and the massive light pollution from all the street lights, which combined to make stargazing near impossible.

I remember when I was younger, I'd look out at the night sky, at the moon and think "this is the same moon my loved one is under". For a particular partner (I'm not being mysterious, I really can't remember who it is anymore), I even told him to think of me every time he saw the moon. So the moon became a quasi-symbol of love and remembrance for me. Today when I looked out however there was no moon at all. I'm not even being dramatic, I saw no sign of the moon. The internet tells me it's a waning moon, but it sure looked like a new moon to me (I just learned that no moon = new moon while trying to find the right terminology for this). I however did see an unusually bright twinkling dot, that made me think was a satellite, and three stars dotting the night sky. I do really wonder where the moon is.

-----

Today I am starting Steinback's Of Mice and Men. It already feels promising, pages in. Hopefully it's small size will be a welcome respite from the Forna that I finished today.

Rosoff and Forna

2011-07-25T07:49:00.002+01:00

I read two books about the experience of war recently, Meg Rosoff's How I Live Now and Aminatta Forna's The Memory of Love. Both books, failed to really impress me. Of the lot I suppose Forna's was better, but clocking in at 445 pages it really wore me out with it's excruciatingly slow pace and lack of dialogue. Rosoff's on the other hand, I blew through in 5 hours.

Both books were critically acclaimed, but I found the hype to be overrated. That and I didn't like the characters at all. Daisy in How I Live Now was overtly precocious in an annoying way, Edmond too self-assured to be a plausible teenager. A whole swathe of characters in The Memory of Love are overly indulgent with their emotions, choosing deliberately to linger on events and feel sad for years after with no actual steps taken to rectify things, the most annoying being Elias Cole who I wanted to strangle at various times.

While not being bad books per se, I found them nonetheless disappointing and unimpressive.

Fear

2011-07-23T18:25:00.002+01:00

Last night just as I was about to sleep, I wandered onto bbc.co.uk and found myself transfixed to the live news stream about the Norwegian bombings and gun attacks. I slept late, unable to quite bear with the scenes of destruction being broadcast right to my wee laptop (the wonder of modern technology indeed) and yet unable to quite ignore it, despite the fact that I could do nothing. This morning I woke up to the news that of the gun attack, 80+ people had died. This was quite a change from the 4 quoted in the news before I went to sleep. He shot into the water even, eyewitnesses said, to kill those attempting to swim to safety.

I spent the morning in a vague haze of sadness. Sadness at the fact that the world seemed so violent and harsh, and how easily one person could destroy the lives of so many families. Sadness that no one really, could do anything about it. Sad too, for myself, because it made me feel that little bit more scared of the world.

The last time I really remember feeling quite like this was the night of my graduate prom in 2008. It was 28 November 2008, and I had spent an entire night being blinded by flashes in a darkened ballroom. My feet hurt from my really high heels, exacerbated by the fact that my stockinged feet slid in the shoes. My eyes were dying from the dry contact lenses, and my makeup was starting to smudge into the warm humid air of the night. I had gone with the !nk crowd to the old Color Bar in HV. Somehow I remember drifting into a blue funk at random times, feeling immensely sad at the thought of the Mumbai bombings, which my friends around me chattered. I'd walk away, and off into random corners to just think about how terrible the world was, and how sad everything was. Ultimately pointless, but I did it anyway.

Today HM came over for a bit, and we started talking about graduate school. The thought about how everything was so unknown, and how I didn't want my proverbial wings to be clipped, made me scared. She told me she was scared too, but it was one of those things where two scared people together only magnifies the problem. She had to leave soon away, she was going to have dinner at her grandmother's.

After dinner I asked my mother why she decided to have children. She couldn't really give me an answer. I asked my maid, Felice. She couldn't give me an answer either. Blargh, I thought, about the future. It seems so unknown, and therefore so scary. Yet it's typically get an education, get married, have kids. It seems so simple and straight-forward, yet why do I feel so scared at how uncertain everything is? (At the same time I feel slightly resentful at how 'certain' it ought to be, but that's something for another time.) It seems I am always scared, and hence often sad.

And the's when I thought most about what I want to achieve from this year for myself: I want to live a life as best as I can free from fear. Fear of overcooking food, fear of not being able to get good enough grades, fear of being emotionally hurt by yet another person. I'm tired of being afraid, and I want to break free from what is arguably a pointless emotion.

Random Ramblings: July 2011 Edition

2011-07-20T09:00:00.005+01:00

Yesterday I realised as I was looking around the pharmacy that I was really really not prepared to be a mother. This thought occurred to me as I was in the condom/baby stuff/pregnancy test/eye wash (eye wash?!) aisle, and there was a cute teddy bear for sale that I was drawn to. If I'm still at an age where I am drawn to cute stuffed toys, I am not yet old enough to be a mother. This is because it dawned on me then, that I might fight with my baby for possession of the cutest stuffed toys to hug. Ergo, I am not old enough to be a mother.

I was originally going to call this entry Thosai, after celebrating the fact that I found out I was not carrying a little R Daniel Narang on my person (it'd be a 1/4 Indian baby come to think of it) by devouring a Thosai from a Komala Vilas branch at Tanglin Shopping Mall after pottery class. I don't think I've ever enjoyed eating with my hands so much before. I was originally going to eat my Thosai with utensils, and even took some from the counter. I ended up using my clay-powdery fingers to attack the Thosai. It was immensely satisfying. On another note: I do wonder how much clay I ingested as a result of my enthusiasm.

-----

I was going to also perhaps call this entry Postcard. I am sending postcards again, with the most beautiful non-touristy ones from Cat Socrates in Bras Bersah. As hipster as that place is, walking in really makes me feel happy and calm with happy-hipster-vibes. I was there on Monday, running errands and returning to costumes Ianthe and I borrowed for her birthday celebrations on Saturday. I ended up eating at KFC and having a tasty Zinger burger by myself. I noted that all the pictures and names used in the current KFC advertising/interior design campaign were all Caucasian.

And then there is this:

The postcards I went to send off to ones away from me.

And the middle one: an ode to Dr S-'s rhotacism, which I have fallen in love with. I would sit in lectures and listen to the lull of his voice, and smile to myself. Weally, weally, he'd say, instead of really, really. And then because he's German when he tried to say Jewelry he'd say Jewry and I'd think of those old-school Nazi era racist math questions, and giggle to myself (offense, totally not intended, I just posses a healthy sense of irony and inappropriateness). Bureaucracy'd turn into buwocwacy and the like. His speech reminded me of Elmer Fudd. Nonetheless, I fell for his speech impediment, which I found utterly adorable.

His postcard is of a person floating in a parachute.

Sigh

2011-07-15T19:40:00.002+01:00

So just before I was about to go to bed, I decided to go into my brother's room and check in on him. As I raised the blanket to cover him, I noticed a strange panelling that looked oddly familiar, lying in a weird piece next to him. I went back to my room and checked my new trekking bag. Surprise! My brother decided to cut out the panelling at the back of the bag, which was meant both to give the bag structure and promote air circulation. I suppose it's because it stuck out and didn't lie flat against the bag, and somewhere this totally fried his brain, and thus he decided to cut it off.

I have no idea where he got the scissors from. We hid all the scissors after he decided to cut up all the photographs downstairs. Also I locked my damn door before I left the house to go out.

Upset, but still sticking to the plan, I went back to his room. I pulled the blanket off fully, and as I raised in in the air to tuck him in properly I saw them. Next to my brother, sleeping angelically on his side, was all the panelling cut into pieces. It was like a horror movie, when the scene is fully revealed and where the blood was previously hidden, it turns out to be everywhere.

I can do nothing but sigh. I want to sleep now, badly, but I'm not sure if I can anymore.

A person: a mirror

2011-07-15T17:17:00.002+01:00

I often wonder if I have aged very much over the past 2 years. I am, as always, an experience collector. I collect experiences. And I find lately I emerge from them with new wrinkles. I feel as if on the inside, I am much more wizened than my outer appearance suggests (a fact mentioned many times by the teens I met on the cruise: they thought I looked 18).

10 years had passed since I first started watching Harry Potter. Today, I saw it with Liselle, Hui Min, Ianthe, Steph and JH. A true end of a decade. I wonder where I'll be in 19 years time indeed.

Alabama, Arkansas

2011-07-14T17:43:00.003+01:00

Last week was spent being quite a social butterfly.

3/7/2011 - Sunday. Spent it at Ianthe's place hanging out with Steph and Jiahui playing Little Big Planet 2. Missy, the Siberian Husky, was scary. She licked me randomly, which was really creepy/disturbing, but licked Jiahui way more.
4/7/2011 - Monday. Spent it having dinner with Chang Hong and Tiffany, then I had supper with Mong, Hadi and Andrea to celebrate Mong's 21st birthday. Conversation topics were rather dodgy, but no one was around to really eavesdrop. Brought Ryan for a walk in the afternoon.
5/7/2011 - Tuesday. Hadi came over to wach My Blueberry Nights. He liked it, hooray!
6/7/2011 - Wednesday. Pottery class in the morning, and then pilates class at night. I am unfit. Both in moulding clay and physical fitness.
7/7/2011 - Thursday. Lunch with Jiayun in Holland Village, then another pottery class at night. While at Holland V Jia ran into an old family friend. His fly was open. I pointed it out and he zipped it up. I borrowed a trashy novel from the EMI bookstore.
8/7/2011 - Friday. Met Patrick and Nic Seow at Dempsey, came back mid-afternoon to watch a silly Japanese movie I had rented the previous day.
9/7/2011 - Saturday. Had lunch with my mother, went out at night for dinner with Mong to celebrate his birthday. Ended up wandering around the Zouk area at 1am in the morning, eating roti prata and seeing the mess the Zouk partiers left around.
10/7/2011 - Sunday. Had lunch at Putien with my guo mah, then had dinner with my grandma, grandpa and uncle's family. Made my cousin very hyper by playing with him.

This week was more sedate.

11/7/2011 - Monday. Got my wisdom tooth taken out. Complained a lot. Felt like dracula (sucking my own blood). Ate porridge for dinner, sigh.
12/7/2011 - Tuesday. Stayed at home, but took brother out in the afternoon for a walk. Cleaned out my cupboard. Watched Broadwalk Empire with my Dad at night.
13/7/2011 - Wednesday. Pottery and pilates again. Results came out in between, was OK. Neither particularly happy nor displeased with results. Felt resigned to being forever an underachiever. Friends did really well, which is awesome. Kinda. Watched 8 Femmes.
14/7/2011 - Thursday. Had lunch with Ianthe at Rail Mall. Gave Ianthe her birthday gift and she seemed rather happy with it. Ended up seeing Elliot and then another person from LSE. Went home and watched Helen and the Baby Fox. Wanted to watch Broadwalk Empire but mother hogged the TV to watch 8 Femmes.

TOMORROW: HARRY POTTER IN 3D!

Can't wait.

Prednisone

2011-07-10T16:40:00.002+01:00

I've never really spoken much to my friends about my brother, except in jest or to relay some silly anecdote about something hilarious that happened involving him/he did. I always try to make light of the situation, painting him in a very silly light, laughing at times at him. Sometimes it's to the point that I suspect my friends think of him as a mere joke, because all I tell are the funniest stories. Fact is, making fun of things is the coping strategy my family decided to adopt when it was revealed that my younger brother suffered from severe autism. That and perhaps my Dad was always a joker, even before any of us were born.

Brought up in a large, supportive, extended family I had always been relatively sheltered from the day to day minutiae of bringing up my brother. I never had to take care of him, and as a result never really saw him as a real sibling. He was just an irritant when I was younger, destroying my toys, stealing my food, and taking my parents away from me. Just a creature that I shared a house and DNA with, but with no real affection. It was hard after all, for me to understand why my younger brother was the way he was, especially since as a child I was already questioning everything. It was hard to accept the answer "he just is like that", as an explanation for the millions of things he did that upset me. Then when it came to things he destroyed, because he wandered into my room, I would get scolded in turn because I should have "known better than to leave things lying around".

There was a time too I remember, when he got into a drawing and biting mode. I was, and still am an incredibly chaotic and messy person with my belongings. There were times where my textbooks would get chewed up to the extent that pages and covers would fall off. Then there was a flower drawing phrase, where every paper-like object would get flowers scrawled all over it, including my homework. One time, after my brother destroyed my math homework, I recopied it out without the working. My parents wrote a note to the teacher, who I was already terrified of. She took the note, accepted my new clean homework. When she gave them back however, she forgot completely about the note my parents had written and instead mocked me in front of the whole class for having such 'neat' homework that I didn't need to do any workings, implying heavily that I had copied all my work from someone. Strange how little things like that stay with you.

It wasn't till I was about 12 that my attitude towards my brother started to change slowly. I was growing older, more used perhaps, to things. It wasn't a rapid change, but an incredibly slow one. I had always been rather protective of him when I was younger, even though I wasn't a huge fan of him, so that didn't really change. What changed however was that I started to see him more as a living, breathing person, rather than just an It. It was then that I really started to become a sister, finally able to let him into my heart and play little silly games with him. Then, I could pick him up in my arms and swing him around until he laughed with delight. I could tickle him until he curled up into a ball. I could appreciate fully the fact that he was smiling at something I had done for him.

I'm not sure when the next turning point in my life came, though I suspect it was around the time I was 17. I say that because I remember a classmate noticing a bite mark on my wrist in class one day, and me not being unduly upset about the bite to make a big fuss of it to my friends. It's like I finally understood, "it just is". This was where I finally transitioned from sister into quasi-caregiver. These were a hard few years, with my brother finally hitting puberty. He rapidly outgrew me and most of the family in height, increased in muscle strength, became more defiant. It was harder to control him now from behaving badly in public. Plus physical force, like dragging him away from something, no longer worked. I still played with him, but I could no longer lift him up even though he'd pull my arms around his waist like before. He also became less ticklish. I started helping out a bit more, disciplining, bringing him to and from classes.

Almost exactly a year ago, my brother threw a massive tantrum and was completely freaking out. My parents barricaded themselves in their room, waiting for him to calm down. I had been preparing to go out clubbing with friends, and so even though knew something was happening, didn't quite know the extent or root cause. In my distracted mind, I decided the best way to get him to calm down and go to sleep would be to stick to the routine. I took his toothbrush, put toothpaste on it and called for him a few times to come and brush his teeth. Instead, he got more frustrated and lunged at me, grabbing me by the shoulders while digging his fingers into my skin and leaned over to try and bite me as I screamed and screamed for help. My parents ran out of the room to help, and I went back to my room to cry because I was so shaken by the incident. I had never been so scared of my brother before.

The first time I really brought my brother out alone before was just last week. I was going for a walk to clear my head of R, and decided to ask my brother along since he looked so bored. We walked to a park about 15 minutes away from home in the sweltering heat, and I watched my 17-year-old-but-still-a-baby brother squeeze himself into the playground set, some 50cm too tall for everything. Still, he was happy there, never having grown up in his mind. Getting home proved a bit tricker, since he didn't want to leave. Later in the week, as I left the house on Thursday to meet Jiayun in Holland Village for lunch, my brother ran to the door, hoping I'd take him out. It made me sad to have to tell him I couldn't, as he looked at me with those large eyes of his.

Today as I walked with my father and brother back to the car from an emergency trip to the doctor's, I mused how just 24 hours ago I was being a totally irresponsible youth at Mong's 21st birthday party. Now, I had just brought my brother to the doctor's, registered him, applied cream as he scratched away from a major allergic reaction afterwards (hives, just like me last time). It was but a drop in the massive ocean of responsibility my parents carried everyday, and I thought about this was how just the beginning of me one day fully taking ownership of my very special brother. I thought about the duplicity in my life, I thought about Rajan and how he'd really be the only person that'd fully understand. I thought about how I missed him the teensiest bit.

Right before I wrote this, I went to check in on my brother. From going to bed just 15 minutes earlier, he was soundly asleep. Looked like the many antihistamines we gave him before we desperately visited the doctor's finally knocked him out. It was a nice change, from just hours earlier when I was trying to sponge him with a cold towel to stop the scratching. I had seen the welts and the redness spread all over his body. I had tried to hold him hands to get him to stop scratching. I thought about how good it was that I was home this time round, so I could help out. I think now, about my future, and how I'll never really be alone in this life because my brother is wholly dependent on me. It's both a scary and a comforting thought.

The Big Sleep

2011-07-08T16:02:00.004+01:00

It wasn't all too long ago that the thought of sleeping alone presented me with a palpable anxiety. Growing up with doting grandparents and a small house, I had spent most of my childhood sleeping with other people in the room, to the sounds of late night Chinese television blaring. It wasn't till I was 13 that I really tried sleeping in a room alone, and even that was briefly ruined when I got dragged to watch Ju-On one day by a friend.

When I was Christoph, we spent almost every alternating night asleep together. Last academic year he had a nice double bed in his flat in Elephant and Castle, and this year I had the double bed at my place. I hated his pillows, which were really soft. In turn he said I was a blanket stealer. As this year rolled about, we eventually drifted to separate blankets. He preferred the super-warm-but-better-quality-Marks-and-Spencer single quilt, and I was happy with my crappy-but-large-and-enveloping-Argos-Value double quilt. I had my awesome and cheap £5 for 2 hollowfibre pillows from Marks and Spencer too. We were happy. He slept like an unmovable rock and I rolled about on my side of the bed.

The nights he didn't spend next to me however, I slept badly. I'd have trouble falling to sleep, because I missed his presence. I missed being able to reach out and touch him. Missed listening to his soft snoring. I'd think and think, as I lay in bed trying to sleep, about the daunting future and feel anxious. Having him around reassured me, somehow, that as long as he was here things'd be okay. I'd stay up later than usual as a result.

But of course it wasn't all unicorns and double rainbows. There were nights where despite him being there, I'd be unable to sleep. I'd still toss and turn, except now I'd be afraid to do so in case I woke him up. Then there was one very bad memory where one night, we both had trouble sleeping and just as he'd fallen to sleep, I'd woken him up. After he got frustrated and told me he was awake, I went to the kitchen and cried as he went to sleep. I didn't sleep at all that night and ended up having a nervous breakdown. Sometimes if I wanted to sleep early, and he wanted to sleep late, we'd be forced to compromise. Other times were more normal, where I'd get frustrated at him being able to sleep so soundly next to me as I did the insomniac's march (bed-toilet-bed every 10 minutes), and feel alone in my misery. Not that I wanted him to be unable to sleep too, it's just that him being able to sleep so soundly felt mocking.

Then one day he left and I suddenly had a double bed all to myself. I ended up using it as a dumping ground for my once-worn clothes. Books. Newspapers. Sometimes files and papers. Stuffed toys. Sometimes I'd lose things in the mess. At night I cuddled with my clutter. It felt strange in a way, like a smaller person occupying the bed with me. I started to regain control of my sleep, relearning how to sleep alone and on my own terms. I started to forget what it was like sharing a bed with another person.

And then one fine day, Rajan came into my life, and I found myself (albeit briefly) sharing a bed again. In what I found surprising more than anything else, although I initially welcomed the idea of falling in love again (HAHAHA MISTAKE), I began to resent the idea of sharing my bed with someone else after all the freedom I had been accorded.

First there were all the idiosyncrasies: no outside clothes on bedsheets/lying on the quilt top with outside clothes is ok/but then how do you tell someone this nicely? Then my sleep times were horribly wrecked, as I finally met someone who had worse insomnia than me, and I compromised by sleeping ever-so-late even though I was so tired. Even my stuffed toys weren't spared, as Rajan picked them up and tossed them around the room, probably deeming them amusing. It also turned out that Rajan was a tosser and turner in bed too, just like me. On my cheap bed, I could feel the bed move every time he turned. Which was often. ARGH.

Then came the blanket problem. Being with Christoph and then myself for the past few months had spoiled me into not sharing a blanket. Sharing a blanket (now that it was Summer and I had no other thin quilts) felt downright uncomfortable. All I wanted to do was wrap myself up in a blanket and I couldn't do it anymore because there was someone else in the bed. Plus I was quite sure I was still a blanket stealer in my sleep.

The mornings felt strange too as I rolled about to see someone next to me. I had gotten used to waking up slowly in the mornings with sunlight and a book. Now when I woke up I couldn't open the curtains, and had to deal with another not-morning-person even though I wasn't a morning person either. Rajan brought a whole new set of things to get used to, a whole new lot of things to compromise on.

As today rolls around, I realise it's been almost exactly a month since I've last slept next to someone, and in my strange way I revel in that fact. I loved it when someone slept next to me, but now I can sleep as late or as early as I want, and wake up however I want without worrying about the person next to me. I can wrap my blanket around me, or kick it off as I sleep if it gets too warm without fear of any repercussions. I can turn on my side as many times and as often as I want, punch my pillow into a good shape and sprawl all over the bed. The bed is mine, and mine alone. Phew.

Like the pine trees lining the road

2011-07-07T16:33:00.002+01:00

I have an urge to take a few days off my next academic year and follow the North Downs Walk, walking from Rochester to Canterbury, and ending in Dover. According to Google Maps, it's about a 43.3 mile walk (why the heck is this in the Imperial and not Metric system?).

But then again I have many urges and to-dos, including so far:-

1) Doing Wing Chun when I get back to London
2) Travelling to Colchester by myself to look at the Roman ruins
3) Travelling (back) to Helsinki by myself to explore the city
4) Writing about my recent Baltic Cruise
5) Writing about my ethnic identity, as per an essay topic suggested by a website I stumbled upon, of which I have already jotted down some points

I have a very bad habit of not following through with plans, and instead bowing to random bouts of impulsiveness and laziness. I hope I manage to urge myself to follow through with these.

Clay

2011-07-07T10:27:00.002+01:00

Yesterday I attended my first pottery class in Singapore. Pottery has someone always been one of my interests, there's just something to feeling the malleable clay between your fingers and moulding it into something coherent with your hands. This class, much to my appreciation, was stocked with adequate equipment - enough wheels for everyone - much unlike my last class where everyone had to compete to use the two wheels among eight people.

So there I was, shyly smiling at everyone, the way I do with unfamiliar people. One was a cute little boy, around perhaps 6, who had the most beautiful bluest eyes and blondest hair. Another was a woman, looking eager, who apparently was new. Another woman sat at a mechanised wheel, working on an existing project, wearing denim bermudas and a white and blue striped collared shirt. It was the eager woman who struck me the most.

She was the one who attempted to start a conversation. She was French it transpired, and when the little boy said he was French too her eyes lit up. They started pattering away in French, as I smiled to myself, feeling like I was in a quaint French movie. Then she spoke to me. She talked about how this was just her 2nd week into a 1 year stay in Singapore. How she missed home, how she skyped her family everyday. How she couldn't get used to the temperature and the food. She easily looked in her 30s to me. I spoke about how it was when I first went to London, that it'd get better. Still I knew such words were of little comfort to her, platitudes even. But we had not yet reached the level of intimacy, and I could not quite remember what it was like when I first went to London.

It struck me then more so than ever, that even though we get older we don't necessarily get used to the changes life brings. I always knew in my heart, and that is perhaps why I try to be sympathetic when my friends complain about their parents, that even parents are just older people who are trying to do what they think is best. That they're only that much more wiser, and that all they've really mastered is some experience and a lot of Looking Like What They Know They're Doing When They Really Don't. I spoke to my Dad about it a few days ago, and he laughed, saying Now You Know. Still, it was different hearing it from the French lady. Hearing it in person that being an adult doesn't mean you know what you're doing - and that perhaps you'll never really know what you're doing despite your age.

How Many Roads?

2011-07-03T07:25:00.003+01:00

After I ate lunch today, I stood up to clear my food away and instinctively looked at the fields behind my house. There was a man there, dressed in a white t-shirt, sitting amongst the tall grass. He sat with arms around knees, tucked to his chin, and looked as if he was rocking back and forth. The grass in the field is tall, and has not been cut since the last time I was home months ago. Snakes live and flourish there.

He didn't seem normal. I was worried. I wanted to call the police, but I wasn't sure. What if he had gotten lost?

I decided to wait. I came back to my room. Read an email. Went to shower and cried.

After I got out of the shower and looked again, the man was gone.

Like the Fool I am/And I'll Always Be

2011-07-01T21:15:00.003+01:00

I played Blowing in the Wind today until my fingers could not take it anymore. Because my father said I Got a Name would be a wee bit too hard for me to restart 8 years of non-playing guitar on. He was right, but then again he usually is. Then I sat down and finally wrote one of those tough honest, emotionally charged emails to R.

As I lay down in bed, finally trying to put my mind at rest, I got the urge to eat salted peanuts. At 4:15am in the morning. Nevermind that I was just starting to feel sleepy. But I felt my soul would not rest until I ate some damn peanuts. So I went downstairs and ate peanuts. Then I decided to blog about it. Because I'm awesome that way.

I have no idea how the hell I'm going to get over this damn jetlag. Also, my untimely and odd urges amaze me.

Happy

2011-07-01T17:21:00.003+01:00

One of my favourite stories is that of the original Grimm's Fairy Tale, The Little Mermaid, where she turns into sea foam at the end because she can't bear to kill the one she loves. She gives and she gives, and even till the very end cannot bear to stop giving.

It was my favorite story when I was 15. Now that I'm 21, it still remains one of my favourite stories.

Handphone

2011-07-01T07:42:00.002+01:00

Second time in less than a week that I've woken up in utter confusion by my handphone ringing. Handphone. That's an asian Chinese word. Taken directly from shou ti dian hua, which literally means hand phone. Everyone else in the world calls it mobile, or cell. Me? I still can't not think about that device as a handphone. It's too deeply ingrained into my psyche.

Anyway so I just got very weirdly woke up by Hadi.

I woke up at 10am today and forced myself out of bed. At 12pm, a mere 2 hours later, I decided I might as well lie down and nap until Hadi called me around 3pm. I set an alarm for 1:30pm. At 12:45pm when I woke up to use the bathroom, I decided to reset the alarm for 2pm. I went to sleep and dreamed a weird dream. It seems I've been dreaming every time I fall asleep nowadays. At 2pm my alarm rang and I woke up for a second to grab the phone and turn off the alarm, then I went back to sleep. At 2:09pm, Hadi called, and I got woken rather bizarrely by a device vibrating on my chest.

It was rather fortuitous I suppose, that my sleep addled mind a mere 9 minutes earlier decided the safest place to store a handphone was by balancing it on my chest, because my handphone was on silent mode. The vibrations woke me up, and a very confused phone call commenced next.

La Paloma

2011-06-30T16:26:00.002+01:00

As promised to myself, I have attempted to start playing the guitar again after 8 years of inactivity. I have a very bad knack of starting things and never finishing them. This time however I promised myself I'll pick up at least ONE song on the guitar, and I'd have to be a song I actually like as opposed to something merely easy to play. Tonight after looking hopelessly at gchat for an unnecessarily prolonged period of time and thinking about what a silly bird I am, and will always be, I decided to start trying to re-familiarise myself with the chords. Long story short, there was much giggling at the ridiculous sounds I produced, and lots of WTF-ing at the chords which seemed to demand far longer fingers than I possessed.

On another bizarre note, I just accidentally kicked my desk with my foot, prompting the phone on the table to somehow resettle itself in its charging port. It made a beep, startling me after I went "ow".

48 Hours

2011-06-30T13:12:00.003+01:00

It's been about 48 hours since I started feeling really sick, and although the symptoms are abating, I still feel pretty terrible. I've spent a good portion of the past 48 hours lying about in bed, sleeping at odd times and generally feeling sick and dizzy if I'm awake. Though, that being said, I'm not sure how much of it is due to jetlag and how much of it is exactly due to the flu.

I have finished reading Diary of a Nobody, which was a good and short amusing read. Perfect for sick people, with its humour and nicely cut pieces of information (diary entries, after all). Motivated by my visit to Russia, I bought a book of Pushkin's stories (the Russians use a hard /P/ in pronouncing his name, a long sound with pursed lips - something I found highly fascinating) from Foyle's. Perhaps I shall start that book next.

It stormed like mad today, with such grey clouds that it blotted out the sun's existence entirely. Haven't seen it rain like that in ages.

Murder on the Orient Express

2011-06-28T20:04:00.002+01:00

I have taken to waking up around 2:30am again, now that I'm back home and the sleeping draught (oho, a Christie word!) has worn off. I must say while waking up at that time when I was back 3 months ago sent me into a frenzy, now I am rather sanguine about it. I just polished off Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express, which was highly enjoyable but definitely less satisfying than And Then There Were None.

As I went to use the bathroom, I saw a medium sized cockroach peer at me from my brother's towel which was hung on the rack. URGH. Nothing says 'welcome home' like disgusting bugs, which seem to live mainly in warm tropical areas. I quickly went back to my room, since I didn't know what else to do. I hope it's still not there, if I have to go out again later. That and I need to see that the towel is tossed into the laundry hamper before it's actually used on his person.

Influenza, Hospitals and Jetlag

2011-06-28T13:22:00.002+01:00

I am back home. One 12 and a half hour flight from Heathrow, 3 movies and an episode of Law and Order UK (Enter the Dragon, Les Femmes du 6 étage and The Adjustment Bureau) later, I am back to what feels like 100% humidity and 30 degree celcius weather. Also, yummy food.

The day before my flight home I messed up and booked a cab for 3:30am instead of 3:30pm. The taxi company very nicely woke me up, and I had to haul my very dazed and sleepy ass downstairs to pay the driver, while beating myself up about making such a very silly mistake. Then I came up and found my grandmother waiting for me, which was even worse :/ Luckily she didn't tell my grandfather, or I'd never live it down. It's funny though, the transition from being fully independent quasi-adult in London to having to suddenly revert into the role of a subservient and obedient child the moment (grand)parental figures appear. I didn't really like it, especially since my grandparents are more domineering that my parents.

Today I went to the Singapore General Hospital, less than 24 hours after touching down, for my usual check ups. For once all my appointments were on time. Which is lucky considering that as my time there dragged on, I started to feel more and more sick with what I can only assume is the flu. That and I was jetlagged as hell and walking around the hospital in a haze. Things got interesting when I finally retrieved my Medisave form (some semi-medical state insurance in Singapore) from the nurse's office after 3 months and I realise the random doctor who signed off my form circled 'schizophrenia' instead of 'major depression'. Cue me staring at in a daze and finally deciding to go ahead and submit the damn form anyway.

As I sat in the Medisave office and looked even more confused over bureaucratic red tape (and jetlag), the Medisave woman took one look at my form and started talking to me in a very slow and low voice, enunciating every single syllable. I guess that's how they treat people with schizophrenia. How unfortunate.

For lunch I had awesome Teochew Mui (Teochew porridge) buffet and grabbed like everything available. It was the BEST MEAL I ate in a long time. That and I grabbed a whole plate of Ikan Bilis (small, fried fish). SO GOOD. Yes, I am a woman of simple tastes. I went home, took medicine, and slept my afternoon away.

Shower Curtains

2011-06-10T12:04:00.003+01:00

When we first moved into the flat less than a year ago, I changed the shower curtains. They cost about £3 from the nearest Argos, located a 5 minute walk away along Grey's Inn Road. Today as I took a shower, I decided to sit down in the bathtub and splash warm water onto myself. As I sat there, hunched over and switching hands to hold the shower head, I mused on how dirty the bottom half of the shower curtain had gotten. From a rather boring shade of beige, it had somehow transformed into a rather brownish-yellowy patch. It also had a strange smell to it. I wondered what substances exactly clung to its synthetic fibres; skin cells, follicles, residual soap and shampoo, urine perhaps? Perhaps other even more sinister substances that I couldn't begin to even imagine, or wouldn't want to think resided within the weave of my shower curtain. Bacteria. Fungus. Viruses.

I close my eyes and feel the warm water running down my back. I think of Saturday, when I'll meet my grandparents at the airport for our holiday. I think of my exams, over just yesterday. I think of the irreverent ME NO UNDERSTAND QUESTION, complete with a dinosaur going RAWR that I drew for question 2 of my exam paper, because I didn't know how to answer it. I think of Rajan, and the whirlwind of the past few days. I think of the future, and feel the strange mixed feelings of my heart straining and the heady exhilaration of the unknown.

I consider putting him and our few days up on a grand, marbled pedestal. Pretend and tell myself that he's the love of my life, that I love him. Tell myself that, convince myself that, so I'll not be an emotional slave to another man. So I won't fall and be hurt again, in love instead with an impossible idea that only works because he's not around. Fall in love with an illusion, a memory, 7 days. Fall in love with what could have been. I think maybe I'll fly to America over Winter break, see him again, plan to do my masters in the USA. Start planning my life around him, think of our children running around our yard. Our exotic mixed-raced children. We'd have three of them.

Or maybe after Saturday when we both leave London I'll will myself to forget him. Erase from my memory the way his eyes crinkle up at the sides when he smiles, erase the smirk he always gives me, erase the way he smells. I'll never talk to him, never see him again for the rest of my life. Never send him the postcards I promised. Years later, when his name pops up in the papers I'll pretend not to know him. "But you went to the same university for a year," people will insist, "and you were in the same department!", but still I'll pretend to not know him even though I'll probably remember his laugh, the feel of his skin, thinking of him everytime I hear the word tautology.

He was my carpe diem, my trigger to remember why I'm living rather than just merely alive, a burst of life. And tonight, I see him for what could very well be the last time in my life. I will miss him, but it's the thought that he might miss me that makes things feel unbearable. That everything is so senseless. I think, rather pretentiously, of a Nietzsche quote, "what really raises one's indignation against suffering is not suffering intrinsically, but the senselessness of suffering".

I will see him at 6pm, and tomorrow I'll leave for a 12 week Baltic cruise with my grandparents.

Mantra

2011-06-08T11:01:00.001+01:00

I just haven't met you yet.

I feel free

2011-06-06T19:37:00.002+01:00

After talking to Hadi on skype, I started walking about half packing and half studying, now that my boxes for moving out had arrived. When 7pm rolled about I decided to go out and get some food from Kung Food, but instead decided on the spur of the moment go try the weird Chinese buffet thing I had seen down Leather Lane. As I was walking back, I swore I heard the cyclers gathered outside the cycling shop making fun of me for getting Chinese takeout, and I started to feel annoyed. Somehow as I passed by the Holborn Wine Bargins, I decided to turn in and see if they had any Crabbie's. As to why I did that I did not know.

When I came home I opened the beer and started drinking immediately. Took a picture of what could very well be my last real meal in this flat for posterity and sat down in front of my computer. It was then I realised what I felt, I felt free. I felt free because last time part of my behaviour used to be motivated by peer pressure. Imagine Zoe's face if she had come home and seen me not studying and drinking beer days before I have an exam. She'd be aghast.

Thus it transpires that I decided to celebrate my freedom from anything whatsoever by being totally irresponsible. Hmm.

Portions for Foxes

2011-06-06T15:40:00.004+01:00

Today as I walked back from Chancery Lane tube, after having sent off/help drag Zoe's luggage to the station, I felt a strange sense of lightness. As Zoe was packing up the last remnants of her possessions in her room earlier, I sat there watching her while eating what very well could've been my last Daddy Donkey burrito, and musing about how everything had changed from the day we had moved in last Sept 2010. Life, as we knew it, had taken some very strange turns, bringing around with it strange bouts of lowness and self-realisation. This year we took such a different course from all expectations. We made new friends, drifted away from old ones, dug deep into ourselves and found new things.

I chased a slow walking pigeon on the way back home. It was fat and merely waddled away, unfazed by this crazy Chinese girl flapping her arms at it.

Last night was probably the peak of this self realisation. I had earlier contacted a exchange student who was a classmate, telling him how much I had appreciated him, but lacked the guts to say so during term time. I had concluded that since I'd never see him again - why not? Instead I ended up spending a memorable night with him, laughing away and talking about all manner of things random and in common. It was there in that moment spent with him that I realised how deep my love for Christoph was, and that the idea of love setting you free was but a myth. But all the same here I was, with this person that I thought I'd never know, solely due to the ever changing mystery of life - that damnit life is worth living because I want to see where it'll take me. I want to live, and see where my journey ends up.

Broccoli

2011-05-31T21:51:00.005+01:00

Tomorrow it's Zoe's last exam, and I have successfully fed her on the night of her every exam (save once when she cooked for both of us, as we had the same HY234 exam). In the meanwhile, I have two more exams to go, incidentally both government modules. Today I reached home at about 7pm and managed to finish cooking by 7:30pm. I was impressed with how fast it took, and how tasty it was.

I made fish from some frozen fillets, cooked it in butter with lemon juice and some dill. Then I chopped up a zucchini and dumped it into a pot of almost-instant lemon and garlic couscous from Waitrose (the best tasting couscous I've had, I swear). For vegetables, I steamed up a large bowl of broccoli and cauliflower. It wasn't by far the most impressive meal I've made, but definitely one of the fastest for the amount of effort and time taken. Perhaps I'll keep it in mind when the next exam season rolls around and I need a square meal.

In the meanwhile I've been cooking a lot, all things considered. Yesterday I made chicken soup at Flat 8 (Shu, Jean and Hui Min's place), on Sunday I made roast chicken with a rather interesting marinade of mango and peri peri from Marks and Spencer (note: please don't try this marinade). Before that on Tuesday last week I made Cielo and Zoe a meal of chicken adobo, rice and some random veg that I can't seem to remember anymore. Other than that, I can barely remember any other meals I've eaten. It seems that especially within this exam period, it either being the rather marathon like length of the exams or the drugs I'm taking, the days are really melting into each other, and I find it hard and harder to tell my days apart from each other.

In other news, I am almost done with watching Season 9 of Law and Order: Criminal Intent. I am really such a sucker for police shows. Perhaps I should just go back home and join the police force, since I'm so aimless in life anyway.

Sourdough Loaf

2011-05-24T23:05:00.002+01:00

Today I went out with Cielo and Elliot, visiting the British Museum and the Wellcome Collection. First we went to LSE, where I showed Elliot and Cielo around (alongside jokes to demand to see the Dean of admissions because Elliot got rejected from LSE). We ran into DOMINIC LIEVEN as we got into the lift for the East Building and apparently I totally fangirled out in front of him saying stuff like I was sorry to see him leave for Cambridge, how I really enjoyed his lectures this year, etc. We then bumbled into the 4th floor, where we ran into Shu and Jean who were dutifully studying. Later when I showed them the library, we ran into Jon. Lots of people hanging around LSE nowadays apparently.

Afterwards we went to eat lunch at Nando's, then briefly went through the British museum to look at the Egyptian exhibits before going to the Wellcome Collection. Compared to the British Museum, I much greatly enjoyed the Wellcome Collection's exhibition on Dirt and the other random permanent collection housed upstairs. I bought a bookmark from the bookshop there that reminded me of a gummy for Jean.

For dinner, Cielo and I (Elliot went off to meet distant relatives) cooked chicken adobo and fried beans with rice. It was pretty tasty, but a tad bit salty.

In other news, it's back to work tomorrow, for HY234 on Friday D:

Lipton Mango Tea

2011-05-23T16:47:00.004+01:00

Monday afternoon and I find myself in the LSE 4th Floor canteen again, nursing a headache D: I think it's because for lunch I sat in Lincoln's Inn Field with Deborah SL and got my brain cells fried from excessive UV radiation or something. Still it's nice out today, a comfortable temperature, save the occasional gusts of cold wind.

Yesterday was a tasty day. For lunch after church, Shu and I went to get takeaway from Hare and Tortoise. I had tempura udon with maguro tataki as a side (small portion, but oh so sexy tasting). On our way back however we were blocked from returning to her place because the scaffolding off a building around the other side of her block had fallen, on Southampton Row to be precise. As a result the police were blocking people from entering, lest the scaffolding collapse more. Just as we turned the corner to leave, a random Korean girl came out, saw the police cars and blocked off road and went OOOOH in a very Korean accent. We ran off giggling because it was so stereotypical, heh.

For dinner last night I cooked Bak Kut Teh, and as a result was completely distracted from studying because of the extremely alluring smell that permeated the entire apartment. I ended up sipping some of the hot soup while it was cooking and burning my tongue a little.

Tonight I'm going to meet Elliot and Cielo at Goldmine in Bayswater. I'm told the duck there is very good but er, I don't eat duck. We'll see.

Toothbrush

2011-05-21T12:31:00.002+01:00

I finished Hanif Kureshi's The Buddha of Suburbia today. It was a rather strange book, it's content most unexpected. Still, it's the ending made it as a good book for me,

"And so I sat in the centre of this old city that I loved, which itself sat at the bottom of a tiny island. I was surrounded by people I loved, and I felt happy and miserable at the same time. I thought of what a mess everything had been, but that it wouldn't always be that way."

In other news, in a fit of randomness this morning before I brushed my teeth, I decided to boil water and sterilise my toothbrush like the way I had seen in Monk. When I did brush my teeth, the bristles felt softer. I half wondered if they melted, but then put it down to a psychological trick.

Waiting to Wait

2011-05-20T15:12:00.001+01:00

I can't wait to get out of this bloody city and go home. Just three weeks more!

The interim between exams is really terrible. It's like waiting to wait.

HY235

2011-05-20T11:18:00.002+01:00

Yesterday I finished my first exam, had my first pint (strongbow D:) in ages, met up with Nithi, bummed around without guilt for an entire afternoon, developed a crush on a fellow classmate and lost it within my waking hours, got a post-alcohol headache, did some opinion group thing online for one and a half hours, ate the chicken rice Shu cooked (tasty), played Sims on Jean's iphone, had an epic facebook chat convo with Eugene, read a few chapters of the Buddha of Suburbia, watched an episode of Law and Order and went to sleep around 2am.

Sounds like a full day.

Cherub

2011-05-17T21:48:00.002+01:00

Today as I walked along the snaking queue for a Daddy Donkey Burrito (chicken, fresh salsa, no extras), a man slowed down as he got close to me. I heard him say the word "cherub" to me, and I was puzzled for a while as he walked off without breaking his stride. I could have sworn he said the word "cherub", but that didn't make any sense. Perhaps he meant to say "cheer up" instead? That certainly made more sense, for in the morning I suffered from extreme academic inertia. The thought of exams on Thursday, and me being unable to focus certainly dragged my mood down.

For a while after I got back, the only way I could study was to skype with Hadi and ask him to watch me as I studied, making sure I didn't get distracted -______- After a while, I had to leave to buy groceries (for I had promised to cook a nice warm meal for Zoe before her first exam) and met Jia at Sainsbury. Then we walked back, made stew and Elliot came over halfway. Dinner was spent with Jia, Zoe and Elliot.

I have done barely any work today, and it's making me feel antsy. Oh dear, exams!

Waterloo

2011-05-16T20:42:00.002+01:00

Showing my complete lack of focus and dedication to exams (a trope repeated in previous years with Adam's Apple and Indigenes in 2006), I went to see A Screaming Man at the BFI today. Digressing a little, I recall now that Indigenes was also the first movie I watched alone. Anyway it revolved around the relationship between a man and his son and the civil war unfolding in Chad. The end is predictably, sad, as with all realistic movies. As the ending unfolded however, my thoughts drifted along a rather surprising person, specifically C. When the movie ended I felt a deep pang in my heart, not for the pain of the characters that I had just witnesses on screen, but because I missed C dearly.

As I walked up from the riverside to Waterloo bridge to catch the 341 home, I encountered a female panhandler with a black dog sitting at the steps. I gave her 40p. 341 came within 5 minutes, and as I rode it, I counted every 168 bus that we passed. There were 2.

C Prompt

2011-05-13T12:21:00.000+01:00

I saw C today for the first time in weeks. I was originally fearful of running into him as I was afraid of how I'd react, what it'd do to me.

Last night I had a dream that occurred in present time. In the dream he came back to me, said what a fool he was, and that we would stay together for the rest of out lives - something we had talked about before. He picked me up and hugged me, and my legs dangled in the air, 40 centimetres of difference in height between the both of us. After that I dreamt of eating barbecued chicken wings with my father. They had freshly squeezed lime juice on them. We were inexplicably in an in Singapore airport, and I was about to depart for somewhere. There was a hawker centre in the airport terminal, a legitimate open air and dodgy hygiene sort of hawker centre. That was where we ate the chicken wings together. I woke up hungry, and to reality.

Today when I saw him, I felt my heart clench tightly. I felt my body go into flight mode. I backed up a little, and took the left most door out of the library instead of the centre one I was about to take. He wore his red jumper, and was talking to someone I didn't recognise. He didn't see me. He never did because he said I was too short and he was too tall, and that I (and 85% of the population) never appeared easily in his field of vision. He didn't see me today.

Escitalopram

2011-05-09T10:37:00.003+01:00

I woke up really slowly today, curling into various positions as I attempted to wake up. I don't know why it's been getting harder and harder for me to get out of bed, but I suspect it's because the medication I take at night makes me drowsy. After I finally woke up, I continued staying in bed as I read David Mitchell's Number9Dream for a while. A knock on the front door from the mailman finally got me out of bed, as I raced out to the door to see him struggle to cram a package for Zoe through the little metal mail flap.

Now I am finally up and about, but a terrible feeling has sunk into my core. A feeling of 'Don't Go Out Today, Something Terrible Will Happen'. Except I can't. I need to go to the National Archives, a one hour ride away from my place, because I need to do research. 'Don't Go, There Is No Meaning', something in me screams. Another thought comes, 'You're Alone, All Alone In This World', 'You Will Come Home To No Dinner And An Empty House'. I feel the unmistakable feeling of panic begin to bubble in my chest. I feel very strained and tired, and it's only 10:50 am.

I was fine yesterday. Perhaps it's the thought of going to somewhere so unknown, I've never been to Kew before. Perhaps it's the thought that for once in a some time, I have no definite dinner plans today. Perhaps it's the thought of exams looming over the horizon. Either way I feel very tense today, with some dark inner side of me chiming "There Is No Meaning To All Of This" repeatedly in my head.

Cycle Hire

2011-05-08T21:47:00.003+01:00

I've had a recent routine as of late on Sundays. In the morning I pack up my things and my work for the day, and leave my house at about 10:15 am to walk to Shu's place. I usually reach there around 10:35 am, and we leave at about 10:45am for church on Tottenham Court Road. After that we grab lunch, study, have dinner and I leave at about 9 pm to go home.

As I leave at about 9 pm for home, it usually means I walk home after the sun has set. Not only that, but I walk through fairly deserted streets as all the shops and cafes have closed for the day. Every single walk home is filled with little pockets of paranoia, and I always make sure to loop my fingers around my laptop bag's handles and get my keys ready in hand before I reach home.

Today as I was just about to step into my lobby however, I was stopped by two men at the Barclay Cycle Hire stand right outside. Naturally, I was really suspicious, as the entire road was empty. They said they were tourists, and one was curiously East Asian while the other was Caucasian. They were trying to get a bike but they said they didn't quite know how to work it. I hesitated, but walked slowly forward towards them. As I got closer and stepped into the light of the Barclay's stand they saw the unmistakable look of suspicion on my face, and they themselves looked a little taken aback.

Needless to say, nothing bad happened to me. Still, as I stood there for those moments and watched them trying to struggle to get the bikes out of the rack, I thought about how things had gotten this way. About how it's hard to be friendly and helpful in London because one is just so fearful, especially as a female, that Bad Things Might Happen.

Thus is life in a big city, I suppose.

Total Eclipse

2011-05-06T23:10:00.002+01:00

As I was walking toward Sedap today to have dinner with a bunch of people, with only two that I know vaguely, I mused about the last time I experienced such an incident. It was more than a year ago, when I put on my Extroverted, Amusing and Charming face. It was the 14th March 2010, the day where I met Christoph at someone's birthday party. Dinner was at a Mexican place, and the food fell all over my plate as I tried to eat it. I sat next to Christoph, with him on my right. When we stood up at the end of the meal, I was amazed at how tall he was.

At the bus stop we spoke en route to the bar. He spoke about coming from a small town, how he liked forests and abhorred the city. I told him about the Soy Sauce story, and how my grandmother broke the news to my grandfather that my Aunt was marrying her American boyfriend. At the bar we spoke some more, drinks were two for one. He 'bought' me a drink, I 'bought' him one in return. I ordered Sex on the Beach, the girly fruity cocktail I always like. We spoke some more. He joked about having multiple girlfriends. At the end of the night, he left without getting my number and I was disappointed. When we finally did get together, I asked him about that. He said it was because he thought I wasn't into him. We laughed about it.

We got together, we fell in love. We spent the Summer apart. We had fights. We went on holiday. I met his Mum. I fell in love with her. I met his sister. I was scared of her. I met his Dad, he was a dear old man. We came back. We spoke about children, moving in and our future. We had the fight. We went our separate ways, strangers again, dead to each other.

I thought about that night as I walked to Sedap, trying to put on my Extroverted, Amusing and Charming mask again. Perhaps it would be a bad night, perhaps it might be a good night, but nonetheless it would be a night of untold possibilites.

Sprung

2011-05-06T16:46:00.002+01:00

The snow drifts of winter have turned into the pollen drifts of spring. A few days ago my friends and I passed by a young girl who asked her father "Dad, why is the ground furry?".

The pollen lies all over the streets, blanketing out the original colours of the pavements and roads. It is a strange, mossy yellow colour. As far as colours go, it is not a very appealing colour. Yet the texture, the light feathery-ness of it can be discerned just from a glance. It brings about the idea of a lightness in the air, of tiny particles floating about and weaving through molecules of atmospheric gas. The sun is out now more often then there are cloudy days. The absence of stockings, trousers and boots show a clear shift in the mood of the people in London.

Spring has finally arrived to the joy of most, except for those who suffer from hay fever (not me, thank goodness).

I carry it in my heart

2011-04-27T21:48:00.002+01:00

Today as I walked home for good, from Shu's place since Zoe came back, I teared up as I passed the Barclay's bike stand right outside the lobby. I longed to see the abnormally large, looming and comforting figure waiting there patiently for me. The body language, changing upon sight of me. Arms wide outspread. The utter look of amazement, delight and love as I walked closer into view. The person who is now forever lost, living only in the confines of my memory. My love, that still reaches its curling tendrils out only to grasp nothingness.

I once heard a friend say that the length of weeks taken to get over a love is proportional to the number of months one was with the person. I will give myself 5 and a half weeks more to mourn and to forgive myself.

Going Gentle into that Good Night

2011-04-21T13:01:00.002+01:00

I have just come back from the bathroom, where I spent 5 minutes heaving up nothing but water and phlegm. All I can say is, thank goodness it was not food or stomach acid. I have spent the entirety of today lying half prone on the couch in Shu Wen's place, reading Jonathan Coe's The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim. I spent last night at her place, and will probably be hiding out here for the next few days. Though a far cry from the comforts of home, it is a pretty damn good substitute as I still hide in my own head, although there are 3 other people in the same room as me.

My thoughts feel discordant today, a combination of many ongoing and half completed ruminations on various subjects. I thought of Shu's father and his new(er) life with his second wife, prompted by seeing his photo in her room, and the scrawlings of her young step-sister in her room. I thought about Christoph (of course) after seeing Joel and Hui Min together. I thought about having hours and hours ahead, and no concrete structure. I thought about these really nice t-shirts I want to get from Oasis. I thought about my parents, I thought about life. I thought about the state of my health (I have asthma today, and a nasty jetlag induced headache). I thought about tomorrow, when A New Chapter Begins and A Door Closes. I thought, and thought, and stayed within my head.

I stay within myself too often for my own good. My thoughts too varied, fleeting and yet oppressive in their tone. So much for anti-depressants slowing down one's mind.

Freedom

2011-04-20T12:07:00.002+01:00

One of the supposed perks of moving away from home and staying by yourself (figuratively, flatmates never quite equate to family) is that you are given the freedom to do whatever the hell you want, whenever the hell you want. To me however as I've learned from being away from home this few years, it also means the freedom to fall deeper into whatever psychological abyss one had carved out. It means the freedom to fuck up your life, and the freedom to stay in bed all day and be depressed, because there is no one there to come and ease you out and back into the land of the living.

I am deathly afraid of the freedom that has been accorded to me, especially now upon returning to London (at least the weather is cheery today).

Last night I fell into a deep distress when I woke up (jetlag and stomach problems) and could not get back to sleep. After a call from my mother, and a skype call with my father after, I managed to fall back to sleep and woke up at about 9am today. Truly there is nothing that can beat the love and comfort of one's parents.

For all of you out there, no matter what deity you believe in, please pray for me. I have never fallen into such a deep well before, and need all the strength and love I can muster to pull myself out.

Back to Reality

2011-04-18T12:13:00.001+01:00

Tomorrow in the early afternoon, 12:45pm to be precise, my flight leaves back for London. It is something I am really not looking forward to, but not really something I can help either.

Hugging my brother and trying to tell him that I'm going back tomorrow wasn't easy either.

Despite my misgivings, London is pulling me back into its gritty, tough-love arms again.

Like a North Wind Whistling Down a Sky

2011-04-17T16:51:00.002+01:00

Although arguably pseudo-scientific, this quiz result seems rather apt for now.

I just transferred a bunch of my Dad's songs onto my computer, good old stuff I grew up with when I was a child. I need neutral, unangsty and especially unlovey songs now.

Cold, dry, oatmeal

2011-04-17T03:47:00.002+01:00

Last night I met up with some old classmates from .9. When the night was over, I took a cab ride back with Chun Wui. The cab driver was initially chatty, talking about a transvestite prostitute who always trawled the same junction (between Raffles Hotel, Raffles City Shopping Centre, Chijmes and the new Carlton hotel) to good nasi lemak in Changi Village and Boon Lay. When the conversation with the cab driver finally died down, Chun Wui and I started to talk about people we knew in general, and how from the past 2 years since school ended they had changed.

It got me thinking in a way (of course it did, for people are innately egoistic and navel gazing) of myself, especially in the state I now find myself in. Chun Wui commented that I, compared to others, did not seem to have changed very much. I agreed, but at the same time replied that psychologically, I have undergone so much more changes that even I can't quite conceive the extent of it myself. I have changed, in ways that I couldn't help.

I know for a fact that I have become more scared, more fearful of life and everything it entails. I have become less receptive to change, even though I know now with even more certainty that nothing in life is certain. I panic more. I withdraw inwards into myself more often. I have learnt how to hide it in plain sight, which is perhaps not a very good thing. I have become more pessimistic about myself. I question more. I fear being alone more. I fear myself more. I know for certain however, that the only thing holding me back is myself. If I can transcend that, I can do anything. That thought terrifies me with it's potential and abilities, and at the same time makes me more anxious because I really only have myself to blame for wasted dreams.

Life is a journey, not a sprint, and this is something I need to repeatedly remind myself of.

I am a drum

2011-04-01T11:51:00.001+01:00

I feel as in my insides have been hollowed out: flesh, blood and tissue gingerly scooped out with a metal spoon, leaving the insides smooth as a water battered pebble. In lieu of solid matter my insides are filled with emptiness and air, somehow yet still dense enough to prop up bones, skeletal structure and skin. I feel that if I tap my fingers lightly against my chest, a deep resonant sound will emanate. I am empty.

21

2011-03-27T12:57:00.003+01:00

I am now 21.

I wish I could say its been an easy few days, but its been harder than usual. The words "there are still so many things I want to see with you, so many things I want to say to you" keep running through my head. I miss him dearly, and regret much.

Against the Wind

2011-03-25T08:47:00.002Z

I turn 21 in a day's time, and I've never felt more unprepared to become an adult.

There were times in the past where I did feel prepared. Doing little things like making my first bank account, my first angry letter to the landlord, even fixing the problem of the sticking lock (WD 40-ed it) made me feel accomplished. Look Ma! I can do these things by myself, I can take care of myself. Yet today I find myself, having fled home, immensely relishing my time here being cocooned away under the safety of home and my family.

Small steps I suppose.

Ready to Start

2011-03-20T12:06:00.003Z

My world has been shattered once more. I am flying home on Tuesday. I booked the tickets last night.

I love him, and he he says that he loves me, which only serves to make things worse.

The Kitchen

2011-03-12T15:39:00.003Z

I was originally going to attempt to show I clever I am by going into a mini discourse about Vesta, the Roman goddess of the hearth. I was going to talk about the fact that Romans worshipped her showed that they understood that the kitchen was literally the heart of the household, integral to its being. But then I realised hearth could also mean a conventional fireplace located somewhere else in the house, not necessarily the kitchen, depending on how annoyingly picayune a reader could be. Therefore I choose the safer, but still pretentious path of attempting to highlight this possible deviation in definition and distance myself slightly from its originally desired (but definitely pretentious) narrative.

So anyway I cleaned the kitchen today. On Saturday, Jewish people celebrate the Sabbath. On Saturday, my roommates celebrate the fact that I clean the kitchen, and simultaneously clean up all my dirty kitchen implements. I'm not exactly sure to the extent which they appreciate me cleaning however, as I often take around an hour to clean the kitchen. One does no housework at all, and the other takes about 30 mintes to clean the bathrooms. The kitchen is by far the hardest thing to clean because of the raw work and time needed. Still, I am surprisingly less peeved because they tolerate with my dirty dish pile and often take the initiative to toss the contents of the large black bin in the kitchen away when it overflows (one of Christoph's friends told me about her household last year... the flatmates refused to take the initiative to toss the trash and after a few weeks maggots started appearing).

This week as I cleaned the kitchen, I listened to Outlook on the BBC podcast. The first one which was very interesting was about this woman who went to Afghanistan to live among the locals and befriended a local family after 7/7. The second one was far less invigorating, but nonetheless interesting. It was about a man, who suffered from domestic abuse for more than a year before the neighbours called the police to rescue him. He spoke of how his partner would pour kettles full of boiling hot water on his lap, punch him until he got black eyes and the like. It was rather depressing really. What depressing really was that it reminded me of my flatmate. While merely confined to what is apparently self-induced emotional abuse in her relationship, the fact that she sits there and just takes it while non-stop justifying it to herself, depresses me to no end. I really hope her other friend moves in with us next year because I'm at the end of my depth of empathy.

On another note, I apparently forgot there was an ACS dinner last night. For some reason I thought it was on the 14th of March, and not the 11th. It only occurred to me to check when I was showering last night around midnight, when I suddenly remembered. I then realised why I thought the 14th March was a special day. It is, for starters the birthday of my uncle, an event we celebrated every year at home. Secondly, it's also the day I met Christoph last year. This is the second year running that I missed the dinner, I bet there's going to be more gossip again.

Evian

2011-03-11T14:48:00.003Z

Today at Subway the sub of the day was Tuna Mayo. Now I ordinarily like Tuna Mayo, but it had the tendency to make one's breath incredibly stinky, and therefore I do not like to eat it in public. Instead I opted for Chicken Tikka (sub of the day for Monday), but the poor stressed Subway Man dumped one scoop full of Tuna Mayo onto my bread before I could say Chicken Tikka! Chicken Tikka! Instead, he apologised, and then put the Chicken Tikka on to of the Tuna Mayo. I wish I could comment and say that it was a weird combination, but I ended up not tasting any Tuna Mayo at all (which makes the Tuna Mayo rather suspect in terms of taste).

In other news, today my Korean GTA who cannot pronounce "L" and instead replaces it with an "R" sound, repeated the world Election multiple times because we were studying the Japanese Liberal Democratic Party in class. For some reason, I was the only person who apparently found this funny. Also when a classmate, Chet as he is known, attempted to say "LDP" he went "LG" (as in LGBT, for we just had student union elections where that particular acronym was shouted about often) before correcting himself. It was a very accidentally sexually charged class. If you call juvenile mispronunciations and brain farts sexually charged that is.

In other, other news, I have a headache of the same sort that has been recurring everyday nowadays for the past few days. I also cannot think of any other versions with the word "day", except for weekday and Doris Day.

Chicken Risotto

2011-03-08T18:43:00.002Z

I actually made Chicken Risotto for dinner today. It sits in front of me, a yellowish shade of grey. The smell of freshly ground peppercorns is more overpowering than the chicken, or the onion, or the risotto itself. I'm amazed I have found the strength and willpower to cook it after the breakdown I had last night, which lasted till I fell asleep at 7:30am today. \

I am very tired again.

Dizzy Rascal

2011-03-01T04:23:00.002Z

So here I am awake at 4:24am again. Again like yesterday, the insomnia of today is traceable. It started off when I leaned under Christoph's arm to look at the condition of the Cream of Mushroom soup I was making. With a movement known to all klutzy people everywhere (for I am one of them too), he lowered his arm and his elbow crashed into the top of my skull. It hurt. After a while I started to get a headache and feel a bit dizzy when I was showering 10 minutes later. When I got out of the shower, I concluded the best thing to do was for me to just rest in bed, and leave preparations for my Mock Exam to tomorrow morning.

My hair was damp. I asked Christoph if he would help me dry my hair with the hairdryer. As I stared into the space of the white wall in front, blankly, I heard a horrible sound and a feeling of my hair being yanked out. My hair got sucked into the hairdryer. It wasn't even just a little bit of hair, it was quite a bit of hair. I snipped it off, probably adding layers my accident. I dried my hair mysef, then both of us went to sleep at about 8:30pm.

We woke around 10:30pm. It is 4:29am. Sleeping at messed up hours does not make for good sleeping patterns. Christoph's managed to go to sleep, thank goodness, but as always I am unable to. I don't even feel tired or sleepy, just rather stoned. For the past 1 hour I have put my mind to work by working on my Mock Exam notes, but now can't be bothered. After I finish this piece of bread, I will attempt to sleep again.

Karl V

2011-02-28T14:51:00.002Z

After a night of sleeplessness, punctuated by the various wails from the sounds of the night, I awoke to a gloomy rainy London day. Just as I wanted to start studying for my mock exam around 1pm, I felt my brain fail on me. I could barely think, yet I was not sleepy. I was just tired.

Somehow, around 2:30pm, I felt my second wind coming. As I started to type away at my notes, I felt myself grow calmer as the panic started to recede (helps that I find Charles V such a fascinating character). Then, Modern Man by the Arcade Fire came on and I was filled with an immense sense of exhilaration that I am where I am, not necessarily living a perfect life, but in possession of all the things that one needs to live a life. I thought of Christoph, and I thought of us, and I felt refreshed.

Of Roommates and Flatmates

2011-02-26T17:21:00.003Z

I have done and spent very little of today awake. I woke up around 12pm (surprise, considering I went to sleep only with the aid of melatonin around 4am), and then dozed off around 2pm to 4pm when I was reading in bed. I have just finally managed to force myself into doing something productive, which was cleaning the kitchen. This time, rather than clearing the ledge with the plant, knife blocks and wine bottles, I opted to clean the oven door instead.

It was very strange cleaning the oven door. As I cleaned it, I wondered how long it was since the last person cleaned it. As I recalled further, I remembered that when we moved in, out of cleaning the entire kitchen, Ching and I didn't clean the oven. But since then, various people have cleaned the kitchen other than me (probably about a combined 5 times from both Ching and Zoe since we decided to specialize in our duties). Then there was the time I apparently put a styrofoam base into the oven under a frozen pizza when I thought it was cardboard. The story then goes that Christoph saw it and cleaned it up before I saw it because he didn't want to make me upset. Did he, or any of my flatmates clean the poor oven then? I don't know.

What was interesting however was that I realise the oven door actually isn't tinted slightly brown/sepia-ey. The moment my sponge and yellow rubber gloves touched the door, the brown gunk promptly stucked EVERYWHERE. The yellow sponge turned brown in a split second. I do not exaggerate. It's like it was just sitting there, waiting to be touched to be removed. I didn't even have to scrub very hard. As I gingerly scrubbed away with my sponge, I noted the dominant smell of the oven was of chocolate cake. I made chocolate cake last term around Week 5, which would've been early November 2010. It smelt the same as my chocolate cake, which was too chocolatey for its own good and collapsed under its own sheer density. It came out more like the richest brownie I could've ever imagined.

Anyway I digress. As I was cleaning the kitchen, I was thinking about the whole idea of flatmate-ing, and roommate-ing. One of my flatmates from this year was Zoe, my roommate from last year. You'd think living in such confined quarters together, that things would not differ from this year. They have. Now don't get me wrong, I actually really really care and like Zoe. But inevitably, as with all humans with their unique idiosyncrasies, people can and will grate on each other. An example is the issue of slamming doors. For some goddamned reason Zoe cannot close the front door silently. I suspect she even gets a kick out of slamming the door. On a scale of irritating behaviours, this is actually something like a 2/10. But depending on the time of the day, the mood I am in, that could rise on the scale very significantly. Then there are little stuff, like who throws out the trash (which I admit to being an extremely lousy flatmate for), suspicions that people are not doing their duties in turn. Another thing about girls is the hair accumulation in the shower, which I feel I remove very often. All these little irritants add up, and colour perceptions whether valid or not with each other.

Which brings me to my original point, regarding staying in the same flat with your close friends. It is not a good idea. On Weds when Jia and I met up for a lovely sushi dinner at Atariya, we spoke briefly about this. Little things that one finds endearing in a friend, might not necessarily translate to being a good flatmate. An example is about a house I know where a group of close friends stay. One of them is known for being self-interested. As friends, its something one can laugh about, since he does take the piss out of himself too. As a flatmate, it turns out he actually is self-interested. He takes and uses things without paying, never takes the initiative to purchase combined household items, and leaves messes in the kitchen without cleaning up. That translates into being a horrid flatmate. As for the group of them, their relationship is rather strained now. When looking for flatmates, its best to not look for how close you are them them sometimes, but rather how they are in their lifestyles, habits and behaviour. If you're a messy person, room only with messy people, etc. Little things like that can very much affect how much you enjoy being at home.

And the most important point: never move in with your boyfriend with other mutual friends. By this I mean for example, in a 3 person flat where you and your boyfriend have a room each. Don't be either party, the couple, or the third wheel. The couple will gang up on the other person if they work out, and it they don't work out the other person will invariably need to take sides. If you're in the couple that does break up, then you will be stuck with seeing the ex all the time. Either way at a given time, someone is miserable. Of course this does not affect all living arrangements, but it is a good rule of thumb. If you want to move in with your chosen partner, do it when its just the two of you, and not with a random other person. I've heard enough horror stories regarding this to look upon all such arrangements with a sense of dread.

Settler Aggression

2011-02-26T03:54:00.002Z

This is ridiculous. I think I am less recovered from last week than I am ready to acknowledge. On the BBC website, I saw a picture of cricket fans stuffed into queues attempting to buy tickets for the cricket world cup. When I saw the picture, I instantly felt very sad because 1) they're passionate enough about something to suffer just to buy those tickets and 2) some of them might be disappointed because there aren't enough tickets available. 1) is because I haven't felt lively enough in ages, and that's what I was reminded of when I saw the queues, but 2) really strikes a chord because it's like I can almost feel the disappointment of not being able to get what you've really want, and worked so hard to achieve.

The last time a photograph had such an impact on my feelings, it was when I saw this picture from the Gaza Strip:

I will eat a banana, and then attempt to sleep again.

Coca Cola

2011-02-26T03:23:00.003Z

I am yet again awake at a ghastly hour. Earlier, from about 8 to 10-ish, I feel deeply asleep. I had one of those deep sleeps which takes ages for the body to reawaken, yet you wake up more tired than before. It was one of those deep sleeps where you remember and (especially) have really strange dreams which feel very real, but are very strange. So instead of sleeping at a proper time, I am now awake at 3:26am typing away.

I had earlier lay in bed and attempted to sleep. While I lay there I thought of many things, too many things in fact. I started to feel distressed and panicky. Chief of these was the fact that I felt that I had lied to one of my government tutors about why I was missing for class today. Honestly, I had not done the work. I had seen the readings, but had missed the lecture the week before, and as a result I all saw was a bunch of incomprehensible statistics and probability formulas. But at the same time the reason I gave was valid. I did, and have been, running on about 5-6 hours sleep every night from Tuesday onward. Thursday, my day to sleep in was ruined when Camden Council decided to be maddeningly efficient for once and cut the damn grass at 8am in the morning. I was already starting to feel the effects on my body and my psyche yesterday evening, but had I have really wanted to go to the class, I could have pushed myself. I feel guilty because although my reason was valid, I knew I could've done better had I wanted to.

Which brings me to yet another distressing thought: more essays and mock exams. It's not so much the act of preparing and doing it that worries me (surprising, even to me), I realised, but the fact that I have seemed to be consistently under-performing. Today, while having drinks with the usual people at 5pm on Fridays, they spoke briefly about essays. One said the lowest he'd ever gotten was 59. The other said he was used to scoring high 60s on his essays. I did not participate in that particular conversation but instead smiled, nodded, and laughed as appropriate. Just the thought that I have been getting nothing but 58/59 for all my essays this year was enough to diminish any joy I had within me for that moment. Worse still, it was not something I felt I could allow myself to admit to other people. It makes me feel like a failure.

Last time, something like that would not have affected me to this extent. I am used to under-performing. The report books of my past are littered with comments like "is a bright girl... I don't understand why she gets the grades she does". Unfortunately this seems to be a 14 year rut I seem to be unable to get out of. No matter how much I try, seeing teachers, seeing writers-in-residence, I never seem to be able to break the barrier. I have no idea what to do. And the fact that I don't know what to do, the fact that it scares me so much, makes me go into denial and attempt to push the thoughts out of my mind. This means however that whenever I am reminded, my mood takes in instant leap into a void. I had hoped things would've been different in University (although it could be a British style education that doesn't agree with me in general), but its really the same as when I did the IB/O Levels/PSLE.

I had originally hoped to post about the very tasty Vietnamese food I've been having of late in the Clerkenwell area with Christoph, but that will have to wait for tomorrow.

*Instead of drinking a pint today with the guys at 5pm, I drank a can of coke because alcohol would've put me to sleep instantly.

Tuesday, Week 7

2011-02-22T17:44:00.002Z

Apparently there is no hot water at home again. I think I was the last person who had a hot shower this morning before I left for school. Wasn't my fault, I didn't break anything. In fact, someone (it might've been me, but the pettiness inside blames it on another flatmate) knocked off my shower gel and didn't move it back upright. The whole bathroom, much to my chagrin, now smells like Sanex Moisturising shower gel. I was upset to see what must've been 1/4 of the shower gel all over the sides of the bathtub, leaking out, when I got home to investigate the panicked texts of a flatmate (perhaps she was the one who tipped over my shower gel and didn't put it back upright!!!).

So anyway back to the investigation, after testing all the taps in the house I determined that the water pressure of all the cold water taps in the house was much much more lower than usual. Usually if you turn the cold water tap in the kitchen on the slightest bit, BOOM, your clothes are all wet from the intensity of the splatter of water. This has happened to me numerous times because the tap directions are a bit counter-intuitive. It did not happen this time. ALSO, after just going to the kitchen for my nutella sandwich, I have discovered to my chagrin that I am right, there is no more cold water coming out from the taps. It is a Camden Council problem after all, not of my dearly beloved landlord.

I suppose the perks of having freaked out so much last week is that I am oddly sanguine about this whole water business now. I've run out of energy to freak out. Well, that and perhaps because this is the second time in weeks that this has happened (I think it was Week 4 when the water stopped working).

-----

I originally wanted to blog about my day today, when I was eating a Wright's Bar sandwich (with salad, extra 25p) and was wandering around the East Building. I didn't want to disturb the calm of the History Common Room, and so went outside. There however, I was in a hallway surrounded by the doors of various professors and such of the History department. One door at the end of the hallway was open too, and I could hear talking from inside. Feeling a bit silly and awkward, I decided to move onto the staircase area. It was unusually cold because someone had left a window open (and today itself was a pretty chilly day) so after consuming one sandwich, I moved on to look for somewhere warmer.

My search for a warmer part of the building brought my downstairs, past rooms bearing more familiar names, and onto the link bridge of the East Building with the Clare Market Building where I found a warm radiator. I promptly propped myself against it, munching on my sandwich while hoping no one noticed me. This was because again, I was in a very weird and awkward position, eating a sandwich randomly outside offices. Of course as it always is with such situations when you hope you're not seen, two people walked by while I kind of shrank inwardly. Soon after I finished up my sandwich and scarpered back to the Common Room to continue my reading.

-----

I hope Camden Council fixes the water soon.

A Recount

2011-02-19T13:01:00.003Z

Looking back at the comments written on previous posts by kind commenters, I feel guilty. Unfortunately it's guilt for feeling something that I felt, and therefore not quite something that I can change. I don't know. I am slowly feeling better. The weather outside is very gloomy today.

8th Feb, Tuesday, I went to the National Portrait Gallery with Shu Wen to see the Taylor Wessing portrait prize.

12th Feb, Saturday, I celebrated Dexter's birthday with some other friends at Tiny Robot. The food was good, but strange. We went back to Jon's and watch the remainder of Shaun of the Dead (which I had previously seen with Ianthe, Steph and Jiahui during Summer last year).

15th to the 16th, Tuesday to Wednesday, I skipped school and hid at home to lie low.

17th Feb, Thursday, I went shopping. I walked from school to Covent Garden, then to Leicester Square, cutting through Soho to reach Oxford Circus. It was a nice, sunny day.

18th Feb, Friday, I went for the Talking With Nazis talk by Laurence Rees, then I went to Kam Fung to eat dinner with Christoph.

Today, I'll be watching True Grit with Christoph at the Barbican, followed by dinner afterwards. I received the Calvin and Hobbes comic book I bought the other day on Amazon. I might go for a run. I ought to clean the kitchen. I am resolved not to do any studying today.

Que Sera Sera

2011-02-19T12:37:00.002Z

Last night I attended an LSE Literary Fest talk by Laurence Rees (there seem to be various versions with regards to the exact spelling of his name) called Talking with Nazis. He was an ex-BBC producer of historial documentaries around the WW2 era (why the hell does that sound like such an awesome job, and why aren't there more like that to go around?) and did one of the first documentaries about Germany and the Nazis. As a companion to the talk he gave, which was on the nature of interviews and interviewees, we watched some clips of interviews conducted with old SS guards and a woman who denounced her neighbour. For the optimists, it's not a sob fest of the interviewees crying their regret, and for the pessimists it wasn't a straightforward denial (they did agree to be interviewed after all). Instead it was insightful listening and watching to their responses. It was just simple, plain, matter-of-fact recounting. I did it, but I won't tell you whether I have regrets. It was part compartmentalisation and part self-denial. It was an excellent, refreshing talk.

That wasn't really why I wanted to post about last night's talk, though I seem to have accorded it a nice paragraph without really setting out to do so. I went home and googled Laurence Rees, and it turned out he wrote one of the core texts that I used for my extended essay in IB. The fact that I had actually handled his work, read his words and seen his person (albeit retroactive realising) made me excited (retroactively), so I spent a solid few minutes bugging the hell out of a Philip Pullman-reading Christoph. That was exciting.

In other news, my digestive system seems to have gone completely haywire. Last night before I went to bed, I ate a pile of pasta and went to sleep straight away. 4 hours later I wake up, bloated and hungry and unable to sleep as a consequence. I spend the next 30 minutes eating all sorts of random things, toast, biscuits, slices of ham before I am full enough to go to sleep. I wake up 5 hours later, still tired, and now completely bloated. My stomach feels so sick, and its been like this for the past few days.

Week 6

2011-02-17T18:56:00.001Z

After talking to some friends today, I realised that a lot of people have been burnt out from school too. However, their burn out manifests in less destructive ways, as my skin surely attests to.

Perhaps next week will be better.

I haven't wished this in a long time

2011-02-15T22:42:00.000Z

but I wish I was dead now.

I am very tired of living, and attempting to live.

Pesce

2011-02-07T19:28:00.002Z

Week 5 is finally here, and by extension A Week of Hell right after a week of Preparing for Hell. I am very tired.

Today I finally stumbled upon a good recipe which is fairly chinoise enough for my palate. White fish, cod in my case, marinated in a soy sauce-chopped garlic-brown sugar-sesame sauce mix. Tastes almost like the soon hook my grandma would always order in restaurants back home.

Thank God for valium and Yes Minister.

Fuck Internships

2011-01-27T11:55:00.003Z

I don't know what to do with my life.

First off, my grades are crap. No one wants to hire anyone who's managed to fuck up her First Year in Uni and get a 2:2. Nevermind that I missed it by 0.666666 marks. Fuck the rounding up and rounding down system.

Second off, the things I actually am interested in are very hard to get due to numbers. The world has too many PhDs running around clawing at academia and think tanks as it is. Even working in NGOs is hard for the same reason, too many people and too little places.

Thirdly, I can't take a job that is high stress. I simply cannot cope with stress or insomnia (which is brought about by stress anyway), because at the rate my neuroses are going, I am going to end up dead sooner rather than later - and that's just with the stress LSE brings.

Lastly, and worst of all, I have no confidence in myself at all to even go out and apply for anything. Even rubbish like HR wants applicants to have a 2:1. In the eyes of the competitive working world, I am nothing even with my shiny expensive degree from LSE and intelligence.

I hate it when people ask me about the future, because presently, I have none.

Drei

2011-01-23T17:34:00.002Z

Since I have not been doing this for some time, I have decided to write about 3 books that I have read recently.

Imre Kertész's Detective Story took a while to get a hold on me. At the end however, I was left with a fairly discernable impression. It was not enough however, to strike quite a resounding chord with me. A good read nonetheless.

Anne Tyler's Digging to America was highly entertaining. Jumping from narrator to narrator, I especially loved the bits the grandmother Maryam narrated. I even brought the book the school on multiple occasions to read when I was between classes. Still at the end, it seemed to lack a little something (or as Jia puts it, umami).

The best of all 3 however, was Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's. The titular story did not impress me as much as the latter three short stories did. When it comes to a well executed and finished story, Capote is simply one of the best. The problem I usually have with short stories is that they ring hollow when they finish. Sometimes, you even wonder about the motivation for even wanting to write them. They tell something unsatisfactorily and answer nothing. This was especially the case for Enright's Taking Pictures and D'Ambrosio's The Dead Fish Museum. Capote however tells and sums up a good yarn.

Eating Animals

2011-01-22T16:20:00.002Z

Apparently I am heartless. On Wednesday, I somehow managed to drag my hungover ass into the Old Theatre by 6:25pm (luckily, because at 6:45pm the lecture theatre was full), and listening to Jonathan Safran Foer talk about his newest book (albeit published more than a year ago), Eating Animals. As some of you might have recalled, I am a great fan of his writings. Every year that I have read them, every year they have made my list of Top Ten Reads (which reminds me that the 2010 one is still tardy :/) Going for a talk by him, even though I like my meat very much, seemed only natural.

So anyway I went and listened. He was very good and very convincing. Not everyone can go vegetarian he argued, but surely you can give it up for just one meal a week? And he's right. Unfortunately while my mind and my heart, arguably thinking organs, I am unable to reason with my stomach. 30 minutes after eating a satisfying meal of spaghetti bolognese (fine there was beef in it), my stomach started to bray for more food. As much as I like the idea of going vegetarian, and I do know of the health effects of eating too much meat, meat is still one of those stomach fillers that keeps it full for the longest period of time. And I am frequently hungry because my metabolism is completely out of control, to the point that it is detrimental to my health >:(

Thus today while separating the meat into single person portions, I realised I had 4 portions of pork chops for 1 person, 1 portion for 2 people (Christoph gets 1 more pork chop) and 3 portions of chicken for 1 person. Therefore I must conclude, I am heartless to the poor animals.

I need a life part deux

2011-01-17T14:54:00.003Z

In my neverending wrestling with essays (!!!), this time with the Chinese Civil War, I often mentally turn into a mush pile as all my energies are directed towards dissecting, rephrasing and plagiarizing works of the Good Men. That and wishing I was playing CIV4 instead/getting a haircut/pulling out my hair strand by strand.

Therefore, my latest obsession: the waiter in the first part of Kelly Clarkson's I Do Not Hook Up. SO HOT.