The city is at war

Argh I'm so dissatisfied with life again.

I don't understand how everything when so wrong for us.

I need to move on

So there I was last night, having fun and dancing with friends when I just happen to look across the dancefloor (somehow the waves of people had parted for just a split second) and I see him there with that God-I'm-so-uncomfortable look on his face. The same face I remember from the first week of crush where we left LSE taking care of two tipsy people, the same face I remember from the night of the Malaysian Boat Party (how the hell did I just sum up my entire partying career in a mere paragraph? I am evidently a loser) - and my heart stopped for a moment. He was wearing the same outfit as the night we got together. And his face? That was the expression I fell in love with, for some absurd reason.

Last night I did the same things I did with him those nights, I dragged friends who looked uncomfortable out to dance with - hoping they'd be able to share in the fun too. And every time I did it, I thought of the times I did it for him all because I wanted him to have fun and I wanted to see him smile. And they did, even if just for a moment, they laughed, they smiled for me. And it crossed my mind for a moment to do for to him again, despite all the anger that has been racing through my blood the past few days and in the one spare moment I just wanted to see him enjoy himself and see him smile his weird smile again.

I am not by nature an angry person. The problem with me being angry for a sustained period of time especially is that it messes with me like crazy. Whenever I fight with a friend, every time I see that person I get upset again - feeling anger and hurt in equal overwhelming parts. If you remove that person from my sight it gets pseudo better, I can shelve my anger for another period where in the interim it festers like crazy - but if I see the person all the time or am constantly reminded me of them, things become unbearable. And that is how I feel now. Why am I hurt and angry? Because I poured so much love and effort into a relationship, because I feel worthless now in your eyes, because I feel like I'm not good enough for you and you dumped me, because you did it so suddenly and inconsiderately, but mostly it was because you made up your mind to leave and spent more than a month before you could tell me - time that could have been spent together trying to work on things.

The day before he left me I emailed a frantic email to a certain Hadi. In it I outlined everything, the situation and how badly I was feeling. And what he said broke my heart, "Mel it's not so much that he doesn't want to spend time with you, it's that he doesn't want to spend any time with you" (well along those lines anyway). So there it is outlined, I had become a burden dragging him down. The knowledge that you're a burden hurts. It says you're not worth the effort. It says I'm too good for you. It says, no screams, you are worthless in my eyes.

That is certainly how I feel now, worthless. Crap appearance, crap attitude, crap personality, crap behaviour. I have never felt so judged as a person before in my life, not by any teacher, parent nor 'friend'. I cannot even accuse my ex-es or the people I regularly dislike of this. He was one of the people that knew me closely and rejected me as a result. That feeling, is palpable hurt that cannot be remedied by anyone else.

I need to resume finding myself again, after stopping because of school work.

Ben Dover

Things I hate:
1) Being angry

Things I hate even more:
1) People seeing me when I'm angry

-----

I don't know why I'm so angry and frustrated today. In colloquial language I'm feeling damn SIAN. It started off well enough, lecture, class, etc. Lunch was with Dexter, Rufus, Khey Jo and Michelle at the Kebab place on Kingsway. The real frustration started to sink in during the 1pm to 3pm period where I was left to my devices. I ordinarily did work during this time, but today I was literally too sian to do work. So I read a bit for my presentation on Ireland then wandered off to the NAB.

I reached the NAB at about 2pm, just in time to see the mess of changing classes. It was quite nice actually, sitting there and watching people stream about. I saw a few familiar faces about. I then started reading Surely You're Joking Mr Feynman. I felt calmer and less annoyed. After a while Daryl, my History classmate appeared and we talked for a while before heading to class upstairs.

After class however my sian meter is filled to the brim. I AM DAMN SIAN. I see Zhi Wei and end up complaining to her. I walk back, and bump into Michele, my roommate, just outside Passfield. I come back and am still trying to get hold of Stephanie Yuen, who I usually go gym with on Mondays. I call her multiple times and cannot get hold of her. My meter is rising. I go out to use the bathroom, and they're BOTH occupied. I try and call again. I go and and the bathroom next to my room is STILL being used. I go the the other bathroom and some idiot didn't flush and it looks damn gross. ARGHBRU C@Y%*(C$Y *(@#$

Then I finally get through to Stephanie. She just finished the gym and is heading back. I REALLY REALLY lose my temper this time. Admittedly it was my fault for not replying her earlier, but I assumed she remembered I always finished class at 4 and could only go to gym at 4:30 earliest - but after a day of pent up frustration all I need is one more smidgen of irritation to really shove me over into ANGRY from simply FRUSTRATED.

On my way out, I kick open of the firedoors. Then I start thinking about whether there are CCTVs around. I decide I don't care, but at the same time refrain from kicking open the other doors on my way out. I shove off to the gym and meet Stephanie at the entrance of Passfield. I try to shove past before I show how angry I am. I walk to the gym.

At the gym there is a long line of people ahead of me. Inside the gym I can see people queuing up for machines. THAT'S GREAT. The counter girl asks me to wait for a while because I think I need to renew my membership. In the meantime while I'm slouched and leaning on the counter, and generally looking and feeling pretty bad I hear someone almost singing out my name and I jolt up in surprise.

Did I mentioned I've never run into anyone I know from LSE outside of LSE before? Well that now has changed because I ran into one of my History classmates. At the gym. In a bad mood. Of all freaking bad times to have to run into anyone, especially someone from a group where I am desperately trying to make friends with (GOD I sound like such a loser) and thus appear normal and happy/adjusted. And I turn around in surprise and there he is smiling and I have this absolutely stunned look on my face because well I AM STUNNED. That and I didn't even know he knew my name.

Blah I am still sian, 250-something calories less later. I hope it goes away, I have a presentation and an essay due in on Friday this week.

Tonight is the night to let it go

So baby don't worry, you are my only,
You won't be lonely even if the sky is falling down.

-----

I still remember the night when I was at Cheam's place and I saw the video for this song (we laughed at how Jay Sean looked like a bigger Mel Chandi). I laughed especially at Jay Sean's dancing in the video because it reminded me of how you danced - and how you hated dancing and always looked awkward doing it. I guess you must have copied it somewhere. That was you in my eyes, awkward and sort of loser-ish - and for some reason I loved you so much for it. I fell in love with you exactly for who I saw in you, another person trying struggling to cope with the world and the place that we had been put in. However for as much as I let you in, you kept me out. No matter how much love I gave I could never penetrate the walls that you put up, walls of frustration, unfulfilled ambition and fear.

I have learnt a very painful lesson from all of this. That no matter how much love and trust you put into a relationship, it will never be enough if the other person cannot put forth and open themselves as much as you have. That the romantic notion of love changing everything doesn't quite exist in actuality, because I gave all the love I could possible muster, all the patience, all the energy and effort, but yet I still could not save the relationship on my own.

You kept me out yourself, and you blocked me out even though I tried my best to reach through to you. I loved you so much but you could not bring yourself to do the same. And it hurts trying to come to terms with this, for someone as optimistic as I am that for everything I put in, you put in but a marginal percentage, and that all the love in the world could not have resulted in a happy ending for me.

I no longer wake up with you on my mind, nor are you the last thing on my mind when I sleep at night. Yet as inexplicably as the rest that have left me, your name has been etched on the muscle of my beating heart - scars that will heal but never go away. I might be but a footnote in your life, but you have occupied a whole chapter in mine.

Instead tonight before I sleep I will think of a boy with blonde hair and blue eyes, sometimes hidden behind metallic glasses and sometimes not. And I will wonder if he'll be turning up for lecture and classes tomorrow, and hold on to the hope that he will, for the sight of him brings joy to my heart - a joy that it has been deprived of since the day I flew off to go home for Winter.

The Story

It seems like My Blueberry Nights is my go-to movie at the end of a heartbreak.

Now if only I had a Jeremy around too.

The breakup 24 pound Teddy Bear I bought for myself from Hamley's is called Bundaberg

I just woke up from a dream where I dreamt of the friends that I missed back in Singapore. It was like in two parts, first was a random Hadi and Cheam with some others I don't remember going on some sort of journey and I was with them. The other part was with Yihang, Steph, Arjun, Daryl and Kaijun, the usual Ink people (with me repeatedly asking where was Jia in the dream) settling down for dinner and drinks to celebrate my 20th Birthday.

I remember being really happy in the dream, being able to see everyone again. But somehow I'm still happy now having woken up because it felt so real - that it really was just nice to see everyone again even if just in a dream.

I think if I stayed in bed longer I would have dreamed of more people.

Perhaps it was the gathering, a meetup for Gareth and Cheang Jin, that I went too last night that triggered it off.

She

When I was Secondary 4, I fell hard for an angel. As it unfolded, I wrote at the same time, documenting the happiness she made me feel and at the same time the torn feeling I felt liking her. I called it “Of Floortiles and Her” because everytime she passed me, I was so overwhelmed I couldn’t look at her at all and would start at the grey-pink tiles that lined the floor of my old school.

My memory fails me when it comes to quite pinpointing when it first started, or what triggered it off per se. The main factor was that somehow even though we were in different classes, I saw her almost everyday (or perhaps it was everyday). We had the same social studies and history class, plus I had literature with her.

There was just something about her. The way she smiled, a little shy sort of smile, like she was unsure of something, just melted my heart – and her small eyes crinkling into oblivion did nothing to aid the calming of my heart either. I wouldn’t describe what I felt for her as love in the conventional sense either. It was certainly a crush, but it seemed somehow very motherly in nature. I had absolutely neither sexual nor possessive romantic notions of her, the way one might feel in a conventional crush. Instead what I felt was an urge to protect her from the terrors of the world outside, to hold her and to take care of her and protect the good heart I saw within her from becoming hardened.

I suppose a large part of it was due to the fact that she possessed many of the things I did not and hence respected. She was a well-liked figure in school, intelligent and a top scorer, a relatively high ranking prefect and one of the top athletes in school. I was scraping the barrel academically, thin as a reed and feeling isolated from my classmates. The disparity could not have been greater. I suppose everything just clicked nicely during that time and I started to notice my heart beating faster everytime she approached and the surge of happiness I felt when I saw her.

I used to run into her in the bathroom a lot for some inexplicable reason. I think she used it a lot because she drank a lot of water whereas I just liked going for a walk in the middle of class. I did the same thing in ACSI, so I can’t be called some random bathroom stalker. I’d walk in, see her, and she’d smile at me then leave. And then I’d be floating from a massive pseudo-sugar high for the next few hours.

It created a massive conflict in me because of my religion. I was and still am a Christian, and though I personally believe that homosexuality is one of the lesser sins, it is still a sin nonetheless. To others, I didn’t mind, I even respected them for having the daring to do so – but years and years of drilling had affected my consciousness and I felt guilty nonetheless. She brought such joy to my heart, yet it made me feel so guilty inside. The effect on my psyche was overwhelming and I felt so terrible inside everyday.

The last time I saw her was in July 2007 when we call convened back in school for our graduation ceremony. I was just about to leave, sweating about in my nude stockings and blouse in 30 degree humid weather (oh I can’t remember feeling that way anymore after being back in England for more than a month), I saw her leave. As she walked off, she turned around and smiled that beautiful smile at me for one last time before heading off for the rest of her life. I smiled in return.

Oh London

It has rained non stop today. I woke up today it was raining, I left class to take photos of people in Covent garden - it was raining. I walked to LSE, bought a cheeseburger from Wright's Bar and went for EH101, it was raining. I came out and walked to the library to photocopy things and it was raining still. The final straw was when I came out to go back to Passfield AND IT WAS STILL RAINING AFRC(J*UX$)UB$)C%.

So I took a bus back. Best 1.20 pounds spent this week - I was extremely satisfied.

Valentine's Day 2010

Violent Violin

There is a bruise forming on the thin skin between my breasts. It resides in the hollow where they both end. When I touch it, it hurts. I can feel something solid behind it, something I can only assume is my rib cage. Meanwhile, the thin skin and flesh that covers and protects my vital organs is bruised. Touch sensors saying hard and painful, alongside soft and cold fingers shoot to the neurons in my brain when I touch it. I press it to make sure its still there and hasn't fled from me overnight like you.

On Tuesday during Ceramics class, I burnished a vase that I had made. I had to prop it up on my chest in order to grip it to burnish. My pocket vibrated, and I got a text. The text was from you, of all goddamned people, telling me of some random event. I felt my blood race, and dilute venules in my cheeks. I felt my muscles tense in my shoulders, getting ready to fight my way out of a threatening situation. But no, it was just a text. And I was just a girl burnishing a vase.

I held on to the vase tighter and burnished faster and faster and faster. My chest started to ache in pain as the tissue started to bleed from the pressure exerted on it. I burnished faster, willing either myself or the vase to break first. But nothing broke, except for me on the inside. Even my flesh and skin has betrayed me by refusing to break alongside me.

I am alone in trying to repair myself for this world.

My Tomato Days

Today as I was walking back from EH101, I found a tomato mysteriously lying in the gutter along the side of Bloomsbury Park. My first instinct as with all interesting and unusually placed objects is to pick it up. As I leaned down to pick it up, I started thinking about throwing it against a tree to watch it explode. Then it occurred to me that there were too many people around and that I might get into trouble. It was just as well because upon touching the tomato I realised it was too firm and probably would just bruise itself. Poor tomato. I wonder how it ended up lying in the gutter. Probably fell out of someone's shopping.

Anyway I held on to the tomato as I walked back, occasionally stopping to toss it about. I got funny stares from people, but I just kept walking. When I reached back to my dorm, I knew what I was going to do with the tomato. I addressed it to the resident womaniser (or manslut) of the dorm who happened to share the same surname as me (and thus I had access to his mailbox) and left a nice little note. Ohohoho.

The sun is out again today, and I kept bumping into people I know in school. That helped cheer me up (: But, today is yet another long day. Who knows what else may happen?

Set Yourself on Fire

Today I went to Waitrose. There I spotted the 6 pack house brand Salt and Vinegar crisps that I used to love eating in Singapore. You could only get them in Cold Storage Jelita in Singapore.

I remember when I first started dating Patrick, I used to talk about how much I loved them. I think it was the week of his birthday when I bought some apple chips for him because he mentioned once how he went to a friend's house, ate them and loved them.

On one of the first few times we went out, I bumped into him outside NTUC just as I was getting ready to meet him for out date. He sheepishly told me that he was looking for Waitrose Salt and Vinegar crisps, but could only find Lays in NTUC, and then he handed me the plastic bag. This was some 3 years ago, yet the memory of it still makes me smile.

Accepting Death

I came to London not knowing the proper way in which to prepare rice for cooking.

I remember one Saturday night I wanted to steam mince pork with rice and you taught me how to do it. You fill the pot up with water, knead lightly. Feel the rice grains running over your hands, feel the pain shooting up as warm hands plunge into ice cold water. Feel the sensation of rice grains and numbness simultaneously. Hear you talk about how your mother hated to do it, and you always did it for her. How it was something you didn't mind. Feel the smile across my face as I watched you washing the rice intently. Hear you complain about how it appeared the water never washed the rice clean and it was "gross".

I never washed rice again after that. You always did it for me. You cooked me porridge the one day I was sick. I ate it instead of dinner and gave my fish and chips to Michelle who was hungry that day. It had sweet potatoes, carrots and chicken on it. When it was hot it tasted yummy, but for some reason when you heated it up later that day I felt like vomiting. I'm not sure if its the same night where you asked why, and I replied "maybe I'm pregnant" and then you looked like your soul flew out of the window as I tried to shake you and say I'm Kidding! Hello how could I be pregnant if we haven't had sex? Are you in primary school where pregnancy comes from holding hands? and you were stunned the rest of the night anyway.

The week after we broke up, I washed the rice for dinner. Rufus started scolding me, asking me why I was washing it so much, It needs some starch left you know! And I replied, that's how he likes it, he always wants it to be clean. Let the fool wash it himself then, Rufus replied. That night after they left to change for ice skating, I lingered in the room and watched you try to beat a racing game. You eventually did it and I left thinking, if you put that much effort and dedication into our relationship it would have worked out.

Today I washed rice again, in our little sink in TG04. I plan to eat rice for lunch and went to get more rice from your room. The daffodils I bought for a pound and gave to you the day before we broke up are blooming now, just in time for Chinese New Year. You smiled when you reached up to get the rice and hand it to me. You made a comment about how you hadn't killed them yet, amazingly. I replied, yes, considering that a malevolent spirit resides here.

As I washed the rice, I remember everything about that night. How you taught me how to wash the rice and how the rice grain felt running over my hands that night as you taught me how to knead the rice. I felt the numbness seep into my fingers again as I thought about you, and thought about then.

I have a packet of Vitasoy to look forward to

Last night I took medicine before I went to sleep.

Today I woke up physically fine for once, but traumatised from dreaming a dream where all I did was sob violently and become hysterical and miss someone who smiled a smile that stole my heart. And the pit of depression appeared again too.

At least I have another lunch to look forward to as well, today.

Only when I sleep

Only when I sleep,
I see you in my dreams

I am afraid to go to sleep tonight. For the past three nights and past three mornings I have dreamt of him and woken up with full blown panic attacks as a result. The mental and physical trauma is becoming more than I can handle, especially when I am suffering from a lack of sleep. I can no longer rest because I am so scared of what will happen tomorrow morning when I wake up.

This is a trauma that is so deep rooted that cannot be reached by any one on any level. It's a fear of what comes within that no one can reach, comfort, or take away. It's not emotional pain that subsides slowly with the soothing words of a friend, it's not physical pain that can be taken away with panadine. It's not even a nightmare that I can be woken up from. Instead it's an emotional terror that shoots deep from the core where I am terrified of the places my dreams will take me and the physical pain that manifests as a result. And the worst is that I am all alone in this when I'm sleeping. No one can come and comfort or distract me when the terror hits.

When I am awake I can fight, but when I am unconscious I am helpless.

I am scared to sleep.

Apparently a Banana man ran through ST102 lecture yesterday

I remember last time when I was missing someone when he was serving national service. Someone told me "the nights are the worst" and I agreed.

Every night however my dreams and filled with him. I wake up. I try to fall back to sleep again. When I wake up again the pit in my chest has formed, a tight clench that hurts physically so much till I cannot fall back to sleep. I am exhausted both physically and mentally. It becomes hard to come out of bed everyday when one feels that it is so hard to hope, even when you know there is a life worth living the moment you get out of bed. Waking up depressed in the worst.

I once said missing someone was the worst feeling ever, I forgot to add the word "love". Missing someone you love is the worst feeling ever, especially when you know they're gone.

I've not felt such deep suffering in a long time, nor have I ever recalled fighting the feeling so much before either. There's a very large down, and a very hardworking little up to all of this.
Going to sleep with the knowledge this is going to happen is harder.

"Oh I broke my glasses"

I suddenly remember a period in school towards the end in 2008 when I wore contacts to school for a few days straight as opposed to my usual glasses. When anyone asked, I said I broke my glasses and then smiled. I later found out that people actually believed me and kept asking me whether I could see my way around school. Arjun once asked if I could see enough to see my bus number to take home.

I'm not sure whether I should be touched that people trusted me so much, or laugh that they are so gullible. Thinking about it makes me smile now, in a good old lady 'those were the times' way.

Thinking of you indeed

I woke up this morning feeling terrible again. But this time of a more physiological sort. All the muscles in my chest are clenched tightly. I had a dream about you again and I suffered an anxiety attack in my sleep as a result.

For a Pessimist, I'm Pretty Optimistic

I still remember the day of your birthday. I got out of class and called to see if you were hanging around before Spanish and was told you were still having lunch. As I prepared to walk back, I got another call asking me to come over at meet you at Sainsbury Holborn. Then you asked me if I wanted to meet your friends. I froze a little because I was nervous, what if they didn't like me?

In the end I went along with you to My Old Dutch and met the 3 of them there. We talked for a short while before leaving. I remember it was cold outside and your friends slowly left. One walked with us down the block to Bloomsbury Park and took a bus from there. It was dark out, very dark. You were cold and I offered you the green plaid scarf I was wearing, that you were always fascinated with. I had on my white long gloves from H&M. I clung on to you as we walked at the side of the closed Bloomsbury Park, and down through Russell Square. We were talking, but I can't remember what about. I remember feeling really happy and excited.

Today as I looked out of the window during the same aforementioned class, seated next to a Really Hot Guy, I remembered that. I felt sad, because I remembered what I once had and now had lost. I thought about how much things had changed. And then I noticed something else, it was much more brighter now than it was at the end of November last year and the sun hadn't set yet.

Even though you are no longer around, things are no longer wreathed in darkness.

Someday

I need to be reminded sometimes of how my life here in LSE has been everything my heart had been hoping for. From being constantly in the last classes in my top all girls Primary and Secondary school, I had been implicitly told that I wasn't good enough, not smart enough to amount to much in life. Teachers said we were lazy, and a teacher scolded me in front of the class saying I was a disgrace to my family and stupid. I cried. I cried everytime inside when I got a mark in the 50s. It seemed that I was doomed to failure. But somehow, I managed to nudge my way into yet another top Junior College. On results day I cried out of relief, not happiness.

At Junior College I was surrounded by friends who scored brilliantly and were brilliant in their own manner. I still scored 50s no matter how much they tried to help me. I cried again. I got scolded by the principal for doing badly in Chinese and being the last for Math. I got more stressed. I started getting anxiety attacks over academics. Results day I felt my heart sink deeper and deeper as rows and rows of people left the seats and went on stage. The feeling of being left behind, shouted you are a failure to everyone, especially myself. My lack of academic capability was clear for everyone to see it seemed, and I felt naked. My heart had been broken again.

Then I got into LSE, the reason why I had spent two years working my life away straight. I had never given up fighting what everyone had told me for 12 years of my life, that I was stupid and unworthy of academia. The feeling of intellectual inferiority still plagues me today, but I know that as long as I keep trying and fighting I have already succeeded in my own small way. I am tired of feeling and thinking that nothing I do will ever be good enough.

Bloomsbury

I think I have damaged the tiny veins under the skin of my hands. Cold hands constantly plunged into hot water lead to great bloomings of shrunken constricted veins, some going into shock with the sudden change in temperature. The skin on my hand turns bright red in angry patches and I cannot touch hot water without feeling slight jolts of pain emitting from a deeper layer of my skin. Little bumps raise up in protest, stop doing that, they say. It hurts.

But I keep doing it anyway because hot water in a cold foreign country is one of the consistent few pleasures that life has accorded me. I apply hand cream over the bright red skin, in hopes of soothing it. My hands now smell of cranberries. As I run my fingers over the other hand, rubbing in cream, I remember the other hands that once caressed it.

I continue washing my hands in hot water and watching my skin bloom.

Technology and Tactics baby

My mind is currently overwhelmed with 10,001 ideas for my essay on the Military Revolution 1500s - 1800s in a rather happy way. It just reminds me how much I enjoyed the war and technology section when I was studying for the IB, especially when everything is consolidated in one overarching picture.

I get a little voice in the back of the head saying, "you're doing the wrong majors!"

Elephant and Castle

So anyway I go off for tutoring today, and find a few steps away from my room that my left rubber ear bud for in-ear-earphones is missing. Okay nevermind, its a minor thing. I can always buy another one. Just ten quid, no sense getting upset.

I arrive at Harris Academy to find no one there. OKAY. Breatheinbreatheout. Call people. Get told no one is coming to Ber-fucking-mondsey (meanwhile Irvine Welsh narration comes into my head). Okay smile, go and tutor. Get stumped by questions that I have not seen in ages. Oh my son. Feel stressed. Get message from stressed Hardeep. Unload stress. SMILE.

1 hour of intellectual ego massacre passes. Try to feel better that I could answer most of the questions with the second girl. Wait for bus, get on, get kicked out at Elephant-and-fucking-Castle. Start worrying about getting stabbed. Start worrying about getting raped and robed and thrown into the shrubbery. Start worrying about getting stabbed in the face. Start thinking about yummy calming chamomile tea in room. Get stuck in jam on Waterloo bridge. Ignore old memories and The Pierce's Ruin, playing more (un)fortuitously at the same time.

Find rubber ear bud piece attachment below my desk. Type this out. Take a hot shower. Drink tea. Relax. Thereisnoplacelikehome.

Pinpricks

I woke up this morning feeling like I had just suffered a heart attack.

Now the blood that flows through my veins feels like its prickly and thorny, poking my soft skin from underneath. I feel it poke at my arms and at the pack of my neck. Studded metal haemoglobin globules bumping along narrow blood lines. I feel my heart clench constantly, like it has forgotten to diastole. I feel the prickly blood flow to the back of my head, creating tiny little pinpricks in delicate walls and slowly, but surely, letting my life flow out of me.

Happy

Today after EH101, I had hot chocolate in The Garrick with Swan Yee. Then afterwards I walked back to Passfield. I acted like a penguin in my penguin get up (large poofy coat, funnily shaped ugg boots) while waiting for the traffic to stop, chased after pigeons in Russell Square, dashed across roads, hopped up pavements, avoided the cracks in the tiles, jumped up stairs and jumped down stairs... right into a oddly large crowd of Chinese people I have never seen before in our TV room. Cue retarded smile followed by a quick dash out of the room and balancing on brick planter boxes.

I have not felt so happy and satisfied with life in a long time.

Our Daily Bread

This was the last devotion stored up on my Google Reader, and I read it and cried http://www.rbc.org/devotionals/our-daily-bread/2010/01/15/devotion.aspx

It really feels like I have been given a second chance at life again, with all the writing and contacting of long lost people again. It may sound extremely rich coming from me, but it suddenly feels that for the past 5 years God has been working subtly in the shadows around me till I returned.

Find the Way

Today I bought 3 large blooming daisies from the florist outside Holborn station. As I walked and listening to my ipod, through my usual route of Hoborn-Bloomsbury Park-Bedford Way-Russell Square, an old song that I used to listen to in 2006 came on: Mika Nakashima's Find the Way. I started thinking about here I was, on the cusp of two-oh, walking in a foreign land carrying three bright blooms when it suddenly hit that as much as I thought I never got any better from 2006, I had. 4 Years ago I was suffering through the worst period of my life and I had survived.

I had gone on to a good school, I had made friends that I know will stay with me for life, I fell in and out of love, I developed mentally. I worked my ass off, I got results that were enough to bring me to my next desired stage in life. I fell in love for the first time with a boy, a boy who was probably the only person who ever really loved me for who I was, I experienced a new side of life with him and his friends. I came to London, I learned to carve a new life here out of nothingness. I relearnt the pain of loving someone to no avail. I learned lessons of the depths of human love for one another from the people who have cared and checked on me the past two weeks. And most importantly I learned that I have been wrong for 5 years, I have been wrongly angry at God.

I have changed, in the smallest minutest of ways. I have become more compassionate, more loving, more able to stand up for myself, more able to control hurtful emotions. I have learned how to be stronger, how to appreciate my life more and how to always keep on fighting for life even when there is no hope. I have become the person doing things now that I at 15, all upset and brokenhearted at the cruel twists in life, had wanted to become. And I know I still have some way to go to becoming that person in my mind who I greatly respect, but am now closer to being that young woman than I ever have been.

I am so sorry Lord for blaming you these past 5 years.

Chipped Nail Polish

The mark on my fingernail is still there from that night when we went out to Sainsburys' together. We got back really late and my roommates were sleeping, the door was about to slam shut when I stuck my hand to stop the door from waking my roommates up. It hurt like hell. I wanted to scream in pain. Later that night when I saw you again I showed you my finger, with pink flesh turning purple. You touched it and said it looked painful.

Now you're gone, from me. Taken by forces that were out of my control. No matter how hard I fought, I could not win a battle that required the hearts and wills of two. That mark on my fingernail is now covered with chipped nail polish, hidden and out of sight, but I know it still lingers on.

I can listen to Halfway Around the World without feeling sad now

Every morning when I wake up I am most despondent, and every night after talking to people the entire day, my night ends well.

I have truly been blessed. It is ironic that it is only when we are in the worst possible situations that we really how much truly we are blessed (though I felt like half murdering Zoe when she told me this last night). I am surrounded by the most caring people here in London, even though I might not have known them barely half a year ago.

And I am making headway :D

Blind, by Lifehouse

Last time when I was younger, I used to cry silently. Tears would just form in my eyes and slide down. Now however, whenever I cry it’s a rather violent and physical affair, with screaming and hitting of objects. Somewhere down the line, the emotional pain just escalated till I couldn’t cope with it anymore. Not only could I handle things less well emotionally, I couldn’t handle it physically as well. For the past few days, my appetite has been gone, I’ve been getting bad stomachaches, my head feels dizzy and my breath feels sucked out of me. Plus I keep vomiting. As a result I’m paler than a Brit now because I literally have no blood flowing through my veins. It’s like getting a mild version of extremely bad stomach flu.

Like I said, I wasn’t always like this. It’s not hard to imagine why I want to go back to the past. But today though, I laughed and felt genuinely happy for the first time in the past few days.

-----

I was 13 when I had my first boyfriend. He was someone from my church, called K. He was a year older. He pursued me. He also dumped me 3 days into the relationship. Fantastic. All we ever did was text and instant message each other, but damn did being dumped leave a nasty impact. It made me feel worthless, and I felt that I couldn’t face him. I left a series of dramatic messages where I told him not to contact me. I also remember being fairly depressed, something that didn’t lift for months. I couldn’t really remember why I was depressed, except I’d start crying in class, be really moody and snap at people. I shouted at my teacher once when I thought she was being unreasonable and immediately burst into tears. It only abated when I got really upset and started scratching myself. Looking back, I think it might have been related to my first failed relationship, but I’m not too sure. I actually forgot about K all these years, so I guess he left a smaller impact than originally thought.

Of all my years in Secondary school, I remember Secondary 2, when I was 14, as the fondest. I remember it because it gave me some of the best friends I ever had, Ianthe, Stephanie and Angeline, even though I’ve lost touch with Angeline. I remember all the useless project work days when we would hang out at each other’s house with the pretense of doing work, filming and finally video editing. I remember doing really retarded things, while screwing around with the camera. On a more somber note I also remember spearheading a petition to get the class chairperson ousted. It was so happy, that I don’t really have much to write about. I also remember running home and playing a lot of Warcraft III and GTA: Vice City. I scraped by in school again.

I guess its fair to say when I was 14, something happened that forewarned of the mad path my mind would take. At the end of church camp in 2003, when I was 13, I met a guy called M. He was 4 years older than me, and obviously was in the same church as me. He and I would text each other everyday and talk on instant messenger every night. Once he mentioned how awesome it’d be if we were both got married because our wedding invites could just say M2. AND of course being 14 and absorbed in my world, I didn’t imagine for the slightest moment that he liked me. And liked me he did, soon convincing himself he was madly in love with me. Like all completely irrational and hormonally imbalanced teenagers, I freaked out.

I cut off all contact with him. Whenever I thought about him, all I felt was fear. I was filled with an insane fear that he was going to pin me down and rape me. Once I saw him in church and ran out to the toilets to cry. I had an asthma attack. Then another time when I saw him, I hid in the darkness of my now empty Sunday school classroom till I was convinced he was gone. It was madness really, looking back. All his friends hated me. Hell if I were him, I’d hate me. But yet I did it anyway. I still remember it vividly. It was an all-consuming fear, a fear that made my heart race and adrenaline kick it live never before. It was a fear that completely overwhelmed all mental rational processes and defenestrated it. It was a fear that turned out to have lingered for so long, than when he asked to be my facebook friend in 2007, I rejected him while feeling the same fear coursing through my veins.

2005 however, was the pivotal year of my life. It was the year when I was well and truly kicked into the realm of maturity. I like to think that the events that happened in the end of 2005 and early 2006 that ended up shaping me into the person I am today, batshit insane anxiety, full blown proper depression and extreme paranoia included. It was because everything happened at once, in a most violent manner.

2005 however, didn’t start on such a dire note. I remember it starting as the happiest year ever, when I confessed my liking to a guy I had liked ever since I was 13, A. It was one and a half years of liking the same guy. He was perfect to me, smart, funny and passionate. We would talk online and message each other with our phones. It wasn’t till end 2004 that he started attending the same church as me when our mutual friend brought him. At first after church, we’d go out as a group. Then when everyone slowly left to go home, we’d hang out together. He was the first person I kissed. I still remember the afternoon when he first brought me up to the top level of Tan Tock Seng Hospital and showed me the view. Then there was the afternoon we hung out and he lay in my lap at the small park next to KK Hospital. I documented everything thing down excitedly in my diary.

But he refused to commit. I didn’t press the issue that much, I think.

However at this point of time, L (as mentioned in the previous section), decided to hold training sessions to groom a new generation of church leaders. I wasn’t chosen because I wasn’t deemed ‘holy’ enough. All my friends, the gang I hung out with in church were chosen. Now this was highly unfair of a number of levels. It was evident that she had picked and chose those that came only from good schools, with no respect to actual depth of Spirituality, because A who was chosen had just become a Christian recently. Finally I had been serving the church since I was 13 by helping out in Sunday school and teaching. I was the ones who had gotten my friends into even serving in church to begin with. For all I had done, I had been unfairly passed on to be groomed as a church leader. I was upset enough, but I bore with it.

As friends are unconsciously wont to do, they drifted. All they talked about were little in jokes and things that happened during the training. Plus as the classes happened right after our Sunday school, I didn’t even have time to hang out with them. It also so happened that my best friend, C, was one of two girls really chosen in a class full of boys. I remember saying rather bitterly then that it was more of a potential mating club than a real church leader training group. I felt even more hurt by the fact that I now felt alienated from my friends completely.

And then before I knew it, the signs started cropping up. He started talking to me less. She started telling me less. Then I found out by accident that they were hanging out together a lot. Still I wasn’t sure. This was at the end of 2005. Then it really happened. I still can’t remember when I found out exactly, but it was to the effect that everyone now knew they were dating each other. But what about me? He, the guy I was crazy about, never told me anything. Nor did she, my supposed best friend. I was devastated. The two people who I trusted most, had betrayed me.

I had been with Hakka Methodist Church for my entire life, but I had to leave. I cried and cried for days in the interim. Even leaving the church cut me to pieces. This was the singular institution I had spent my childhood days playing about, where all the familiar faces of my parents friends were. This was where I imagined going to church my entire life. This was where a large portion of my hope and life had been. With one fell swoop, I had been betrayed by a church elder, my best friend and the first boy I really liked. Worse still was the growing gap I felt between my friends and they not even attempting to pull me back. It hurt. For all the love that I had given, I felt nothing in return.

I dropped contact with almost everyone. But they kept finding me, finding me on facebook where even now till today their little church outing photos pop up in my livefeed, and I tell you it still hurts even now because it feels like for all I felt that I had done for them, they had not appreciated me. They didn’t chase me when I ran. They had forgotten me. I felt like I had been easily replaced. All we were was just facebook friends, who didn’t contact each other directly.

At the same time I was experiencing problems in school. A classmate had tried to commit suicide at the end of the year when her school results showed that she had not qualified to move on to the next year of school. I still remember the blame I heaped on myself, for not taking Angeline’s casual passing remark about that particular classmate mentioning suicide before, for letting her out of my sight. As I ran through the corridors that day looking for her, I felt all the hope fly out of my life. We found her. We cried.

That Saturday I remember I started thinking about the events during church practice. I remember breaking down uncontrollably and crying without cessation.

When 2006 rolled around, I was a Senior in Girl Guides. During one of the first orientation meetings, some of the older girls were trying to break in the juniors by making them play those typical orientation games with the apparent idea that public humiliation = bonding session. I remembered being an awkward 12 year old and not wanting to make a fool of myself, so I stepped in and told the other leaders that if those girls didn’t want to do the chicken dance – or some other absurd thing – then they shouldn’t be forced to. I walked away not knowing the implications of what had happened, that the other leaders felt offended by what they felt was an usurp of their authority. They started boycotting me.

At the same time, a lot of my classmates were also in girl guides. I remember calculating that either one-third or a quarter of the class were girl guides. I first found out by the boycott when a long time friend just stared ignoring me completely. While the rest of my classmates still behaved as per normal, she ignored me completely. But there were the others that treated me coldly. At the same time, I had also been talking to and counseling my ex-classmate who had been retained. That my classmates had so easily forgotten about her, and had written her off as “desperate for attention” had affected me badly. I could not accept that others could do such a thing to another person, a depressed one at that.

The more the life that I had known and previously treasured deteriorated, the more inward I turned. I lived 2006 inside the confines of my mind and online, talking to Suat Ying, I had literally felt that my life had gone, I had no classmates, no girl guides and no church. The three largest portions of my life had turned into a nightmare for me within a few months.

2006 was the year that made me into the person that I am today. The crazily depressed, anxiety ridden, paranoid and insecure person that I become whenever I feel life goes out of control. The scars from 2006 affect me even today.

And that is why I’m writing this, so I can finally learn to let go of everything.

I worked my ass off, getting 10 points for my O levels and somehow making it into ACS(I). I felt like I had finally succeeded and was working to a better life, to leave 2006 well and truly behind me. But of course more things happened.

watching the flames of candles flicker calms me down.

Eyes Wide Open in Horror

It is yet another day. My eyes open up as I wake and I stare at the wall. Slowly, the realization hits me that the last two days were very much real, not some terrible nightmare conjured from the deep-seated fears of my heart. The idea of the nightmare that I find myself once again having to pick up the pieces of my life. I cry, because honestly, what else can I do? I long learned that keeping tears In just makes you feel worse. That’s why whenever I can, I cry. I wasn’t always like this. In fact it wasn’t all too long ago that I was very much a different person. I was less scared, less anxious, less troubled and perhaps less aware. But 5 years is a very long time in the development of a person’s character. Thing is: I still feel the person that I once was inside of me. I feel it whenever I talk to friends, whenever I am with my family. And I miss her, I miss her a lot. Though I know there are some things that are well and truly irreversible – I don’t think I can ever go back to the carefree and somewhat ignorant person I was then – I also realise that somehow, I need to get rid of all the emotional baggage that has been saddled on me these past formative years before I have any real hope or finding real lasting happiness.

I still remember an incident when I was about 12 or 13 vividly. I was with my two best friends then, and we were a silly lot. There was a store that sold sambal fishballs in school that were really yummy. My friend and I would scarf down 2 of them, then run all the way from the canteen to our classrooms where our water bottles lay. Run because honestly the sambal was too hot for us to handle, and it’d make us cry. But we felt free and happy. People looked at us weirdly as we tore past them on the staircase, but we couldn’t care less.

I never felt like I fit in anywhere. I always felt like the child that was a bit too weird for the norm. Too rebellious and stubborn even at a young age, too much of a troublemaker, too energetic and too enthusiastic. I remember because I felt so out of place, I was constantly searching for affirmation. I tried to hang out with the ‘cool’ girls, like all misguided kids do. Of course they evidently didn’t want to have anything to do with me. I even remember a friend I had since I was 7 jokingly referring to me as someone she didn’t regard highly when we were both 11. It hurt then, it still hurts now. Somehow, I managed to survive with nary a conscious dent, though I know deep down it exacerbated the already present childhood traumas of my heart.

My family was a very unconventional one – and by this I refer to my father’s side of the family. Its structure was mainly matriarchal. I came from a line of strong and empowered women. Even though my father was evidently the one that wore the pants in my parents relationship, I always knew I was surrounded my strong women. My grandmother, just 70 this year, used to run multiple businesses in what was very much a male dominated field in the 1950s, much less in a conservative Asian society. Her mother before her also ran the family business after her husband died and built up a family fortune only for it to be gambled away by her second son. Then there was my Aunt, an opinionated, assertive woman who again worked in a male dominated field – computer science in the ‘80s, who was also simultaneously battling lupus. It seems evident that a streak of strength, determination, ambition, stubbornness and intelligence ran through my blood.

However there were other things brewing in the family bloodlines as well. There were also propensities to extremely bad tempers, extreme anxiety, paranoia and depression even. It’s of much debate whether such attributes are passed through the generations through genes or nuture, but all I can say is I either inherited all the abovementioned attributes directly, or through my relationship with the family absorbed all of them. I do wonder if things were ceteris paribus, whether I would have gone on to be close to where the Wong women are, whether I’d be more settled and happy. But either way fate threw me a wild card: my brother.

My brother was probably the first indication that I would live a less than average life. Born when I was 4, he was supposedly a playmate that I longed for. My father always said that he didn’t want a second child because he knew that as a child, I needed a lot of attention. Either way this got thrown into the wind when it was discovered that my brother was also autistic and a low functioning one to boot.
I remember being very happy when he was first born, but as I struggled to understand why my brother wasn’t like the rest, I got angrier and frustrated. I didn’t understand why everyone was making such a fuss about him, I remember getting very jealous and upset. It’s one thing to say “your brother’s different” to a child, but very much another for that child to understand. To understand why her brother isn’t talking, and playing with her like she thought he would and at the same time taking the family’s attention away from her. I ended up bullying him. I was the proverbial horror child without a conscience.

Having a brother like Ryan also had another effect on me, it made me partly the centre of unwanted attention. Everyone didn’t know how to relate to him. It either went two ways, the oh-my-dear-you’re-so-pitiful way or the why-is-that-kid-so-weird way. More than often it was the latter sort of stare. Growing up I remember the dehumanizing stares of people around me as I went about with my brother. I could see the way they looked at me differently, as the cogs in their heads started moving, trying to figure out whether or not I was mentally disabled too. I felt burdened by the way people viewed me. People assumed I was mentally disabled by extension.

As a child growing up, two of my biggest social groups I remember were that of my mother’s family and church. My mother’s family, bless their souls, were a wonderful and kind lot. All of them happy-go-lucky folks. However as much as they were accepting people, they never knew how to relate to my brother. It’s almost as they saw him their minds immediately blanked out. They just didn’t know what to do or what to make of my brother, and I, the sister was caught up in all of this. I always felt alienated from them because of my brother. Sure every Chinese New Year they’d grasp my wrists and tell me to eat more, else I’d be blown away by the wind. They’d pat my head and tell me I’m a smart girl and to study hard. But I felt less like a person and more like an object. I was the unrelatable unreachable enigma.

Church as well posed similar problems, but to a lesser extent. This is probably because in church I was separated from my brother. Still it lingered, all the curious questions, all the stories that people begged for from me. I admit to telling great whopping lies at the expense of my brother to make the others laugh and like me. I still remember the details of those stories, probably because I still feel guilty. There were other aspects too, like hearing others, especially the younger children say things like ‘Why is that Ryan so weird?”. Hearing that hurt me to no end. Sometimes I’d fight back, but more often than not I’d just keep silent.

My parents were also very different from that of other parents. They always treated me in a mature manner. I’m not sure if this is because they had their hands full with my brother, or whether that was their actual parenting style. They pretty much let me do whatever I wanted, with little discipline. My parents really only scolded me when I got exceptionally out of hand. As a result when I was young, I went about mostly untamed, doing things impulsively and speaking my mind without care. They didn’t even force me to study, resulting in me pretty much coasting about with bad grades for most of my schooling life. My parents also never stopped telling my how much they loved me, how clever I was and how pretty I was, yet it served to have little effect on my self esteem.

Looking back, I actually attribute most of the stereotypical parenting to have come from my paternal grandmother, Mama as I called her. When I was young, I clung to her like crazy. Once I even spontaneously flew with her to Ipoh because I refused to let go of her at the airport. She used to wake me up every morning, get my clothes ready and make breakfast for me. After school she’d teach me Mandarin for many hours (which would later turn out to backfire) and force me to exercise. She’d make a special dinner for me because I was a fussy eater and then force me into bed next to her when she went to sleep at 9pm. For many years that was my routine, till finally I got too rebellious for her to handle at 11. She hired a tuition teacher.

My relationship with Mandarin has always been a tricky one. It started when I was first dumped in Nanyang Kindergarten, a rather traditional Chinese school, after we moved, from a predominantly English liberal sort of Montessori. Naturally this move was akin to caging a previously free bird. First day of school I went home crying because I had been badly scolded for not knowing how to write my name in Mandarin. That was really when my grandmother really started intervening in my education.

I hated that school. I don’t remember having many friends as the new kid. The others weren’t friendly at all. As a result I recall trying too hard to fit in, with the end result of being subjected to even more social isolation from the others. The boys, who I really wanted to be friends with for some now unfathomable reason, turned this round on its head and ended up bullying me. I remember Nanyang so vividly only for how miserable I felt, all 6 months long of it. To this day I can really only recall having 3 other kids who were nice to be a treated me kindly.

Primary school was a well known Christian Girls School, the main reason why I was even planted in Nanyang for 6 months. First day of school I remember being really happy because C my friend from church was also in the same class as me. We talked so much that we got separated by the teacher within the first few days of school. I don’t really remember very much except that I spent the next few years doing the same things, trying too hard to seek affirmation from teachers, trying too hard to seek affirmation from classmates and random incidents of talking back to teachers. I fainted once when I was 9 and the teacher had to carry me to the sick bay. When I regained consciousness, I puked all over her. I was incredibly awesome in that way.

The first time I recall really really having to study hard was when I was 12 and sitting for the PSLE. I had gotten 192 or something for the preliminary exams and my mother panicked. She took leave for a few days and sat me down for some good old Singapore style cramming. It was the first time she actively participated in my education. I sat for the examination, scored 212 and managed to get into the sister Secondary school. Hooray. But there is one incident that happened on that day that stands out in my mind though it wasn’t made known to me then, of a certain call made to my grandmother by C’s mother, L as she shall be known. L, a long time church friend of my parents as well as my Sunday school teacher. In the call she asked my grandmother how I did for the exams, and when my grandmother told her she sounded very surprised, then annoyed. My grandmother was offended and relayed this to my parents.

L, was the person who would later destroy my old life and change me forever.

Details in the Fabric

That's it: I'm gonna muthafucking write.

The night is always darkest just before the dawn.

I am incredibly disappointed with life.

I saw the saddest thing today in M&S

Today I went to M&S for underwear shopping. I wandered around aisles of impractical lace covered things that would invariably jut out under t-shirts and plain-boring-rough-cotton-white things. I also saw the saddest thing ever, next to what was probably belongs to freaks of nature: cotton white 32 AA bras with cups half the side of my already small palms and I-forgot-what-number G cups with cups the size of my head. Other than that there were the great mysteries of the earth to reckon with, like why women with D cup boobs need push ups and additional padding, in twin packs too.

I also incidentally, cooked. Some sort of garbled Chicken Tomato and Broccoli Pasta (Salad):
300g Chicken Breast - 2.39
6 Tomatoes - 1.02
1 Head Broccoli - 85p
1 Sainsbury's Tomato and Herb Sauce - 85p
Rosemary
Garlic and Mash Seasoning
White Ground Pepper
Fusilli.

It was the first time I had ever dealt with broccoli, and mid boil I had to scamper downstairs and google 'How to Cook Broccoli'. Nice stuff. The answer is 4 to 7 minutes, or in my case till I deliberately waited till I could smell the scent of cooked broccoli.

I also lost my temper today because I missed my stop at Euston. I was on bus 73 to Stroke Newington and boarded outside Selfridges. There was a girl in front of me, also waiting to alight. Our exit was blocked by this old man and woman shuffling into their seats. Okay, no problem. Then just as they moved out of the way, the other girl and I went to the exit of the bus, only to have it close 1 second before we stepped out. The girl started calling out, the people around started pressing the Stop button to help us, and the bus driver drove on to fucking British Library.

My first thought was to let out one large almighty FUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK at the driver. My mood had been exacerbated by being stuck in traffic for a long time along Oxford Street. Then my next thought was 'what if I get in trouble for it?'. So instead like a good downtrodden citizen, I just stewed. But the word stayed in my head. FUCK BRITISH LIBRARY. FUCK 4 EXTRA BLOCKS FOR NO REASON. FUCKING MORON DRIVER. FUCKFUCKFUCKFUCK. I wanted to scream it all the way back to Euston, but there were too many people around. Not that I haven't done that before in London, when I stepped out of Barclay's with Daryl. Then I saw piles of snow in Euston, and felt the urge to really kick it about all over, but I restrained myself. Instead, I went back and complained to every single friendly face I saw in Passfield.

Well, that and muttering fuuuuuuuuuuccckkkkkk all the way back from the British Library and Euston.

Phew

OHHHH IT WAS IN A BAG AT MY FEET.

I thought it was a pair of shoes.

Yay.

I found it

the ring that is.

But I don't know where my mousepad and USB hub are, still.

Oh no oh dear

Oh no oh dear I can't find my ring anywhere I don't remember seeing it when I went to shower last night and I didn't wear it before then so I didn't have it by then and the last thing I did was have dinner and wash the dishes in the kitchen and I usually take my ring off to do that but then I don't know where I put my ring at all and my Daddy gave it to me and oh no oh no has it been lost I don't want it to be lost I love that ring crap crap and my mousepad and USB hub is missing even though I saw it yesterday when I was unpacking and now I can't find it oh my God why am I losing so many things?

At least my lugggage finally came.

Collect Call

Things I can do with my spare time:
Photography course
Ceramics course
Read
Watch films
Watch shows
Play The Sims
Become more involved with Amnesty
Watch plays/musicals
Hang out with friends more
Volunteer
Write
Exercise

"I apologise, they are French, Madam"

So anyway as some of you might or might not know, I flew back to London yesterday. And another that some of you also might or might not know is that my baggage went on a mini Parisian holiday without moi. At least it wasn't avec a sticky fingered thief I suppose. ANYWAY, it proved to be a rather stress-free flight - somehow. It was only towards the end the rubbish started happening.

On the first flight, I watched Gattaca, which was surprisingly really good. Then I ate and went to sleep. Woke up with about 4 hours to go and ended up watching Julie and Julia, then the absolutely wonderful and amusing Whatever Works. I burst out laughing multiple times during the movie. Landing in Paris was fine, and I bumbled about with my large carry on backpack throughout the terminal to my next departure gate - getting pulled over for a security check over what turned out to be Cashew Nut Cookies. (I don't actually know how I remained calm over this)

My flight from Paris to London ended up being delayed for 30 minutes. This was because the plane was frozen. The thought of that alone, especially sitting about in the plane, made me inwardly face palm. Something along the lines of "good grief, that's how cold it is". Oddly enough I wasn't stressed out. Just really sleepy and waiting for the plane to take off so I could close my eyes.

We landed in Heathrow 30 minutes late. The landing seemed especially violent and jerking. A real slam-on-the-brakes kind of affair. I actually felt a bit thrown off from my seat. I wonder if this was due to the ice I presume the plane was at least slightly skidding on.

The real nightmare I imagined was that of immigration. Lovely charming gormless British Border Customs, or something along those lines. Watching the students being grilled and yelled at in front didn't really help abate the fear I felt in my heart. I also noted how they were quizzing the of-African-origin students like crazy. My guy had just finished shooing away a family because one of the tweens was still filling out her Immigration card, so I was a bit terrified of him. The grilling was just one of those usual Where do you study, What do you study, For how long sort of things, relatively painless. So I relaxed. HAAAAAH.

Anyway picture me, sitting on my carry on baggage on a cart, watching luggage going round and round. Waiting. For 30 minutes. With every minute getting angrier and angrier and thinking, GOOD LORD MY GRANDMOTHER MOVES FASTER THAN THIS BAGGAGE. Then poof. No more baggage, except some bubblegum pink Hello Kitty hard case shits going round and round. Too embarrassing for even their owners to pick up. (I kept thinking of the Scotsman I met at Paris CDG during the security check, where he laughed when I said I was going to Heathrow, he said "Good Luck". I should have known this was a bad sign)

Pull a baggage guy over. Baggage guy looks annoyed. HELLO IS THERE ANY MORE BAGGAGE COMING FROM FLIGHT AF 1080. He goes to the control room to check. NO THERE IS NO MORE BAGGAGE. I think: WELL YOU TWIT COULDN'T SOMEONE HAVE TAKEN THE BOTHER TO COME TELL US THERE IS NO MORE BAGGAGE COMING OUT AND YOU TWITS HAVE LOST IT? Instead I say: so, what do I do now? Redirected to Claims. More lines. More people. Oh great flying fuck.

SIDENOTE: There were lots and lots of bags lying around all over. All these unclaimed missing wonders. It looked like a Holocaust Museum, where all the owners had been gassed to death. Thousands of gassed dead owners and thousands of unclaimed stacked-against-side-of-wall-uncaringly bags. So much for unattended baggage being cause for alarm anymore.

Meanwhile I talked to the people around me. This man who joined the queue in front of me found his bag in the aforementioned Holocaust pile, wished me good luck and scooted off. The girl behind me, fresh off a holiday from Korea, ended up waiting at the wrong carousel for her stuff. The man behind her, who remained with my most of the way, was thiscloseto snapping. He was very tired, a business traveler, and evidently did not need this shit. He shouted at people who tried to cut the line. He seemed like a really nice man, just having a really bad day. Can't blame him. Meanwhile it took me almost 40 minutes of waiting to finally get a talk to the holders of what must be one of the world's shittiest jobs - Missing Baggage Claims Counter Assistant. Blablabla We'll deliver it by today afternoon, here is your reference number, THANK YOU.

I walked out, was about to blow past the alcohol duty free. Stopped, vaguely recalled someone asking me to help him buy alcohol, thought FUCK IT, and continued walking. 2 hours after I landed in Heathrow airport, I finally walked out. The first thing I did when I saw Sheun was hug him, then I cried.

What a fucking day. And it was just 10:30 am in the morning.

-----

Anyway to cap off this saga, I came back to Passfield from shopping today at about 5-ish. I went to reception and asked - no bag. I went back to my room and called them. I spoke to some fellow, who was evidently not French. I confirmed that they found my bag and had passed it to the delivery company. As I said Thank You and Goodbye to the man, I thought I heard him say,

"I apologise, they are French, Madam".

before putting down the phone.

My elbow joints ache

Today I went cycling with my Dad in East Coast Park. I hadn't cycled for a while and so started off really shakily. After a while, it got better and I felt more confident. We cycled all the way to Changi Airport and watched some planes set off while resting. Watching the planes made me feel a little funny inside. Oh well.

On the way back, as I was cycling under some trees. Something landed on my leg. I looked down and saw some long brown thing and thought it was a worm. My first instinct was to brush it off, which I did, and in doing so fell over, bike and all, on the road. Initially I thought I busted my left ankle since it was really stiff. I also got some scratches on my ankle. I managed to get up and cycle back to the rental store though. It felt a little stiff afterwards, but otherwise it seems to be fine.

Then we went to Katong to eat Peranakan food. Yummy chicken buah keluah, sambal sotong and sambal long beans. There was also ngoh hiang, but I don't really like ngoh hiang in general. Then it was a fairly long (by Singapore standards) car ride home.

I fly off in 8 hours. Oh dear.

Avatar had the same plot as Pocahontas

The last few days have been kind to me. From having lengthy and random conversations with Daryl over msn, to hanging out with the Math Studs (albeit separately) and Steph, JH and Ianthe, I still feel the same oh-dear-God panic in my belly, but it is slightly more muted. My heart still doth race in a completely un-sexy way at the thought of my 2330 hours flight tomorrow night though.

Sunday I had breakfast with Hadi. He was late, as usual. I bought 2 books from Borders while waiting, so it wasn't a waste of time. One was booker winner How Late It Was, How Late and the other was An Arsonist's Guide to Writer's Homes in New England. I hope the latter is amusing because I have reached my current threshold of depressing literature. It'll also be good to have something to destress with on a 16 hour plane ride back to Londonium. Anyway I had a nice breakfast at Cedele with him, and all the laughing made me feel nice and calm. Then we went to Starbucks and I got green tea latte all over my mouth and he didn't tell me.

I met up with my mother (who told me about my green tea latte stained lips) and we shopped a little before I headed back earlier without her (she was going to meet friends). I had dinner with my dad at a random kopitiam in Buona Vista and then rested a bit before heading off to Cheam's place. Halfway there I remembered I hadn't seen Kaijun at all, and on a whim made a call to him. I ended up going to his place and talking to him for almost an hour before moving on to Cheam's place.

By then the lovely humidity and heat had caused me to sweat, despite the fact that there was hardly any physical exertion on my part. Since Pulau Sibu also gave me hives, I was scratching away. Cheam the boar gave me medicine with the words "It's not drowsy". When I was drowsy later, he amended it to: "It's not drowsy for me". We ended watching some MTV Top 40 countdown and half talking rubbish. I must have been prattling on about a lot of rubbish, since I was almost knocked out by the medicine. Later he walked me back, which was good since the medicine also made me insanely paranoid. On the way back, I saw someone staring out from a window at us and I said "OH MY GOD SOMEONE IS LOOKING AT US!" (really loudly too), but just as I said that the person walked off, then Cheam looked up and saw nothing. I bet he thinks I'm insane now.

Monday, Ianthe, Jia Hui and Steph came over to my place. We ate Golden Pillow :D Then we bummed in my (messy) room, talking. We should have stuck to that instead of going on the epic plan of fail that happened next. Steph mentioned wanting to play L4D2. We took a bus to Bukit Timah Shopping Centre, the guy there refused to let us play because only she was a member - but the rules which were posted all over said a member could bring 3 guests. Okay. Then we walked inside the shopping centre, to look for another lan centre but it turned out to be members only. OKAYYYYY. I was starting to get frustrated.

We then headed to Bukit Timah Plaza because there used to be a famous one there. However upon walking a few rounds, we discovered that one had disappeared. What. The. Hell. God clearly did not want us to play L4D. But no, JH and Steph were so hell bent on it (and to be honest after putting in all that effort it seemed a waste to not play) and we ended up trudging across the road to take 61 to Sunset Way. We went to Clementi Arcade for some nice cold creamy comfort when we discovered that THE DAILY SCOOP WAS CLOSED. OMG FAIL*4. We ended up eating at the eatery next door and playing Uno, and finally FINALLY managed to find a lan centre.

Then came the last fail: Steam apparently has been working very badly with L4D2. My computer (just mine) kept CONSTANTLY DISCONNECTING FROM THE GAME. I'd play like 30 seconds then the server would drop me. I wanted to cry in frustration. Lousy lousy lousy. But then on Steph's prompting I finally gave up and went to the counter girl in hopes of getting a refund or something, when she went and messed around with my computer and somehow got the game to work properly. So then I started playing :D

Actually come to think of it there was yet another fail. 1 hour into the game, my computer got stuck. It didn't just hang, it just made my screen go all white with an outline of a gun on it. I could shoot, but I couldn't see anything. Just as well since at that moment everyone kind of died and the zombies went after my stuck game next. Then I exited and rejoined, only to find the entire rendering of the game went with it. The next 30 minutes was spent bumbling about not being able to differentiate zombies from teammates, zombies from environment, and expending a lot of rounds that I didn't really have as a result.

Needless to say we couldn't complete the campaign.

Today I saw Avatar with my father. In 3D at Cathay. I also had yummy fried fish and yong tau foo for dinner. Now I am hot, sticky and sweaty, and need a shower.

Taaaa.

"Excuse me, can I massage your breasts?"

In the The Sims 3, there is a characteristic that you can choose for your Sims called "neurotic". With the neurotic characteristic, the Sims display a range of wants and actions that range from obsessive compulsive to anxious. You can even get to have an stress/panic attack on cue, which distresses the other Sims around it, but results in an 8 hour period of calmness for the Sim with an elevated mood. I wish I could be a Sim like that, then I could control my stress and have it boil and explode once everyday (or week) and then feel very calm and be in a do-not-give-a-flying-fuck mode, scaring roommates and friends notwithstanding. Instead I am stressed out constantly, all the time, every time now.

I spent New Year's at Rimba Resort on Pulau Sibu with my parents. I finished 4 books, which were all enjoyable, even the chick lit one I brought deliberately. I saw lots of Sea Turds (Sea Cucumbers) when the tide was out. The food was excellent. One of the other guests looked like Uncle Buster from Arrested Development. Yet at night the violent sounds of the waves crashing stressed me out. And the lack of things meant my mind was allowed to wander. In normal people this is a good time for them to relax, instead it starting boiling up into a panic attack for me where I starting feeling stressed about a thousandandonethings.

Today we left Pulau Sibu and went to JB. I had a nice lunch of Ba Ku Teh with my parents. I went to Giant and bought stuff that I wanted to bring back to London. I went for an excellent massage with my mother. I had not felt so relaxed in a long time, though the girl did a little switcharoo halfway, something I found out when she asked me to turn over halfway. Then I started thinking "hmm, isn't this a good way to kill someone, when they're getting a massage?". I probably undid 10 minutes worth of massage with that one thought.

Now I'm back home again, and I can feel my neck and shoulder muscles turning rock solid again.

My new year's resolution? Be less stressed, either medically or mentally. I'm going to die early at the rate I'm going.