hisssssss
according to enid blyton, that's the sound turtles make: they hiss.

jinni and i were deciding whether to eat dinner at this chinese restaurant, and in the end we settled for kfc and subway respectively. however, the menu of aforementioned chinese restaurant listed a steamed turtle dish, and there was a picture of a turtle on a platter, head and all, garnished with spring onions and chilis and various other things.

also, jolie and i have decided to take selected cases: wto dispute settlement, for me because it's taught in english and chinese and for both of us because the course outline states that we will be looking at, amongst other things, 汽油规则案 (gasoline rule)， 海龟-海虾案 （shrimp-turtle), 荷尔蒙牛肉案 （hormone beef), 香蕉案 (banana case), 飞机案 （airplane case) 等有的案件已经成为国际，国内模拟法庭竞赛的原型 (they have become issues for local and international moot competitions).

two halves make a whole
jolie said to me yesterday that when we speak in chinese the locals only understand half of what we're saying, and when they're speaking chinese we only understand half of what they're saying. i shrugged and told her that two halves make one whole, anyway.

jon suggested that in the future, i shall speak to our children in chinese and he shall speak to them in english. because children learn better when their parents, and not just their chinese teachers in school, speak chinese to them. we're both living testament to that.

some people, really.

today i bought strawberries which i think were overripe. they were soft by the time i got back from school, but i managed to salvage a fair amount. they were sweet and firm and would have made a very nice jam, if i had the equipment necessary for jam making. time to get more pots and pans, i think. i hope to start cooking by next week.

there was supposed to be a sand storm today, but it didn't happen.

three nights in beijing
everybody spits here. old people especially - men and women. it's not uncommon to walk along a pathway and see small puddles of white. i saw an old lady bend over and spit into the bushes. maybe that's what keeps them green and leafy in this winter cold.

i'm staying in a flat, in a block of flats which is one of a cluster, and you can't really differentiate them unless you're familiar with the place. just now, on the way back from jolie's - she stays in another block - i went up the wrong block. and i didn't realise it was the wrong one because the neighbours opposite us stuck a glittery 福 on their door, as did the people staying opposite the place i went to by mistake. i must have given some poor dudes a scare. they didn't open the door, but i heard them fiddling with the lock.

i bought a skipping rope for 3 yuan today, which is about 60 singapore cents. it looks very kiddy, being made of brightly coloured plastic, but it has its uses. soon, if you come to beijing, you'll be able to see me in the courtyard of 富润家园, bundled up and skipping to my hearts' content. it's really too expensive to get a gym membership.

i also bought some cherry tomatoes, and they taste amazing. they're firm, and tart. also some chinese royal gala apples. a lot bigger than the variety we get back in singapore, and crunchier too.

i have placed my desk - a desk which i purchased yesterday in ikea, our landlady didn't provide any for us - in a position that enables me to look out of the window. however, the sun is currently in my eyes so maybe it's not such a good idea. in the distance i can see the great wall of china.

i managed to smuggle two roses from the bouquet jon got me to china, in my check-in luggage. they're next to my laptop now; it must be the cold, they're keeping their colour remarkably well.

p.s. i love you and an incredibly emo farewell-to-singapore-for-five-months post

with a title like that, i sure as heck won't blame you if you've decided to hurl before reading on - or even if you're only going to get as far as this sentence before you decide that this isn't something worth reading.

it was hard to feel anything for p.s. i love you, firstly because i wasn't able to stop laughing everytime hilary swank and gerard butler started having one of their kissing scenes. there really was something incredibly fake about those, somehow. and of course i knew adele would scold me AND laugh at me for being emo if i did cry, so during the first part of the movie i suppose i was pretty annoying, leaning over every so often to laugh or make some comment to express how incredibly unbelievable i found parts of the dialogue, and bits of the letters gerard butler's character (gerry) was supposed to have written to hilary swank's (holly).

secondly, the movie just moved too slowly. it was so long.

but, yes, i did cry at certain points. very unfortunately, this whole exchange thing is bringing out the emo in me. to my credit, there were certain bits of dialogue that were meaningful and believable, lines that hit home. the best part of the entire movie was the scene where holly finally breaks down and runs to her mother and yells that she's angry that God took gerry away, and how she's kinda moving on with her life but it's not the same because he's not there and she feels so lonely. at that point, i was reminded of why hilary swank took home a best actress oscar.

the only other part of the movie i liked was when holly was reading gerry's final letter, and this line from it: everytime you feel uncertain of yourself, look at yourself through my eyes - err okay something like that lah, i can't quite remember.

***
and so, i spent the first few hours of my one year anniversary with jon with a tissue stuffed up my right nostril because my nose was leaking, trying desperately to fall asleep despite the great, hollow ache and the wetness agaisnt my cheek, caused by the tears on my pillow. one day i think i'll be able to look back and laugh at my emo-ness, or maybe not. some things are too painful to be laughed at, ever. you think?

but after all, it's not as if jon's dead and we're never going to see each other again. in fact, for people like andrea whose sense of time is measured in deadlines, as she says, july will come really quickly. and as adele and i frequently remind each other, one day we'll be wishing ian and jon, respectively, spent more time away from us...

(someone's at the door)

***
(two minutes later)

guess who sent me flowers?

and guess who wanted to start crying in front of the delivery man and has proceeded to take Too Many pictures of the same thing?

(no prizes will be awarded for correct answers)

i'm glad my room's decorated in green - everything so matchy matchy, hor.

why guys can't do arts and crafts

christmas, the year i was 15, dexter gave me one of those short, squat glasses you can get from ikea. he'd stuck a little fringe of cotton wool all around the bottom edge of the glass, and written merry christmas chloe on the round edge of the glass in what later turned out to be normal glitter glue. which, as every girl - even a crafts dummy like me - should know, eventually peels off the glass.

and he told me, very candidly, that he'd done mine first because the first ones are usually the ugliest and best friends don't mind so much.

he proceeded to make more of them for other people. . . girls.

and mine was, indeed, not the nicest looking one.

well, i decided yesterday that i needed a glass for holding water when i brushed my teeth in beijing, so i retrieved the glass from where it'd been languishing on my bookshelf with the letters peeling off and the cotton wool turning grey. and i peeled off the letters and cotton wool, but there were glue stains so i put the entire thing in boiling water, and waited.

all the glue came off, as well as the 2001 he'd written on the bottom of the glass in what turned out to be not-permanent marker.

now, looking at the glass, you wouldn't think it had once been a festive looking thing. err, rather ugly festive looking thing but festive nonetheless. but, hey, for what it's worth i'll always remember its origins. . .

even while i'm slowly being poisoned by lead from the taps in china when i'm showering and brushing my teeth and retainers. it's not lethal unless you swallow, right?

sunshine at my window

i love the smell and feel of clothes which have been dried by the sun. and it's got to be a scorching hot sun, the kind which comes with a blue sky with barely any clouds and a hot breeze. not the half-hearted kind of sun, it's not the same.

well, the clothes don't smell of anything, really. i could be poetic and say they smell of sunshine, because sunshine doesn't smell of anything; as it is, they smell faintly of dynamo or whichever brand of washing detergent it is that we use along with it - my mother admits to using a bit of dynamo with the washing only because it smells nice, she's not too sure of its cleansing abilities.

but for me, there's just something about sun-dried clothes, and the satisfaction of taking them off the line and ironing the wrinkles out that i will miss.

missing you, missing you

honestly, i currently feel like i'm not going to miss much in singapore except the following (in order of most missed):

1. running (wouldn't you have guessed?)
2. my family
3. my mother's cooking
4. ironing clothes and watching daytime tv and lame-ass local sitcoms at the same time
5. playing the piano
6. coffeeshop tea and coffee
7. the ginger garlic sauce one has with chicken rice. but that's easily make-able overseas anyway, provided it doesn't freeze while i'm making it.

chor asked me how i was going to spend my last week in singapore, and various people have told me they'll take me out to eat things i'll miss while i'm away. maybe it's the weather, but i haven't had much appetite of late. i just feel like i want to do more of numbers 1 and 4 on the list, sleep, do some of number 5, come home to number 3. i only hope i'll be able to replicate it somewhat, thousands of miles away in sub-zero conditions (i meant my mother's cooking).

i'll probably start missing people properly, and a lot more once i'm in beijing.

***
i'm looking forward to going away because there's nothing that's really holding me back here in singapore, not while jon's in india. i'm not even really thinking about what i should or should not expect from my next five months in beijing (which might be a good thing) - a part of me just wants it to be july. it's been too long and i've forgotten what holding his hand feels like.

actually that's probably why there isn't much i really feel like i'll miss now. home is where the heart is, and not all of mine's in singapore.

today i went to marina square again because my mum decided there was stuff i still needed to buy before i leave on saturday. i'm meeting adele again on thursday and i told her we absolutely cannot go to marina anymore.

anyway, i pointed out the shop with the teddy bear bouquets to my mum and she agreed that they looked very poor thing. in fact, she pointed out that through the glass of the shop window they bore a remarkable resemblance to the skulls in the glass cases in the killing fields in phnom penh.

i can't find any photos of them online, and i don't usually bring a camera out - the shop can be found on the way to john little.

adele referred to the poor teddies as useless little buggers.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA!

you have to admit though, that she's right.

mary, mary quite contrary, how does your garden grow?
with silver bells and cockle shells and teddy bears all in a row!

i had a very enjoyable valentine's day with adele. after unearthing nice things on sale as we traipsed around marina square and millenia walk (some items which, of course, we purchased) we sat ourselves down on a bench outside topshop at marina and proceeded to people watch.

here are our three definite no-no's for valentine's day.

1. DO NOT ALLOW YOUR BOYFRIEND TO CARRY YOUR HANDBAG. neither should you, if you're a guy, offer to carry your girlfriend's bag. many people have said this many times, and besides it being utterly and totally emasculating, a girl's bag is her best friend! imagine having to reach over and/or ask for your bag from your boyfriend everytime you needed a tissue! (some girls seem to need a tissue for everything)

or, worst of all, not being able to conveniently answer smses from your kaypoh girlfriends or have a frantic omg i am such a dork emergency sms exchange with said kaypoh girlfriends, should you happen to commit some terrible, whether real or imagined faux pas while on the date. which, as any girl should know, is perhaps the best way to soothe frazzled nerves.

and what if he carries your bag in such a haphazard fashion - or drops it, even - and causes the tub of lip gloss in it to crack and your expensive foundation to leak and dirty the inside of your bag? or, horror of horrors, your trusty only-can-find-once at pasar malam mirror which you carry everywhere breaks?

not that i carry any make-up around (much less use it), but you can imagine.

of course, for me, maybe it's a different story. jon will first drink up all the water in my water bottle, and then he said he might very well run off with my bag because he wants (not needs) some new music thing.

(i assume he was kidding)

2. no matching clothes, please. and if you really must, please don't get them in bright red. the colour might signify love and passion but it's just gross.

lastly, and we both felt this should take the cake -
3. don't get your girlfriend teddy bear bouquets. adele reasons that you can't throw dusty teddy bears away like you do dead flowers. i don't agree with that, because i'm sure there are girls who do so. . . but personally i wouldn't be able to. the thought of something which looks life-like and like it has feelings - eyes, a nose, ears, a mouth - being crushed and then incinerated makes me feel queasy. and the poor teddy has to suffer the indignity of being attached to a long stick.

damn poor thing.

remember the times when february thirteenth fell on a friday?
still, black cats and ladders were only for the superstitious.

anyhow, adele and i had fully planned to do the whole valentine's day thing properly by watching p.s. i love you, but i just saw that my favourite life! reviewer tay yek keak only gave it two stars, and ended his review with the following:

"this flick is about the love that frees us. try freeing yourself from its fakeness.

p.s. i dare you (emphasis mine)."

we are therefore now trying to book tickets for juno instead. i normally don't trust ong sor fern's reviews - she gave it 4 and a half stars - not after she gave troy five stars (i will NEVER get over this!), but it's an indie flick and by my own judgment it looks okay.

also, the best thing about 27 dresses was probably james marsden without his cyclops ray directors. but that was also probably the reason why i liked hiim so much in the first place.

***
last night i went to jon's for dinner, and ended up carting home pratically the entire alex rider series, by anthony horowitz. the only reason i didn't manage to cart home the entire series is because jerome was missing two, ark angel and point blanc - and lukas already purchased the former.

if i can't be tintin, i'd like to be alex rider. why do these exciting things only seem to happen to boys? even when girls do james bond-esque things it's different.

i've finished three and a half of the books already. scorpia beckons. will he go over to the dark side, or won't he?

oh, and i'm still up now because although i have spoken to jon 3 times in the past 8 hours or so, i kinda feel like i want to hear his voice again before i sleep and he's now on a plane going from bombay back to dehli.

ghosts in mirrors and john legend

quents gave me a lift home from this year's chinese new year gathering, which was a dinner-time one and held in potong pasir at shannon's place. and as the conversation progressed on the way home i suddenly felt like weeping. because i nurse a fear that my friends who are guys will stop loving me, as i will them, and i will leave them behind. which i sometimes feel - fear, rather - i'm already doing. and worst of all, it's not a conscious thing. it just happen(s?)(ed?), what with the two year gap because of NS, the different things we're doing in university and out of university - and all of us, save for liz and kenneth, have ended up dating out of our (at times) annoying jiak kantang ac circle. and these relationships all look set to last a long, long time.

i didn't weep, of course. one doesn't do these things, and besides, i was too tired.

there's nothing to weep about also lah, really. when i get over this whole Growing Up nonsense i will admit to myself that it is rather lovely to be moving on with your life and planning for your future, and being glad for your friends' futures at the same time.

i told joel (jon's younger brother, who very kindly went for a choir gathering with me on the third day of the new year) that i'd probably go through almost anything for jon wrong and quents. and it's nights when i feel like this that i wonder why i know i would, no questions asked.

i don't think i'm ever going to quite forgive jon wrong for making us sit through daywatch though. granted, shannon was at fault too, for renting it in the first place; but the movie was So Painful, liz and i were fighting to turn off the dvd player the moment we realised we were never going to get the plot. which was sometime into the first 15 minutes of the show.

sometimes, like this time, now, i feel like i'm fighting time. time with his army of minutes and hours, seconds and weeks. invincible, never to be beaten. he will soldier on, and we're pretty much defenceless against him.

time has to be a him, i can't imagine time being a her.

when i started university, i never actually gave much thought to the fact that doing law would lead to my being a lawyer. the closest i came to truly acknowledging that law school=lawyer was being interested in pro bono work and being a guardian ad litem. that's when the state picks you to represent children in matters such as their welfare and custody. and then i had ideas about setting up childcare centres where children who needed this service could come and be looked after.

so of course, to actually do that, you need to be a lawyer; perhaps i did acknowledge that after all, in my own way.

but i've come to see that being a lawyer here in singapore more or less means slogging it out in the corporate world. i might be wrong, and i suppose i really ought not to make such sweeping statements until i'm actually out there working: stay tuned to this space. i just don't think i'd be happy if i didn't have time to go for runs and walks, watch tv and cook dinner for jon. and most importantly, i wouldn't be happy if i couldn't read my bible and love people whole-heartedly as it commands us to do without finding it a chore because my mind is too weighed down by what i have to do at work. and it seems that that's the way it's gonna be, for the first few years at least. will i have time for these things? i tell myself that as long as i want to make time, there will be time, but i can't help having my doubts.

also, heels give me headaches and blisters, and i detest ironing clothes which pretend to be the wrinkle-free sort. BLIARS, all of them.

some of the most peaceful times i had in 2007 were when i was sitting in quents' car, usually at the back, listening idly to the others talk nonsense while i did nothing except gaze out of the car window at expanses of blue sky, clouds and tree-tops. sometimes i got sunsets too.

jon tells me i'll get over these things, that we'll all get through university and come out and find that we're better friends than ever, things like that - but this is one of those times when i really don't know, and i wish we were sitting at the bleachers with only our a levels to worry about. how long the entire exam period seemed, how soon it was over, and we were one step closer to the Rest of Our Lives.

***
from now on, everytime i hear wang bu liao, i know i'll remember quents being slightly freaked out because we told him it reminded us of ghosts in cheongsams with red roses in their hair smiling sweetly and eerily from mirrors. which wasn't very nice, because he was giving us a lift home.

still, that's what friends are for.

handsome is as hamsum does
i'm in a bit of a quandary as to the spelling of hamsum. i thought it was spelt hamsome until i read an article in this month's ntuc income magazine. don't look at me like that, i bet your mother is a member of ntuc too, AND you get the very same magazine just that you don't bother to read it. the latter spelling does sound more like when you pronounce it, doesn't it? however, we shall take the ntuc income magazine's spelling of the singlish version of handsome as the correct one, for the purposes of this post.

anyhow, i love annoying my brother! he's become more even-tempered of late (must be all the girls in jc, hur hur) and he's been losing weight as well (definitely because of all the girls in jc). today i told him he was a riot, and a hamsum riot at that.

to which he replied - and he meant it - i hope other girls think so too.

i was ironing clothes at that point in time, and was therefore forced to watch half an episode of deep space nine . that's the nth season of star trek, and as i'm happily running the iron down a shirt, the steam issuing from it warm on my hand, one of the klingons starts having a rather lewd conversation with a lady who looks... human.

when i told lukas that that's just gross, dude! he said, very calmly and matter-of-factly, they're not humans... so it's not porn.

aiyoh! he's really such a ham lah!

he also pointed out to my mother just now that her roast duck looks albino, mum. she's rather upset because today when we went out for lunch we saw two very long queues: one for the singapore pools, the other made up of people clutching yellow slips of paper, waiting to collect their pre-ordered roast ducks and suckling pigs - and the roast ducks cost $18, which was what she paid to buy the raw one from good ol' ntuc.

oh well, i pointed out to her that she gets to keep the duck fat, and we can have potatoes roasted in duck fat soon.

singapore is probably the only place in the world where you can eat malay food for lunch on chinese new year's eve, and then come home for tuan yuan fan. i had the most amazing nasi ayam penyet at jurong west (east? i know 157 goes there) just now.

***
maybe it's because jon is away - the above-mentioned magazine made three sets of couples, one who'd been dating for one and a half years, one who'd just gotten married, and one who'd been married for 25 years - write love letters to each other in honour of valentine's day. i can see you rolling your eyes already, such a plebian publication and thing to do! you're thinking.

but i teared. i began to tear when i started reading the newlyweds' letters to each other, and by the time i got the the couple who'd been married 25 years i wanted to start crying in earnest. he thanked her for things like making home, home even though she had a full-time job. you know, the little things that make Everyday happy and peaceful and a blessing to others. just like how i think God intended marriage to be.

you grew up with bananas in pyjamas
now, i'm pleased to introduce W1 and W2, the WEALOUSES!

Wealous 1 (W1) is currently in new dehli, and Wealous 2 (W2) is obsessed with making things on her mother's sewing machine.

oh we're weals that can't be separated
growing at the spot
where you last splashed hot oil on yourself
or was it boiling water?
the side of a smoking seafood platter?
it really doesn't matter...
the weals are here to stay.

***
that was absolute nonsense; i'm sleepy and sorta kinda waiting for jon to come online.

also, jon wrong's parents HAD to choose this year to renovate their home, which means they aren't having their annual chinese new year lunch. even though it's really the last time for a while we'll all be together at this event. wah lau eh.

all i wanna do is grow old with you

today i went with my family to the sim lim square food court for lunch. it's pretty difficult to make your way to a table, the spaces between the chairs are on the narrow side.

there was an old man carrying a tray with char siew rice and soup on it, and his hands kept shaking so the soup would slop out of its bowl onto the tray, and i only noticed him because he wanted to sit at a table behind us and he walked into the chair next to me, which my father hadn't pushed in when he got up to leave the table.

i turned just in time to see more soup slop over the edge of the bowl, and i felt unbearably sad. of course, it may just be hormones (yes, it is THAT time of the month) but he looked so alone. his white shirt looked ironed, his hair was neatly combed... it made me think of sunday best, and how church activities mean so much to old folks whose spouses have died, who live alone. which is, of course, why we should support the church even if we don't quite agree with the things going on there in general - but that's for another post. it's good to have some form of a support network for those struggling on through life without anyone.

and of course, whenever i see old folks alone, i think of jon and paul mccartney singing when i'm sixty-four, and wonder what life will be like for the one who has to see the other pass on. the statistics show that women live longer.

okay i'm not going to think about it!

i'm dreading having to live through at least four times of the month in beijing, what with the weather and what everyone says about the lack of sanitation. imagine having the most awful cramps when you have so much to do and weather to fight. we'll see.