Chloe Is

Too Cold, and wants a bowl of steaming hot rice congee. Preferably from that shop towards the end of the Al-Ameen row, with Jon in tow. And a walk home after that, because we've missed the last bus home, talking.

Dreams of a 22-Year-Old Nothing

Maybe I could star in Channel 8's 30th Anniversary Blockbuster if my acting career started now- or I could just continue Peter Birks' quest to make Restitution on the grounds of reversal of unjust enrichment as quintessential to the common law as the tort of negligence, right here in Singapore.

He's passed away, and a Google image search produced no photographs of him, only of his books. Just you wait - the third edition of the above book, incorporating his theory of absence of basis, will bear my name as editor.

Drawing Parallels

Last night, I tried unsuccessfully to convince Yalan that Channel 8's 25th Anniversary Gala 9 o'clock serial, The Little Nyonya, was sort of like Ian McEwan's Atonement.

I don't exactly appreciate all the misery characters in novels and films and cheesy local Chinese shows have to go through, but I continue watching or reading faithfully to the end (no flipping there directly for me!) because I like to see the Vindication of the Good People. No matter that there are pages of prose describing seemingly endless suffering to plough through, or that I have to sit through episodes and episodes of oppression and the Unfairness of It All. It's just Thoroughly and Extremely Satisfying when the Good Pretty Girl marries the Handsome, Kind and Generous Man and the Wicked Horrible People get their just desserts, usually by dying Horrible Deaths.

Just as you expected from the very beginning.

What a lot of capitalised words there were in that last paragraph!

But, judging by Atonement itself, some fairly recent Korean dramas (Stairway to Heaven, for instance) and the 9 o'clock show before last, Crimebusters x 2 (who comes up with these names?!), The Little Nyonya might well throw up some surprises and end with tragedy instead of a nice wedding and a Many Years Later epilogue in the last five minutes of the last episode.

Please, Channel 8, don't do that to me. Baz Luhrman changed the ending of Australia so Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman's characters could end up together. If there isn't a happy ending for Juxiang, you still have time to do something about it, although (the Very Pretty) Jeanette Aw is only Slightly Less Annoying and Simper-y as the titular character in the show.

It's your 25th Anniversay Gala Blockbuster Serial, after all. Do stick with a Predictable and Formulaic Plot. I can already see Cynthia Koh's character having an affair with her sister's husband, and I am eagerly awaiting the utterance of what must be the Most Famous Chinese Serial Line in all of your history:

爱情是不能勉强的, love cannot be forced.

On that note, Channel 8, I have to say that you've done a great job so far - it was very clever of you to decide to centre the story on the Babas. It has given you free rein to bring in all generations of MediaCorp actors and actresses to play random family members and friends.

A pity, though, that I might not be in Singapore for the last episode or the bulk of the show. But I'm sure there are ways for me to catch up on it.

***
I wish Jon would come to school. I want to buy a curry puff for a snack but I don't feel like going downstairs again, especially since I just bought a cup of tea and somehow it seems rather greedy to go down again for a curry puff.

Mid-Week Melancholy
Well, technically it's not the middle of the week anymore because it's Thursday almost-evening, but I had these melancholy thoughts yesterday, which was Wednesday, the real middle of the week.

Blame it on Jon. It was past ten at night and we were in one of the classrooms when he suddenly told me and Justin about a question his friend had been asked during a job interview.

You come to a crossroads; one fork leads to a village of normal people, the other to a village of cannibals. The cannibals always tell the truth and the normal people always lie. There's a man at the crossroads, and you don't know if he's a cannibal or a normal person. You can only ask him one question. What would that question be?

He couldn't remember the answer, so I googled it, and I got links to all sorts of horrible websites. But the most horrible one must have been the one I decided to look at because it looked interesting, which of course turned out to be a mistake. I didn't hang around the website long enough to see what it was really about, but from what I could gather people had been trying to shut it down with lawsuits and the like, and from what I could see the contributors to the website appeared to support white supremacy and race supremacy and all that sort of nonsense - in the name of God.

It made me feel sad, and when I went home I read the newspapers and felt even sadder.

It's true, what the Bible says - how the Israelites turned away from God, how the Jews didn't recognise Jesus as their true saviour. How it speaks of people building their own altars, creating their own gods, turning to iniquity. We often blame God, asking why He would allow pain and suffering and Pure Evil, oftentimes using that as justification for not believing in Him. But what we fail to realise is that many times we are the ones who have chosen evil, and our hearts gradually become hardened and steeled against what is good and right. Crowley in Good Omens was right; people say things like The devil put me up to it, but they actually think up things to do to each other quite independently of any other supernatural being which might exist.

It's not even about hate crimes, or torturing babies. Some weeks ago we were watching I Survived a Japanese Game Show, and to fight elimination, Donnell and Mary had to "become" chickens - wear a chicken head piece, roll around in oil and feathers, and burst huge balloons shaped like eggs by sitting on them, whereupon a yellow liquid would spurt out.

The Japanese in the audience were laughing away, but I didn't really find it that amusing - and my mother said, This is so demeaning and stupid. I'm not going to watch anymore. The Japanese are really sadistic.

And I realised that she was right. What's more, God never created human beings for this sort of nonsense. He created us in His image, full of dignity and grace, but we've rejected that image of Him for something cheap and worthless, all in the name of fun, entertainment, money. Things which aren't wrong in and of themselves, but sometimes you wonder at just how far people are willing to go.

Oh dear, I am becoming such a prude, and this sounds like an Annoying GP Essay.

But you know, there really is a lot of pain and suffering in the world, and the least we can do is enjoy and appreciate our health, safety, peace and sanity, instead of doing what is clearly utterly ridiculous and unnecessary, for an end I think only God knows we are trying to achieve. Although I think what we might be trying to achieve is, really, life without Him.

The answer to the question, to save you from having to google it, and not getting the answer but links to strange websites, is Which way to your village? If he's a normal person, he'll point the way to the cannibals' village. If he's a cannibal, he'll also point the way to the cannibals' village.

Of Exams
One of the library staff members looks like my mum. She has the same kind of thick black hair, cut in a fringe, and is always decently dressed. By that I mean that she never dresses up, but she looks presentable. Jeans, a polo shirt maybe. A kind face, black eyes.

This morning she and another staff member were decorating the notice-board at the library foyer, for Christmas. They decorate it for all the major festivals, Hari Raya they had ketupat shapes in shiny green and yellow ribbon; Deepavali saw flames cut out of construction paper.

Right at the turnstiles where you have to tap your matriculation card to enter the library, there's a yellow and red sign which reads: CAUTION! You are entering a quiet work zone. Students studying for exams.

Every night, 15 minutes before the library closes, one of the librarians will announce this fact and that they're going to turn off the lights in 5 minutes. Recently they've added, the library staff wish all students all the best in their exams. Really Annoying muzak will then begin playing, I can hum it. There's this part with awful, fake trumpet sounds which I absolutely loved to try and annoy Jon with by attempting - and failing - to replicate it, very loudly, on our late night walks down Bukit Timah Campus Mountain.

Last Thursday when I came out of the school showers, and one of the librarians was there. She was going to meet her friend and they were going to the gym together. Probably one of those ladies ones, where middle-aged women go to escape their lazy husbands and housework.

It must be nice to be a librarian.

The Best is Yet to Be

As much as I want so badly to accept the other side of the story, including Mrs. Chan's implicit approval of Mr. Lynn not scolding the girls for the ragging there and then, there is just something so inherently mean and vindictive about what they did to that girl that continues to disturb me. Throwing a little food around is okay, especially on birthdays, just so long as you don't expect someone else to clean up after you. I've done it, we've done it. Our kids will probably do it. But tying somebody up, actually man-handling her in the process and then throwing food at her while she was defenceless crossed the line.

This shattered the last vestiges of school pride I had. I'm thoroughly ashamed to say I'm from ACJC now. Already I tried to dismiss the rich brat, party school stereotyping - I did have a good time in JC, and I learnt some of life's best lessons there.

So much for the best is yet to be, and Christian values. It's terribly disappointing.

I want to know why so little was said and done about it. Or why my brother, when I told him about it, said it's just a birthday prank, then pointed to the fact that Mr. Lynn was there. As if that made everything okay.

Furthermore, Singapore's entering a recession. Shouldn't they have at least thought about not wasting food?

Sometimes I think AC/MG kids are proud of the stereotyping they receive. I know I was, to some extent. But I know now that it's really not in the least cool, especially when you can't speak your mother tongue to save your life.

I just hope they all grow up and learn to have some sense of responsibility eventually.

How anyone could have ever thought that that would be a "fun" birthday prank is beyond me.

Happy Families
I played that game with my neighbours in primary school; I'm sure you did too. Garish, highly coloured cartoon drawings of people, printed on cheap cardboard. The pack of cards we played with came in a 4-in-1 special, with packs for Donkey, Old Maid and Snap too. I used to dread Donkey and Old Maid, no child likes to be called either, even if you were lucky and the jeers only lasted for one round and the misfortune befell someone else. But woe betide if you ended up the Donkey or Old Maid for consecutive rounds, or worse still, the very last round before it was time to go home for dinner.

Snap was also painful - literally.

Happy Families, on the other hand, was much safer. Is Mr. Baker home? The sons and daughters in each family had alliterative names: Bobby Baker, Percy Plod.

***
Sundays leave a strange taste in my mouth, not least because it's the only day of the week where there doesn't seem to be much else to do after going to church and visiting my maternal grandparents, which means I can take an afternoon nap. My mouth always tastes a bit funny when I wake up, a taste reminiscent of lunch gone by.

It's also probably the only day of the week that I interact with my family for almost the entire day, given said activities. We even participate in the taking of the afternoon nap together when we get home, albeit in different parts of the house.

When I was 11 - it might have been 12 - and starting to think less about boys as slugs but as members of the opposite sex, I greatly desired one of those large, traditional families which seemed de riguer if you were attending a Methodist school. Or amongst my friends, anyway. Having cousins, especially male ones who attended ACS seemed like a big deal because it opened up new avenues to get to know boys. Admit it, getting to know boys was so the in thing to do at that age. Well, maybe not. But at some point or another it would have been THE thing to do.

It wasn't just that, though. It was also because these large families always seemed so happy. They would have a grand meet-up on Saturdays, and I vaguely recall thinking that it must have been fun because all the cousins (and their parents) were either from ACS and MGS, and close enough in age to relate to each other. There were maids to take care of food or at least cleaning up, and big houses with family rooms exclusively for watching TV in. In fact, I was so envious of friends with that sort of large, traditional family (large house for family meet-ups included) that I drew up an extensive list of fake relatives in my journal - and by extensive I don't just mean there were many of them. I gave all of them full names, names which I liked, like "Geraldine" and "Andrew". I was particularly fond of "Zhi" for boys' Chinese names, and "Ling" for girls'.

Personally, I hated my name until I grew used to it, because "Chloe" wasn't very popular with my generation and teachers would either pronounce it wrongly or directly call me "Mercy," which of course resulted in a lot of teasing. To top it all off, my Chinese name is "Wei Ming," which sounds like a boys name when you read the hanyu pinyin.

And I still suggested to Jon that we name our daughter 'Carmel.' (It IS biblical!)

I even went so far as to write fake autographs to myself in my autograph book, from fake male cousins - though I don't think they were very convincing, being far too neat for boys' handwriting, even though I did my best to make it look different from mine, and messy.

I still have those lists and that particular autograph book, if you ever want to see them do let me know.

***
My maternal grandparents live in a 3-room flat in Marine Terrace together with my uncle, who's a bachelor. They've lived there ever since they had to move from a shophouse in Little India, and that was where my mother stayed with her four siblings when she wasn't staying in the university hostel. It's a nice place, on the top floor; the front view is of the sea at East Coast Park and there's a nice breeze. There was upgrading too, recently: the lift now stops on every floor, and there's an extra room attached to the kitchen.

The three of them are lovely people, although I used to hate being told by my mother to give my uncle a kiss because his chin was usually covered with prickly hairs. And before life got harder for wai por Sundays in general meant the taste of her chicken rice, Chinese New Year Sundays the taste of her pineapple tarts and tang yuan, and Birthday Sundays the taste of her soy sauce chicken with mian sian and an egg. Always the egg. Dumpling Festival Sundays meant the the taste of her zhong zi, Mooncake Festival Sundays the taste of her mooncakes.

Gong gong (Kong kong?) used to be a school teacher, in a time when teachers were highly respected, and deserving of that respect. He had a stroke when I was 7, and wai por has been taking care of him all these years. They hardly get out of the house nowadays, because his mobility, severely impaired by the stroke in 1993, has been steadily decreasing over the years.

Now he just shuffles about slowly, and he has to be wheeled around in a wheelchair because walking is just too tiring for him, and he takes too long to move about. But pushing the wheelchair is tiring for wai por and she has gout - her joints hurt - so what can they do?

It will be his 78th birthday this Saturday, and we celebrated it last Sunday - all my aunts were there, and most of my cousins. Wai por looked so happy to see that we were all gathered as a family, and for once her hurting joints didn't really matter because it gave her joy to prepare food for us, to see how happy we were to eat her good cooking.

Because it was so crowded and there was so much noise I couldn't take my usual pre-afternoon nap nap, so I simply sat around observing things and people.

There are skeletons in the closet of the familial nature which are too personal to publish in such a public space, but last Sunday I was reminded of how strongly I had used to want a normal extended family of the sort which all my friends seemed to have. Doting aunts, jolly uncles. Grandparents with deep pockets who gave out fat red packets for almost every conceivable occasion, from birthdays to getting PSLE A stars. Per A star. Cousins one could relate to.

Or what I thought was 'normal' for immediate family, even. A father who would pick me up and send me to places instead of telling me that I had legs and walking was cheaper than petrol; a mother who would bring me shopping at 'cool' shops where I could purchase Roxy or Rip Curl items instead of me having just one pair of Giordano jeans for almost all of secondary school; a brother who was older than me instead of younger.

It will soon be time for me to bring Jon to meet my extended family, and I've been feeling ashamed that I am ashamed of some of them and thus ashamed to let him meet them.

I don't think those large, traditional - rich - families are all that happy either. Every family has skeletons in the closet, or don't they?

Come what may, blood will always be thicker than water. I'm older now, and I've come to truly appreciate my upbringing and admit that my parents knew best, but I'm not sure if I'll ever be able to truly appreciate all of my extended family. Visiting gong gong (I remember fretting over its spelling the time he had a stroke and I made a Get-Well Card) and wai por is like entering a whole different world, far from the trees and grass and large houses with one too many cars in their huge porches in my neighbourhood, far from the people I come into contact with daily. English speaking, healthy and able-bodied, well turned out, and as comfortable and content as the middle-class usually is, which sometimes means not very.

Birthday cakes from Awfully Chocolate or a hotel bakery well-known for cake, instead of Bengawan Solo ones topped with jellied fruit, flower-patterned marzipan lining its sides, held together with cream too light in texture to be pure cream. Cake a treat, only to be had on birthdays, always bought by the same aunt who's a cashier at Guardian Pharmacy.

I've come to realise that where gong gong and wai por and all my relatives are, is where the heart of Singapore really is. Not Orchard Road, not the CBD or the Esplanade Waterfront or the upcoming IR (Dear Government, please don't bail Sands out because then you might become partial in regulation of the IR).

And I'm glad of it, glad I'm a part of it.

***
Jon and I went to the National Museum and the Singapore Art Museum last Friday, and just before we went to the latter I said that I really wasn't in the mood for anything too high-brow and artsy fartsy. He assured me that This is Singapore man!.

So, not paying much attention to the list of exhibits at the entrance, we went up the stairs and the first thing we saw was a silver dog with the face of a joker lying on its back on a red cushion in a Venetian gondola. The dog also had a very huge and obvious penis.

My disgust soon turned into amusement as I read the explanation accompanying the work. It was by Vincent Leow (not the cute Evidence tutor, my mum thinks he might be the guy who was caught for cutting his pubic hair in public) and there was some long convoluted explanation about holidays and pets and photographs of the two. Something like that. It was Awfully Pretentious and we had a good laugh when I read it out in a Fake Pretentious Angmoh Accent. Just like the author probably intended.

It was then that we noticed that Ong Kim Seng's Heartlands was showing, explaining the bamboo poles with clothes hanging out of one of the museum's windows. When we turned into the first gallery showing his paintings there was a crowd of people gathered there, some taking notes, all listening to a man dressed in a short-sleeved, light blue shirt stretched a little too tightly over his belly, who looked just like a nice neighbourhood uncle you would smile at in the lift talking about the paintings.

I kept telling Jon that it was Ong Kim Seng himself, but he insisted that if it was everyone there would have been wearing suits and evening dresses. We even had a $2 bet on it, which Jon has already paid up with school canteen cai fan because I was correct.

I liked his paintings very much, much more than the strange silver dog-man. So much for modern art. Or modern all things, for that matter. Modern some things, yes. But not all.

Do You Remember?

This morning, I encountered a group of MGS girls on the bus. They weren't the terribly annoying kind who result in you making all sorts of unfair stereotypical assumptions about kids from 'elite' schools as you get off the bus. They were about as annoying as I probably was at that age, making a little too much noise, but still at a tolerable level. Better yet, they were talking about nice, normal school girl things that I believe all girls that age talk about, regardless of how much money your family has.

And I felt Horribly Old and Boring.

It's never the rich spoilt brats I encounter who make me feel old and boring - well, they do, but in a different way. In a dismissive, You Ought To Grow Up Or Be Given a Good Spanking sort of way. It's the normal, nice kids who aren't too good at hiding the insecurities brought on by puberty who make me feel like I want to be 16 again. Not that life was terribly exciting, and in fact, it was pretty terrible. Maybe that's why. No regrets, but sometimes I do wonder what it would have been like if I'd chosen differently then.

Although I probably wouldn't have been able to.

There You Were, Thinking That Something Earth-Shattering Had Happened
I have decided to stop showing Annoying Year Ones that I'm annoyed with them. Firstly, it's not very Christian behaviour. Secondly, I seriously doubt that their entire year are Annoying Twerps - the very definition of an 'Annoying Twerp' entails that you've had the misfortune of encountering one. So it's not fair to generalise and dismiss the Not Annoying, Non-Twerps as being tarred with the same brush. And one hopes that they will all naturally transform into Not Annoying Non-Twerps as they grow older and realise that The World Does Not Revolve Around Those In Law School.

Right.

That being said, I had the misfortune of encountering one such Twerp this morning. On the way up Bukit Timah Campus Mountain I had to keep biting my lip to keep from laughing out loud - because if I'm not going to be Annoyed, at least I can be Amused. I know I'm able to laugh at how seriously I took myself when I was younger (read: in J1 maybe, but not in Year One), although I'm not so sure they'll be mature enough to laugh at themselves in a few years' time.

How Grown Up and Mature I sound!

***
Today I told Liz that I wanted to be a bear, Paddington specifically, because he gets to eat a lot and even when he displays a total lack of social grace he's excused. He gets to celebrate his birthday twice a year, and Mrs. Bird always bakes him a cake with lots of marmalade. Also, unless the weather doesn't permit it, he has 'elevenses' with Mr. Gruber at his antique shop in Portobello Road every morning - buns from the bakery where he has a standing order, and a thermos flask with hot cocoa.

Liz suggested that I try the whole buns and cocoa thing, but I told her what was more important was transposing the 'elevenses' concept to the Singaporean context, read: pau and coffeeshop drinks, milo perhaps. However, that really hinges on which coffeeshop you go to and the brand of paus they sell.

I may not be a bear hailing from Darkest Peru (nor practically a shoo-in for the U.S. presidency because nobody in their right minds would want a Vice-President who thinks running the country is about as difficult as the talent segment in a beauty pageant), but I think I've figured out a way to leave my mark in this world.

It will all begin with the following letter:

Dear Makers of Lim Kee paus,

Thank you very much for making the paus who have been my preferred breakfast or tea companions for the past few years, although they don't provide companionship for much longer than 5 minutes or so because by then they're in my tummy.

I have noticed that you don't produce a Halal range of paus. Could you please consider doing so, because then I can suggest to my school's administration that they replace the Kong Guan Halal Range of paus in the canteen with yours? I am sure that this will enable me to leave my mark as the One who ushered in a New Era of Good Pau in the School Canteen.

Alternatively, you could also give the Makers of Kong Guan paus, Halal or otherwise, some tips to making their paus more palatable. I'm sure this will not be a difficult process, as all you need to do is tell them to improve the quality and quantity of the pau filling, and maybe impart to them your recipe for pau skin. As your paus and their paus are factory made, I seriously doubt this will entail an increased need for labour.

However, Kong Guan has managed to produced curry puffs which are extremely Solid. There is no other word to describe them. Perhaps you could consider producing a range of curry puffs too.

Yours Sincerely
Chloe

***
About three months have passed since I came back from Beijing, and I don't think I'm ever going to recover from my fondness, now, for schmaltzy Chinese pop. If anything, my collection has expanded, with Khalil Fong (fang1 da4 tong2) and Lee Hom (you DO know the MUSIC MAN) joining the songs I think I'm listening to One Too Many Times.

I felt like being spastic today while I was on the cross-trainer, and singing along loudly and lustily to the (Chinese) songs playing on Stonie (my trusty MP3 player, no prizes for guessing which brand and model he is) and waving my arms about and acting all drama-mama, in a highly exaggerated simulation of what could be almost any Chinese singer's concert.

My grandmother has half a cup of 3-in-1 coffee with some McVite's biscuits every evening at around 5:30p.m. She dips the biscuits into the coffee because then they're softer and easier to chew. Old people like to fuss and hate to be left alone, even if they're alone only because they're in a different part of the house from somebody else.

She happened to be having her teatime treat when I was seized by the urge to channel a Chinese pop concert, and although I'd gladly go through the whole shebang for my mother's benefit and amusement, I was the teensiest bit embarrassed to do so in front of my grandmother. I felt like I wanted to be alone; she would suddenly ask me about things that happened yesterday because she thought they'd happened today. The remote control would suddenly malfunction and I would have to explain to her how to manually change the channel or turn off the TV. She looked childishly frightened when she saw the annoyance on my face, her eyes and the apology and plea not to be forgetful or forgotten in them making me feel guilty, making me promise that I will be more patient with her.

I was reminded of how the songs sounded different when I was alone on those long bus rides home from school with nothing but trees and sky lining the roads on either side. When nobody on the bus knew me and even if I'd just sung out loud suddenly I would have received strange looks but they wouldn't have cared because people in China don't bother themselves with other people, there are too many of them.

It's claustrophobic in Singapore sometimes, at home, in school - even when I'm outside I feel like it's shrinking. Since we purchased a cross-trainer, there are days I don't dare venture to the roads for a run because I don't feel like I have what it takes mentally to battle the sheer amount of traffic; drivers horning each other - you can hear the impatience in every short horn blast - exhaust fumes and the roar and warmth of buses travelling above the speed limit, drivers of cars trying to overtake them and each other.

And the saddest thing is that I can't bear to be alone for too long.

Both Sides, Now

It has been a rather long time since I last blogged, and I think this might be my last blog post, ever. The last time I stopped blogging was when Enoch left for Calgary and I knew we were over for good; that was sometime in Year 2 Sem 1. I removed everything from my blog and put up the lyrics of Joni Mitchell's Both Sides, Now, along with a Suitably Emo Picture. For all that, it's a good song, a good Growing Up song. Although Ben Folds' Still Fighting It comes a close second.

No, I haven't broken up with Jon and I don't think that's ever going to happen, however unhappy we make each other sometimes. Because even when I'm at my most pissed off with him, or he says or does something which makes me wonder What The Hell Were You Thinking, it breaks my heart to have to be even the teensiest bit mean. Which is what girls usually are when their boyfriends piss them off. I can't betray my gender, can I?

People do stop blogging for other reasons: I wonder how many of us will still continue with our blogs when we start work. It's not so much about having nothing to blog about, because there will always be things going on in our lives, photographs we want to share. I wanted to have a National Day post this year, sharing about how I wanted to cry when I heard all the national songs - I'd barely just come back from Beijing. Despite Nathan Hartono ruining Tanya Chua's pretty passable contribution to the National Collection of Annual Cheese, Where I Belong, and despite the show segment of the parade paling vastly in comparison with the opening ceremony of the Olympics, I was never prouder or happier to be Singaporean and back in Singapore.

Things like that, you know? And I'm around 7 months shy of the Working World, this is the kind of post you write when you have your last exam, when you walk down Bukit Timah Campus Mountain for the Very Last Time.

But I think it's time to stop blogging. For now, anyway. Even if I have things to say, by the time I get to Lenny and an Internet connection I'm Too Tired to write anything, and I feel like I no longer want anyone to know what I'm thinking. Like how I've been going out of my way to avoid most people - it's become exhausting to say hi, and risk the possibility of small talk which I'm finding more and more impossible to make. Not least because people hurt you in ways they don't even imagine would hurt, and while I'm learning not to be bitter, hurt is one of those things only time heals.

This is my second last mid-semester break, and I've spent the past three days in school doing my IT Law 1 assignment, which is due tomorrow morning at 10 a.m. Yesterday I sat in the library for hours at a stretch, only taking toilet and meal breaks. By the time Jon arrived to pick me up (thank God he got the car) when the library closed, all I could do was open the door and sink into the passenger seat and tell him how miserable I was. My shoulders were stiff and aching from sitting upright, and I couldn't quite move my fingers properly after typing for so long.

Is being a laywer going to be like this? No, I think it's going to be worse, and respite will come less and less often. I tell myself now, and pray like anything that I will choose the right thing, the Jesus thing to do, when the time does come to choose - but only recently I've realised Just How Hard it is to do even that.

It's not because I want to feel noble, or that I'm a wonderful person for being able to give up the riches of the world - I just don't want to spend what are supposed to be the best years of my life feeding the vanity of people who don't need more money than they already have, to who I'm but a pawn in the grander scheme of things. It's not just in Singapore, but a large majority of modern civilised society which has traded emotions and human relations for money and concrete; most of the time, it's so much easier to give in to pressure. No matter how awful you feel after that. Forget committments, forget true love - the world promises that there will always be something else to take away the emptiness, but you know, that's a Big Fat Lie.

I feel different from before, and although I was Rather Miserable in Year 3 because Jon wasn't around and I went to Beijing, the contrast between how I feel now compared to the past 3 years in school is more marked than it ever was. I don't think it's hormones, and although I call it a "crisis," which it is, after a fashion, I doubt I'm ever going to go back to feeling the same way I did before. Which is a good and a bad thing, because I'd rather feel this way and know that I've matured than go on trying to be Happy and Cheerful but Bloody Ignorant. Yet I feel that I've become more bitter and intolerant; so many times, I wish the world would Leave Me Alone.

Everybody knows it hurts to grow up.

I'll survive, though, I think.

we the citizens of singapore

in national day news, the houses around, but not any further than the 2 or 3 next to the house of the Minister-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named, have also sprouted flags. heck, even the half-finished house directly opposite his, notwithstanding construction workers milling about piles of cement and sand, has two flags perched proudly atop what i suppose is later going to be the roof.

in other national day news, i am still trying to come to terms with the fact that i now reside in tanjong pagar grc, jon in jurong grc (even though he is blatantly in the bukit batok area, staying a mere 3 bus-stops from bukit batok central), and the area around imm is now holland-bukit timah grc. if you want to know which grc you're in, go check out the carefully multi-racial national day banners hanging from the street lamps that you must surely have seen by now.

obi-la-di obi-la-da life goes on
on the bus yesterday there was a balding old man surrepstitiously sneaking durian out of a plastic bag and into his mouth. i walked past him and caught his eye just as he was licking the last bit off one seed, and he didn't look in the least bit sheepish or abashed. in fact, he looked rather defiant, like a child who'd polished off the box of expensive godiva chocolates purchased by his parents for one of their bosses - you can't do anything about it and even if you spank me i ate them up and that makes up for everything.

i'm lying when i say i feel old, which is pretty often. especially when i see the year ones, even though the boys are one year younger than me. i feel older, of course, but not old. really, i don't think i've felt younger and more insignificant in the grander scheme of things in my entire life. it's actually a pretty nice feeling once you get used to, and contented with the idea.

my favourite time of day isn't even lying in bed waiting for jon to ring me so we can end the day with a good jaw. it's the time after that, when i lie sleepily in bed unable to sleep, staring into the darkness and out of the window at the trees which look weirdly-shaped in the night, thinking about everything and nothing at all.

***
i really liked the mummy 3. it was so cheesy that after a while it didn't come off as that cheesy after all and i just kept laughing and laughing - during, and even after the movie was over. as jon and i left the cinema i had a good time imitating michelle yeoh being all cheesily sorceress-y, as well as the skeletons brandishing their swords and shouting it's general ming!

i can't believe they got russell leong to play him.

always trust your instincts, and don't bother about hoity-toity movie reviewers who think they know it all. when you see the trailers and know it's going to be good fun because of trashy CGI scenes and a ridiculous but easy-to-grasp-don't-think-too-much-storyline you just know you've gotta watch it. well, i know i've gotta watch that kind of show anyway.

cheep cheep tweet

abi and i took ourselves to the bird park last thursday because we had nothing else to do, and one of the first things you will see is an entire row of talking birds. next to their cages are signs which tell you what their names are and what they say.

but, try talking to them and those little buggers, flitting about merrily in their cages just a moment before, will suddenly go all still and shut their eyes.

which smacks suspiciously of those people the even more annoying stomp vigilantes persist in uploading photos of, who pretend to be sleeping whenever someone the signs dictate you should give up your seat to enters the train.

neither of us brought a camera so there will be no everlasting pictures of birds - however, you get a 20% discount on entrance fees with a citibank card, and you can redeem an adult ticket for a pearl when you leave.

***
in other news, it appears that the only house displaying a singapore flag on our street belongs to that of the Minister-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named. someone in my family also pointed out that the Very Bored policeman guarding his house probably put it up for him.

1 july 2008 1411

and so, my last meal in beijing was a toasted ham and cheese sandwich and a paper cup of hot water from starbucks. kuek foo's sitting next to me and has just finished consuming his, except that he had enough money to get a drink as well. when i finally post this in singapore i'll have eaten dinner on the aeroplane and hugged jon for the first time in almost nine months.

it feels good to be going home.

***
i'm going to leave the title of this post as is, because i was planning to post it just after i got back but of course that never happened. there should've been wireless at the beijing airport but somehow i failed to connect to a network.

jon and i had our first real argument since i got back, last night - okay, that's not true, we've had some disagreements in the past 16 days - but it was our first real argument because he refused to believe that it was the gaelic and hence the french who drank warm beer and not the britons! based, of course, on one very reliable source - asterix and obelix.

on my part, i refused to believe the opposite, and it turned out in the end that he was right.

which means i'll be prevented from boiling sausages in beer, because someone thinks it's an awful waste of said beverage, and after all, no one here drinks warm beer either. just like the french.

my dad pointed out that the french drink wine, anyhow.

all that being said, it's been nothing short of glorious being back home in sunny singapore. it's been disappointing at times because i think i expected just a teensy bit too much. but everytime i walk from my house to the bus stop, seeing how clear and blue the sky looks, how green the trees, how fresh the sunshine - i breathe a silent prayer of thanks, and go on marvelling at how it's as if my glasses have been wiped clean as clean can be. even the exhaust fumes, when i go running, don't smell that bad. i love being able to see blue sky and clouds and the sun so much that even the humidity doesn't affect me greatly.

best of all, abi arrived at my house yesterday bearing the box containing all the books i asked her to purchase for me, save for one or two she couldn't get. i've been absorbed in the adventures of paddington since last night.

***

others may grouch and complain about rising prices, but trust me, there is always a good food bargain, and it's touching when grumpy hawkers still remember you and your fondness for Extra Vinegar with your bak chor mee sua.

also, because jon is a Class A Slob, we've been going to this coffeeshop near his house (wouldn't YOU like to know which block?) the location of which shall remain classified information, and they serve pretty good fish noodles ($3.50) and u mee ($3). the most amazing thing is for $3 you get three big fat prawns. well, not big and fat exactly, but big and fat enough.

i had my first cup of teh-c-kosong about 5 days ago or so, and it was heavenly. bitter, with just a hint of milky goodness.

lastly, there is nothing, nothing like sambal fried rice and ice cold beer and barbecued chicken wings consumed together. nothing.

however, it all comes with a price. i had a long run yesterday with jon and i'm feeling stiff and sleepy.

ticket to ride
it's my last sunday in beijing, and this will probably be my last post in beijing. i'm looking forward to coming home more than ever. still, i woke up this morning and felt the slightest twinge of sadness at my impending departure.

or maybe i was just hungry.

i decided a few weeks ago that my farewell post would consist of me telling you about two important things:

first, we've discovered that lee kum kee soya sauce tastes awfully good with just about anything. we've hence taken to calling it magic sauce. and it really is! can't speak for the bottles sold in singapore, but those sold here are filled with. . . magic sauce.

second, and most important of all, is probably my greatest achievement in beijing to date.

i can now poop in a squatting toilet (poop being the most neutral word i could think of). i used to have a mental block against it, but desperate times call for desperate measures. it is amazing what one can achieve when driven to it.

on that note, much as i'm not for globalisation and the erosion of culture, one of the best memories i'll have of travelling around china is coming out of the train station at 长春 (chang2 chun1) on the way back from changbaishan and seeing a kfc right in front of my eyes, open at 0630 in the morning, because the sun rises really early in summer - breakfast was from 0530-0930.

kfc meant just one thing, especially since i needed to poop Really Badly.

clean toilets. squatting, of course.

if They dare

(yes, THEY, whoever THEY are) to delay my flight home for no apparent reason except that terminal 3 of the beijing capital airport is Too Big and therefore Highly Inefficient, i swear i will run past airport security and out onto the runway, then wave my arms and jump about hurling obscenities (i won't be heard, but it's the thought that counts) until Someone cares enough to take notice of the crazy singaporean girl dying to see her boyfriend after 9 Very Long months, and demands an immediate all clear for take-off from the control tower for my flight.

after i get onto the plane, of course.

i'm not making sense, am i? and do pardon the use of so many italics.

but today was the first time i left the house in about five or so days, and i even did some cross-stitching in the dark when we went to sing ktv.

i must be going crazy.

baa baa white sheep

meeeeehh meeeehhhhhh - for alliterative purposes i realise i cannot call this a lamb, i have to call it/him/her a sheep - Suzy the Sheep! Sam the Sheep! Super Sheep! the only name i can think of to go with 'lamb' is lana.

Lana Lamb.

which effectively makes it/her (i suppose she'll have to be a her?) a Lame Lamb. Lana the Lame Lamb.

for the rest of this post i'm just going to refer to it as 'it.'

it does look like its butt is overstuffed, doesn't it? and like it had an operation where all its innards were removed and put back in. see the line down the middle of its back?

its face is also kinda weird - crooked smile - as are the ears. it looks like a little like a rabbit somehow.

what eternity really is

i stand corrected: it is almost the end of the second day of what i know is going to be the Longest Week in my entire life, and i am Sorely Tempted to change my flight home again, because now i think i know the true meaning of eternity. it's not what i said it was before - there's a post on this sometime in may - it is this. this having Absolutely Nothing To Do and Missing Your Boyfriend So Much That You Think You Might Die From Loneliness and Insanity and Worrying About Stupid Things Despite Having Friends Around You. Soon.

and missing your mother and father and brother and grandmother and your boyfriend's mother and father and brothers and your lovely best friend who is coming back at midnight on 2 july and your other lovely friends who are going to have fellowship tomorrow, and doing other things like working as shopgirls and procrastinating about applying for pupillage (you know who you are, don't try to deny it).

well, it's not quite having Absolutely Nothing To Do. xiaoyun and i were so bored yesterday that we took ourselves to the nearby shopping centre, not to shop, but to purchase craft projects.

i successfully completed one of those D-I-Y lambs today, although it looks rather weird. i shall post a picture of it tomorrow, perhaps.

yes, i am That Got Nothing To Do. it took me all of half a day, maybe less, to cut up pieces of cloth, stitch them up, stuff the resultant lamb-shaped cavity and sew the entire thing together.

i am now cross-stitching something. it takes up more time, probably because you have to keep counting the stitches.

JONATHAN LAU MUN YEW WHY THE @#$$%^$%#^%*(^*! MINISTRY OF DEFENCE MUST MAKE YOU KENA RESERVIST NOW?! since he won't be reading this, being safely IMPRISONED in jurong camp, i'm tempted to come home earlier to surprise him, except i know it won't work. and it just seems so strange to come home before 1 july now. somehow.

but there's an upside: i'm kinda looking forward to the sermon on sunday, there's a sermon series on galatians.

and sunday means i'll be just one and a half days from home.

maybe i should stop counting. i'm going nuts.

durians

i went for the king's singers concert last night, and had a really great time. i was a bit worried that audience response wouldn't be good because it seemed to be mainly made up of chinese, and some audience members were exhibiting boorish behaviour before the concert started - but happily enough, i was wrong about that. the audience was responsive, enthusiastic and warm (even if they didn't understand english), and i was just so happy to have heard the king's singers version of danny boy live that nothing else really mattered. i felt goose-bumpy the entire time. they also did two classic chinese songs, self-arranged, as an encore, and i really liked jasmine flower. kinda reminded me of something mrs. wilson might have done to the song.

although their set tonight had a jazz selection, AND they were also going to do all i ask of you - but no matter.

when i finally set eyes on the 国家大剧院 (guo2 jia1 da4 ju4 yuan4, national centre for the performing arts) yesterday evening, my first thought was, it's got to be easier to clean than the esplanade. because while it's all steel and glass panelling, at least it doesn't have spikes protruding from all over it.

until i realised that it was totally surrounded by a moat of sorts.

whoever designed the esplanade probably really had a thing for durians - or maybe he or she had to do it durian-like, as part of the Uniquely Singapore theme. i have no idea what whoever designed the ncpa beijing had in mind. a floating orb, perhaps. or a*mei's ufo song. that was the second thing which came to my mind. but that can't be right, because they (The Chinese Government) don't like her now, right?

also, Somebody, Somewhere, has decided that it's cooler at night, so they turn down the airconditioning in the subway and subway stations.

and that, my friend, is totally not true. sure, mr sun sets by around 2030, but there's something about the insane amount of dust in the air, and the even more insane amount of people trying to get onto the trains on a saturday night which makes it terribly hot and stuffy.

and then while i'm away, i'll write home every day

i've got just about 10 days till i'm back in singapore, and i couldn't fall asleep last night for thinking about it. i gave up after about a half hour of staring at the ceiling in the dark, and reached over to my desk for my mp3 player, because i decided that i wanted to listen to all my loving by the beatles. not the best song to fall asleep to, i'll admit - it's up-tempo and a little noisy - but two weeks ago, we chanced across a man on the street selling cds, the Many CDs Burned Onto One Disc, Very Blatantly Pirated kind, and after i purchased a beatles 78-CDs-In-One disc, i deleted all the chinese songs on my mp3 player to make room for a bunch of the beatles' songs from aforementioned disc.

i think it was then that i knew my time in beijing was coming to an end. if it hasn't already. not in terms of days, you understand, but in the other way. whatever way that is.

ploughing through assignments in chinese, one of which was not much more than a desperate attempt to paraphrase a chinese article by the same professor i was handing up the assignment to, was an extremely painful process which i'm glad i probably won't have to repeat ever again in this life (or the next, for that matter). the worst thing was having the niggling knowledge at the back of my mind that based on what my classmates had told me about elective modules, and the fact that my professor had about four classes of around 80 to 100 students each, he might not have even bothered reading through what i wrote. as it was, jinni and jolie had an investment law module exam just last week, where their answers were copiously copied from the textbook(which they were told to do). when it was time to hand up their papers, they walked over to the desk where their professor was sitting, whereupon he took one glance through all they'd written, rifling quickly through their scripts, and then graded them. well.

at least jinni, and jolie, to a lesser extent, had a good laugh editing my juvenile delinquency essay. i don't think i've ever seen jinni so amused, or maybe we were just bored after being cooped up at home for more than half the week.

i'm glad i came to beijing, although something jinni overheard an ang moh man saying in starbucks probably sums up my entire experience: you can't take the people in this country seriously. or you'll go crazy, trust me. you've just got to try and laugh it all off, but some days that's harder to do than others.

after all, i suppose coming to beijing has been about making friends, loving people - and more importantly, the stuff you talk about at wedding dinners. like paul very earnestly demonstrating to us, on a cold night walking along the streets to find a cab after leaving the Very Boring singapore students' association dinner, what a salsa shimmy was. shangren silently leaping off the bed and crouching by the door of our hotel room in chengde, when we played do-an-action heart attack. everyone was supposed to follow suit, but i was a bit slow on the uptake and ended up sitting on the bed laughing at everyone crouching in one mass by the door.

jinni coming into the house with a bag of potatoes and declaring matter-of-factly that she didn't buy the big ones because she suspected that they were genetically modified. just like what my mother said, and some of them can be the size of your palm. xiaoyun's naps on the sofa before she goes to bed, or the time she came home and excitedly exclaimed that some touts for a nearby hair salon practically lifted her off the pavement and into the salon.

and more recently, me poking around with a pair of chopsticks in my letterbox for a letter jolie wrote to me - i managed to retrieve it, but there is now one chopstick in the letterbox; yesterday, when i met a prc friend who's studying in singapore and is back in china for a holiday/usp summer program, and we wandered around the central shopping area chatting idly, me finally slurping up, through a fat straw, 抹茶玄米沙冰 (mo3 cha2 xuan2 mi3 sha1 bing1, ice blended matcha with crushed almonds) from 街客. due to a shortage of ingredients it had been out of production beijing-wide for a couple of days.

close your eyes and i'll kiss you,
tomorrow i'll miss you,
remember i'll always be true;
and then while i'm away,
i'll write home every day,
and i'll send all my loving to you

bye bye beijing, in ten days. i'm saying goodbye now because although i know i'll feel Rather Sad (i'm not entirely heartless, you know), i'll probably be too excited to fall asleep again.

i really, really really hate to say this but on the episode of the office which i'm currently watching, there's a scene where dwight walks into michael's office to speak to him, and i thought he kinda looked like jon.

and that, my friends, is not a compliment.

it was the high forehead and the fact that there are still 12 interminable more days till i see him again. really.

yay rachel is going to do dipsing after all :)
not that i'd really be able to hang out with her a lot and she's got to do horrible compulsory modules like evidence and company but still. she'll be around.

after the rain has fallen

we had a rainy weekend, much to our astonishment, and this morning i was sorely tempted to have a last run to the park, along the streets of beijing. well, of my district, anyway. because the dust has dissipated somewhat, the air's cooler and smells a little fresher, and best of all, the piles of dirt and sand and loose concrete are damp and the wind's therefore unable to blow any of it into your face.

i don't think last runs are really last runs unless you set out from home thinking it's going to be your last run.

but i lay in bed for a while listening to the sounds of traffic and thought about how a wave of exhaust fumes and cigarette smoke hit me when i stepped out of the apartment building, on my way to church yesterday morning, and decided against it.

i skipped in the lift lobby again. you've got to go at a particular time: too early and the neighbours are leaving for work; a while after that and the cleaning lady comes. once i hear the sounds of her huge mop i know i'm good to go in about five to ten minutes.

our university has an Extremely Strange and Useless Policy. we've got take-home exams which function pretty much the same way as they do in singapore, except that after you've finished typing your essay, you're expected to collect these sheets of paper from the teacher and copy out your entire essay by hand before handing it up. thankfully, two of my three professors with take-home exam modules have decided to do away with this requirement.

still, i had to sit at the dining room table last night copying out 3500 chinese characters, not all of which were arranged in correct grammatical order. jinni had a good laugh editing my essay for me - every cloud has a silver lining.

i've decided that i can only put one article per day into my luggage for the remaining days that i am in beijing. however, i realise that i'll probably run out of things to put in, unless i want to end up not brushing my teeth or washing my hair.

last night
some nights i lie in bed unable to sleep, listening to the steady sound of traffic in the early morning, wondering whether i'll miss it when i'm home. cats mewling, the neighbour's dogs barking, and the shriek of sports cars going much too fast in a residential area at random intervals isn't quite the same thing.

that's around 17 days away, give or take a few hours, but i've been compulsively feeding things to my suitcase for the past week, and stacking up my notes as soon as i'm done with an assignment, ready to hand them to the scrap collectors downstairs.

defining stupidity

as usual, we were comfortably seated on the sofa again, chatting at random intervals and doing our assignments, when the doorbell rang.

jinni went to peer through the peephole, and announced that it was some weird guy.

nevertheless, i wrenched myself free from the hold of my piece of sofa and went to join her, and we opened the door a sliver anyway - whereupon i looked at the man standing there and exclaimed hey that's the guy who sold us long distance talk-time for more than double of what it was really worth!

he took one look at us, realised he must have visited us before, and scuttled away quickly.

aiyoh, want to con people also cannot remember who you've conned before.

it is Extremely Hot and Dusty in beijing now. i don't mind the heat as much as the dust, and the worst thing is that the people in charge of beijing seem to have the same ideas about the singaporean government re roads and pavements in Perfectly Good Condition. in fact, i vaguely remember a phrase from my short-lived gossip girl phase, something about if it ain't broke, make it broke, and fix it. and in this case, make taxpayers wonder where their money goes to at the same time, i might add.

so, not only do you have to cope with the dust already in the air; when the wind blows, all the piles of sand and dirt from the Absolutely Unnecessary re-paving and re-tarring of pavements and roads, ostensibly in honour of the olympics (olympics, schmolympics) rises up and if you're unlucky you get caught in a mini-sandstorm.

boo ya!!
i had a title for this post last night. i even thought about what i was going to say, but now all that's running through my head are the lyrics to ben folds' still fighting it. in particular, the bit which goes and everybody knows, it sucks to grow up.

the title of this post, therefore, is taken from words i saw printed on the shirt of the tiny boy i met in the lift on my way back home from buying fruits at the mini-mart downstairs. they were encased in a speech bubble, the words seemingly issuing from the mouth of multi-coloured giraffes and zebras.

okay, i'm not very sure what animals they were, but that's what they looked like.

it's been very pleasant the past few days in beijing, especially with jon being back in singapore and able to buy calling cards which give him 340 minutes to talk to me, for $10. two of our girlfriends from the university are also staying over for the weekend - and with that, i suddenly remember what i wanted to call this post!

happy dumpling festival! 粽子节快乐 （zong4 zi3 jie2 kuai4 le4)!

that's what our china friends have been referring to 端午节 (duan1 wu3 jie2) as, and that's also why our friends are staying over, because for one it's too far for her to travel home and everyone else in her hostel has gone home, for another, her parents have gone travelling so although she stays in beijing she's been locked out of her house.

it's been pleasant with them here, with jolie coming over too, and we've been sitting with our laptops on our laps, typing away at assignments and the like, sprawled over the sofas in the living room. chatting idly from time to time, napping, ordering take-away at mealtimes. the sun has been gracing us with his presence, and shines in a nice way through the wall-length living room windows.

i'll miss being an exchange student. i won't miss the whole being away from singapore thing, but just being a student elsewhere. is there a difference?

i decided to go for the international christian fellowship's serivce today, even though i'd dismissed it as being Annoying and Too Americanised sometime during the beginning of my stay in beijing. i'm really glad i did, actually, and although i'm slightly ashamed to admit it i think i'm going to be going back there for my last 3 sundays here. it was almost like being back home, somehow, and i felt terribly lonely as i walked out back into dusty beijing and a wall of spoken chinese.

delays

my parents and brother are stuck at the hong kong international airport because their flight from beijing got delayed; i came online to check out why but didn't get any answers. seems the flights coming in and out of beijing recently have been delayed, anyhow. they've been using the weather as an excuse, so i've heard - maybe it's foggy and cloudy way up there, although the actual rainfall in beijing has been apologetic, a token amount to make up for the lack of sun and the resulting chill.

and although my mother is still Rather Naggy, my father still Rather Dogmatic and my brother Rather Lame, i miss them already, and couldn't help but tear as their taxi pulled away from their hotel.

i can only imagine the earful she must be giving the airport staff in hong kong now. haha! oh mummy, what will i do with or without you.

i chanced across this picture though:


for a moment i couldn't for the life of me remember which year this was. and actually, i still can't. i think it was quentin's 19th birthday, or it might have been his 20th.

on that note, we met the man who made my brother's 中软 (zhong1 ruan3) so he could purchase another one. this man smoked like a chimney, as do so many of the mainland chinese men, and when my mother asked him why he would, he held out the hand where two fingers grasped his cigarette. making his hand go all wobbly and trembly, he said very matter of factly that people who smoked weren't as prone to alzheimer's, and did we ever see people who smoked with trembling hands (and by that extension, being forgetful?)?

she came up with the perfect retort later that night.

you never see smokers with alzheimer's because a great many of them don't live that long!

alright, not funny, and not necessarily true. but i'm 22 this year and i can't remember when it was that we celebrated quents' birthday at the food court in the botanic gardens. i do remember that amanda made a white chocolate cheesecake and there were strawberries on it. and in it. see, that's not so bad, right?

interesting fact of the day
if you brush your teeth - i use the tri-coloured colgate - and drink milo right after, you'll get a taste in your mouth that's exactly like warm mint-chocolate chip ice-cream or one of those fancy starbucks drinks with a name beginning with the words peppermint and chocolate. it works best with milo made from pure milo powder, not milo 3-in-1.

today i am going to attempt to overcome my fear of travelling in china by taking a bus with my parents to the nearby city of tianjin.

of tv

my parents and brother are in beijing until friday morning, which explains the dearth of posts. well, i stayed in today but that just means that i have Very Sadly finished watching seasons one and two of 30 rock. i started on gossip girl, and after 3 episodes and some wikipedia-ing of plot synopses, have decided that it is Not Worth My Time.

and dudes, chace crawford is awful. nevermind that he looks vaguely like zac efron and is therefore "good-looking," he can't act to save his life. though i must say he looks exactly like his character. weak-minded with no opinion of his own, poor-little-rich-boy trapped in a bubble and fighting to get out.

give me a break. also, the clothes aren't as nice as i thought they'd be.

i'm going to start the office tomorrow, as planned. i shouldn't have listened to those xoxo's floating around at the back of my mind, along with various exhortations that i watch it. it reminds me a little of popular, too. does anyone remember popular? whoever produces these shows/writes books of that ilk seems to like giving the poor-little-rich-miss-perfects one syllable names starting with b: there was brooke, now, blair.

anyhow, the office should keep me occupied in the breaks between my assignments - which i really must continue - until i get back to singapore. i can smell the extra vinegar in my bak chor mee already.

yay for steve carrell and shows which don't have Absolutely Preposterous Premises.

time to say goodbye

nah, i'm not suddenly leaving earlier - in fact, the assignments have just started coming in.

jon's leaving bangalore this friday, and he gets back to singapore on saturday. a couple of days ago i got mad at him because i was severely caught in the deep, dark throes of homesickness when he said you know, i'm not quite ready to leave yet. and i was like dude, how can anyone not want to go back to singapore? how can you not want to go home and WAIT FOR ME TO COME HOME. which sounds ridiculous, and was pretty unreasonable of me, i'll admit. but girls have these weird moments.

but now that i'm feeling better about my remaining time in beijing (see previous posts) and determined to just make the best of things, even doing my assignments (in chinese!), i feel a bit wistful. because he's right, his time in bangalore did fly by, and while i know he's glad to be going home it all seems pretty sudden. soon enough i won't be sending him smses or calling him with a string of 12 numbers, just eight, and the number saved under jon bangalore is going to be redundant.

it's not just that though. i think i'm also feeling wistful because it's been a difficult, yet amazing and sweet almost eight months for us, and his going back to singapore marks the beginning of the end of exchange, and of this period of growth. i think it'll feel different for both of us when it's time for me to go back to singapore though. so maybe, after all, it's just like this because i won't be there at the airport when he lands.

***
i've got an exam tomorrow, and i've been taking naps during the day, in between finishing up my notes. quite pleasant, really, especially since it rained two days ago and the cold after-rain feeling's not quite dissipated yet.

speaking of making the best of things, there's that saying about making lemonade when life hands you lemons, right? i've bought a large bag of dried lemon slices, and i've been drinking a lot of what i suppose i must call lemon tea as you have to steep them in boiling water. pretty close, you think?

dear lavan

if you're reading this, do let me know. i woke up and turned my computer on to be greeted by the following message on MSN, sent to me by yue en while i was offline last night:

'anyway outta interest, I got this from Lavan's blog

TSH: "For Lavan, he says that Love comes from the heart. So all the guys in this LT, would any of you say that Love is a chemical reaction?" Jon L's hand is the only one that goes up...haha. Nadia takes some of the heat off me by adding her views. The lecture continues. Even though I'm tanned, I feel myself turn red.
hmmmm heee heee, I contemplated for two seconds if I should let you know this, but the fact that you were in Ho Hock Lai's class and I'm pretty sure he doesn't think that it's a chemical reaction now :P being that he's happily looking at you in your MSN pic :D (emphasis mine)'


lavan, i trawled through your entire archive trying to search for that entry but i couldn't find it. just so i wouldn't be maligning you.

and my dear yue en, jon's eyes are CLOSED in the picture? so i don't see how he can be happily looking at me?

so anyway, even if jon still does think love is a chemical reaction, it doesn't matter because he's an acid and i'm an alkali.

awwww!

all this, for a member of the male species who, as is typical of them, tried to make me believe last night that among other things, h0h l@w corporat!on required their prospective pupils to be able to speak hokkien and tie bandages.

in other news, i have progressed on my essay, just that most of it appears to be taken from the articles given to us by our teacher.

maybe

i should cook chicken curry today. looking at abi's pictures of chicken curry on facebook has made me feel a longing for singaporean food. and i still have those boxes of prima taste sauce mummy gave me before i came over, and it's quite cool today because it rained last night and it's windy. only thing is, i think there's msg in the mix.

i have also saved the first chinese essay i'm attempting to write as THISISNOTHAPPENINGTOME.docx (word 2007).

i'm not kidding.

***
1048: the doorbell just rang and a man has just delivered my ticket for the king's singers in beijing on 21 june. which i purchased for 180 yuan (36 SGD). WOOHOO! being able to watch good stuff at great prices must be one of the better reasons for coming on exchange.

awww shucks

okay i know this picture looks kinda wrong, especially since jon wrong isn't there (he's taking the picture i think) and in the original one sean was on quents' left and bryan was on my right. no offence to either of them, but i came across this and decided to crop this bit out to post. bryan's shirt was also Rather Rude and this is a family friendly blog, no?

because i was touched that he sent a message (and a fairly long one at that!), a couple of days ago, to my facebook inbox - which made my day :) and that he finally uploaded the picture, of course. this was taken the night before i left for beijing, at coffee bean in holland village, just over three months ago.

i think we kinda look like twins in this picture, something must run in the fami-lee.

as i was saying

before i go on, don't you think i ought to be recruited for the national day parade 2008? i think i can give a pretty decent rendition of home, and can pull off a live performance, when it comes down to it. it might even bring tears to your eyes, seeing as i love and feel so much for singapore! however, i'm not famous enough, so i don't think that's going to happen, ever. i'm also past that cutesy age where i can audition to lisp my way slightly haphazardly and a little off-pitchly through some national song and get away with it live on television.

unless, of course, by some fluke i become a famous enough LAWYER.

like THAT'S ever going to happen.

and it's not like they're EVER going to ask a FAMOUS LAWYER to perform at the national day parade, if all she's achieved is. . . being famous for being a lawyer.

alright. again, here goes. i have decided to number everything for convenience and ease of reading. see how my legal skills are being put to good use in everyday life (now i should be in an nus law school ad too, whaddya think?)?:

1. if you remember correctly, we managed to get sleeper tickets for our trip to jilin to climb chang bai shan. what i believe i didn't say was that we all got 上铺 (shang4 pu4) tickets, meaning that we were each allocated the topmost of three bunks, i.e. bunks where you can't sit up straight because then you'll be hunched right against the ceiling of the carriage. and believe me, when you're lying down, your face is literally inches from it. poor paul's feet stuck out a good few inches over the edge of his bunk.

it's not like i had much problem with slotting myself into the small space, but as i was lying in the darkness staring at the ceiling of the train carriage it hit me that i've done many things which i can and should be proud of, which make me, me; chief among them would be fighting my way down the long and winding road (now that is a good song) and finally finding God and getting baptised. which means that i have nothing to fear, because

there is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears withhas not been perfected in love. - 1 john 4:18

i realised that i only ever needed to fear God's judgment. i never needed to fear the past or the future, or fear man and the wordly things which encroached so much on my consciousness at times. and even God's judgment i don't have to fear anymore, because of Jesus' death on the cross.

the logical conclusion would therefore be that there is nothing i should fear. at all.

but i am only human, as are we all. still, that was a nice realisation. i don't think it would have come to me at any other time, and it was enforced by our braving the horrible weather to get to the top of the #$%^&#%$(*! mountain. dude, if i can brave that, i really ought not to fear and worry so much about things. right? right. and just have more self-confidence.

2. i'm pretty sure God's teaching me to live this reality:

every christian needs two conversions. one from the world to Christ, and another back into the world with Christ - john stott

i hope that speaks for itself.

it's true, and although i knew the world wasn't all sunshine (no Son what. so how to have Sonshine haha okay bad joke and you won't get it unless you go to church - alright cause we believe in the Holy Trinity: the Father (God), the Son (Jesus, God) and the Holy Ghost (Helper from God, God)) even back in singapore i think part of the reason why i've been feeling miserable in beijing is because i refuse, in a way, to accept that i cannot like everybody, or let go of their faults as easily as i thought i could. because i feel that in some way that makes me a horrible, un-christian person.

loving someone and liking them are also two different things. love is a choice, like isn't really a choice. i could go on and on about this but it's not fundamental to this post. if you'd like to hear more, do let me know.

but that's Growing Up for you. it was easy to be happy in singapore, to love AND like people around me and be a blessing. especially when there was jon to talk to at the end of the day, to reassure me that things were okay, and i wasn't going all crazy and bitter from the world.

so i think i now know a little bit more of why we had to be apart for this period of time: it's simply that i had to Grow Up and get through, accept and learn some things about the world on my own with God. i remember feeling like i was overflowing with joy when i became a christian not so very long ago, and i also wondered how long it would last. because you can't be high all the time - you'd be of no earthly use (i think i've written about this before).

paul (the apostle, not the friend) wrote

so to keep me from being too elated by the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from being too elated. three times i pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. but he said to me, "my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." therefore i will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. . . for when i am weak, then i am strong. - 2 corinthians 12:7-9, 10b.

i've seriously felt like i was going crazy and becoming bitter, but after last night's revelation and the realisation that i really have to accept some things before i jump out of my window, i feel much better. Jesus never called us to be perfect. He called us to be perfected in Him.

the world and people (including me!) are crazymessedup at times but i've learnt that i have to accept that, and move on - always - with Him.

okay i'm hungry and i'm going to eat breakfast! yay!

by the way, i also slept very well last night. much better than i have for the past week.

truth, freedom, liberation!
(hurhur)

when i was about 16 or 17, i used to follow the amazing race with great plans for my own future: i wanted to travel, to see the world - and the fact that the person i was dating when i was 17 had these grand ideas about the world and how it was probably much better than silly, small ol' singapore probably had a big part to play in my desire to Grow Up and Get Out There.

although a part of me felt that i'd be extremely happy and contented just being in singapore, feeling sian and complaining about it day and night - but still being extremely happy and contented anyway.

AND SO. after much whining to jon, and some whining to chor, here it comes:

i'm not really enjoying myself in beijing. i don't want to be afraid to admit it any longer, and i'm just going to have to accept it - as will you. if you've been following my previous posts, you'll know that for me, the novelty of being in a new country wore off a couple of weeks ago. since then, i've had bouts of feeling Absolutely Miserable. i've been putting it down to the long distance between jon and myself, but i don't think i can do that any longer because it's not fair to us, not to him, or me.

the truth is, i'm just boring, and small-minded (EDIT: BUT NOT PETTY AND MEAN!), if you'd like to think of me that way; at this point in time i'd much rather be back in singapore ironing clothes and having driving lessons and being able to go out for a proper run whenever i want to, instead of having to skip in the lift lobby because it's too dusty outside.

i want to be able to eat as much as i want of my mother's good and healthy cooking, watch bad singapore tv, get annoyed at my dad for being so dad-like. i want to ask my grandmother how her day was, i want to nap on our worn faux leather sofa in our living room with no air-conditioning, and wake up feeling hot and sticky and irritated because hey, it's hot and sticky back in singapore and that kind of weather makes you feel irritated! i want to make fun of my brother and his cool new life in acjc - heck, i even want to be preparing for year 4 sem 1.

i won't go so far as to say that i'd much rather have been back in school for year 3 sem 2, bitching with everybody about assignments and exams, because the break from school was welcome, and today i studied for an exam i have next week and found it interesting. so there are good points about having come on exchange, see?

i miss my friends. cookies and cream ice cream at island creamery with the guys, drinks and a girly dressy night out with the law school girls just because we feel like it. movies with adele, baking, sunday mornings walking over to the ywca to steal abi's baked goods or just to see her. BAK CHOR MEE WITH JON. seeing the girls from my romans group at bsf on thursdays, even though we were split differently for matthew.

most of all, i want to feel happy just doing things like walking down the street, looking at the trees - the Everyday things. which i do enjoy doing alone here, but it's different, you know? i don't belong, not even with the others, no, not really.

somehow i think almost everyone (okay, not everyone, but it seems so. although i'm sure everyone's homesick to some extent) i know's been really excited about having the opportunity to travel and see new things - and i've just been too scared to admit that i'm not like that. all the things i've seen i've actually found Extremely Boring, and i think if mummy makes me visit the forbidden palace or other attractions with the family AGAIN when they come next week i will really just 吐血 (tu4 xue3 VOMIT BLOOD) for them to see. haha! i feel like i'm terribly uncultured but hey, that's just the way things are.

(in fact, i secretly think my mother will be extremely bored too, and she'd rather go check out groceries at wal-mart with me and exclaim over how cheap vegetables are downstairs. especially when the prices are converted back to singapore dollars...!)

seeing how other people live their lives has been interesting. letting them share a bit of themselves with you has been great. those have been the things i've enjoyed the most about travelling in china.

but when it comes down to it, THERE IS NO PLACE LIKE HOME AND THIS IS NOT HOME. i am dying to go home and get on with my life in singapore.

i'll miss the girlfriends i've made in 政法 (zheng4 fa3) though.

after all, exchange hasn't been all that terrible. you'd have heard if i'd been driven to jump out the window already, right?

it's not even the inefficiency and sheer number of people, the lack of consideration for others which gets to me, really.

but there are things i know i came on exchange to learn. oh, not just about jon and myself. other things too. and that will be a story for tomorrow, perhaps. for now, i'm feeling much happier than i have for the past few days, weeks, and i think i'll be able to sleep better tonight as a result.

THE TRUTH WILL SET YOU FREE! indeed it does, and in all ways and senses of the phrase. nothing like God's wisdom for you.

of all the things in the world

guess what! it might please you to know - it sure pleased me! - that i managed to buy the right shampoo after all! i just compared the chinese words - 西柚 （xi1 you2) - on the bottle of shampoo i purchased with the bottle of conditioner which i purchased in beijing, when they still had the pictures of fruits and flowers on the bottles.

now, i have no idea why it smelt different to me. maybe something's wrong with my olfactory senses, or there's too much dust in the air and hence up my nose.

noooooo

remember those vaguely offensive yeeeeeeeees! yeeeeeeeeesss! clairol advertisements?

well, anyway, this post isn't about them.

it's about how somebody, somewhere, decided to give the whole range of clairol hair products an extreme makeover. not that it's that big a deal, really, because i like the new scents they come up with, and the new shampoo bottles are more ergonomically friendly.

but why did whoever-they-are have to choose to do this when i'm in beijing? because along with being more ergonomically friendly, they also decided to stop printing pictures of the fruits and flowers whose extracts are contained in the shampoo on the bottles. and because it's beijing, duh and obviously, all the words printed on the bottles of shampoo are in chinese.

which meant that i spent, firstly, a good ten minutes, searching for the clairol section, and secondly, another fifteen or so minutes sniffing the contents of almost all the bottles of shampoo on display there.

the shampoo and the bottle it's in are still coloured more or less according to the older range, but i couldn't find the one i'm currently using (with matching conditioner), which is the grapefruit bright pink one. or maybe it's been re-released in a different colour. who knows? so now when i condition my hair, hopefully the smells won't clash. the bottle i finally bought smelt orangey - it was orange, after all - which is pretty close to grapefruit. you think?

***
two days ago i was feeling a bit blue; on my way to the bakery i saw the weather-beaten middle-aged lady who runs a bicycle repair-come-parking service under a nearby overhead bridge reading the bible.

we're not into counting months, really we aren't, but since it was the second last 22nd of the month that we'll be apart, yesterday -

next door there's an old man who lived to his nineties
and one day passed away in his sleep
and his wife; she stayed for a couple of days
and passed away

i'm sorry, i know that's a strange way to tell you
that i know we belong
that i know

that i am
i am, i am
the luckiest - ben folds five, from the luckiest

because we're all talking about american idol

i know i'll risk getting lynched by yalan (if she can even be bothered to read this because she's too busy voting for david arnold cook HURHUR) - and thousands of david cook fans across the world, not that they'd read my blog - for saying the following BUT. i'm youtubing david cook and david archuleta's finale performances and i have to say that the latter sounds better and just fresher, somehow. after jasmine trias murdered elton john's don't let the sun go down on me in season whatever it was, i didn't expect any other idol contestant to ever do it well but david archuleta did! and he's only, what, 17?

although imagine and the long and winding road kinda got on my nerves, because i'm one of those annoying purist people, and i like the beatles, so no one will ever match up to the fab four in my book. still, both were well-executed and pleasant enough. which i couldn't really say for david cook's performances. he just sounded... jaded. and like a lot of other stuff we've heard already, you know?

ooh and it appears that david archuleta plays the piano, and he played it when he performed angels.

okay and THAT was an amazing performance. i actually liked it almost as much as i like robbie williams singing it!

i guess you can really see people in their music, and maybe that's why david archuleta appeals to me. err yes, although i've only just youtubed his performances, haha. he's still young, and you can hear his dreams when he sings. rather more untainted, and hopeful, with touches of wistfulness and innocence, which is nice. you can hear that he's uncertain but excited about the future.

ah well, he just hasn't lived enough, and let's hope and pray that however much he'll have to grow up in the following months he won't forget what it was like to feel like he had the world at his feet, and more importantly, the feeling that he knew exactly what he was going to do about it. in a good way, of course.