Charmaine banged her forehead on the edge of her stone-hard wooden chair last night and earned herself a freaking baluku from the sheer impact. Needs to be kept under observation. Should her sanity show any alarming abnormalities, please notify the relevant authorities.

Meanwhile, she hopes that the swelling blue-black bruise on her forehead *wince* will subside into something less visible, because Reso's first video-recorded run-through is tomorrow. If raising her eyebrows doesn't hurt as it does now, the whole business would probably be ridiculously funny (hao lian lar! bend down to pick things up in the dark, lar!).

She shall retreat presently to some corner to mope and feel morose over her sheer stupidity in inflicting unnecessary pain on herself =( Although, really, she is immensely grateful that she didn't hit her eyes, or her nose *shudder*

Sigh. What a lesson. A reminder to be more careful next time, soundly hammered in for good measure.

Went for a haircut!

Wanted only a trim originally, because the ends of the newly-permed hair were fraying like carpet fibre, or matted dog hair, which no amount of conditioner or hair rebuilding-cream could salvage... Which is kinda scary because I've never seen my hair ends so dry and frizzed and tangled and so... so... dead before. And since Mum was going for a trim I might as well have mine, too.

A trim wasn't enough to settle the ends, though... ended up loping the fraying bits all off and layering quite a fair bit, so tada~

I haven't had short hair since year one sem one! And I've never ever had long-ish hair before that, not even to shoulder length, believe it or not =) It's kinda nice to feel the breeze on the back of your neck really, and the hair is kinda funky now that it's much shorter, quite reminiscent of the younger days with the additional dose of waviness and highlights from last week =) Wouldn't have wanted to whine much under the usual circumstances, but I kinda wanted to keep longer hair for the concert. Oh wello. It'll grow =)

OOooh and I got to do hair treatment cos my mum was coaxed into it by a salon-ful of girls to do hers. Hohoho! That's an absolute first I think. It's very nice to have your hair washed and massaged and conditioned with stuff and heated with that spinning UFO-lookalike thingie. (my hair probably needed it, crispy as it was -_-)

Yay! New look for the hols, hohoho... Hair permed AND highlighted AND cut. Quite an adventurous move for conservative Charm, yes?

Oooh, it's refreshing to indulge in a frivolous hair-centred entry once in a while =)

A reply-entry, because there's so much to say =)

*grins* You sound so much like a parent, my dear girl, "watching you grow up" and "come into being"... But on the other side it's strange, I think, to see so many people around you with such an awareness of the world around them. People who "know", who have "grown up" and "matured" in so many ways.

And there I stand, wondering if I'm not lagging behind in some way. Makes me think of the Happy Prince standing above the town, watching life bustle around him, watching people in the far off corners of the town suffering... And yet there he is, still, glistening with gold beneath the sun. Or the Hunchback of Notre Dame leaning over the stone parapets, wondering what life is like "out there".

Yet oftentimes life within is so... secure, so... sheltered (*pause* what is it with this seemingly common belief that I need to be protected...? the number of times I feel like I'm supposed to function as an ornament in a glass enclosure, sigh), so homey, that you're lulled into the sensation that there is no more the need to venture out. Except that this thought is mere madness, because the world and its realities surround you still, because there is a life, a real life, that needs to be lived, if only to survive.

I don't think it'll kill me to live, lar =P

We're growing still, all of us. I used to be terrified of change, of having a sudden drastic change that will rob people from you, that will turn friends into strangers. (Remember secondary school and the -ahem- complicated choir politics that resulted in all those bizarre change in character? But then again, upon hindsight, I suppose certain characters already possessed this potential for change *frowns* Haiyah, the whole affair was just very freaky lar, eek.) But then change is not always bad, I realised. You have changed as well, quite a bit, too, yet you're still essentially you, this same perceptiveness that sees more than before, this almost rebellious impulse for freedom, and that innate, abstract, intuitive understanding and ability to visualise stuff quite like no other =) And a whole lot of stuff that comes with being you, that I don't think can ever be lost even as you move on in life.

I always think--or like to think, rather-- that even as all of us are moving through life in all these different directions, and are changing, we're changing simultaneously, and changing together. Which is a comforting thought because it no longer seems so estranged. That there is still an odd kind of equilibrium between age-old friends. There must be a reason for having met all these certain people and going through a rough patch together, like some sort of a beginning that we can all turn back and relate to even at a later point in our lives, the formation of this firm bond of trust and relatedness that you know still remains a part of you, change or no change...

I'm starting to ramble, and even go out of point from the original reply, but I think you'd know what I mean =) I'm still adapting to changes though, but I think the real big changes are not quite in place yet. Wait till all these secondary school friends get attached *grins* That'll be quite a change to behold. And then we'll all have to re-adjust all over again -_-

Yet you all would still matter the way you are and have been, and mean just as much =)

How do you emote a song in that range? How?

Oh Charm, feel! Feel Charm feel feel feel!!! And then act it out.




I don't want to listen to my recordings anymore, for so many things that are still not coming out.


Okay, get the moping over with now, Charm, and back on track again. Stop telling yourself you can't do it, because you can, and you will. You need to believe in that.

More experimentation, I think. There's got to be a way to make it work.

Permed and highlighted my hair, courtesy of Jeremy... Charm's new look of the holiday :P Looks extra fluffy now... Let's see how it works out in a week.

That aside, I'm still totally totally awed by his piano-playing skills. It's very free-style, but the music becomes so very alive that you feel extra spirited. I had almost forgotten how it feels like to sing with piano accompaniment... Bee-oo-ti-ful =)

Meeting the SC girls tmr! Yay!

I ran round the neighbourhood yesterday! *pause* Okay, brisk-walked, actually, to be more accurate... the only running down is down slopes, which isn't very much. Sheesh. -_-

Love the cool evening, shady walks, stretches of private houses, intersecting small lanes and roads that make interesting little detours everywhere round so that each walk is different. Eliminates the horrific walking-in-circles feel that the track has. I only ever like one track, and that's the St Nicks one, because it contains fond meaningful memories, the glowing centre of the school where we have our morning assemblies. The memories of NY's track blaze of painfully distinct memories of breathless, gasping struggles around the track, impossible number of rounds and circuit training and afternoon PE and hopping on one leg for 400m. Yuck yuck yuuuucccck. And along with images of sticky hot days comes a word bank of automatic associations with words like 'torture' and 'disgusting' and 'feel like dying' and 'dehibilating migraines' and 'stagger around school the following day'. Exercise never looked remotely fun thereafter.

Probably explains why I can barely run without sharp gasps and shudders for breath for the longest time after I swore off PE after JC. The more I resisted the more painful it was, apparently, and there goes the vicious cycle that cuts running off from the notion of (psychological!) health and fitness.

It's very silly to do without exercise though, so now I'm attempting to come round to the idea of "running" weekly, weeding out all the psychological barriers that attach themselves to it. There's the handphone radio, which helps a humongous lot, because running is no longer that listless, lonely, thump-thump-thump-gasp-thump-gasp-thump. I chucked the idea of taking up the track, though, because of the attached memories, and because walking in circles make me feel like I'm heading nowhere, plus because the distance covered is so carefully marked out I feel exceedingly frustrated when I cannot cover a decent distance without struggling to push myself on. And I need to walk alone, because it's therepeutic. I don't have to worry about slowing another person down, account for what another person feels about the run, feeling the need to keep up to some invisible other-person's standard, plotting out some sorta a ready-made route beforehand... Oh no no no. Changing directions and switching to a different lane and exploring a different area of the neighbourhood and detouring as and when injects a more refreshing feel to the journey, now more of an adventure, a trip, rather than a routine.

Plus the reward at the end: 30 min walk in exchange for 5 minutes on the playground swing, or a 45 min walk in exchange for a 10-minute-swing. *bliss* It's crazy I know, especially when I loiter around the playground doing random stretches, waiting for the swing to be vacated, but oh, it's such a little thing that I cannot resist, and seem so apt a reward. Just to feel the breeze in your face and your hair, the smooth glide up--down--up--down--whooooosh in your ears, leaning back, back to watch the tree leaves and patch of sky flash past and back, and lean down to feel your weight accelerate the swing downwards, and then up higher, higher... Oh, how I love swing-swing-swing-ing!

Someday I shall be able to cover the gentle uphill slope from junction to junction in a brisk jog without wheezing at the end. *nods*

It's been ages since I've been out with the girls, and boy was it good to see them all again, for a luxurious one day stretch, no less =) Shopping is exciting when you've a certain unique combination of the right kinda people to shop with and shop for =P


Classic shot :)

We took so many many pictures! *grins*


Feels so good to re-live the good old days again, that I'm still relishing the entire feel of it all whilst on a picture-editing-high at 3.20am *grins* Am already looking forward to our elaborately personalised birthday projects... Here's to loads and loads more of meet-ups to come for the rest of our lifetime =)

This is unrelated, but, you know what they always say that the stuff that you dream will never come true?

Well, I dreamt that the ecology readings that I diligently went through a few times came out as an exam essay question by itself.

I think I just validated another myth.

@#$%^&*.

That aside, exams are over. Yay. I kinda wish I'm more excited about it, though. Hm.

'When I was alive and had a human heart . . . I did not know what tears were, for I lived in the palace of Sans Souci* where sorrow is not allowed to enter... Round the garden ran a very lofty wall, but I never cared to ask what lay beyond it, everything around me was so beautiful.’

-Oscar Wilde, The Happy Prince

*Sans souci: "without care"

So protected, you little golden statue of joy, so protected still... What else do you know, but this? How strange, to fear knowing and feeling, and to fear not knowing and not feeling...

It's 4th of May in the afternoon now, and a few minutes less than 24 hours before my next paper commences.

When the rest of the world have already completed theirs, from faster-do-faster-finish SMUers to the start-a-month-early-so-that-we-can-end-two-days-before-NUS's NTUers, to the rest of the frolicking NUSers who're finally done with their papers after a two-week-long battle. My MSN list looks terribly long for a Friday afternoon: Jeremy ponders what phone to get, Cheryl points ecstatically to her newly pierced ears, and Derek is relishing the taste of freedom. I think I shall prudently remain "appear offline", lest I decide to give myself an early holiday too.

So how has exams been for everyone? Did you submit in all your relevant papers? Have you filled in your particulars properly? I forgot to write in my question numbers on the cover page of my Romanticism paper in my hurry to submit them in, so I shall make a public confession now, just in case :) It is always good to nurture such habits in our Leaders for Tomorrow, you know.

The day after my exams is voting day, but I am some ten months underaged, much to my dismay. Especially since Aljunied's been so happening recently. My mum gets to vote the first time in her life, though, so I shall make do with feeling excited for her instead. Woe to the people -really- staying in Aljunied, who apparently have ended up as MarineParaders instead. Or Clementians who are under some walkover arena... (See Derek? Hougang is a funky place to stay in)

In the past couple of weeks, every morning when I step out of the gate I come face to face with PM waving and smiling benignly at me. Several lampposts down the road there's WP and their benevolent beams, but right on top of the party poster we have a humongous lightning-sign looking like it's positioned to strike right down their middle. I am sure they did not consider the visual semantics, of course, but oh my.

Okay, break over, back to notes. Everyone else who've been on blog hiatus, come back and blog soon~!