Tuesday

Today’s the Tuesday of mid-sem break, and we had our first group meeting for N.Structures. Love the group! Am so glad for Su and Liza and Kim and Gurpreet and Benita. I’ve often thought that it’ll be cool if Su gets to know Kim, because they remind me of each other sometimes (super infectious chatter!), plus Kim’s like a fizzy drink full of bubbling energy, it’s hard not to get high as well. And they don’t have to watch their language with one another, for one, since none of us have what Su calls “virgin ears” *laughs*

So there began the most engaging project meeting ever, with some discussion on work, LOTS of bonding and stories and opinions and other random juicy stuff, hurhur. Prof.T would have been proud of the sheer number of narratives we swapped in those couple of hours.

No surprises there, certainly, but after project discussion officially ended and half of the group left, Liza Su and I continued chatting for the next 3 hours straight–-about almost anything you could think of. Amazing. I’ve known Liza since year 1 sem 1 from our EL exposure project group, and I’ve never quite remembered talking to her this much before... I shall henceforth dub this The Su Effect =D Made me really realise that it’s quite a pity I never got to talk this much to Liza, or most of my Lit folks before. Sigh, the friends I’ve missed out on! Su’s a super wonder lar! I seriously need to fix my conversation making skills… I’m such a reticent talker! Mostly because I never ever quite know what to say to anyone, save for people whom I am already extremely comfortable with. It’s an evil cycle, I tell you. How to be comfortable with anyone if you don’t talk to them? My ice-breaking phase is an average of like, 2 years. Highly disturbing, methinks.

Ah well. Something for me to think over while I leave off this entry for a bit =)

Feb Update

The Cherry sister asked me to update, so here I am!--albeit feeling a little sheepish because I haven't got an idea what to write about, but we'll see. Long-winded rambling often comes in useful at this stage! =D

Let's see... what happened in the past week? Valentine's Day came and gone, of course, but to be frank it didn't feel very Vdayish-- I only spent long enough time in school to catch a couple of bouquets, (which made me wonder, rather perversely, what do you actually do with them a few days later-- throw them away? I've attempted to keep a bouquet of roses--hung them upside down to get dried flowers--only to get yelled at for keeping a hoard of weird-smelling stuff in the room, after which the poor flowers had to be banished outside and finally to the bin, because I didn't know what to do with the dismal black petals that emerged a few days later...) But I digress. And should anyone began to glare at me and say "But roses are romantic!" I shall declare of course that yes, certainly they are, and one should keep the ladies happy and the economy going all the same, save that I'm still troubled about things that don't go on living for long after Vday, but that's just me being me. Perhaps it is the temporality that makes flowers so beautiful :)

Where was I? Oh-- so I came for a highly entertaining reproductive health lecture on contraceptives, with lots of rather alarming stories of what young doctors encounter in the A+E after the population had their share of various Valentines' Day trysts. Goodness. Of which (and allowing me to digress again) it might also be interesting to observe that I've been getting quite an overdose of sex education this semester from my modules. Reprod health aside, Sci-Fi and Metafiction novels have offered quite explicit scenes that would make my parents reconsider the delicacies of literary texts. Then again, most scenes have been more disturbing than anything else, with their symbolic meanings and intellectual dilemmas begging to be unpacked in every act, so--- not quite as kinky as when one reads outside the literary framework, I'm afraid.

Sigh. I would keep digressing. Vday night was spent preparing to 拜天公, but the neighbourhood was strangely silent most of the night... I would've thought there were more families observing the traditional ritual. It's always fascinating to watch the beautifully crafted paper-palace and paper money burn, starting with green-blue flickers that turn into orange-yellow flames soaring more than a metre upwards, with smoke carrying the ashes so high it almost seemed as though they were really swirling towards the sky.

(Nothing much happened on Friday, saved that I smelt strongly of smoke from the night before--but of course this is not relevant.)

Over the weekend I ism-ed, so Monday I was bereft of sleep and semi-high in general. I realised that I could sit through 9am seminars fully awake from the first minute to the last--which never happened last semester--so I gathered I must be much more fond of these modules than I ever was of Research Workshop, or 18th Century poetry, which, along with Asia Mods, made me feel extremely backward, inept and badly read--hence extreme anxiety and stress abound. Infinitely grateful for this semester's modules, which are difficult, yes, but also more engaging, somehow. And I don't feel like a misplaced honours student so much :)

Friday was another rather long, slowish seminar, and I'm extremely glad to have the grape sis there to make the hour easier to pass :) We actually had time to calculate the budget of a certain related concert *grins* But for all the complaints of the trudging pace of this module, I'm really grateful for it, because it gives me less stress and more time for my other mods in general *relief*

Which brings us to Friday night! I am actually quite fond of production meetings, long as they are, because they give me a kind of reassurance that things are moving along, and that we've involved as many different people as we could in planning and making things work out =) And I'm immensely excited about our newly assembled boyband! *beams* Such potential! If this doesn't sweep at least half (the female half) of the theatre away, I'll... eat my books.

Okay. I won't do anything of that sort. Still. A lot of VO3 is gonna be exciting, so do come for the concert, okay? I have good vibes for this one, and we have capable people at the helm, so don't miss out on it :)

K, updates for a week-and-a-half! Still got little admin stuff to tie up, so till the next entry, ciao~!

Of cousin, sisters and friends

Was browsing the blogs of a certain few people I've become terribly fond of, and feeling infinitely grateful that I have somehow a part to play in their lives, and they in mine.

We're not meant to live our lives lonely after all. There would be disappearances you cannot control, but there are people who are always by your side no matter how far away they may be physically, and there will be people who've always existed, but whom you re-discover as better friends than ever.

And you know who you are, of course =)

Ism-ing

It's Sunday, and I must have rewritten my 700 words over and over again because it didn't read satisfactory enough to me. Dr A very kindly extended the deadline to Monday--that's tomorrow-- but even after days and days at it, what I get is a gazillion new ideas that contradict one another when I try to get it down on paper. Then I try to explain: see, this is how it works, but it just looks more convulated! I look at the length of my one sentence and conclude that I'll probably never get Alzheimer's disease, if studies showing that people who tend to write in long sentences have a lower chance of getting Alzheimer's are anything to go by. There are semi colons everywhere in my introduction alone, which carries an impressive 104-word sentence, among other things.

It's frustrating lar-- even more so because I really want good things to come out of this, because I'm so very fond of the texts themselves. Yet somehow it's a lot more complex than it seems-- the complexity of ideas that you unsuspectingly drink up along with the engaging plot is deceptively easy to read, but try dissecting it in any way, or pinning it down into a coherent argument, and-- ugh, I feel like tearing my hair. The essay has to read with resounding clarity, difficulties or no-- otherwise I'll never forgive myself. Everytime I break and come back again and re-read I'll have an incredible urge to rewrite the entire thing, but it's not yet finished. I think juggling 5 texts in one essay is no mean feat... usually the max I do is 2, so that the other ideas from other texts don't come and trip me up.

Aaaaaah.

Okay rant over. I really really need to get this done by today... there's a science essay due Thursday that I haven't even touched, help!

Help.

It's really incredibly funny in a perverse kind of way, that kind of ha-ha funny that makes you want to weep at the same time, when you look at a 5-digit projected expenditure and an expected max profit of 100 bucks. I confess: I do not know what to say, or how to salvage the scenario.

Now I understand, with painful clarity, the need to have genuinely experienced people around--seniors, or seasoned performers, or otherwise-- to actually give your proposal a glance, and start roaring "NO LAR, CRAZY AH" before you decide to, you know, jump off a cliff with a hang glider that still has lots of holes in it.

Since the cliff is already picked (and a bloody high cliff it is, too), I guess all we've got to do is to attempt to patch up the holes.

Eeeeep.

CNY

Um, not so many photos taken, I realised. Oops.

But here's a few, anyhow:


S.Kang and me at our 大年初一 hotel buffet (And that's the first ever qipao-top I've ever worn)


Mum and Dad looking decidedly festive in red too


I'm the first girl of the generation on the paternal side of my family tree, and the only girl holding the surname as of now, because all my cousins are male. Gee. That's us at my fifth granduncle's home, with the newest addition... also a boy, but a very cute boy nevertheless :)

The 15 days of CNY aren't over yet, so there might still be more to come--meanwhile I gotta get back to work... Am already feeling a tad guilty for the super extended break I took in the first four days of the new year, woops. Till the next time!

CNY Eve

... was fruitful! Met Shell, visited teachers in NY, caught a few teachers-- Mr N, Mrs Too, Mrs Teo... Shell, who met Mr N earlier, said he still remembers me as "Oh! the choir girl!" Which is quite nice to know, actually--I was quite attached to my JC choir, so it's a nice happy association :P He was ever hilarious, as always-- quirky stuff on his desk ("This mess is a desk", photoshopped pictures of himself as 007 and some other American general, a horrific garbage dump next to his table "because they won't give me a cupboard, see? I told them, if they give me a cupboard for my CCA stuff, then the rubbish will disappear! Into the cupboard!") Goodness. Haha. It's so good to see him again. I miss his econs lessons lar! Whoever else can make econs lectures that fun, and tutorials that illuminating?

Fair number of teachers have already left the school, but, but! Through Mrs Teo, Shell and I made the glorious discovery that Miss Tan is back from Harvard and is teaching at SR! *beams* So we just made our way down to SR on sheer impulse, barely 5 minutes after Mrs Teo gave us the news, praying very hard that we would catch Miss Tan before she heads home. It was quite a wisp of a chance-- new year eve's school celebrations were likely to be over, and we haven't got her contact number, and we were effectively gonna crash a school where we've never studied in without being too conspicuous. What if they chase us off for trespassing?

Okay, they didn't, apparently. Heh. SR has super nice teachers-- the first teacher we met offered to help us check if she was at her desk, and, upon finding out that she wasn't, told us to "please take a seat" and went off to look for her for us. In less than 5 minutes Miss Tan was heading our way, looking a little bewildered at two figures waving wildly at her some distance away, and looking behind her to see if there were anyone else we were waving at--because she is immensely new to the school, after all, and wouldn't have ex-students yet.

Then the surprised exclamation of genuine delight when she was near enough to recognise us-- "Oh my God! You guys!" (it was quite a squeal of delight from the very composed Miss Tan we know) and then hugs all around =) It's terribly nostalgic, catching up after a gap of some three years or so, relieving a flood of happy memories of the best-ever lit classes even as we were conversing about the present and the future. I think the visit made our days totally--Miss Tan's, Shell's and mine, and I'm way grateful to Mrs Teo for that random bit of information that effectively sent us over on that impulse trip to SR =)

Then it's off to lunch with Shell at Macs (all hail twister fries!) Poor girl's up to her ears in FYP stuff, but at least she's gonna head to Genting for a holiday.

So ends the morning-afternoon of CNY Eve, plus the fairly quiet reunion dinner with my immediate family--grandma and uncle, too--which is pretty much like our usual dinners (we do have dinner together nearly everyday, after all), save for the new-yearish feast :)

More updates of the new year in a photoblog, hopefully!

Trip of the day

Ever since the new canteen's been built, there would be every once in a while when I'll trip and almost fall on the canteen steps. I don't know if there is a precise step that is perhaps 0.5cm higher than all the rest, but then I haven't seen anyone else trip along the stretch, so I gathered the fault probably lies with me.

The fact that I am blogging such insignificant information, however, probably means that this queer and unwelcomed routine had been interrupted. And so it was. Tuesday evening I tripped... and fell.

It has been a while, as I told Azi and Jy later, since I've ever had quite a spectacular fall as this. Having been conditioned to a series of near-trips on the stairs, only to regain my balance in a giddy rush, I hadn't believed in that two seconds that I really was gonna fall. Instead of dropping my hands to break the fall, therefore, I flung out both hands to grab onto something solid to stop the fall-- except that my hands missed the solid handrail and hit the not-so-solid plastic dustbin, which of course rocked forward out of my reach in a series of noisy clops.

Thus my poor left knee got most of the impact, hitting and scraping across the rough patterned stone floor.

I am glad I did not squeak in shock, but the clatter at which my belongings and I landed and the accompanying rumble of that not-so-solid bin already did the job of drawing alarmed looks from passer-bys, darnit. I glanced round long enough to see two girls who froze in mid-conversation to stare in shock, then promptly averted eye contact and climbed to a standing position. There's no way to look dignified when you pick yourself up from a fall, I realised with some annoyance-- my barang barang kept me from rising gracefully from the steps, so I had to compensate by pretending to sweep imaginary dust off my skirt (while swallowing the awful dismay when I caught sight of the freshly-bleeding abrasion, which was beginning to throb in earnest), and walking away sedately from the accident scene, nonchalantly sms-ing as if nothing really happened.

I'll leave out the messy details about washing the endlessly bleeding knee in the isolated toilet as I recovered myself. At that point in time there was not much room to choose which hurt more--my knee or my dignity. Like HOW EMBARRASSING IS THAT LAR! :( At this age my psycho-motor skills still continue to astound me. The last major fall I had (we shall prudently leave out toe-jabbing and bruises and unintentional head-banging and walking into furniture because they belong to another category of accidents) was in first year, when I was out doing newspaper collection with my seniors. Two seconds after spotting a road barrier with a low-hanging chain, and consciously telling myself not to trip, -WHAM- I walk into the chain and end up knee-first on the concrete road.

Ah well. As of now I'm gonna be confined to wearing long pants and jeans for the new year. Was complaining pitifully to my dad that I can't even run on the treadmill because it's not knee-friendly (though I must confess I wasn't really that miserable about skipping exercise in particular :D).

"Oh, but you can," he told me with a grin, pacing on the machine. "You'll just have to run like this--" *does a curious, limping gait on the running treadmill*

*grumbles* I really ought to keep the frequency of these little accidents down--even my parents are developing an emotional immunity to them. Gah.

Trip of the tongue

Presentation over! *throws confetti*

Turned out fairly well, I think... Managed to get through nearly the entire presentation with no major trips.

Nearly, yes, because towards the very end, the weird-sounding science-fiction-ish terminology (Anar-res-ti, Ur-ras-ti, Oi-ie, Sa-i-o, Si-mul-ta-ne-i-ty, Ha-i-nish, comparative-cultural-anthropology, fundamental-complexity-and-relativity...), and the sheer speed at which I was reading them, got my tongue so tied up in knots that I tripped over-- of all things!-- my lecturer's name.

"So to conclude, here's just a very brief summary again of the main thrust of my argument. Like Prof cut-ke-cup-tup-pup-pup-- Prof cut-pak... SORRY! I mean..."

The class dissolves into laughter. Prof P, at the side of the room, looks slightly amused.

"Woah, I'm sorry! Tongue got a bit--blah. Let's try this again." *deep breath* "As I was saying. Prof. Pat-Ke mentioned that..."

Gah. I was blubbering plosives like a motorcycle that refused to start, right before the class of 30-odd students. (Classmate to me later after class: "Were you gonna say Prof cupcake?" -_-) So embarrassing lar! I was nearly gonna panic when I couldn't string the two syllables of his name together in that terrifying suspension of 10 seconds.

Yet on hindsight it did seem funny, haha. I'm glad the class is amused, actually-- for most part of the seminar they were comparatively more silent than usual (probably because a good number didn't finish reading the book :P), so it was a relief to hear them laugh :) Ah well, all's well that ends well... I'm immensely grateful. Now I can crawl back to bed and sleep off this throbbing headache :)

Traditional post-work-completion post...

I'm done with the presentation! Well, the preparation part of it, at least. The actual presentation is in another 12 hours or so. As of now I've read it over and over so many times that I'm actually losing track of what I want to say. It's very disturbing -_-

Oh, and I was mosquito feed for most of the writing process. The mosquitoes are vicious in the evening. I only managed to smack one-- and that one was already bloated with my own blood. I can predict what my dad or mum would say to this-- "You managed to kill it only because it's already sucked your blood... Some of your slowness must have got into it lar, that unfortunate thing." -_-

I'm trying not to register the fact that Charlene and KK will be leaving for Switz this coming evening =(