i've been home for 2 weeks now. feels longer though, so i'm glad there's still a month left for me to laze around, sleepsleepsleep and eat more food. :) that's basically what i've been doing for the past 2 weeks back, plus meeting all my long-lost friends! i've watched more movies than i've ever watched in the 2 months i was in cambridge, ate more chicken rice and wantonmee than i think i ever ate in the span of 2 weeks (for the record, it's 5 chicken rice and like 4 wantonmee), watched god knows how many hours of my favourite taiwanese variety shows!! i think i shall youtube them when i get back, it feels weird to have missed out on 2 months' worth of gossip and entertainment news. yes shallow as it may seem, it actually makes me feel happy i understand chinese cos the shows are just so funny. i can literally laugh out loud at the tv screen when they're on!

going to malacca tmr with the cousins. heard that there's a new shopping centre opposite mahkota parade. hooray for more shopping! i'm looking forward to karaoke and just chiling with the rest. we had my first complete family gathering on sat with all the families since i was back. felt so nice and warm inside :) family is still the best place to come home to.

morna's coming over the new year!!! yay!!!! i can't wait.

home!

back in singapore already! the flight back wasn't exactly fun alone though.. had several um.. let's call it obstacles:

excess luggage! my god i had to PAY for it. first time i had to whip out my credit card.. my dad called it a lesson to be learnt: never ever pack too much again. think of the 200 or so dollars wasted on a pack of notes and books i brought back to mug with. such a nerd i know.

body check: they RANDOMLY chose me. the officer just turned around and pointed at me. at that point i was thinking, ok well at least they didn't have to check my bag cos i had so much trouble packing it. it was totally stuffed! so i took off my shoes, belt and jacket to be scanned by this huge machine. once they found i'm metalless, they let me go, but not before asking me to walk around in the airport for awhile barefoot.

now this is the hilarious part: check for EXPLOSIVE MATERIAL in my hand luggage. do i look like a crazed criminal ready to bomb the airport anytime? do i really?? i'm an innocent looking asian female student! the most innocent class of passenger i have to say, after the old frail lady that needs help walking that is. this after the body check as well! the first time i had to succumb to these security measures at any airport in the world. i found it totally ridiculous. although the security officers were nice enough to console me that it was all a technical thing and they didn't have any part in singling me out.

sigh I'M MISSING CAMBRIDGE ALREADY! after 3 hours of touching down here. how am i going to last 6 weeks! friends, please ask me out soon and console me. all the NUS pple are still having exams until friday, which means i'll be moping around for a week. owell, back to a familiar rhythm.. it shouldn't be too hard.

continuation...

after fairbairns, as if we were not tired out yet, we had the white christmas bop! ahh went as an angel, what else?
the nose wasn't part of the costume.. i stole it off snowman elgon. and lost it after in the process. haha! the bop was amazingly fun! pembroke doesn't do many bops and when they do, everyoneeee is there! so took tons of pictures as usual, but they're so difficult to upload! use your imagination...

cheese music the whole night. just like cindies. but i somehow liked music at cindies a bit better. uh oh, i'm becoming cheeeeesy.

after-party at V as per normal.. we managed to find some decent songs in luke's computer other than his customary trance. ooh speaking about music, dave just transferred some 'brit' indie punk into my computer woop! they're nice actually! i don't know how i always doubted british music, but not any more. 8 weeks has shaped my musical taste. i'm easily influenced.


it was kinda sad that we had a freaking lectureeee the next morning/yesterday at addenbrooke's. had to drag myself out of bed in time to catch the bus. then start to PACKKKK! omg i should be still packing now but i can't bring myself to do it. it's soooooo much! :( owell, after this post then!

last night had PCBC DINNER! boat club dinners are always notorious for crazy speeches and heavy drinking and good food, but don't worry i din drink much. everyone was on a high cos it's kind of the mark of the end of term for all the boaties!

the women's second boaties who were there. some of them actually skipped it to go to red ribbon ball! HAH. they don't know what they missed. there we go from left to right:

livy my lovely bow pair partner! we rock! we're always getting compliments from coaches: good backs bow pair! wonderful!

helen and cat 3 and 4! confidence rowingg.. ahhh i miss rowing already. it's great fun!

jon our wonderful cox who had a bit too much to drink yest haha. he has the most hilarious calls: drawwwwwww onee! drawwwwwww twoooooo! and smile for the camera!! lol.

rosie: our perfect stroke. rhythm setter! she's practically in control of the whole boat cos we follow her set rhythm to row.

i'm so so glad i picked up rowing this term! i've made wonderful friends and had such a good time culminating in the dinner. the speeches were touching, funny and we plied maggie and ellie, our LBCs, with tons of chocolate and wine. as well as giving jon a huge bottle of red wine. company at the dinner table was also enjoyable. it was a tradition to write in one another's menus throughout dinner so there was this major conveyor belt of menus going round. i can't even remember how many i'd written in, but it was quite a lottt considering there were 3 full tables in the hall!


there we are: the two medic rowers, rich and me, and hannah who was dragged into the picture cos she was standing outside the hall at that time. :) i'll miss them all! i'm already feeling the withdrawal symptoms.

as usual, all the boaties crashed the dean's christmas party in the old library after, singing carols and getting sweets thrown at them by santa in jeans. hilarious!

i had my last van outing last night and picked up some sausages and fries... i think i might grow fattt at the rate i'm having midnight snacks. not good. already put on 5 kg, but i think the scale is screwed up cos we were not allowed to take off our shoes for some reason, and i reckon it's all muscle mass anyway, which would be alright i guess. hehheh, alan was singing all the way back, just random songs wayyyy out of tune. it was a sight, four of us singing in the streets in different levels of dressing: alan and me in black tie, dave and max in cvs. :)

okkk that's long enough. i really should get packing soon or i won't make my flight, or my bus for that matter.

goodbye cambridge (for awhile) hello singapore and bright sunlight and heat! and most importantly, fooooooood! i'm having conflicting feelings, looking forward to going home, yet i don't wanna leave here, especially after the last wonderful week...

wonderful wonderful wonderful day today!!! :):)

look what we got via email from our LBCs:

SECOND BOAT: You raced in 12:31 - damn hot girls. This places you 23rd out of ALL 65 women's boats, which is AWESOME. And, you came FOURTH out of all the second boats!!! That was fourth by only 28 seconds as well! So the same result as the first girls, brilliant! To come fourth is amazing anyway, but you also managed to beat 12 first boats!!!! OH MY GOD YOU ARE AMAZING.

i thought Fairbairns would be a killer, but it was actually FUN! and shorter than I'd expected. that means that we could have pushed harder and got a faster timing!! but i'm still really pleased with ours!! 4th out of all the second boats on the river! how cool is that? :) haha!

this week has been wonderful... i love it when we're the only people in the world that's celebrating christmas a month early just cos we're in university that closes for the holidays and we don't want to miss out on all the christmas fun. the whole week's been christmas week and i enjoyed it tremendously... busybusybusy going for everything:

monday: carol service in the pembroke chapel. the choir was absolutely amazinggg! i've never heard anyone i know sing sooooo well before! and that guy's solo piece was stunning. exactly like a professional opera's voice!! omg i can't even describe it properly... mince pies after in the old library as well.. heavenly.

tuesday: busybusybusiest day of the week: had preparing for patients where we went to visit an old lady in her home and got lots of chocolates and coffee AND a stuffed toy in return! i hope i'm as contented as her when i'm her age. it's so heart-warming. did erggggggs after rushing back in a 10 min sprint on the bike after which my legs were dead tired alr. so u can imagine how i fared on the ergs. died, showered, then went for christmas formal!!!



















that's in hall for formal. i think i'll miss formals when i go home. it's always good fun! PCMS concert after where we went to learn how to be a little more cultured. the choir as usual was wonderful and i finally got to see lydia play! she's awesomeeee.. i don't understand how everybody can be so talented! went to cindies after for christmas cheese night. FUNFUNFUN! i actually am beginning to enjoy it all now.. perfect timing since i'm going home in 2 day's time.

wednesday: had pasta push for 2nd women's boat. we had our printed tees given to us by santa maggie and ellie! my first bit of stash!!! and it has my name on it as well! :) i love it to bits. pantomine in the hall after. it's kinda like this parady of a fairy tale, in this case peter PEM. hahaha.. they forgot all their lines so it turned out to be kind of impromptu but it was hilarious! traditionally the dean takes part and we all sing angels by robbie williams with the lyrics changed: i think i'm loving pembroke instead!!!!!

thursday today!: fairbairns fairbairns! it's funny cos that is my friend's surname! and she doesn't row too. we DOMINATED as ellie would put it. sitting tall and proud, showing the rest of the river what the pembroke women are made of. we nearly caught up with the boat in front of us and as the email showed, we're all damn proud of ourselves!!

we just had our farewell for lydia. she's going back to caltech after a term here at cambridge. they all went for formal but i couldn't a ticket in the end cos it was all sold out :( would have been nice to have a formal with them.

the farewell was goooood. :) her mum came down and we gave her presents and even wanted to put on a little concert cos we had 2 gifted guitar-players! i need to learn how to play the guitar!! and ooo the tiramisu and blueberry cake!! yummmm. :):) sometimes i'm surprised at how good sainsbury's basics really are.. especially the desserts!

right, really need to get some sleep for tmr's clare ragetta! i'm rowing with the first boat as a sub. it should be goooood :) hope we win it or at least get as far as we possibly can! saw the draw and we're basically up against grad students in the very first round! bahh.. that just isn't fair. but WE WILL WIN!! so there!

had netball formal on tuesday:


















our fab netball team that forfeited our semifinals to go shopping instead at nottingham. clare's hall was amazing. nice and cosy... although i still prefer pembroke's :) i love it cos it's just so pretty!


and i have to post a picture of the wonderful pembroke women's 2nd novice boat!! we are so coooooll!
















this was for emma sprints last sunday! we went as the universe.. (u can obviousssssllly tell from our costumes haha!) and if we didn't have to race with guys, we would have won the whole thing!! hehheh.. that's according to livy. the picture on the right was like our 6th time trying to get a photo in the air, jumping in our socks on pebbly ground while waiting for emma sprints to start! we basically had 2 options: wait and freeze and the boat OR get out of the boat and do star jumps. u can definitely see which one we chose.

i had a dissection table outing today.. casino royale was quite a good show, except that it was a blatant Sony advertisement. i swear they were paid truckloads by Sony to showcase sony erikson and the viao like fiftyyyy times throughout the movie! and the christmas lights were up! i finally got to see them on our walk to the cinema... nothing compared to orchard road though. before the show, we met at king's... the king's bar is so coool they have all these cushiony cubical seats that u find in restaurants AND they are the only college to have a coffeeshop in college! i think i'll miss my dissection sessions cos they're all so nice people. plus the recent dissection sessions are so productive cos we actually managed to find every single vein/artery/muscle/gland that we were supposed to and that is definitely satisfying! i think i'll grow to love the brachial plexus... the only thing is that the smell is starting to get bad and my eyes start to tear when i go too close. but still.... they're small inconveniences.

we've just got given a whole long list of holiday homework for HOM. it's not going to be an actual holiday at all! bahhh. i've got to sleep now, long day ahead. talking about homework's got me all sleepy for some reason.

dunno what's wrong with me, i felt so happy in the morning and now i'm feeling shit cos of the thought of anatomy essay. ughh. and i thought i had planned my time well too: went to london in the weekend, had emma sprints AND finished a mims essay in the process. now that is skill.

i just spent 1.5 hours watching thank you for smoking, which was surprisingly refreshing. i dun get the raking of japanese sand bit, but the rest was fab. characters were a bit kooky, but kooky people are the ingredients of a good movie i say! and now it's 10pm. i have rowing early tmr morning.. they're pushing it forward, which means that i would have to get up earlier. groan.

i wish my room was sound proof. inside and out. then i wouldn't be able to hear all those people talking and i can blast jay chou without worrying about offending anybody.

slightly less than 2 weeks more to go. i can't wait. lorna just asked me to go to the jp, just didn't feel in the mood.

ok, back to anatomyyy.

just a few random things:

i think i don't as many people as i should have. i should be more sociable.
i should get a college scarf.
pennying is now officially banned in formal hall because of the medic exploits last friday. but we still did it last night when barbara came down to visit.. nobody cares about the rules..
i'm regretting missing A&E! heard it beat last night hands down.
guy fawkes night tonight = fireworks and bonfire! perfect cure for the cold. :)
i am jay chou's biggest fan.
i need to do more work.

a quick update...

17 October: CUMSA Fresher's Formal was nice. :) so far CUMSA has been such a comforting relief from the hustle and bustle of uni life.. u see people that are your close friends and so u feel like u belong somewhere..

18 October: the first rowing formal swap of the year with the Queens' novice men's team. that was pretty exciting as well.. got pennied tons of times and ended up at the JP talking about god (for some weird reason) and bobbing in a circle for no reason whatsoever. hahaha!

19 October: rowing continues.. had to have lunch on the way to the boathouse and when i got there, there was no cox and no coach! we had to have an ergs training and not go out onto the river. pissifyingg. but it all turned out well in the end i suppose..

21-22 October: OXBRIDGE GAMES!!! we thrashed oxford 18-0 in netball! (Whoohoo!) but lost at all the other games. (because i wasn't playing in those :) ) it was so nice seeing all my friends at oxford (debra, kevin, ajay, ruimin...) and made some new ones too. the rooms at oxford are hugeeee! well, maybe cos it's a double room, but they had a couch and coffee table in theirs with separate bedrooms and all... at the same price as mine too! there wasn't enough time for shopping though..

and todayyy i stayed up all night (and morning) and FINISHED MY HOM ESSAY! yesssssssss. my will power is back! tmr i shall read my dissection notes and look like a pro in the DR. hehhehheh... i wish. not with all these smart alects in cambridge though...

funkyard yesterday was surprisingly fun! had a blast of a time with my fellow asians in our night out. :) too bad i didn't take any photos, just slipped my mind though i brought my camera!

it was nice receiving TONS of email from home today.. really made my day even though i had to spend like 2 hours replying to all. and don't worry dad/mum. all the updates are only about the interesting stuff, i don't write things like "oh, i studied so hard today", but that doesn't mean i don't mug hard! rmb i'm nerdy, that's how i came here! :) pers would totally agree to that.

well, maybe i should update about my academic work briefly:

• i've been to 2 dissections already, it's twice a week and it's disgusting but a good learning process i guess.
• had PBL today, we're doing a "project" on obesity and we have the hardest question in my opinion out of the 4. :( the good thing was that it lasted 45 min when it should have been 2 hours, so that was such a wonderful surprise.
• covered the vertebra column and anterior upper limb so far in anatomy, the other topics are far more boring with the usual stuff like diebetes and protein structure and function
• finished my one and only essay so far (yay!) and have been preparing for lectures every single time! (oh dear i sound like a mugger toad now.)

ok that's enough, i'm scaring myself with my efficiency. HAHA. and i shall spare you now.

it's sunday!

and i have nothing to do this morning! feels just wonderful :) thankfully i finished my essay last night so i have the whole of today absolutely free!

yesterday i rediscovered my scoring touch at netball. wahaha as if i had one before... but yes, i managed to score quite a few in the match. it was real fun! had a good work-out running back and forth. played GA and i think i might be playing next weekend against oxford too! yay :)

i think i have somewhat found my bearings around cambridge; i can find sainsbury's without aid! yessssss. and i might try walking to the boat house today without relying on my trusty cambridge map. if i manage to do that, i have definitely improved in my direction sense!

yingmei cooked her na-shou olio pasta last night. there was a dash too much of pepper but otherwise it was nice. we cooked too much though :( the doughnuts, lasagnia-like dish and all of yaoyu and mingyan's chinese cooking didn't help. maybe she can cook it again soon without all the you huos and maybe we'll finish it this time. :)

i got my skeleton today.. now it's residing in my room, waiting to be named. i only have half though, possibly since right is the mirror-image of left, so according to my friend, we should name our half-skeletons half names. so one left side could be jose and the right could be phine. and together they make jose-phine! haha that was pretty lame but it was pretty funny.

today i also learnt some of the geordie (people from newcastle; alan shearer's a classic geordie) accent/lingo. that's mint! actually means that's awesome! and... that's all i can remember sadly. i'll check it out soon though.

the weather's getting chilly. this morning there was smoke coming out of my mouth! i think i really need to go shopping for warmer clothes or i might just subscribe to the layer-layer-layer mentality. my feet are cold as i'm typing this; the curtain's not keeping the cold out very well.

i had a nice home-cooked healthy vegetarian pasta tonight. we finished up most of lorna's veggies and i think i could have found my culinary speciality here! :) tmr it's another home-cooked meal with yingmei. im so glad we are keeping in touch frequently cos it's always nice having someone to talk about home. maybe i should invite all the singaporeans over for a nice cookout one weekend.. that would be nice :)

yes and tmr i have to go for netball practice so we can beat the hell out of oxford next weekend at the oxbridge games! althought we have a history of being thrashed, but hey! anything's possible! :)

pictures!

i thought i should include some long-overdue pictures... so

here's the view from my window, pretty eh?


















and this is the very cool notice board of my block... spot my name!


















and this is the outside of my dining hall with pers...


















at the bop with katherine (who lives directly opposite me). the theme was around the world.. so i went as japanese school girl. haha she wanted to do it too but she rightly figured that i could pull it off better than she could. haha

























i just realised i'm taller than most of the angmoh girls too! wellwellwell... i guess they aren't as tall as i thought they would be. but the guys are much taller though.

i think 2 entries are enough for one day! till next time. :)

softball squash yesterday was so disappointing. when they said they were a new society, i didn't expect it to be actually NEW. people weren't sure what was going on and what we should do next. i ate a few chips and left together with yingmei.

the singapore/malaysia cookout was a much more boistrous affair.. haha my first proper meal in agesss. i ate and ate and ate. had second helpings of main course and dessert. ben & jerry's chocolate fudge brownie never tasted that good. :) for the main course, we had mixed vegetables, black pepper beef (with my black pepper sauce!!!), potato and chicken curry and muchrooms with lettuce! it doesn't sound all that fantastic but it wasss. so nice to be able to drop all the brit slang and talk normally and be understood for once.

just came back from dissection and this time it was more fruitful! in the first hour or so, all of us were totally lost, didn't know what was happening and all, but towards the end, we managed to find all the flexors and nerves that we needed. the most exciting thing was when the proximal and distal interphalangeal joint at the fingers moved when we tugged on certain tendons that we were supposed to find! really, it was just like stabbing around in the dark until we came upon something that was supposed to happen. :)

i should be doing some work, but well, it's just after lunch and i'm feeling full and drowsy. i don't have anything until 5pm so that's quite a long time away. lalala

update from cambridge!

hello all! sorry for not updating so regularly, it's been busy as you might already know. so in chronological order for your sake and mine, here goes:

Friday 29th September
i arrived in cambridge! finally after 10 months of waiting and dallying... took the bus from heathrow station all by myself as there was some mix-up at the ticketing booth. yep quite weird how my family was sitting with all the other singaporeans and i was by myself on the next bus but no fear, jay chou kept me happy and occupied. :) it was a 2.5 hour bus ride from heathrow and i wish i could say the scenery was fantastic but really, it was just fields and red brick houses the whole time. nonetheless, i got to cambridge safely, got my room keys and heaved my 5 luggages up to the second floor (which the brits call first floor.. ) with the help of dad, pers and uncle george.
went the the bank and got my account settled, which has surprisingly encontered with NO problems whatsoever! all my other friends are complaining about hsbc, but i have none :) pay as you go phone line also settled today.
the singaporeans met up for dinner and we went on a room crawl to assess which end of the straw we got. i apparantly got the long end! yay.. my room has a wonderful view and it's nice and big, "straight out of the ikea catalogue" as christina puts it. I now have stuck loads of stuff on the wall and it actually looks lived-in already.

Saturday 30th September
day off with family. we walked around and I packed my room. Daddy and uncle george wanted to follow the river on foot, so pers helped my by sticking all my pictures together to put up on my wall.
Went for the international student’s gathering and dinner at the old library at night. Oh ok sidetrack a bit, pembroke’s campus is BEAUTIFUL! If you ever have the chance to visit, I’ll show you around. The lawns are manicured, the trees grow just nicely, it’s straight out of a fairytale!

Sunday 1st October
Sunday was the start of fresher’s week at Pembroke. It was also the day that daddy and pers left for London.
Tea in the old library was ok, I left like after awhile cos it was just tooo many people and it started getting stuffy. So we went to zoe’s room to sort out some of her stuff (zoe’s another medic from Cambridge itself)
Dinner in hall, our first dinner as a cohort! 3 course meal which was IDENTICAL to the meal I had the night before. Cheater bugs!
The senior tutor gave a talk after that which was so sleep-inducing I think quite a few pple succumbed to it. haha basically he told us to study hard (!) to maintain pembroke’s high academic standing.
I met my college family after that and went to Becky’s room for chocolate cake and wine. It was nice. I’m glad I didn’t get like drunks in my family or anyone tooooo wild. They were fantastic!

Monday 2nd October
Happy birthday Tee! Oh dear I didn’t wish you at all did I? I hope you read this cos I was planning on sending an email or something to you but I just kept thinking I’ve done it already. So sorry!
Well, there was a self-defense class which I didn’t go to cos…
I had to meet my Director of Studies (person in charge of my academic progress) and my Tutor (person in charge of my welfare). They were ok I guess. Can’t really say much about them since I wun get to see them often. It’s prob just going to be once at the start and once at the end of term just as a formality.
JP (Junior Parlour, the equivalent of student’s council for undergraduates) had a societies bonanza in the afternoon, and I signed up for wayyy too many societies. I have to sift through all the emails now.
The three-legged (literally) pub crawl which I missed cos I wanted to chill out on the night punting, was quite a disgusting affair. Thankfully I didn’t go. There were weird cream and cracker games with honey smeared on faces and stuff. But the people that went had fun, or so they say…
The night punting was the event that I had wanted to go on, however, because Nicole’s mum treated us to a nice Chinese dinner at JinLing, we ate so much and so slowly that we missed the punt entirely. We just saw it floating away into the darkness. L so in the end we had a nice chat in Liu Rui’s room at Newhnam.

Tuesday 3rd October
Matriculation day today! Took the picture with an ancient camera, the type that needs to pull a black cloth behind the camera. I also signed my name into this huge bound book in the old library with a fountain pen and with that I’m “now and forever a member of Cambridge and Pembroke”! haha that was amusing…
Fresher’s fair at Kelsey Kerridge (some sports hall) where I signed up for even more societies like rowing, CUMSA, softball (!), badminton with the Queens’ people. And then there was the matriculation dinner. The first time I had to wear the college gown for formal dinner! I HAD to buy it for 45 pounds! Bah. It’s nice and important-looking though. This was supposedly the nicest dinner during a student’s life in Cambridge… that must mean their standard is not very high. It was nice, but not fantastic.

Wednesday 4th October
My lessons started today. Was allocated a cadaver today during FAB (anatomy) lecture. Spent the day shopping mostly for groceries and pullovers. I didn’t bring enough warm clothing I think. I have clothes for winter and summer but not autumn. First supervision today, my anatomy supervisor’s v nice! We had a real vertebral column in front of us as she went through all them all.
In the evening, there was rock night held in the new cellars. This is basically just an excuse to come out and party. There was a live band which was not bad, although I thought they could use a better vocalist. But hey, it was nice and I actually know most of the songs they played so hooray! :) I had fun tonight.

Thursday 5th October
My first dissection room experience! We saw our cadaver today, and we almost fainted at the size of him! He was very plump and our demonstrator warned us how much work we will be doing in the future during dissections cos there will be layers and layers of fat to cut through to see anything.
It was family night and we trooped down to watch Twelfth Night at the ADC after a stir-fry dinner. There’s 4 of us children in my college family and they are all super nice. Yue, the HK guy kept laughing at my accent, and I kept laughing at his! Haha that’s mostly all I can remember during the dinner… just laughing.

Friday 6th October
Proper lectures started today. So nothing much happened in the day other than me trying to find my way around town to get to my lectures on time. I am so glad that my college is so centrally placed with respect to the lecture sites. I literally just have to walk out different gates of my college to get to the different lecture sites! No other college can beat that man!
It was Mid-Autumn Festival tonight and a few of us tried to go to this restaurant to have a nice Chinese dinner, but ended up getting Chinese takeaway instead cos it was wayyy over our budget. But the food was good! And we had a nice time after at Ceilidh in the hall, which is a kind of Scottish dance that nobody knows the steps to and just kinda learn on the spot. People kept banging into me and stepping on my toes but then again, I think I trod on so many other people as well.

Saturday 7th October
The sporty day today:
Pembroke’s big rowing day! I went down to try rowing out and it was great fun! It was so fun that I went for my second outing today and I think I shall try to continue with rowing for the first term and see how after. Apparently, it might require lots of commitment if you are on the first boat (ie, the pro people) but other than that, there are boats for recreational rowing as well. The Pembroke ladies are the head of the waters last year (which means they won the inter-college rowing competition) so we have a high reputation to keep. Hahha. I think I’m not bad at rowing! :)
Badminton in the morning as well. I now have a new racket thanks to Yao Yu. All I had to do was to re-grip it and it was mine!!! Haha.
CUMSA Fresher’s Squash next at Magdalene. it was nice seeing all the Singaporeans again and made friends with some other people.
Then the legendary Cambridge Bop, which loosely translates into a party. It’s funny how the brits dance to cheesy songs and not all the shitty R&B and hip-hop we have in Singapore. Hahha. Ancient songs were playing as remixes and so we had a good time dancing to the funny lyrics! It wasn’t as wild as I thought it would be.

Sunday 8th October
I had to take a rest day from all the activities of Fresher’s Week. Consolidated all the lectures I’ve had, bought files and more food. Organized my notes. Housekeeping day.
Went for the bar quiz at night, which was crap in my opinion. The geography questions were really hard, I couldn’t answer any :( the scientific ones though weren’t as bad.



And now that Fresher’s Week is over, I have more time to do stuff that I wanna do, although I dun think this week will be less tiring than the last. I foresee tons of work coming my way.

Ok till next time. This is too much to read. Thanks for reading all the way to the end, although I doubt anyone managed to sit through all that above!

packing packing crazily everyday. and in the middle of that i still can catch up with around 15 episodes of bleach, listen to still fantasy gazillions of times so that i can now officially catch some of his lyrics, go out for lunch with uncle 4 and family, skype with rahh and sang more jay songs :) , AND organise mummy's pictures... ... looks like packing wasn't thatttt crazy now. which just means that i have to realllly pack proper later tonight. and so, sorry caroline and yunqin i can't go to the airport tonight. but anyway we will catch one another at some point or another in london la so no biggie.

see la, my horrible will power. i was just supposed to charge my laptop battery and i end up going online for 2 almost 3 hours now. this is bad.

ahh yes, hady has won singapore idol :( enough said. poor bird she must be super depressed. actually can tell from the live atmosphere that hady had much more supporters. they were louder, more passionate and basically just MORE. welll now he and taufik can go slug it out for the super tiny market they both find themselves in while dear jon goes on and wins over taiwan and china. :)

i bought a nice pair of flats and i have just succeeded in smuggling them into the luggage! yay.

the story of me and the letter J...

here are some significant things recently that all begin with the letter J... such a lovely letter :)

• Jay's seventh cd is out! and i've got it! duh. even though everyone says it's not very good (take note bird) i think otherwise. it's wonderful as usual :) it runs so smoothly from start to finish and this time he actually made an effort to pronounce the words to ju hua tai properly! ahahha. and i just so happen to watch him on wan quan yu le... it's been a joyously-filled jay week.. wahaha.
• Jonathan leong is going to win singapore idol. especially after lilian and i personally went down to support him last night at the indoor stadium. heh mosh pit summore haha. sorry for the grainy picture we weren't allowed to bring our cameras in. my phone's resolution's actually quite not bad huh.
• Japanese anime! haha.. (well... i had to draw the link) bleach! ahhhh kuchiki byakuya is how cool. i love how no one can pronounce his name properly haha. senbunzakura kageiyoshi! oh and ichigo's not bad too... ok here's an example how watching too much anime can infiltrate your life:

Brother's friend R: "eh how to do this question?"
Brother looks at the question, "hmm, this is taicho level already, always skip this kind of questions!"

and another example:

R and his brother sits at the computer when R was supposed to teach his brother for the PSLE coming up in a weeks' time. They've been playing games for quite a while. R's mum suddenly bursts into the room, back from the market: "NI MEN WEI SHE ME ZAI NA LI?!". My brother then warns R: "you better get ready for her bankai!" and they both laugh.

i think i'm going nuts

5 more days...

and i've caught catching-up-fatigue

I have just received tons of post from Cambridge and from the JCP (Junior Committee Parlour, which is kinda like the student council of the college) of Pembroke. some exerpts from the booklet of house rules:

• Avoiding fire: "you must never leave any pans unattended while in use, and you must avoid in particular frying in oil, which can generate high temperatures and fumes, and thus considered to be dangerous, as well as anti-social." well then, if i can't fry in oil, what can i fry in? maybe i'll have special frying liquids when i wanna cook there. and anti-social? how is that anti-social?? oh then there's more: "the bursar may remove, without notice, any frying pan!" apparantly it's illegal to bring a frying pan to college. quite a tricky move to get us to all eat from the buttery eh!!
• Entertainment and parties: "permission must be obtained in advance for any party exceeding 15 persons and will require that stewards are named to assist in the smooth running of the party". sounds regally restrictive... like there's so much order to be followed in college.

the rest of the package was quite interesting. it sounds like a lot of fun in fresher's week! i'll have parties and pub-crawls almost every night. die la i'm going to be so tired after only the first week. oh and there's going to be staircase dinners, family outings, matriculation dinners where i'll have to wear an academic gown, whatever that is, and lots of other obligations to attend to. it's going to be packed.

on another note, i haven't started packing yet! and the worse thing is there aren't people around these days who are free enough to hang out with me anymore. so i'm left alone in the house most of the time. thank god for korean dramas! and the internet! my companion buddies, i foresee, through to the day i leave our sunny little island for the cold of the UK. it's only 2 and a half weeks more.

i'm back at the office again. last week i only worked one day cos it was one hectic week! it's good in a way cos i've gotten so much done in the week, but also because it was too busy, it felt like it went by in a whizzz. now i can't seem to remember much of it :(

mandy has officially left our little island. :( i've been moaning about it since forever, but now she's gone away (and won't be coming back until may next year), it hasn't really sunk in yet. maybe in a few days when i wanna ask someone out to watch a movie or go hang out and i realise that there is no one left... maybe when i see her online and suddenly realise i can't pick up my phone and call her anymore... maybe then, it will get to me.

on another note, i am fully immunised to start my communal life overseas! wahahaha.. and today i felt extra happy in clinic cos it's kinda like a return to the confortable norm that i was used to before this mad rush to get things done. plus clinic today was as slack as it could ever get... long periods of waiting time in between patients.. ahh that's the kind of life i will get over in the uk i suppose. or even better!

bought lots of stuff from one shop yesterday too. now i have a wardrobe full of black and white. :S maybe not so good, but at that time it all looked so pretty and i couldn't decide which to get. my mum decided to be nice to me yesterday cos i complimented her (haha!) and so now i've got everything! haiz.. now i'm kinda regretting the spending spree. not that the clothes are not nice though...

haha i apologise for this utterly random post about weird and non-related stuff. my brain's on autopilot mode and what comes to my mind goes straight onto the screen. i'm still deciding whether or not i should go for dance lesson later. hmmm. feeling sooo lazy. stooops la.

muchmunchmunch!

tmr we meet again before one of us leaves... and again we come to a point in time when we have to say farewell to yet another close friend.

every time one leaves, i feel that my time left is getting less and less. this time, it's going to be a big blow cos it's

mandyyap!

my other half of DD. companion during the time when no other could accompany me. my mugging friend. one-sixth of munchkins. fellow horrible tennis player (we really need lessons!). screamer at k-box sessions. maestro in providing side-splittingly hilarious midnight msn convos. my great friend. :)

aiyoh die i will be so so lonely come saturday. mandy! must rmb to have our skype/webcam convos v v often ok? and all you nus people! stop mugging and accompany me!

EPL HAS STARTED!!! after a month and a half of longing and waiting.. it's finally HERE!! :) yay to all those who follow football. speaking of which, i should be utterly embarrassed with myself after i fell asleep watching the arsenal match. :S too tired la, plus the match wasn't highly exciting. anddd... after their ego-bashing draw with villa, prof still has the heart to wear the arsenal jersey out today for lunch! there's one die-hard fan for you.

on another note, i have recently discovered rockstar supernova. why am i still watching singapore idol?!? hahha. those rockers really have talent! not like the barely-passable singing in idol that we try to convince ourselves is real talent.. we are so so delusioned.

and helllllooooooo lilian!!!!! thanks for reviving my tagboard! :) it's been too quiet lately. i love u loads :) we should go out real soon!

the last few hectic days..

i'm feeling really tired right now, dying under the sweltering heat of the afternoon, fresh from a full day of crashing nus business lectures and hanging out with nus-going friends. thank god i work in nuh! :)

ok so here's a recap of what happened this busy week...

sunday we sent sherry off to faraway oklahoma to study dance. well it's the first departure from our class and it's really a shock that we are finally starting to embark on our uni adventure... separated and alone (in sherry's case that is). it was rather weird and quiet at the airport but we didn't have any experience whatsoever so please don't blame us. ayee.

monday i crashed the first medicine lecture of the year. bad choice. it was sooo boring, maybe because it was introductory lecture.. but still. b o r i n g. lilian was drifting in and out of sleep! but it was fun meeting up with the medics from so3e again. they all seem rather surprised that term has officially started too! haha. in the evening mandy and i attempted to play tennis. attemped is the word cos both of us are superduper lousy at tennis and all we managed to do was to hit real soft shots at each other at the net so that we could get a few shots going. haiya. we must jiayou! and play again before she leaves!

tuesday was a normal working day. it was suddenly back to routine, when somehow it didn't seem so much of a routine cos i missed so many days of work already this week. tuesday was my only full day. haha. poor prof. went for dance lesson number 2 in the evening. and now my thighs hurt with all the squatting and jumping back and front. but luckily for tee and jy, we learnt the dance blast audition dance! so now they can go to audition and pretend they're realllly pro! hahha i think they'll kill me for that. :)

wednesday we had lunch with bonnie at dingtaifeng. we = caroline, mandy, yunqin, bonnie and me. it was supposed to start at 12, but our dear organiser of the lunch mandyyap strolled in at 1! so that's the reason for our xiaolongbao treat. 2 per person too! hahaha. this teaches you never ever to be so obscenely late. tsktsk. watched sophie scholl too. mandy says it right out from the history text in secondary school. i didn't take history so i wouldn't know. hahha. it was a very quiet film. full of commentary and interrogation. but it showed how biased and inhumane the german soldiers/government were during the nazi occupation. it's a good educational show i must say.

thursday which is today! :) i'm back at prof's after a morning and slightly more than half the afternoon at nus. went for tee's marketing lecture and I TOOK NOTES! hahha. in tee's words: "so i wouldn't fall asleep". hahha very true. but it was kinda interesting. so different from out normal science lectures back at rj. the pple were also so totally different. then we crashed in lilian's little puny hall room for a bit before i made my way here.

and now here i am. all alone and relieved for the reprieve from all the hustle and bustle that was the last few days. ahhhh...

nus rag day yest. a day full of shoving and elbowing to get the best spot to catch the performances... which were quite amazing for 2 weeks of preperation. especially those hall floats! they can actually MOVE, emit steam, turn, what not.. and oh my, were they elaborate!!

and here are my wonderful friends who danced/built floats:

... well it seems as though blogger doesn't wanna upload photos today... so another time then.

ahh i finallly got to see my dear little lilian! after so many days of her being abducted into hall dance and getting her sleep cycle all screwed up. gosh she didn't even sleep the night before rag day cos of full-dress rehearsal! haven't they ever heard of the advantages of having a well-rested team for the real event?

after rag day there was the formality of the cambridge tea party, where we were supposed to be meeting with fellow freshers and seniors. well, that went well enough, better than expected actually. cos i finally found someone who is confirmed going to be the ONLY other singaporean in my batch at pembroke! whoopiedoop! the seniors were nice, i got recruited into all the sports events, drank lots of something that tasted like bandung without milk, and learnt that there will be tv rooms where i'll get my weekly dose of EPL! :) this seems promising. the only bad thing is that the food at my college is relatively ex for the quality served. welll. thankfully i am bringing my ever-trusty ready-mixed pastes!!! hainanese chicken rice, bak kut teh, soups of all kind, sweet sour pork/chicken! hahha. i'm all set!

happy birthday meimei!!! :) many more to come!

oh yes today our dear dr sandeep had his first taste of rambutans:

sandeep: "what is this uuh?"
me: "rambutan la!"
sandeep: "rarrm-bu-tan? how do i eat it?"
me: "cut it open then eat it. here, use this scissors"

So dr sandeep proceeded to cut the ENTIRE fruit into two, splitting the seed cleanly in half. he then proudly showed the 2 perfectly seperated rambutan halves to me and asked: "so HOW do i eat this thing?"

hahhahahah! i could have died laughing!

fireworks!!

we had dancing today! our very first lesson :) haha no regrets? maybe just a little cos now my legs hurt... our class was quite pro even though we were in the beginners class. hehheh speaks volumes of our own dancing abilities.. which amounts to zilch. well, that's what dance classes are for!

it's also national day eve today. that being so, the highlight of the day has to be the fireworks display at esplanade:

















then it became this...















and finally....
















then there were the 5 of us who all managed to squeeze into one pic thanks to yours truly :)


















we tried to go k-boxing after that but totally baulked at the horrigible price! qiao zha! just because it's nat day eve, they think by putting up a nat day eve special of nearly 10 bucks more than usual, they can con poor little souls into giving up their hard-earned money!! in your dreams!

so we went a-searching for a cheaper alternative and ended up pulling down chairs, sitting and having impromptu singing lessons from caroline. HAHA. the things that we put ourselves to! up and down the scale we went, cromatics even! and confirmed the tone deafness of one amongst us...

ahhh i'll miss these goondus to bits! luckily caroline's going with me so i'll see her more often.

so k-boxing tmr! at the cheap cheap katong place. 30 bucks for 3 hours. and it's per room, not per head! how wonderful... on a public holiday even!

a-lalalala life is wonderful
a-lalalala life goes full circle

it takes a thought to make a word
and it takes some words to make an action
and it takes some work to make it work
it takes some good to make it hurt
it takes some bad for satisfaction

it takes some silence to make sound
and it takes a loss before you find it.

puts relativity in perspective, doesn't it?

helllo august!

time is moving so fast! it's THE month when the US pple fly far far away to be gone for a long long time!

i think i have come to a decision about the scholarship finally. yes, i think i have made the right choice and i hope everything goes well. it has been tiring talking to so many different people and trying to make sense of all their advise and comments as a whole, but i thank them all the same. it seems as though nothing can lead me from the path of becoming a doctor, definitely not talk that junior doctors get bullied and lead a hard life. i've even heard stories about the 48 hour shifts! but still i stick to my choice. :) my parents should be proud of me, although they will still have to fork out the money to fund my education.

went for the british council pre-departure thing yest. honestly, i didn't think it helped other than that now i know a medical check-up is not required for visa. i also realised that the people going to uk all dress very well! :S now i'm so glad i'm not going to study in london cos i'll be so out of place harhar. and yest i also found out that at lse and imperial, you have to settle all your meals by yourself! disgusting! worse still, it's super expensive in london. hennggg the people at cambridge treats us relatively better. :)

we had so3e gathering at elvine's house yest too. it's going to be the last gathering with a full class available cos we are going to have our first departure from singapore in 2 weeks! :( it's official now: we are going to drift off to our various parts of the world soon, ineveitably seeing one another less and less. aiyah thinking about it already makes me sad. but i hope i have my core group of friends that will always remain contactable and close. yes i really hope so...

just came back after helping lilian move and settle into her new home for the next year at nus. her room's a bit smalllll but it's now has more personaly touches than other rooms. i must say her bed looks the most comfortable. got the full set of bed linens plus bolster, pillow, another bolster, quilt... hahaa the full works! sigh yet another moving into a new stage of her life... i thought they rj people will be the majority even in halls but i'm not that sure now. there were only 4 of them in the same block so far. and all the rest were speaking chineseee.. they all seem like overseas scholarss! well tmr's hall orientation, hope everything goes well.

dilemma.. again!

after i thought all my decision-making for my future was done, another carrot appears right in front of my eye. a huge humongous million dollar carrot no less. :(

well pros are that i don't have to pay a single cent (well duh..) and i get allowances too! 1100 pounds per month may even be more than what half of singaporeans earn! PLUS after 3 years when i start PhD, i'll have a stipend too! and i've heard it amounts to 3000 plus sing dollars, OVER AND ABOVE the monthly allowance. at this rate, i can buy my own house straight after a get my degrees without actually having to lift a finger to work!

ok now for the cons: i don't see myself doing resarch, even though it's tied in with clinical experience (which i doubt will add up to much considering who's offering the scholarship). and even if i convince myself to do research, i think i'll need to start out with some semblence of clinical practice before i can actually come up with useful treatments, and the scholarship doesn't allow you to specialise! major draw-back point. :(

ughhh. looks like i'm throwing away my million dollars :(:(:(

driving is actually quite fun! especially when you don't have to turn your head around at every junction/intersection/turn or risk earning points. :) i was driving around the area this whole morning but i still can't tell directions! i have to have someone sitting beside me in the car, so i won't get lost. hahaha.

before the test, this tester was giving us a pep talk to calm us down. the way he talked was soo funny i was trying so hard to stifle my laughter! haha:

"the traffic conditions will oh-ways chainnn, you all must make sure that it is safe before proceedinggg... relack yourselves and make sure you don't waste your time, money, and effort in this test..." HAHA.

oh and speaking of driving, the day i got my license, i witnessed an accident!! whoaaa. it's like a sign. right after i was made to watch that safety video the day before too!! this little boy was playing around with his dad's lorry and accidentally released the handbrake, so the lorry started moving down the little slope and hit a stationary car, not only once but a series of times kinda like how you bounce a ball off the floor! the sound of metal against metal was horrible!! and the little boy was so terrified he just stared in fear at the driver of the stationary car. aiyoh poor boy! scarred for life.. luckily he wasn't injured, nor was the driver of the other car.

yay i finally got all my friends back from ipho and medicamp! whoopie!! :)

I PASSED! :):)

finally! i think i got over the initial happiness already. it all seemed so long ago, although it only happened this morning. just like how the whole of the past week seemed like ancient history. hmmm, i don't rather fancy this feeling, it seems as though time is passing really fast and reality is just starting to sink in...

ARGHHH..

driving test tmr! :S

i hope i pass...

in 2 months...

i was thinking as i was looking around in my room that in 2 months time, i will no longer be able to see it everyday, nor will i be able to see my family or friends as and when i want to. I suddenly realised that all these little things that i've taken for granted will start to haunt me when i leave. i may put up walls and appear like i'm totally looking forward to my foray into independence and a new environment, but somehow i still feel apprehensive, like i'm not ready for such a huge step in my life. all the little things that have been laid out for me on a silver platter will disappear along with the platter and everything else. i have to start from scratch and do everything myself, even all the normally-unseen duties at home; cooking, cleaning, ironing, organising, being held responsible to every little deed; but most of all, i think i will have to find out how to be my own person. all these while, i haven't actively gone on a self-discovery trail though i know what makes me tick and what doesn't, albeit greatly influenced by the company i'm with. so this experience will at least give me the chance to explore and identify what makes me ME, if you know what i mean.

i have a feeling i'll come back a changed person; if not physically, but definitely definitely mentally. stronger, more decisive and independent. that's what i hope i'll get from this, over and above the degree that is :)

i think i need a sunrise,

i'm tired of the sunset.

which is kinda like how i view going overseas to study; being cast in the same everyday life but in a whole new different setting. it's like how the sunrise and sunset are 2 different yet similar events and that we're tired of one so we're trying to replicate what we're used to in a different environment and a different place.

but am i tired of my sunset? not really, it's just that i want my sunrise to remind me of my sunset, but yet also create beautiful memories at the same time. i'm being greedy but isn't everybody?

jb was disappointing. sat at the mechanics for so long i fell asleep! there was nothing on except for oprah (which was entertaining cos it was wildest dreams episode!). as such, i have perfected the skill of listening to music and zoning out. i can do it for around 3 hours straight now! hahha.

bangkok is officially off now. :( all thanks to the stupid guys. got me all excited for nothing.

am i taking easy-going to a new level? or is it just that i'm a person without the normal range of emotions. honestly, i seldom feel very much for any particular choice or decision. i just take them as they come, come what may.

i'm in the midst of this rollercoaster ride of our bangkok trip planning. one minute it's on , the next it's off. i hope it swings to become a reality real soon cos i'm getting rather tired of all the changes and me having to change my mindset repeatedly to ready myself for whatever's ahead.

keep your fingers crossed!

:)

alrightt! changed the setting of the blog. now u can see m o r e . much better than the super squeezy previous one. :)

this is the end of my weekend tuitions. i'm kinda happy and sad at the same time. it's like how you feel when school ends. :):( bye to the kids. bye to photocopying tons of stuff. bye to searching the tons of assesments books for the correct answer sheets. bye to constant giggling. hello freedom.

my new-found compulsion with the piano and the guitar has made me more intuned with the lyrical aspect of songs. you have to learn the lyrics to sing with the piano or guitar.. duh. sooo i think i'm getting used to listening out for the lyrics instead of just paying attention to the melody previously. hurrayy! some of them are actually quite meaningful. :)

i have just taught my music-illeterate brother to play boston on the piano. he keeps playing the same tune over and over again it was getting a bit irritating. i'm glad now he's fallen asleep.

sighh i think i have stayed too long at prof's. i have seen both shi hui and bird leave me for ipho and medicamp respectively. :( not feeling very happy right about now. so i have negotiated with prof and we have agreed for me only to come down for clinics! so that made me slightly happier.

another thing that has made me happy and gay: project runway! my new favourite of the favourites tv show! somehow it really reminds me of my art days. so since i'm inspired, i have picked up my pencils after so long and drew! bird must feel rather special. right now, i look behind me and i see bird and myself staring down at me. :) hahaha only bird will understand this. but looks like i'm drawing more often these days and in the future too since i've received quite a few requests for portraits already haha!

from one hobby to another, if u can call it a hobby. bird has re-inspired me to practice the piano!

gosh i have been really inspired these days. :)

i was looking through all my previous photos and i came across this.. my art stuff! for 2 whole years i slogged through getting my instillation done for the o levels: many sleepless nights, sacrificed in the name of art haha, being the last students out of school (the security guards had to chase us out!), being constantly frustrated at the lack of time, yet being supremely satisfied at the outcome. ahhhh, those were the times i learnt exactly what hard work is, and finally got to experience first hand how "hard work pays off".

my colour page. deciding to use greyscale to match the mood of the piece: sexism. although i would personally have much rather preferred the orange/red one.


























formulating the layout of the final piece. but in reality, i actually completed the whole piece before starting on the preparatory work! haha.. real cheater bug :) so was working backwards the whole time.





















how the whole thing came together. with lots of thanks to mr asman the D&T teacher who built the whole inclined platform for me! :) haha i still have the miniature model i made for him as a guide.


wellwell. that was another chapter closed in my life. really hope i can get back to it when i have the time in the future.

i shouldn't have opened my big mouth. now germany's out of the world cup as well. stayed up till 6 this morning to watch the big semi final and the goals had to come in the dying minutes of extra time no less!

but i have to give the game some credit (and justify why i stayed up to watch it): it was too exciting. heart-stopping at certain parts, but not because my dad was yelping and shouting at every scoring opportunity that nearly always shook me out of my semi-conscious state at various parts in the match. it was really end-to-end action. the papers billed this games as several big battles:

the battle of the world's 2 best goalkeepers
the battle between the best attack(germany? although i'm still wondering why and how) and the tightest defense (italy, ok this i concur)
the battle between the playmakers: ballack vs totti (but somehow i still would rather fancy ballack vs riquelme or ballack vs zidane or ballack vs ronaldhino or ballack vs deco)

but in the end i think it was just the battle with luck. italy was just destined to win after hitting the post twice in a minute in extra time. so let's leave it as that. :)
....

ooh i found return flights to london at $998! wonderful!

i was laughing at this the whole day today, courtesy of mandy yap! hahaha.

speaking of pretty things, the bunch of retirees from france have just cleared out my many eye-candies from the world cup. thanks to them i have no torres, no kaka, no mr maggimee to look at anymore. thanks zidane. thanks. and germany just defeated argentina, thanks to the second goalkeeper and my messy messi did not even come out to play. urgh. my interest in the world cup is waning.

ok now for my non-football post. (well technically at least)

i think i am just not adapt as recognising roads. neither is bird nor shihui on friday. according to prof, finding his house is full-proof. just turn into linden drive! very easy one! turns out that this very simple task managed to confuse the three of us a great deal, so much as that we were made to make countless u-turns and emergency stops. not to mention all the horrific lane-changing in heavy traffic that followed the u-turns. i must not drive along bukit timah road when/if i pass my test, not for the first month at least. ayee and today's my first revision lesson!!! what good timing.

germany vs argentina at prof's house on friday night. dr rasheed managed to fortell when argentina's goal would come. he proclaimed it just before riquelme took the penalty, then GOALLL! freaky coincidence.. i should have asked him for the result of the next match and go bet some money on them. haha. everyone's betting nowadays. winning money too. but i'm too hamchi. and that stupid shawn can just put down 50 bucks on this match too.. and WIN $100!

mandy's belated birthday dinner surprise last night was entertaining. we had fun during the planning. scooting from newton to thomson to buy flowers, back to newton to get camera card then down to city hall to meet the rest. it was a night of random stuff, and i have some random comments:
- i must say caroline's really strong to successfully hold mandy's eyes close what with all her struggling and all.
- we all also finally saw the elusive julyn, even if it's just a glimpse.
- caught on to where the MIA part of our class will be going to study thanks to our special link nat. hahha.
- learnt about the ranking system in the army, though i don't think i can remember any other than a leutanent is the lowest of the officer ranks.
-made plans to go visit caroline and abuse her staff discount at nike :)
-the weirdest thing was on the mrt train when some strange american guy started talking about how we should save a broken flower, cows and horses and farms. ???

ahha but the magic of the weekend has ended and now it's back to reality. sitting in the dreary office awaiting my next command.

one night, two heatbreaks

one night,
two heartbreaks,
and both my teams are out of the world cup.

the twist of fate that was the penalties. i just hate penalties.. that one second makes or breaks the fate of the team. as the today paper put it:

england just had to go out on penalties. no other way would be acceptable. yet as punishments go, this one was hideously choreographed.

hargreaves could not miss as if to prove to the end he has been a revelation
lampard had to miss becaused he missed everything all tournament
gerrard had to miss because it was as of he was too close to goal (thirty yards out he is deadly)
carragher had to miss so that we could argue if he was too fresh
and ronaldo just had to score the last penalty to rub it in.

well there's a silver lining to every disaster; we have seen the last of sven goran eriksson. mr magoo who more often than not looks like he's comtemplating how to lose the next game without looking as bad as the last.

brazil next. enough said. it's just too surreal that they are out. played like imposters of the magicians that they usually are. especially the fifa world player of the year. twice over.

now the only suitable world-cup winning team left is germany. ack bird must be gloating right about now.

the world cup is really eating up all my time.. i watch almost every single match there is to watch.. and now even with 2 days of no football, it suddenly feels empty... like somethings not right - just like how this british patient of prof's is an exercise freak who finds something amiss when he doesn't do the daily jog/physical activity even though he has like severe pain in the knees. :S

bird has joined me at prof's. i think i'm the student who has been attached to prof for the longest since the start of the year. and the more i stay the the job, the more repetitive i think doctor's lives are. endless routines and meetings, non-stop checking up on patients, staff continously giving you no peace. but compared to my life right now, which consists of casual employment and hanging out with friends, i think it's a better way to spend my time. funny, i'd rather be busy than slack. takes a lot of confidence to say this, cos when it comes the time when i'm in prof's shoes, i'll definitely go back on what i've just said. muahaha. aye but that will just be a form of temporary relief from all the stress la.

serious stuff aside, i think i'm going to order my birkenstocks online!!! it's like 50 bucks cheaper and it's free shipping too!! :) just wonderful. my comfy, moulded-to-my-feet birkies!! yay. i hope they arrive soon.

this malacca trip has been enjoyable.. more enjoyable than the normal trip cos we had a special guest: lilian! :)

we did the normal things we do all the time but it was in a different environment so that was refreshing for a change. malaysia's just so different from singapore. it's a much slower pace of life, no stress, everyone just living the days as they go by. it's so simple. like lilian said: reminds me of oldern singapore.

in malacca, shops don't open until noon; people don't go to work until then; heck they don't even wake up until 9! on a normal working day too! ayee. if only singapore was like that.

well.. after 19 years of obivion, i have found out that i have a cousin from malaysia who's coming to nus to study! how cool is that. :) hahah we stopped at batu pahat on the way back to visit some relatives and we ended up giving advise on studying in singapore. it was fun! hahaa.

well. teddy geiger was just on air on 987fm! :) he sings darn well live too! i should have gone to his showcase tonight.. i've got an entry pass too! sighh.

yup ok. the world cup calls! england vs trinidad & tobago. tata!

i went a-baking today! hahhaa and i ended up with no cookies still.. cos they're all not quite done and there was no time to do the world-cup-cookie :( aye so sad... i was hoping for world-cup-cookies in time for the world cup.. which means i have to go back to lilian's house tmr morning to accomplish my mission! hahaha so exciitngg..

why must sport compete against one another? they should spread the lovee and spread their telecast time so that sport-lovers can get their fair share of sporting action!!! yes i must remember to call up the tennis association and remind them not to clash the french open with the start of the world cup, especially if nadal AND federer are both playing on the same night as germany's opening match! ayeeee.

and yes tan shi hui! i haven't taken any of my jabs/check-ups/tests at all!! :S aiyohh. must squeeze everything into the last few months since they haven't told us what exactly to do yet. i can foresee one thing i will hate about uk: british inefficiency. the famed, or rather, infamous inefficiency.

and i almost wanted to ask you lar lilian!! about where u found the website! but i forgot in the midst of all the nice smells wafting from the oven today.. hahha!

i can't believe sh has made her 50th post and i haven't. :( aiyahh it just goes to show how lazy i am hiaaahhh.

yes and i think everyone should go and try out this superduper cool website: www.pandora.com
you won' regret it trust me!

i'm into my second day of official leave and i'm already feeling bored. went back to NUH for awhile today to help my seriously-techno-klutzy prof with his phone and laptop connection. :S and in the process got a taste of what a doctor's annual leave is like.... which is no leave at all..

even the newspapers have picked this up: peadiatricians cannot take annual leave in june cos that's when all the children are free for treatment and consultations. so they're just slogging away, harder than the rest of the year if that's possible.

gosh. look what i've gotten myself into! hahha

yayyyy! there's so many things to be happy about today!

i have....

1. a new notebook! :) finalllllyyyy. it's fast and nice and good!
2. cool neighbours who don't secure their wireless network!! it's all thanks to them i'm able to blog now. hurhurr.
3. finallly signed up for the starhub world cup channel!
4. after finding out that starhub needs 5 days for activation, i then realised that today's the 4th of june.. which means that my world cup channel will be activated on the 9th of june!! and to all the uninitiated, 9th of june is THE START OF THE FIFA WORLD CUP 2006!! :):)
5. no work for the next 2 weeks!!!! ahhh freedom! :)
6. made arrangements to bake cheesecakesss! and whatever other sinful treats!

teedaaahhhh! wonderful week ahead to look forward to... :)

yayy! social night is finally over. hah. no more dress-shopping! :) i hate shopping for dresses.. such a difficult task.. no one should ever be burdened with it ever.

social night was okkkay i suppose. it wasn't like the best of parties, but at least there were many familiar faces! i have a 403 photo and a S03E photo.. amongst others. got a bit tired at the end..

plans for after social night kept being changed at the last minute. sooo i ended up sleeping over at lilian's house.. aiyahh that feels like a seconddd home to me alreadyy. hurhur cos i've been there so many times!

and now i'm sitting here at the tuition centre, taking over my mum's computer. it's rather slowww i dun like. :( takes agonisingly long to load pictures! i have tuition later. i love teaching this class.. cos the students are soo cute! one even has the exact same name as me :)

uh-oh. i think i just scared away a little boy who asked for tissue. :S

okay. lunch is coming soon. :) food always wakes me up!

this is an entry dedicated to...

LILIAN!! :)

well, there u go! you are finally mentioned here.. in caps no less! hahahaha..

we went shopping yesterday. i must say we're totally unproductive shoppers together. spent like 4 hours walking around nice, normally-very-exciting places like heeren looking for dresses for silly social night, but we ended up not buying a single thing! :( ayeee. but it was very fun shopping together though.. having somewhat of the same taste. and this girl kept trying to trick me into saying that something totally hidious was nice-looking!! then she would laugh her head off afterward. :S

we saw like a lot of rj pple today. just that they didn't see us! HAHAHA. cos we were incognitoo or managed to scramble away from them in time. hahaha :)

we got tired after awhile.. seeing how unfit we both are nowadays without regular pe lessons, so we decided to get something to drink! billy bombers has horribly lazy staff!...haha and we kept looking over to the next table to spy on them and compare what we had with what they had... and after awhile the fries they were having were sooo nice we were finally tempted into getting one for ourselvess.

sigh, i'll miss this girlieee loadsss when i leave! :( :( she had better come and visit me.. or else!

wahaha... MALAYSIA here we comeeee! :)

i haven't been blogging cos i'm just too lazy.. rarr. plus sometimes i don't see the point of recording stuff that seem insignificant. owellss.

i'm bored now. sitting in the office all alone. waiting for prof to call. oh dear, today's going to be either a hectic day, or a plain boring one involving lots and lots of medical reports depending on whether prof calls or not. considering my current state of mind, i think i'd rather have the boring day cos i just feel like slackinggg. and doing medical reports is the best excuse to slacckkk.. :)

watched x-men III yesterday. :) wonderful wonderful show! aiyah so sad when XXX died. andd the silliest thing about yesterday was when i kept mishearing things! :(

erin: i'm going to collect my happy results.
me: wad happy results? happy??!
ym: laugh laugh laugh
erin: HEP B LARR.

:(

aww shucks. i can't seem to remember the others. but they were funnyyy!

and yest i found out that ymw likes the same kind of music as i do! yayyy! now the only thing i have to do is to convert her to like chinese songs too! so we can listen to them together without her whining and complaining! :) wahahaha.

hellohello!! :)

i'm totally happy today! :) i had 2 wonderful mealssss.. plus yesterday was our long-overdued outingg with piggie, sy and shihui :) ahhhh...

yesterday was the first time i realised how fun cycling and singing simultaneously can be. especially if you're singing jay chou songs. hahaaaa. andd i also learnt how not to read a book by it's cover.. if not we wouldn't have waltzed into a looks-posh-and-ex-but-actually-dirt-cheap shop and spend so much time wandering inside! ahhh i have to meet up with those girlies again soon or else i'll start suffering from withdrawal syndromes!!

lunch at min jiang and dinner at orchard hotel today. they don't just sound indulgent, they really REALLY are! din sum and lobster noodles... somehow i preferred the less "luxurious" dim sum to the lobster dish... to me, the lobster tasted just like another prawn. uh ohhh. something's wrong with me... maybe i'm just a simiple girl with simple tastess.

haha the company at dinner was hilarious! i didn't expect my MUM'S FRIENDS to be sooo funny and uninhibited! they are the ultimate korean-drama-groupies and gossip queens, they talked non-stop for 3 hours straight! mostly about nothing in particular and the ah-peh at the next table who kept going back to get extras and who could peel a green apple with a knife in one single piece! i really pitied the tables close to us cos i bet their nice soothing dinner was interrupted numerous times with crazy outbursts from the four of us. :) i laughed until i cried. :)

ahhh.. such a wonderful day! and tmr i better sleep early. champions league final!!! :)

hohoho! i passed my final theory test today! all in 10 minutes! :) i think i had too much practice before the test... cos all the test questions looked familiar or i actually knew the answer even before the options appeared.

had tuition again today. tuition's going well i suppose. no student has quit cos of our substandard teaching. there were a few demanding parents who were questioning our age, "are those two students or teachers?? they look like students leh!". irritating snobs. now i know what my mummy faces each day... :( people really are class-conscious, no matter how much we all try to treat everyone the same way. i think even people who stick to that motto will unconsciously be prejudiced against people who seem to be 'lower-class'. especially so for all those silly parents who think the WORLD of their precious children, enough to brag whole-heartedly to anyone and everyone, and most of the time that would include my poor mum who then has to withstand them all. then they find out that my mum has a daughter from rjc and their whole attitude changes.. start sweet-talking her and all. such is the human nature... rather disappointing eh?

ok well.. enough ranting.. i have nice cold longans with almond jelly waiting for my consumption... how wonderful. :)

today is aunty 2's birthday!!! and we all trooped down to shangri-la hotel for high tea!!! sounds like i'm on my way to tai-tai-dom soon haha.

well.. high tea isn't really just tea. however, first things first, the tea there was fantastic. there seemed to be endless kinds of tea that were on offer! hahah the funniest of all: the drinks menu, made up of around 20 pages, had a grand total of ONE page for coffee!! (: it's really high tea hahaa.

well it was so extremely filling. so much so that we all skipped dinner without complaints. and that is quite rare, knowing my brother's appetite.

hokayyy. i had better get down to replying cambridge mail. it's been lying there for ages already. ):

no more interviews!!!!! yippeee!! :) today's psc interview was the last of the last of all interviews, scholarships or university admissions, that i will have to take for the rest of the year!! :) gosh it's such a relief!

yes the elections concluded peacefully last weekend and i must say that i'm not surprised at the result, yet i still feel a tad disappointed at the inability of the opposition to win more seats... poor hammers.. tried so hard and gave it their best, yet still unable to shake off the PAP. it's amazing how everyone around pledges their support for the opposition and believes that it's only going to do singapore politics good if we induct more opposition candidates into parliament, but eventually all these seem to be just empty talk. singaporeans obviously voted conservatively for the PAP even as a larger percentage of us see the merit of having an alternative voice from the opposition to check the ruling party. it's a shame... we're back at square one, having exactly the same scenario as that of GE2001. owell... we can't do nothing now! i just hope that PAP doesn't shoot down suggestions from chiam see tong or low thia khiang or possibly, sylvia lim in parliament after all the hard work they've put in. give them the money!! keep the upgrading promise!!! don't control them to the point when it seems restrictive.. they've earned their place in the people's hearts and that's what counts.

hahaha after saying all these, when i saw that look of utter depression on eric low's face in the straits times that day, i felt so sorry for him. sigh, i'm such a sucker for tears (which seemed to be welling up in his eyes hehee)...

ooh rallies are one fun get-together!

the worker's party is garnering strength and in my opinion, they have a good chance of clinching more places in parliament. went for their rally at serangoon just now and there was so much fanfare. haha. people were waving those little white flags with hammers and chanting worker's party worker's party! it almost overwhelmed me, noticing the extent of personal participation that singaporeans are showcasing. i must have been standing in the hard-core worker's party supporters' section, otherwise there wouldn't have been people wearing shirts emblazoned with 'YES! i'm voting for opposition' (yep that was quoted from the shirt, no 'the' before the 'opposition'), huge placards with 'I LOVE SYLVIA' on it or citizens clapping furiously at every sentence from the speaker.

well, then there was this group of ah bengs behind me who kept laughing at the 'wei guo wei min' yellow banners that accompanied low tia khiang onstage when he started his speech. hmm.

the best part was the way cars were parked in the area encircling serangoon stadium. there were cars parked on the kerb, on double yellow lines, on the left lane of the public road, on the grass patch beside the stadium where the occupants were still sitting in the car and there were people just standing around their car. never seen before in singapore, only surfacing during elections. brings about the worst in people, don't u think? in both everyday singaporeans and our election candidates as well. all these rallies where our ministers-to-be shoot down any opposition with any methods available, whether or not they are nice or nasty, personal or otherwise. you'd think they were incapable of being rude or demeaning given their polite, efficient ruling for the past 5 years. and then u finally see them getting challenged openly in a war of words, see the loopholes in their policies being prised wide open, and relish the pinpoint of their every slip of the tongue; which then makes you think whether or not you've been blindly led by them for these past 5 years.

well, tmr's polling day. we'll see the outcome inevitably. it's been a good election campaign season though, breaks the monotony of the monopoly.

ooh i kinda like the last phrase. hahaha.

giving tuition is one tiring job. especially if you did it consecutively for 3 days, 7 hours each. :S yep, so that sums up what i was up to the whole weekend, including the labour day holiday. how ironic...

yess. i came home early enough today to snatch some computer time from under my brother's nose!!! HAHH! now he has to wait. oh for all those who aren't familiar with my domestic computer scheduling, it goes something like this: first come first serve. that's basically it. the fact that the same person has been using the computer for a few hours already or for days on end doesn't give any sympathy points to the other in the fight for computer usage. this is how it's like. a warrrr. :)

today, the driving instructor was purposely picking on me. but try as he might, he couldn't squeeze any major mistakes out of me. HAAAHH. i decided since trying to be friendly didn't help one bit the previous times i got him, acting dao was the keyyyy. :) and so, dao i was. didn't talk much, just concentrated on not making any mistakes so that he could not have the chance to scold me at all. it turned out to be one of my most quiet lessons of all time, it's significant given the fact the all the other quiet sessions was with that guyy. at the end of the lesson, i couldn't help but feel that i'd won the battle today! hahha i should give myself i pat on the back. :)

ahhh. teddy geiger's lyrics are sooo cuteee:

Wondering the streets,
in a world underneath it all
Nothing seems to be,
nothing tastes as sweet
As what I can't have
Like you and the way that you're twisting your hair round your finger
Tonight I'm not afraid to tell you
What I feel about you.

Forgive me if I stutter
From all of the clutter in my head
Cuz I could fall asleep in those eyes
Like a water bed
Do I seem familiar, i've crossed you in hallways a thousand times,
no more camouflage
I want to be exposed,
and not be afraid to fall.

murphy's really a smart ass. what can go wrong really does go wrong!

it was soooo frustrating during driving lesson todayyyy. :( whatever i could hit, i hit. whatever was within striking distance, i strike! :(:(:( poles, kerb, and that freaking motorcycle that just mysteriously appeared on the right. (ok, i didn't exactlyyy strike/hit the last one or right now i'll be at the police station being fined.) darn i think i managed to accumulate over 30 points with absolute ease. what the helll happened to my driving??? i came home feeling so depressed i kept staring at my little green driving booklet and wondering why nothing went in my favour today.

sigh but then there's always sudoku!!!! i can't believe 2 puzzles actually kept me busy for a whole evening. ok i geddit, i'm slow at this sudoku thinggg, but it's actually quite interesting huh? all the little numbers jumbled up together to confuse me.

oh yes and today's nomination dayy. singapore has just gotten a whole lot more exciting. but i better not expound on the proceedings lest i get thrown behind bars. ahhaha.

i got locked out of my house, so i went over to my neighbour's and attempted to climb over the fence in the back garden, promptly tripped over the fence and landed on the ground on my butt. so much for being graceful at the start of my last teenage year. :(

yes. it was my birthday yesterday!!!! hooray!! :)

a humungonormous thank you to shihui who tried to organise a surprise birthday lunch for me! i was realllly happy! all of us crammed into that tiny little pantry together with all the nurses and doctors, it was exciting! and thanks to prof for letting the cat out of the bag prematurely. hahah u should have seen the look on shi hui's face when i told her i already knew. hilarious! when silly erin called me, of all people, to speak to shi hui, i already kinda guessed what they were planning... but still. THANK YOU! :) i got shoot! and lilies! smelt wonderful.. but they kinda wilted after a while. they're now sitting pretty in a bottle of water, basking under the sunlight.. or whatever sunlight that's available in this rainnnn.

yesterday was also ben&jerry's free cone day!!!!! omg chunky monkey was super nice! esp the chocolate bits and the banana thingys, which are essentially what chunky monkey is. hmmm. i think i walked along that same corridor in suntec gazillions of times yesterday, meeting diff pple. hhahaa.

dinner was jap buffet at kuishin-bo. wahh i was quite full after ice cream and all, but i tried my best. stuffed myself silly. i felt soooo bloated after that. in the restaurant, they were chanting some crazy tune and ringing those irritating bells for some promotion items. the song was so stupid i pitied the person who was made to sing it every half an hour at the restaurant.

just came home from nus interviews. thankfully i beat the rain! :)

i have been reading random blogs since morning and i find that i have a somewhat worrying inclination to blogs that are either filled with sarcasm or deadpan humour. the kind that will get most people rolling their eyes at the sheer boldness of the decision to publicly post such corny-ness. the same kind that will get me laughing so hard and listing it under my favourites tab. haha.

anyhow, macroscaling thing a bit, pondering about my said inclination towards certain blogs, i was led to think whether it is a generalised scenario of my own daily preferances. do i like people and things that can offer such cheesy-ness? do i choose deadpan over slapstick humour?

mind you, it isn't easy thinking of all the puns and to be sarcastic. it requires a cartain level of intellect. to acquire such a standard of writing takes time to master. i really do admire those who have gotten it down pat.

back to the question: i think i do prefer british humour to the american. thankfully i'm heading in the right direction considering my future plans.

--------------------------------------------

much of today has been a bore. but a refreshing bore it has been.

no work. no driving. no people.

just me.

can u just hear the silence. the beautiful sound of the fan whirring, the water trickling, the tapping of my feet. you never really get to hear and treasure these silent sounds.

my computer has decided to go on a hiatus indefinitely so i'll only be updating whenever i get the chance to. not like i update very often but still... play along here. :)

gor gerald came back on sat in his nice new pilot's uniform with the nice new shiny 'wings', the type u can get at beach road for 3 dollars. the life of a pilot is actually very very interesting! so much hidden politics in the cockpit and amongst flight crew, it makes a good drama. i'm surprised there's no good flight crew dramas already on air when people get marooned on an island and that constitutes an exciting show.

RESIGNED from sushi tei. finally. i think i was getting tired of the repetition. it's really a very boring job other than from the occasional interesting moments from my colleagues. i think i chose the wrong place to become a waitress at. it's really too busy! both tiring and you don't get much chance at talking with your fellow waiters/waitresses. so it's basically u and yourself. lilian, sherry and mandy visited me on tuesday! just in time too! :) hahha got scolded for hugging lilian. hanky panky. utterly ridiculous!

sigh and i'm almost done with driving! i think i will miss the lessons cos they're so fun! :(

and RJC BEAT HC 8-7! yeahaha!! plus shi hui got her driving license so we got to be her FIRST passengers from nuh to rj for the match. i got totally roasted in the 2 hours i was sitting in the hot hot sun. i literally watched myself turn black! especially my legs. and you could see the triangular pattern on my feet cos of my slippers. ew. but the match was fantastic! there were a few good hits and the hc team looked so scary, esp the catcher. but who cares! we won! :) and that's the onluy thing that matters now. oooh we're on the way to becoming CHAMPIONS!

just took a nice nap! :) ahhh. i love it when there's a free day amidst a busy week! gives me the chance to REST for once. gahh

haha today's driving was the most fun so far! :) i have a feeling the instructor's only a few year's older than me. he has trouble teaching the slighter OLDER students who think they know more cos they're older and more experienced than him. HAHA. i like car 55. it's so easy to drive that for once, today i felt like i'd already passed cos almost nothing went wrong! normally i would have wobbled/jerked/stalled/jolted by the time i hit the road but today, Nothing! i think i have an afinity with car 55! it's smooth. hahah.. plus for the first time, i saw the famed pda of ssdc instructors! normally, all my instructors will be so scared to show off their brand new, shiny, top of the range pdas that they rarely take it out of their pocket throughout the whole 100 minutes, and will wait for me to leave the car before they carefully remove it to key in stuff, unlike today's nice guy who showed me how to use it man! damn cool! i don't even see the need for them to have a pda since they all convene at that holding area before and after each lesson where i'm sure they have enough time to record down whatever they normally would have recorded into their pda! but then again, that's not the point is it? owell i think i'm not making any sense whatsoever. lalala

i went to watch russian dolls after. it's kinda a weird show till then end when everything seemed to somehow fit together. well, relationships are meant to be like russian dolls, u never know which one will be the smallest doll, so you have to keep opening each layer ie, accepting each relationship and treat the whole progression as a journey towards finding the final smallest one. you just have to discover your own russian doll. it's really a refreshing concept though. like lil said, normal films will feature one guy and one girl and you KNOW that they're going to get together by the end of the film. but in this film, it's one guy and many many girls, which track his progression to reach the smallest doll and put an end to his experimentation. i know it's bad to two-time or even three-time somebody, but this show puts it into a whole new different light. not than i'm condoning it though. haha.