evergold...

oh yea and after picnic, there was evergold: the play. :)

bryan and yaoyu were fantastic! the whole play was in cantonese, thank god for the subtitles. i loved the costumes.. nic was saying how cooling they would be, esp in that furnace of a dramatheatre. or it could have just been us suffering the after-effects of being sunburnt from the picnic.

picnic in the sun

today i struggled out of bed due to sheer exhaustion, and i figured that it all boils down to being in the sun for too long yesterday.

christina will agree with me that the sun was scorching down parker's piece. and i must say nic's sunglasses are guaranteed to give you 360 degress of protection! i tried it. oh yea.


more at the picnic, there was good food: macdonals-worthy milo and heaps of the best sandwiches in cambridge in the spread...

everybody seems to be enjoying the foood more than anything else..

ben gives affirmation to the lip-smacking egg mayo sandwiches

so do ym and wv who even volunteered to be our food models and be in this advertisement.

darryl got a bit confused as to what to do with his food...

but ben shows the way... fighting for yet another advertising opportunity for our pristinely catered food with his colour-coordinated outfit.

and so, all the compliments on the food left ym and i puzzled at the amount of egg mayo sandwiches left at the end of the picnic... but thankfully there were other activities that distracted us from our misery..

ym got straight down to work filling those damn water balloons,

but not after taking an impromptu bag-tying tutorial from the hawkerman himself.

and what else does meng usually get up to , other than disrupting our efforts by threatening to destroy all the innocent water bombs lying all ready in the sun.

there were patient people trying to fly a kite. all i did was hold the string when the kite was already safe and flying in the air, and i still managed to let it drop back down. i have no affinity with kites, but that can't be said for cricket!

it's softball all over again! :) chrees, ym and i had a ball of a time playing cricket modified to softball.. if only we had our gloves...

yep, it was a great way to spend an afternoon, with games, friends and food. it'd be awhile before we get to go all out and do this again.

(: till then.

egg paradise.. OR HELL?

Recipe for disaster:

1. Give 2 starving people the task of making 3 loaves of egg mayo sandwiches in a night.
2. Throw in another 3 loaves of ham & cheese sandwiches and 3 extra pairs of hands.
3. Ensure that the people do not know exactly what they are doing, inducing hilarious one-liners as a result:
   "that's my template" - meng, trying to hide the fact that he has no clue as to how to cut a sandwich into triangular quarters when he proudly showed off a slice of bread neatly sliced into um, 2 rectangles.
   "return of the bread monster!" - chrees on the monstrous growing pile of egg mayo sandwiches.
   
   
4. Make sure there is always some wastage of food, be it by the horribly inaccurate estimation of ingredients required or easier still, by the accidental flipping over of the plate of completed sanwiches.
   
   
5. Next, and most importantly, insert a dose of creativity and a tribute to the very reason why we were slogging through a friday night:

But somehow or the other, the sandwiches still managed to get done before sunrise... mission accomplished.

and now we're ready for the picnic tomorrow, where other poor souls will have to consume our snacks. haha :)

20 years and counting

boy oh boy. i'm 20 already. all the jibes about being old has already started. check out the facebook message i received yest:

Dear Ms Ho Hui Ying Jasmine,

Allow me to warmly congratulate you for having been granted membership to the Club of 20-year-old Fogeys. I sincerely apologise if you have been kept waiting for more than 19 years just to join this exclusive club, but unfortunately our officers do take a while to decide if you have the maturity, the intelligence, and the character to handle the responsilities expected of a young adult. And I am very happy to inform you that they have all unanimously agreed that you are far and above one of the best qualified candidates by far.

As a member of the Club of 20-year-old Fogeys, one of the biggest previleges of such an exclusive club membership would be the fact that you are now only one step away from the most esteemed position of Old Fogey, the official title for adulthood. As a 20-year-old Fogey, you are basically an Old Fogey in training and will receive more or less the same priveileges as they do, only with more strings attached - all part of the learning process. For more details, please visit the School of Life website at www.schooloflife.com and sign up for some of their talks and classes, like Grey Areas 101 and Tough Choices 06 to 10. You will find them very informative and useful in your bid to be an Old Fogey.

Please do reply if you are willing to accept this prestigious membership (even though there isn't any reason not to) asap so that we can aid you in your training process. And once again, congratulations on being such a well-rounded and qualified individual. I hope that we will have many long and fruitful days together working on your development.

haha, well then a recap of yest in true bridget-jones style:

no. of birthday surprises: 4

no. of midnight surprises: 2 (one singapore time, one uk time)
no. of birthday songs sung: 3
no. of chocolate cakes: 2
no. of chocolate cake slices left: 4 (i just couldn't eat any more..)
no. of candles: 24 (i'm afraid my friends can't count very well)


no. of espresso makers: 1
no. of assorted cookie mixes: 3
no. of birthday cards: 4
no. of football match tickets! : 1 (oh yessss!)
no. of chocolate stains on my carpet: 4

no. of random people wishing me happy birthday: 5
no. of birthday wishes on facebook: 72

no. of main courses i had at dinner: 1.5

no. of wine glasses downed: 2 (poor show...)

and the wonderful core bunch of people that made me lie in bed at night and wish that it could all happen again:

thank you guys.. yest was one of the best. :)

i am doing everything

but study.

today i sat in my room

staring out the window

looking at people playing croquet

and admiring the greeness

of pembroke.

had bakkutteh for dinner,

the best ever so far. :)

i think i might become a masterchef after 6 years of cooking for myself

and other brave people who eat my food,

people i admire.

i found this amazing site (thank u sara!)

that gives me discounts

for everything!

food, shopping, bars

and i have now found the perfect restaurant for my birthday dinner!

with a 25% discount too..

huge number of chinaman points to me! haha

i dunno why i wrote my entry

as a poem

but it looks cool.

so there. :)

happyday!

there're so many reasons to make me smile today..

i just had one of the best skype moments ever! the class were having a stayover at lil's house and they called me to SING ME A BIRTHDAY SONG! awwww. :) albeit a little early but everyone was there! so i guess it warranted a skype birthday call! haven't seen all of them in a long time! the guys especially, shawn, junyang, junyan, jialun. i think that was all, it wasn't very bright at the other end. haha. and they were playing mahjong too! sighhh.. goodtimes...

i have already started making plans for my homecoming in june! it's going to be full of mahjong, gigs, and friends. and of course, family. i want to explore singapore and find where all the good bands are hiding. mr. siva's band seems pretty good but i have yet to see it...

sporty day today. tennis in the morning. then went on to freeze myself with a double chocolate flake milkshake sitting out in the wind. meng's silly idea... frisbee in the afternoon. now i feel all warm and exercised! fit fit fit.

PLUS i now am the proud owner of so much excellent new music AND 17 episodes of ugly betty! bliss.. all thanks to meng. i now ask for the willpower to not be TOO distracted by them.

most people have moved back into college now. lorna and tara almost banged down my door this afternoon... just had a huge trough gathering with everybody and got updated about holiday time-wasting and exotic foreign travels. going to the bar in a bit too just to catch up with people. i now feel that having people back in college isn't all that bad.. distracting, but not bad! it probably has something to do with the pancakes that tara promised later tonight... mmm. :)

birthdays...

2 birthday surprises and 2 dinners in the span of 2 days. everyone's growing older and wiser..

we tried a 1am surprise for voonkiat, cos obviously midnight surprises are so passe. haha. it kinda worked, especially with aaron aka darth vader leading the way. got told off by the porter for making too much noise, he must really have had some crazy hearing aids to hear us from the other side of college.

out of teenhood now. shit it's my turn next. :(

boy does the cake look yummy. i had 3 slices and everyone was trying to guilt-trip me. bah.

lucky lucky boy... only on his birthday! food was good, as all pizzas would be..

midnight surprise no. 2 went underway after vk's dinner... it was a much much larger than expected turnout...

and this wasn't all the people that were there.

ben the birthday boy, being all of 22 years old, was actually working when we descended upon his room, and carried on working throughout the day...

until at dinner, someone told him that studying on his birthday was unlucky... and then he wasn't smiling quite so widely any longer. haha

food wise, d'arrys turned out to be a lovely restaurant which could do with much much faster servce. we almost died waiting for food.

and here's wowo. synonymous with ben. and how he was meant to look like throughout dinner, party hat and balloon. poor wowo would have gotten a nice new shirt had we managed to find one in time.. now he has to settle with ben's leftover party supplies.

ahhh, i'm sadly counting down the days to my own exit of teenhood.

what's keeping me going...

i've been listening to music all day, everyday. basically whenever my computer's on, there's music in my room. this holiday i've found some amazing bands which i'm quite surprised i haven't uncovered before. all this lazyness is not good, especially when it comes to collecting good music.

today is muse day. (and kidney day, but i shall not spoil my mood further talking about work). muse takes some getting used to, but i've reached the point where all the songs seem confortably right. :) it's my ever-reliable work buddy, accompanying me through the night and into the morning...

our time is running out

and our time is running out

you can't push it underground

we can't stop it screaming out

now that you know I'm trapped

sense of elation

you'll never dream of breaking this fixation

you will squeeze the life out of me

and that is what tripos is all about...

work week

people have started moving back into college. that is not a good sign. that means:

1. term is starting (nooooo....)
2. tests are coming up
3. TRIPOS is sniffing distance away (argh!)
4. it's going to be a madcap term once more. no more picnicing in the sun, no more frolicking around, no more jokes, no more fun and laughter. morna just came in and reviewed the urgency of how close the exams are.

it's workworkwork from now on. c'mon! :(

it's 8.07pm and the sun has just started to set. ahhh i'm summer-loving. :)

easter hols...

it's been a week since i returned from my european adventure as so many of my facebook friends have been calling it... and what have i done you may ask? other than suffering from chronic facebookitis due to the never-ending influx of picture-albums and wall-posts, i've been slogging over the outlines for my hk english lessons, albeit catalyzed by one abrupt email from the director of my hk camp yesterday. haha. poor george, to have such a member on his team. i've missed his first 2 deadlines, and will probably miss the rest. just can't be bothered. i'll do things at my own pace. hehe. if our roles were switched, he'd probably have no end of my grumbling and ribbing.

yesss, but now i have the framework to come up with the worksheets and detailed minute-by-minute plans. haha, but that just means more time diverted from actual revision. :S

on a brighter note, tennis has become my new favourite sport! especially since the weather's been fantastic... i'll finally get a tan and not look so pasty white. played yest, playing again tmr morning. (which means i have to go sleep soon in order to get my average 5 hours of sleep a day) i still have that urge to play squash though, relive those memories, run my body through the whole routine of running up and down the court trying to hit the ball off the back wall... and being the initiative self of late, a squash date has already been arranged! wooo :) i'm going to get real fit by the time easter term comes.

other noteworthy news: i've finally touched the piano again after so long! moonlight sonata by beethoven being the culprit. and i'm living off The Killers now. their playlist has been on for about the fifteenth time today on my player. Pers, if u're reading this, go listen to When You Were Young by The Killers. its awesomeee! :)

alright. sleeeeep.

cambridge wins the boat race...

woooo! look at that! just watching it on live feed was exciting enough, imagine if i actually went down with the pembroke crew to watch it! mmm. oh now it's making me seriously consider continuing rowing next term.. weather's nice and that winning feeling is all too alluring.. when we win that is. haha. i can't wait for may bumps! from what i've heard, it's even bigger than lent bumps and that already was AMAZING.

well, pictures taken from the boat race website...

not your typical rowing picture where all you normally see is the painful expressions on the faces of the rowers.. nice scenary as well along the river thames... oxford is actually surprisingly in the lead here approaching hammersmith.. but according to their cox, "it's men (cambridge) against boys (oxford)", and off the start, it was just juvenile brashness off the blocks that gave oxford the lead... not to mention their boat was almost 30 kg lighter than the cambridge blues! phwar, those heavy monsters! all due to the muscles i would assume.

and nearing the end, it's cambridge pedigree outlasting oxford passion. muaha! AND we had the female cox! no wonder we won... :)

jubilation.

i wonder what it takes to be in that boat... hours and hours of gruelling training and loadsssss of passion i expect. now i see why rich goes out to train ever so regularly every morning... those guys were impressive! boat was sat, power was down. you would think there was something special about them, but all the cox's calls were exactly similar to peter's! leggggs! leggggs! relaxx. relaxx! sit up sit tall!

i think i might row next term...

spain!

a week in italy, and now a week in spain.... this trip was slightly different cos i've never been to spain before and it was more of a sight-seeing trip more than anything. the girls were so fun to be around as well, reminded me of old times in secondary school, training in the squash courts and in class...

at barcelona, we stayed at the sea point hostel. and this was the view from the hostel entrance. magic... it would have been better if the weather was nicer for us to go out onto the beach and just relax.. not that we didn't try..

it was so windy that day we hurried out to take pictures then had to hurry back before we were blown into the sea! sightseeing came after and we did the most touristy thing ever and hopped onto the tourist bus to see the city...

barcelona was filled with the works of antoni gaudi and his revolutionary designs that incorporated nature and dissolved the use of straight lines. makes everything seem very smooooth in my opinion..

this is the casa balto, one of the more famous works from gaudi. for some reason, his works kinda grew on me throughout the tour of barcelona. it felt intriging, like a mystery world of fairytales just because of its shape and how it's so out of place with the rest of the city.

la sagreda: the museum which we went in for the explanation of gaudi's work and how he managed to accomplish it all. it all reminded me of AEP in upper sec when i had to come up with mocks for my instillation piece and sketch out inspiration and designs after designs.. gaudi did practically the same thing, but on a much larger scale with his hanging models and architectural plans..

serene and i on one of gaudi's chairs. it's supposed to be mouded to you cos there're no straight lines, but i didn't feel any more comfortable.. the design was cute though. :)

and his most famous work of all time: castle la sagrada familia, which is still under construction after hundreds of years. we went in and it was literally a construction site! there were workers and machines of all sorts inside continuing the building process...

park guell next: gaudi's dream of a residential estate where he and other people could retreat to, however not many people shared his idea of beauty and in the end, only 3 units were sold, one was bought my gaudi himself. haha so eventually it because a public park instead!

the famous gaudi lizard's in park guell.. there were so many people trying to take a picture with it we had to squeeze our way through and fight with those japs/koreans for space!

the view from the top of park guell... u could see the whole of the barcelona skyline from here. we should have stayed till sunset! but no time la.. had so many other places to visit..

las rablas: THE shopping street in barcelona. it's always crowded, there're artists and mucisians everywhere and tons of indian souvenior shops. seriously, where do they all come from? even in italy they were everywhere...

and then we headed to the seaside again to catch the view.. all yatchs in he background.. OC-like.. ahhh the life i could have if i had all the money in the world..

i love this shot.. :)

plaza del toros: bull-fighting arena! too bad it wasn't sunday or we could have caught a bullfight.. but apparantly it's rather ghastly but still, i would love to see one.. maybe next time.

and how can anyone come to barcelona and not visit the nou camp?! ahhh home of the best football club in the world (after man utd of course). we took a tour of the grounds and pers now has a new barcelona training kit! he better be happy, it's the most expensive item i got in the whole trip!

inside the press room where the managers and players get grilled about their performances after the match, and where the man-of-the-match usually gets his trophy. woooo. legends have stepped into this room before. the smell of ronaldhino and messi.. ahhh!

so that was that for barcelona... onward to madrid for 2 days:

i don't know how i managed to last this long through an entry without talking about food! woooo the paella and sangria! heavenly. we had that almost everyday for dinner, together with the spanish tapas (side dishes of mostly seafood, potatoes and the likes)

this is me being the greedy pig that i am. tapas = yumyum!

and chiros in the mornings with coffee.. that's the daily menu for 7 days haha

madrid, being the capital city, wasn't very touristy but was like the concrete jungle that is singapore. spain is surprisingly clean! there were trees everywhere and somehow it just reminded me of home. in madrid, all there was to see were fountains, plazas and shops. it's the puerto del sol above, the main shopping district.

and plaza mayor... which i felt wasn't that spectacular. it was just a miniature st. mark's square, even with a few pigeons around.

yet another plaza, this time with colourful buildings.. haha i really can't rmb its name now.

only one word can describe valencia: BEACH.
the weather was fantastic, the sand was soft, the wind was refreshing. it was the life.

and last but not least... our parting shot from valencia...

darn, my holidays have effectively ended. now back at the bridge, moaning about the tons of work to be done, yet not having done much at all. 3 weeks to go...