| a brief resurrection |
[25 Sep 2009|12:01am] |
So exactly one year later, i'm blowing off the cobwebs across my former territory in cyberspace. Home of my musings since I was fifteen, filled with adolescent rants and prematurely existentialist ramblings...it still entertains me supremely to read back at the histrionics of being a teenager. It also makes me feel old.
Cambridge is a beautiful but terrifyingly hectic whirlwind. In many ways, I had a great year. It was a lot more than I expected it to be, when I stood nervously on the precipice of my departure into the Big World, one year ago. In a week, I will be back in Cambridge, to begin my second year. I'm a lot more seasoned at saying goodbye now, and there's less edgy anticipation of what the next year will hold.
In summer, when i am liberated from law books and legalese, i write again. Here.
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| packing for cambridge |
[25 Sep 2008|01:35am] |
SIX SAGE PACKING PHILOSOPHIES (as practiced by my Mother)
( Best Practices for the Best Prepared! )
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And this is how I have been attempting to pack. My maid has told me to hire a SHIPPING CONTAINER to bring all my things to England. She has even offered me the use of her huge Balikbayan box which she uses to send things to the philippines. Looking at the piles of clothes and items I am to bring, my brother summarised it best, "it might be easier to move Cambridge here, rather than you to cambridge."
Other things that do not bode well include:
1. my incapability to do laundry- my last foray into this sphere of domesticated duties had me tiedying all my clothes blue. in fact, my maid laughed hysterically for two minutes when i told her it was i, who will be washing my clothes.
2. my incapability to cook- its ok i plan to survive on cafeteria food and tesco's pasta salads. plus i am bringing porkfloss and kaya in case i need a taste of home. (forget prima packs, i am not that culinarily evolved)
3. my incapability to Clean Up After Myself. or rather, i just DON'T MIND living in total squalor because i can't be arsed to HOUSEKEEP. even a psychologist said i had "high tolerance for disorder" which i suppose is a fairly euphemistic way of saying "u r a pig".
4. my incapability to Stop Bumming. this is a Huge problem. 8 weeks of term naturally means 8 weeks of hectic curriculum time. going overseas has always been associated with being on holiday for me. so this just feels like an Exchange Programme. (No amanda! Its UNIVERSITY!) my brain is determinedly on vacation and i have thus only read 50 pages of my Cambridge Reading List. EARTH TO AMANDA'S BRAIN- pls come back.
but somehow, in spite of all this, in exactly seven days...i will be in Cambridge for the next three years (god willing). my bags will be packed, i'll be ready to go. my academic life will resume after this lengthy intermission. this is the fruition of what i dreamt of, and is surreal in both a lovely and terrifying way (but mostly lovely). as for the terrifying bits- i'm learning to trust God for His providence and grace.
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| polaroid poetry 002 |
[05 Sep 2008|12:10am] |
for my beautiful bombs on her 19th
yes, we have dared to disturb the universe.
we have rollicked through fields of atoms,
our hearts caught in wild collisions.
we have harvested light and melded its rays
to our bodies, cloaking ourselves in iridescence.
we have turned the world on its head,
gaped as galaxies flung themselves
into ebbing seas like giant cosmic waterfalls.
we have surrendered to the serenade
of stars and swum into pulsing darkness.
we have tumbled, as acrobats,
through the turnstiles of time, and stumbled
to the illimitable edge of Creation,
where a great vastness held us
and we knew, we had arrived-
at the warm rapture
of a familiar beginning.
yes, we have disturbed the universe,
and now we dare to embrace it.
04092008
xxx, A
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| inexplicable ennui |
[09 Jun 2008|10:48pm] |
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the thing i hate most about being in a bad mood, is that everyone tends to dismiss it as merely a symptom of your menstrual cycle- a gloriously convenient way to handle all forms of female ennui. i mean granted yes, occasionally it is due to PMS. but when one day you wake up with the grumps in full swing, and you do feel you have appropriate reason to be mad or sad (or a delicate cocktail of both), it is extremely frustrating when people cursorily attribute it to the vagaries of your womb.
in one smug remark "you are just pms-ing", all the painstaking philosophical ruminations that form the base of one's malaise are swiftly demolished. you suddenly find yourself stripped of the poetic LICENSE to be angry and instead you're left with the exasperatingly reductionist conclusion that every nuance of female emotion has a biological or hormonal root. in fact it is almost reminiscent of the ancient greeks, when the definition of the medical condition hysteria itself, meant originating from the womb (hyster).
evidently, these long languid jobless days are leaving me with more time than i desire for introspection and navel gazing. perhaps the recipe for my emo-less teenage years was just being Extremely Busy. right now, in between my teaching job (which concluded at the end of may) and a whole july taken up by my scholarship course, i am left with the month of june- a No Man's Land expanse of time, which rightfully should be used for relaxation and rejuvenation. but i think I have had more than enough of the Two Rs since the beginning of the year.
in some terribly morbid way, i crave to be intellectually stimulated. one would think i would relish being in this state of suspension after a manic year as an academic zombie prior to the a levels. but i have come to realise that i NEED to be challenged, i NEED to have something to work for, i NEED to feel driven. these 9 months feel like an extended intermission between two Acts of my life. it was thoroughly awesome at first, but now it feels just a little too long, especially since everyone is starting uni in august while i have to wait till october. its not like i have nothing to do, in fact i've been reasonably busy for the past two weeks. i embarked on a massive mission to declutter my house (successful), have been giving tuition, helping out at beyond, learning to drive, assisting my mother with all her random projects, spent a lovely day cooking and "baking" with bombs, hanging with squirt, judging a creative writing competition. but i still feel vaguely unfulfilled.
i have taken to strange preoccupations. like wandering the streets of my estate at twilight with a camera in tow, composing poems and conversations in my head. then the sun sets, and my holga is rendered useless. so i wade ankle-deep in grass, crawl under fences and think about the dozens of beautiful images i am seeing in the half-light that can never be captured. i remember jasmine and i talking about how the world offers so many startlingly gorgeous images when you look for them. like a child's bike at dusk, a rust-eaten red, chained to the barrier of a canal, by the edge of its training wheels. something so strangely incongruous and vulnerable about why a worn miniature skeleton of metal is guarded so fiercely.
sometimes i stop in the middle of the pavement and stand stock still, listening to the night. everything around me resonates with such a sense of purpose. the pounding of joggers against the asphalt, the distant scurrying of dogs and the chattering of maids at their leashes, the resolute rumble of cars charging headlong to their destinations. i enjoy the feeling of being the only one who is adrift, a peculiar sculpture frozen in time. in another time, a slower time, perhaps decades before, this would be perfectly acceptable. but now, if anyone asks me why i'm not moving, i'll tell them i'm a poem waiting to happen.
i go home and fill my notebook with carcasses of poems about camera obscuras, white stones, mute swans and shadow puppets... then i think, with all my literary pretensions and silent solitary walks.....BLOODY HELLZZ i'm turning into VIRGINIA WOOLF. :((((((
this is why uni should start NOW, before i begin my downward spiral, develop a perpetual look of being bereft (ala nicole kidman in the hours), and finally walk into a longkang (no rivers here) with my pockets filled with stones amidst the swirling sewage in my Climatic End. of course, i exaggerate. perhaps i should develop more conventional preoccupations to alleviate the empty spaces in the day, like watching the whole series of Gossip Girl. but there's something in me which has always been antipathetic to watching glamourous teenagers live their insular lives.
at least writing this was reasonably cathartic, i shall go back to reading my book now. an anthology of short stories by some very brilliant young women writers, snarkily titled "THIS IS NOT CHICK LIT". and i SWEAR, that four months from now, when im drowning in the DELUGE that is the cambridge law course, i will laugh sardonically at this post and label myself an absolute MASOCHIST for ever wishing this wide expanse of free time to go away.
so i'll end with a caveat- despite this fleeting bout of inexplicable ennui, i am REALLY having a ball. there are things i look forward to! like wanks coming back, a trip to clubmed bintan with bombs,nat,and seems. and once july begins, my life will again pick up speed rapidly, be packed full of events as i hurtle towards the beginning of university.
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| polaroid poetry 001 |
[26 May 2008|10:38pm] |
even the smallest things arch heavenwards,
lurching toward a deeper destiny.
buds bowed heavy with colour, recklessly
crane their heads like brittle birds.
the trees have learnt no lessons in solidity-
roots begin to ache for air. still shackled to earth,
they mimic the sprawl of branches,
that desperate grope for transcendence.
the world ripens, full with the weight of yearning,
each heart winged on the brink of epiphany.
fringed with light, the cloudless sky,
tells us: at every instant, one must fly.
080508
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| The Dental (Mis)Adventures |
[24 May 2008|03:23pm] |
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so today was the climactic experience of my life in the dentist's chair. having four wisdom teeth pulled at once (well rather, at two different locations) is certainly rather harrowing. enough for me to formally recant my noble childhood proclamations of joining the medical profession. i honestly think there must have been meth in my milk, because i was one DELUSIONAL child. maybe pretending to be a doctor is fun on the abstract level of roleplay, but i cannot handle the whole CONCEPT of surgical implements incising the human body. the sight of needles and blood is enough to make me go slightly hysterical. what ever made me think i could ever muster Medicine?
the whole extraction process was slightly exacerbated by the fact that the operation took place in two locations. Simply because my (Awfully Expensive but Awfully Brilliant) dentist recommended another Awfully Expensive but Awfully Brilliant surgeon to perform the said operation. said surgeon's dexterity is said to be unparalleled ("it will be all done in 15 minutes!"), but he also comes at a price of $700 per tooth plus an additional $1000 (or something equally ridiculous for the services of an anesthetist to knock me out completely). all this works out to the price of a Chanel 2.55 Jumbo (as my mother would have you know). while my mother is perfectly willing to spend that amount on said bag, she believes its completely ridiculous to charge a similar amount for dental services. she is of the belief that dental surgery is a transient fleeting affair, where as bags are transcendent ("i shall WILL my bags to all of you when i die!"). personally, i also felt it was rather exorbitant. so i agreed to my mother's proposal that my AEAB dentist, remove three of my teeth, where as the AEAB surgeon removes the one impacted wisdom tooth, which is the only one that legitimately requires a surgeon's hand. i also declined the use of an anesthetist, and said i'll do it under Local Anesthetic.
What I didn't know is that, the usual practice is to be under General Anesthetic when all four teeth are pulled out. What I also didn't know is that, it usually isn't the practice to remove all four at once, but of course AEAB dentist and surgeon are more than qualified to do this. What I also didn't count on was AEAB dentist deciding to move from Paragon to Camden Medical Centre. The original idea was for AEAB dentist to do her part, and then send me down the lift to AEAB surgeon who was located at the same medical centre. But because of this surprise move, I would have to take part in Amazing Race (Dental Edition), and rush from two different places, under the haze of anesthetic. It already sounded like awesome fun.
( the amazing dental adventure in excruciating detail. )
and so we fastforward to now, where i have a perpetual throbbing ache in my jaw and i look as if i have golfballs plugged firmly in my cheeks. i am also on a "soft diet" of fish porridge, strawberry yoghurt and ben&jerry's cheesecake brownie icecream. tonight i shall be having mashpotato and fish puree! i have also been watching episodes of House on DVD, and while i get terribly excited when they go "DIFFERENTIAL DIAGNOSIS!" and rattle off medical jargon at topspeed, I am under no illusions that the medical profession is appropriate for me.
The far more harrowing medical procedures their patients undergo on House, also put my minuscule excuse of a day surgery in full context. I'm a TERRIBLE patient, I blame it on my wild and overactive imagination, and lack of pain management. i can only imagine the scene in my delivery ward if/when i give birth to a child. as much as i'd love the joys of a natural birth, i'd probably end up twisting the arm off my Hapless Husband while in the throes of agony, or straggling myself with the IV Tubes in protest, when the doctors refuse to top up the anesthetic. it will certainly NOT be a pretty picture of motherhood.
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| The Rise and Fall of Neatness Nirvana |
[25 Apr 2008|11:33pm] |
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whoever is writing the script of my life, must have a great taste for irony. its constantly being dispensed to me in liberal doses, to either hilarious or devastating effect. today's example is both.
THE RISE OF NEATNESS NIRVANA
it is a fact universally known, that amanda has been procrastinating packing her room since the end of the alevels. while others rushed home to build bonfires, burning their notes and shredding up papers in some pagan celebration of liberation. amanda returned home, sunk into her bean bag and watched the oprah winfrey show on loop. since then she has been stuck in an incorrigible state of inertia.
it is now nearly HALF A YEAR since the conclusion of the alevels, and still her room is languishing in a time warp. her study is reminiscent of Miss Havisham's mansion, a picture of disgraceful decadence. stacks of cobweb-strung notes, absolutely untouched since 5pm on 26 November (the climatic End of the Alevels), still in their disordered "mugging piles". in fact, her A level entry proof and schedule still take pride of place on the noticeboard, with all dates struck out except the last.
so eventually, goaded by Suze Orman on the Oprah show and her words to a hapless housewife, "No human being who LOVES herself would live in such disorder! I see the mess in your house, and I can only think that psychologically you are not AT PEACE." and Oprah's resounding rejoinder "YOU ARE NOT LIVING YOUR BEST LIFE". i decided, that i was high time i CLEANED UP MY ACT. i mean i'm not going to let my room be evidence of a screwed up psyche, i'm very much psychologically balanced thankyouverymuch. furthermore, it was imperative that my room be cleaned up because the Newspapers were coming over to take a photo on Monday, and the extent of mess in my room was virtually INHUMAN. and i wanted to convey the impression that i was indeed a well-adjusted individual, not the proud hillbilly owner of a hovel.
my two lovely ever-obliging friends from church, kaye and sam came over to help me pack. (well we were supposed to embark on our fitness regime of swimming, but that fell through). i don't think i'm good at this Eradicating Clutter business. i'm far too sentimental. i insist on keeping half of the things in my "Memory Box" (i have about six large Memory Boxes). the cleaning up session, quickly descended into me singing hwachong school songs to Sam (we found my hwachong student handbook), and her mocking my childhood poetry by reading it out aloud.
but kaye arrived, and brought along her RELENTLESS EFFICIENCY. and soon half of the things on my shelf were on the floor, and we were like busy little elves, holepunching notes, filing things up, categorising notes, flinging stacks of paper into the trash. as kaye repeated her authoritative refrain of "THROW! YOU DON'T NEED THAT. THROW IT AWAY". kaye, with the aesthetic eye of a Domestic Goddess, also arranged all the books beautifully on my shelf, even arranging them so they were all in the same "plane", and the spines didn't jut out.
so they left after about four hours. and despite all the work, i still had a huge puddle of mess on the ground, i literally could WADE in it. i stayed up until 1am filing everything up beautifully and labelling everything so now i have a whole spectrum of multi-coloured files filled with my Alevel notes (i'm keeping some of them for sentimental value). by this time i had filled up 6 huge trashbags of memorabilia from my school days. you could call me an academic hoarder, until sunday, i still had all my notes from SECONDARY ONE. but i had finally achieved NEATNESS NIRVANA. take that Suze Orman, i'm TOTALLY LIVING MY BEST LIFE.
THE FALL OF NEATNESS NIRVANA
unfortunately the next day NEATNESS NIRVANA began to unravel. the photographer from the paper arrived, looked at my study and decided the rows of perfectly organised books and files was too boring a backdrop for the photo (after EIGHT HOURS of EXTREME MAKEOVER). instead, he decided to use my BEDROOM as a setting. my bedroom had been neglected in Operation Clean Up. my sofa is strewn with clothes (and underwear and towels), dirty clothes are mingled with clean ones. shoes are stacked haphazardly by the door. my luggage from japan is still open and on the floor. piles of University Correspondences are scattered artistically on the ground...thank goodness the photo only captured my wall.
next, PhotographerDude decides to take an alternative shot as well. he asks me "are you a messy person?". deciding to give up the charade. i admitted i was. "okay" he says, "lets see you in your natural state". so basically, he instructed me to EMPTY MY BOOK CASE and splay all the books on my shelves artistically on the table. my face BLANCHED at this, and i feebly protested that I had cleaned my room yesterday. the next thing i knew it, all my books from Atwood to Larkin to Woolf were building blocks in some sort of literary sculpture (they didnt even use this picture anyway.)
i think i am simply not destined to live an Ordered Life. my maid walked in and cackled "LOSERRR. Your room is nice for only TWELVE HOURS". and i realised that i have yet to clean out my drawers and organise my Important Documents shelf. so there is still work to be done. plus my bedroom is another mega Extreme Makeover project altogether, and the process of decluttering is never-ending. i think the PSC psychologist was right when she commented "you have a very high tolerance for disorder in your life",which is basically a euphemism
for'you're a very messy person'.i honestly can't imagine what my room at Cambridge would be like, needless to say, i'm just very glad i don't have a roommate. there will be restraining orders held against me and my inordinate mess, or perhaps even complaints to the United Nations Human Rights Commission under the secondary right to a Healthy Living Environment.
At any rate, I have something like 150 lit scripts to mark over the weekend (after marking 70 essays and 70 compres and summaries over the past week), so i will not have anymore time for domestic endeavours. but SOMEDAY, i will truly LIVE MY BEST LIFE (as oprah says), and my house will be A SPOTLESS PRISTINE MUSEUM, worthy of the frontpage of Beautiful Homes. (unfortunately, this is about as likely as me being a champion Triathlete, but it never hurts to aim high.)
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| homebound |
[10 Apr 2008|11:13am] |
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this trip to japan would be a fitting prologue to my bildungsroman. it was truckloads of fun, navigating the train system, soaking in warm public baths (we soaked in a green tea bath, a sake bath, a wine bath, a chocolate bath and a coffee bath!), viewing the cherry blossoms, gorging on the freshest sashimi known to man and stuffing our faces with octopus balls!
but for the first time, in the multitude of overseas trips and holidays i have taken, i (or we) actually actively missed Singapore. perhaps this sense of rootedness and homeboundness increases exponentially with an impending departure- a feeling almost akin to mortality. on october 1st 2008, i will be headed to a fairly foreign land to spend the next three years of my life. with a real possibility of it extending to four, if i should do well enough to have my post-graduate course sponsored as well. the prospect of packing my life into a suitcase for three years is exciting, but right now, i feel predominantly wistful.
i suppose now that Going to University Overseas, is not merely a fantasy but a reality, it has begun to shed its sheen of romanticism. in some sense it has been a lifelong dream, oxford and cambridge being the shining beacons of academic excellence that we all at some point aspired to. but still, the prospect of life going on at home, while you carve your own course abroad, and returning to a place you may barely recognise, with connections and friendships inevitably cleaved apart by time... is sort of scary. its almost like turning into a modern day Rip Van Winkle.
funnily, this sense of "mortality" instilled a sense of patriotism in us that years of National Education could barely muster. all our philosophical discussions on trains, while waiting for rides at themeparks, or while picnicking in parks, somehow led back to Singapore. where is the best place to raise our hypothetical children? singapore (even for its failings in its overly stressful education system.) would we ever marry a man of a different nationality? well we wouldn't mind dating one, but perhaps only a singaporean would be able to understand the tiny cultural nuances and jokes from our childhood...would we ever migrate abroad, and never return? no singapore affords us one of the best support systems...imagine giving birth to a child in a foreign land without any fawning grandparents or encouraging girlfriends. one of the most poignant feelings in the world? walking into the singapore airport after a long while abroad. being greeted by the colourful banners wishing you "Welcome" in five different languages, the cloying heat creeping into your skin...and of course, the announcement on all Singapore Airlines flights "To all visitors welcome to Singapore.....and to all Singaporeans , Welcome Home". (we repeated the announcement ad infinitum, until we were laughing hysterically and on the verge of tears at the same time...)
perhaps this is growing up. yearning for a sense of stability in the ebbing path of life. maybe its a biological nesting instinct which binds you to a place. we laughed thinking this mild sense of patriotism and sentimentality towards our homeland will soon flourish into fullblown Xenophobia. maybe its a natural progression. soon we'll be the stereotypical Singaporeans of the older generation, who cannot go to a foreign country without extolling the virtues of Singapore in comparison. but i think three years overseas may just reshuffle my sentiments.
by some crazy cosmic collision, or what i prefer to call God's grace, i got into all the US colleges i applied to, one of which has offered me a place on their global scholars programme. suddenly many doors are swung open, when i've already firmly chosen my path. i am currently languishing in a huge pile of mail, congratulating me on being admitted to this "challenging but chill" college, postcards from sophomores eager to induct me into the yale/columbia/brown clan, sweet handwritten notes from admissions officers, invitations to gatherings. i even have a banner from Yale (which i shall hang up in my bedroom), an offer for a free t-shirt (i am totally going to claim this). and perhaps the funniest- a note from the Head Coach of water polo at Brown encouraging me to join the team.
i can't help but wonder what life would be like should i choose to take up anyone of these offers. would i be a flannel-shirt, combat-boots wearing hippie at Brown? a greenwich-village-dwelling student activist at columbia? a preppy collegiate (ala gilmore girls) theatre-geek at yale? somehow this is starting to feel like a choose-your-own-ending-novel...a mirrored corridor of endless parallel possibilities.
i am firmly set on cambridge in all practical terms. my scholarship is only tenable in the UK, and specifically for law. my acceptance on UCAS has been changed to "unconditional" and i have responded by declining everything and putting Cambridge as firm. i am on the verge of sending off my 250 pounds deposit to Christ's...
i suppose my muted acknowledgment at my mother's SMSes detailing the US university packages that were trickling in ("DHL called. the guy said he had a package for you from yahlee university. i think he means Yale?") versus my explosive excitement at being told i had been accepted to Cambridge is a good indicator of where i'm truly meant to be.
it's funny that of all the Climactic Correspondences i have received this year (and there have been many), I never once have opened a single destiny-deciding letter. whether university or scholarship, i have never been home when the mailman delivers the packages. the news has always been delivered to me secondhand via my mother (or my sister), conveyed to me via SMS or a phonecall. i think i prefer it that way. my brain might have exploded if i opened my Cambridge letter on my own.
so i suppose, once i tediously plough through the stack of papers and politely decline every american university that has been so kind as to accept me, it'll pretty much be set in stone. i'm going to cambridge. three years of wearing robes, formal-hall, prayers in latin, british accents, balls (how very pride&prejudice), intimidating supervisions with the world's best legal minds, do-not-walk-on-the-grass, punting, rowing and late-night essays...
but i'm going to get my free yale t-shirt first.
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| hello japanland! |
[30 Mar 2008|10:10pm] |
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so a year and a half after their first solo voyage to London, where they navigated the tube system with aplomb, mastered the DON'T-MESS-WITH-US swagger for late-night walks in the city, and were mistaken for underaged oriental prostitutes by the British immigration desk... now free from the shackles of the A-levels and slightly more prosperous from 4 months of working and earning a salary, the indomitable trio- Bombs, Amanda and Nat are embarking on yet another adventure. this time to the land of sushi, sashimi and used-panty vending machines- JAPAN.
it will be no mistake to say that we are slightly terrified. there's a bit of terror mingled with anticipation and excitement (i'm certain there's a very apt chinese chengyu to describe this, unfortunately it has long slipped my mind). we've planned this ambitious ten day journey from tokyo (two days) to hakone (land of hotsprings and VOLCANIC EGGS, we are particularly excited about this), and then to osaka! (three days) then back to tokyo again. it'll be an absolute whirlwind which will involve us hopping from subway to bullet train and resting in budget japanese inns. in hakone itself, the track we planned out involves six different modes of transportation (cablecar, railroad, boat, funicular, foot, subway).
in the course of planning this trip, bombs the accommodation I/C has mastered the art of writing english, the japanese way in perfect tone and register. extremely polite, peppered with positive adjectives and phrases like "delighted!" " we are so glad for your kindness" and generally reminiscent of the awkward prose on japanese cartoon stationery which goes "HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY SMILE!!!!"
however, since i unceremoniously dropped japanese as a third language when i was thirteen (incidentally, the week before the final exam). our knowledge of japanese is highly rudimentary. we hope we will be able to survive with the phrases in lonely planet and our accomplished repertoire of mime and signlanguage. we also have fears that our accommodation will fall through, due to a variety of reasons. and we'll be left to camp out at macdonalds, or beg shinto nunneries to take us in.
right now we are having thoughts of our mortality. bombs has just said very poignantly "before i left my house, i thought...what if this the last time i ever see it again...." so please kids, pray for us. that we will not be kidnapped and have our fingers chopped off by yakuzas. that our yen will remain safely strapped to our bodies at all times. that we will not lose our money and have to hawk our own panties to sleazy businessmen in order to buy traintickets to Narita. that we will not be inducted into a prostitution ring and be given cheesy pseudonyms like the BENTO BABEZZ...have oodles of fun with Udon, Ramen and Soba.
i should stop coming up with worst case scenarios. its unhealthy. OKAY. we need to continue planning our itinerary. we're still in osaka right now. our cab is coming in approx. four hours...MAY THE SEISHIN SPIRIT OF THE NOBLE JAPANESE SAMURAI BE WITH US ON OUR VOYAGE.
(hopefully, we'll live to tell the tale!)
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[25 Mar 2008|07:22pm] |
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at certain times of the month i feel inexplicably emo, and nothing can explain it except the vagaries of my ovaries and perhaps the weather. this is incidentally also the time of the month i sit in front of my mac and gorge on icecream (current flavour: haagen daaz bananas and cream.) and then begins the desperate search for catharsis which usually results in me plopping in front of the TV to watch Oprah. but whatever residual emoness has been vanquished by my accomplishment of the century. i marked 33 lit essays in the span of two hours this morning. (no mean feat, considering my compulsion to adorn each essay with comments, plus the fact i had marked 70 more the day before. and the law of diminishing marginal returns dictates that i should be moving at snail's pace by then)
anyway i have returned from hongkong which was filled with crazy shopping. my mother is the ho chi minh of guerilla shopping. we had two hours of sleep (because our flight was at the unearthly hour of 6.50am, which entailed waking up at 3.30am). after some fitful rest on the plane, we leapt out and immediately caught a cab to a nearby mall, where we spent the next 12 hours shopping, still dragging our luggage along. we broke for a dimsum lunch, and pidanzhou for dinner (century egg porridge, i'm so getting the hanyupinyin wrong). it was 10pm before we took the train to central hongkong and finally arrived at our hotel.
honestly, if you think i'm a "shopaholic" (a gross misnomer! my last shopping trip with michelle wan is not at all representative of my otherwise frugal spending habits), you should look at my mother. in the narrow margin of time during which i made one single purchase of a $4 scarf, my mother had already acquired a kate spade handbag + makeup case, beverly feldman shoes, and a burberry sweater. and this is after going to hongkong thrice last year, and she will be going again in july. incidentally, my mother is also a VIP member of half the stores in hongkong.
i did try to inculcate Oprah's Friendly Spending Tips in my mother. before one buys something, one must stop, think, and breathe deeply. "Do i really need this? Don't I already have this?" "Should I forego present consumption for future benefit?" "Will this add to the clutter in my already overflowing house?" "will i fling this out of my house a couple of months from now in a fit of declutterng?" (granted, i modified the questions a little bit). unfortunately, my mother's friend from hongkong who accompanied us on all our shopping trips counteracted all my noble efforts. upon my mother taking an interest in a striped top, "BUT YOU ALREADY HAVE TEN OF THESE AT HOME" i protest. "then she can have eleven!" chirps Mother's Shopping Homie as she swipes away the said top and hustles it into the changing room.
for all the subsequent days, it was a similar pattern of shopping for the entire day (12 hours!) and breaking strategically for good food. my favourite is the mango dessert place, which has every variation of mango dessert on the planet (icecream, pudding, glutinous rice balls, jelly!) and is just dripping golden goodness. i bought mainly warm clothes for university, certainly a lot cheaper than buying them in England. a red trenchcoat, blazers in blue and black, a leprechaun green coat, a variety of long-sleeved tops, knits and woolies. purple suede boots for traipsing around cambridge! sensible brown ones that will look okay grunged up, if i fall into the river cam (a likely possibility). limited edition chucks (these were really a steal!). shoes in various colours of the spectrum...
high-end brands are far out of my league as a nineteen year old and i do not believe in spending a GDP of a small country on a bag or a pair of shoes. so when my mother trudged along a posh mall on the final day, i walked around the backalleys with my dad. we came across a hongkong police drama being filmed which was quite exciting! it was the scene of a car accident, and they set the car on fire. a bit anticlimatic when you realise its simply charcoals bits and kerosene rags strewn over the bonnet, rather than any impressive pyrotechnics. then i proceeded to sit in a cafe and plough through lit essays.
i think i ought to begin cleaning my room. my bedroom is dominated by a monument of my HK shopping which have yet to be stowed away. dirty clothes have mingled with new ones on my bedroom floor (my wardrobe however, is an OCD's fantasy. i painstakingly folded and hung up everything before i left). my study on the other hand, is stuck in an A-level time warp. I have NOT cleaned up or organised ANY of my mugging materials, notes and books since the A-levels concluded on 26 November 2007. that was an astounding four months ago. it's pretty scary how one chapter of my life has swiftly closed, and a brand new one is about to begin. now i'm lulling about in an interim period, and relishing it. if only life always had convenient intermissions...
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| i haven't felt the way, i feel today. |
[08 Mar 2008|03:19pm] |
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music |
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why incubus of course! |
] |
perspective pries her once weighty eyes
and gives you wings...
rockconcert solidarity (bombs, nat, seems and me)
so yesterday was absolutely brilliant in so many ways. from the lovely gifts and cards my classes at school presented to me on my last day as a relief teacher. to the efforts at distracting ourselves from the impending A levels results by adorning our teacher's volkswagen beetle with post-it notes. the climactic A level results in the afternoon, a harrowing but ultimately gratifying experience (thank God!). i remember squinting at a result slip, as i faced Mr M and thinking ihopethatsmineihopethatsmine. finally clasping it was a moment of closure, the culmination and fruition of months of tear-your-hair-out mugging and God's grace.
and of course, the cherry on top of the already-elaborately-iced cake- the electrifying concert by my favourite band since i was a prepubescent.
dj kilmore was brilliant on the console and keyboards. mike was a manic vision on the guitar, there will be no greater genius. ben kenney's bass reverberated in your hips and played against your bones. jose's drums echoed in your ribcage and colonised your heart beat. and brandon brandon brandon, crazy coyote boy tripped all over the stage like a modern whirling dervish, a web of hair strung across his face.
megalomaniac was a crowd-winner as usual. and pistola was particularly awesome with the instrumental interludes. STELLAR won my heart (although i missed here in my room) and the finale of aqueous transmission revealed them all to be the topclass musicians they all are. brandon was particularly beautiful to watch here, with his delicate hand gestures and movements, tracing a phantom antenna, and flicking it on.. just rapt in a musical trance.
it was an amazing concert. particuarly since i've been listening to this music for SO long. all the lyrics are permanently etched in my subconsciousness, and i can remember even the random scratches from dj kilmore at certain points, or brandon's vocal gymnastics and recognise the song from the opening beats . this is the band that inspired my first forays into poetry as much as ts eliot and sylvia plath did. taught my thirteen-year old-self the word "existentialist" and educated me on philosophy and politics before i even knew of freud, nietzche and kant. and introduced me to a world of tripped-out psychics and swirling nebulae.
so even if i have moved away from the domain of rock to loving twee indie bands like birdandthebee and camera obscura, or more folksy sounds like bright eyes...there will always be a special incubus-shaped hole in my heart.
i managed to get my hands on the incubus set-list (through shamelessly begging a member of the crew). so i have a perfect memento of an awesome night! seema has thoroughly awesome photos that she took from our perfect vantage point! (unfortunately my camera was in my bag which was lodged practically in my ass crack, and i was unable to take it out through the course of the concert.) i'll definitely post some gorgeous photos of the band, once she sends them to me.
for now i leave you with this...that lovely mix of songs that made our night.
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| no one says it like neruda |
[16 Feb 2008|05:40pm] |
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having blipped my way into cyber-oblivion despite my abundance of free time, i have finally returned. albeit a little too late for the customary valentine's day post. i spent vday cutting up valentine's day poems for my classes (carol ann duffy's "valentine" which doubled-up as a brief lesson on symbolism. i try to be educational...) i inevitably started missing our usual v-day hijinks in hwach; from michaellearnstorock serenades by the boyz and our LONELY HEARTS CLUB outings. also, my brother got a truckload of flowers from adoring females, while the rest of us girls got none. :(
anyway, i stumbled across this last night, and it is absolutely gorgeous. nobody says it like neruda! there are no words to describe my absolute love for his poetry, which transcend the barriers of language. i love the simplicity in this one, the lack of artistic pretense. its almost as if you're an unseen observer, quietly privy to the intimate whispers of lovers. if i ever do get married, i'm going to appropriate this as my wedding vows!
Sonnet LXXXI
And now you're mine. Rest with your dream in my dream.
Love and pain and work should all sleep, now.
The night turns on its invisible wheels,
and you are pure beside me as a sleeping amber.
No one else, Love, will sleep in my dreams. You will go,
we will go together, over the waters of time.
No one else will travel through the shadows with me,
only you, evergreen, ever sun, ever moon.
Your hands have already opened their delicate fists
and let their soft drifting signs drop away; your eyes closed
like two gray wings, and I move
after, following the folding water you carry, that carries
me away. The night, the world, the wind spin out their destiny.
Without you, I am your dream, only that, and that is all.
Pablo Neruda
and here's a lovely recording of it from the il Postino soundtrack featuring the voices of julia roberts and andy garcia. i really need the il Postino soundtrack, it has lovely recordings of amazing neruda poems by a host of awesome actors!
(try and ignore the cheesy photo slideshow effects going on (it was the only freely-available version i could find). so concentrate on the uhh.. aural experience.)
now i'm unceremoniously scooting off to join the hwachhomies in dinner (which i am -already- late for, especially since i haven't even BATHED. so i'll save the quotidian updates for later!
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| i suppose i should capture this moment for posterity. |
[08 Jan 2008|01:37am] |
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i found out the MOMENTOUS NEWS (okay this makes it sound like im preggerz) while I was getting my hair cut, with the scissors dangerously close to my ear. my sister called me (my mother having ripped open the letter as soon as it arrived, im glad i didnt have to do the dirty deed myself, i would have keeled over in fear). for the first time in my life, i felt the shock-mingled jubilation of a suburban housewife who flings open her door one morning to see Oprah's Wildest Dreams Bus and Miss Winfrey herself standing, beatified and beaming. i was utterly incoherent and only remember saying "ARE YOU SHITTING ME" and repeating "I JUST NEED TO PASS TWO ALEVELS??" "IM GOING TO CAMBRIDGE" incredulously.
if life were a broadway musical, the whole salon would have got up in a medley of songs (titled "She's Going to Cambridge (Yes she is)" and concluding with "Thank You God, Dreams Do Come True") . the rhythmic snip of the hairdressers scissors would have begun the beat, and a chorus of gay shampoo boys and women in curlers would have formed the ensemble. midway through the medley i would fling open the doors of the salon with the plastic sheet still wrapped around me and the hairdresser at my side still attempting to cut off a loose lock, and i would do a "Good Morning Baltimore!" (or SINGAPORE in my case) ala Tracy Turnblad in Hairspray.
unfortunately, life does not imitate the candy-coloured cheesiness of broadway. instead, my "PASS TWO ALEVELS" "CAMBRIDGE???" cries were met with weird looks from the women sitting next to me who evidently see the salon as a place of quiet relaxation and not bald jubilation. so it was all rather anticlimatic. i resorted to sending out incoherent SMSes punctuated with "Ah! Ah! Ah! Im going to faint!" instead. and in fact, i was NAUSEOUS with happiness. i was so happy i could PUKE. i think i sounded like a ZOMBIE when Squirt called me (but then again, she sounded like she had a footlong subway sandwich jammed in her mouth, i blame the sound quality of her handphone.)
To complete my whole dreamlike surrealistic sequence. i met Mr B the moment i trotted out of the hair salon. Only in a dream is one's world so neatly circumscribed. And of course I GUSHED to him and thanked him profusely.
So. Its a weird prospect, that now i can say I AM GOING TO CAMBRIDGE, to study LAW. (provided i pass 2 alevels of course). and that yes in 9 months, if all goes well i'll be in CAMBRIDGE studying LAW. and really, i am so indescribably grateful for this absolutely Amazing Grace. im facing chronic vocabularly shortage right now and my syntax is unravelling to rival that of a certain overly you-tubed South Carolina Teen Beauty Queen. but really, Thank God! all for His glory and all by His grace.
Poets are always uncommonly apt for every extremity of emotion and Rilke once again is right about this whole happiness business-
" And we, who have always thought of joy
as rising, would feel the emotion
that almost amazes us
when a happy thing falls."
- The Duino Elegies, the tenth elegy
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| farewell! |
[05 Dec 2007|10:24pm] |
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and so the As and SATs are finally over, and i have written 1 and 3/4 of my 2 US university essays although i'd probably go back to rewrite them eventually. prom and partying have had their turn. (although i had to face the ignominy of being one of the rare few females in the world of who got their period on prom night. thank god for lou, the only girl with contingency plans, who has a pad in her evening clutch). last night's attempt at mamboing at zouk fell quite flat, i suppose the fact that i swiftly walked into a pole upon entering the club, and injured my crotch was a bad omen (now i know how greg and hee feel when i inadvertently strike them in their nether regions). also as bombs put it, the club resembled the interior of a sardine can dominated by the male species, and the only thing one could do other than halfheartedly following the mambo actions, was to oscillate sideways in the manner of a pendulum. i think we've been to rock concerts where it was less packed.
anyway I am currently standing at one of those free internet booths in changi airport as my time remaining to use the internet dwindles down to zero. so a quick shoutout to my hwach homies, I WILL MISS YOU ALL DEEPLY, the nostalgia of leaving our beloved huang cheng has been creeping up on me. and to the ld ladies, SOURCE FOR A SCRIPT FOR NEXT YEARS PRODUCTION. to squirt, i love you, start mugging for your blocks because you're going back on stage! to bombs and nat, japan next year so start practicing your konnichiwas and aisheterus! to jasmine, thank you infinitely for being my temporary secretary. to karen, hold the debauchery! and to the church gang (kaye and sam) PHUKET HERE WE COME!
farewell all! i'm off to paris ("city of lights...and pickpockets" as my father puts it, which would probably raise ire in wanks) and london (land of the big ben and awesome museums) from 6th-23rd. see you all come christmas! love and testicles to all!
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| breaking loose with the wind |
[15 Nov 2007|10:43pm] |
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its been a long time since i could breathe. and here i am, having survived the deluge of the A levels, sitting in my chair and engaging in the rare pleasure of reading- for once, not about oil prices and exchange rates or balance of payments, nor about Gorbachev and Reagan, or the multitude of Islamic Fundamentalism movements around the globe. finally my mind is at rest, no longer plagued with the tongue-tangling names of foreign people from a bygone era, visions of wars and incursions, the rising and falling of cost curves, X-M and the marshall-lerner condition..
this is such sweet relief! it almost eludes articulation. the feeling of finally being able to divorce yourself from your books, your notes splayed on the shelf in complete disorder- and not having to care because you're never look at them again. well, i do have one paper left, but it is literature, and reading through one's texts is not nearly half as harrowing as ploughing through economic theory and decades of history spanning across the globe from sunrise to sunset. so in all practical terms, i feel as if my As are over.
i keep smiling deliriously at myself as i type this. the days ahead certainly look exponentially brighter! tomorrow will be spent shopping and planning a holiday with friends, doing frivolous things like getting a haircut (my fringe currently forms an opaque curtain over my face). and then going for the warhol exhibition on saturday! and dinners with friends interspersed along the way.
i really can't wait for when my final paper is over on the 26th. i'll have my SAT IIs on the 1st, but after that its prom and then i'll be traipsing paris and london for two and a half weeks with my family! and then it'll be the rush of festivities- christmas, newyear, and a beach holiday to phuket with the church gang! in between all the globe trotting and merry-making, i'll have to do up my US application essays and scholarship apps. but that kind of work would be welcome and even embraced, compared to the academic coma i've just been through.
i feel incoherent and inarticulate at this point of time. but once again, i do feel i've learnt a tremendous amount during this period not academically, but spiritually. i'm glad for a lot of things, especially the assuring messages from friends, the prayers, the friday-night respite in the form of cell which kept me sane, and even spending the past two months mugging at church with friends every sunday was in a warped way rather fun. we tried to break the monotony by doing strange things like dressing up in the colours of the rainbow. ultimately, i thank God for sustaining me thus far, even when i was firmly trapped in the jaws of academics, His presence was palpable. I don't really like to think about outcomes once an exam is completed, because its firmly out of the scope of my control. so i'm just glad its over and hope i'll grow in the trust that His grace would lead me to where i'm meant to be.
pictures- courtesy of nat.
now for more rainbow-hued romps, as my monochrome world is restored to technicolor!
and a fragment of the Neruda i've been reading which captures today's sentiment. certainly one of the best translations i've read apart from Rilke.
"And I, tiny being,
drunk with the great starry void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
felt myself a pure part of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars.
My heart broke loose with the wind"
- Pablo Neruda, La Poesia
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| post-prelims musing |
[27 Sep 2007|12:39am] |
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and so i have emerged from my academic stupor and tripped right into the graceful decadence of the post-prelims. now i'm in a state of incorrigible inertia, my molecules have realigned, no longer am i that mad mugging machine capable of 14-hour mugging days, i am back to my usual hobo self. my brain has atrophied, and the only information i currently absorb is that which emerges from the mouth of Oprah Winfrey in the 18 hours of wholesome goodness from her 20th Anniversary DVD box set. it has been a week since the prelims concluded, and i feel its time for me to at least lay a finger on something academic related. but easier said than done.
the prelims were nothing short of harrowing. what with the desperate mugging from two weeks before. bombs and i had a bizarre mission to outmug EVERYONE in our chosen mugging location. first we conquered RJ as the last two souls left there in the company of the security guard and then Serene Macs, and then Coffee Bean. its like Survivor Mugger Edition: Outlast, Outwit, Outmug. and of course, being afflicted with the flu during the mugging week didn't help much, i was surrounded by wads of soaked tissue, as i tried to stave off the flow from the crevices of my sinuses, all while trying to rapidly inhale huge stacks of South East Asian History and Macroeconomics.
when i had a brief respite in the middle of the september holidays (a misnomer, since it was hardly a holiday ), during bombs' 18th birthday dinner, i was some sort of academic frankenstein. sarah seah will tell you with great fervour of how i was like some neanderthal devoid of social graces. to be fair, i was on the verge of a nervous breakdown at the very moment she made a housecall, i was paralysed with horror at the fact that i might NOT finish mugging economics ever. dinner saw me behaving like i just emerged from a coma. i was extra-klutzy, extra-slow on the uptake, made extremely bizarre comments, and could not fend off sarah seah's rapid salvos of mocking with any form of wit whatsoever.
the absolute cherry on top of the cake was the winning combination of PMS and Prelims. PMS usually turns me into an inexplicable sobbing wreck, not in a particularly emo way, but in a very self-aware omg why am i weeping over EVERYTHING way- from newspaper articles, to cheesy singtel advertisements. and so the sunday before econs, saw me on the verge of tears everytime anyone spoke to me. without any fitting outlet for my hormonal vagaries, i was an absolute emotional basketcase. in possibly the most painfully ridiculous moment of my life, i found myself weeping over diseconomies of scale. omg managerial diseconomies of scale, eroding industrial relations....i had to snap back and remind myself that this is SLOMAN and not Somalia in the 1990s.
exams always feel like a tremendously long surreal nightmare. for a brief moment you have an out-of-body experience as you hold your pen poised above the paper, and then when time starts, you snap back into reality and ooze brain farts and attempt to derive a reasonably cogent answer. then there is the tremendous sense of accomplishment once you've finished those essays. regardless of how well you think you've done, its always a small victory of the human spirit to note that YES i have finished FOUR HISTORY ESSAYS IN THREE HOURS. and then all of a sudden you're back home, plunging headfirst into your books to attack the other subject and cram all you can into your fatigued brain. bed time couldn't come sooner, and i must say, it was the highlight of my day to just lie nestled in my blankets ready to drop off to sleep.
there were typically, theatrical episodes of exam horror. to discover that i had my period, one hour into the middle of my 3-hour paper was quite a nightmare to say the least. after a while of squirming with my writhing womb, i downed a potent painkiller (the exact same one my brother used after he had an operation to carve a lump of bone out of his leg, such is the potency of my painkiller and period), and soldiered on drawing graphs and calculating statistics. i had to suffer the utter ignominy of emitting a torrential flow into my skirt while punching figures into my graphic calculator. it was tremendously uncomfortable. and when i stood up after the paper, i had an atlas of an apocalyptic world printed on my ass in blood red. and had to be ushered into the toilet with a jacket tied around my waist. on top of that, i had a second paper in the afternoon. so i went back home, bathed, downed a borage of flax oils (nine pills in total- part of my mother's au-naturale regime), clutched a hot water bottle to my uterus, rubbed foul-smelling chinese oils and headed to school for my second paper.
my mother's response to this was characteristic. (A snippet of our conversation on the way to cell)
mom: YOU NEED TO EXERCISE. look! nat never gets menstrual cramps! because she exercises! EXERCISE LETS YOU RELEASE ENDOMORPHS.
me: whut.
mom: ENDOMORPHS!! See you don't know because YOU NEVER TOOK BIO!
nat (the bonafide bio student): Oh you mean Endorphins?
mom: YES. what are endomorphs? i am SURE they exist.
me: nothing?
mom: OH YES. IT WAS A SERIES OF BOOKS FOR KIDS.
me: you mean animorphs.
and thus the prelims plod on steadily. bar my minor crisis on the day before our very last paper. when i discover at 10pm that OMG I DO NOT HAVE MY CLOCKWORK ORANGE TEXT. and so my family turns into a search party to look for that elusive book. my study is turned upside down- verdict nil. all while i'm having a seizure, as i try to read through my annotations. finally i recall that AGES ago i may have lent it to my sister. my mother storms the basement, rouses my sleeping sister and proceeds to find it. she hands it to my brother who tucks it in his boxers and covers it with his shirt. "still haven't found it yet?" he asks as i'm close to hyperventilating over its absence and then he conjures it up from his underwear. as my mother pops in and says with a flourish "DON'T THANK ME. THANK GOD."
and indeed, i must thank God for helping me throughout the prelims. my mugging was punctuated with little else than fervent pockets of prayer. and outcome aside, i feel that in some strange sense, the prelims were a great spiritual experience. i think i would have been scared out of my wits, if not for those quiet moments in the bathroom (yes, it is the centre of all my activity) where I prayed for a peace that transcends all human understanding, which came over me in a most palpable way. i think generally this year i have been struck by the conviction that yes, God is the absolute master over my future, and it comes a point when it is His battle not mine. and my pursuit of my own ambitions, has to be vitally coupled with an acknowledgement of His soveriegnty. if its His plan, He will carve out a way for it, even among the multitude of elements which lie outside of my control.
so yes, i have to say i have emerged from the prelims feeling tremendously blessed about everything. from just the opportunity to know God and have the assurance of His plan, the awe of recognising so many things as a point of grace, my utterly hilarious and stress-relieving cell group with whom i had a late-night picnic at the botanics with 2 days before the prelims and the lovely friends around me. of course, the challenge lies in maintaining this attitude when i get my grades back. but i have learnt that to thank God is not merely a response to something good, but a choice even in the face of something which may not automatically inspire it. still, when i funnel out into the context of eternity, my world view is suddenly permeated by a sense of philosophic calm, which as I infer from Gonzalo in the Tempest, can only be good.
and so tomorrow, i'll finally hit the books again. or at least attempt to. math is absolutely starving for my attention and my UN notes beckon alluringly.
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| personal statement woes |
[23 Aug 2007|09:15pm] |
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for the life of me, i cannot write a personal statement. i blame the 4000-character limit, for making my statement sound like a laundry list of accomplishments and activities written by a personality-less android. i can usually do the whole "talk about yourself" thing- i mean i watch oprah winfrey! i'm in touch with MY IDENTITY, MY EMOTIONS, MY CHARACTER etc. but the problem lies in striking the perfect balance between intimate soul-revealing interjections, and a salespitch of myself on a shoestring word limit! mr p has commented that my personal statement is "rather dry" (an understatement i would say!) and was like a CV in prose, an "index", "catalogue of Amanda's life- page 12". he has expounded on its dryness in lyrical terms that could rival the Othello music- "the moon of your achievements has eclipsed the sun of your personality...". apparently i am also "a beguiling mix of Poet and Pragmatist" (a rather astute observation, since i've always considered myself a pragmatic-idealist). with such a flair for poetic aphorisms and lyrical epithets, i shall not be surprised if my reference comes in the form of a sonnet in perfect iambic pentameter, with a pithy couplet concluding why i should be accepted by universities. i must say, this is a great improvement from paralleling me to Shakespearean characters, and that he has been tremendously helpful with all my uni-application woes. and thus mr p has my heart! (HAHA.) i am now attempting to master the subtle art of writing a conversational personal statement, with achievements mentioned casually in passing, as part of the "flow", rather than slathered down in a heavy-handed manner. i am also mastering the British art of being indirect, because apparently they would rather infer from nuanced writing than be told things explicitly.
this is ten times more challenging than writing a villanelle (not that i've ever successfully written one). but! arghhh i have forms to fill, syllabi to mug, and even though I have been productive, this is hardly enough! sometime it feels like you're floundering in quicksand, and no amount of digging would bail you out. rather than wallowing in my own tragedy, i shall go back to crafting my personal statement (once more with feeling!)
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| bowel woes |
[18 Aug 2007|08:17pm] |
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in the past three days, i must have spent a grandtotal of FOUR HOURS perched on the porcelain throne, purging all the nutrients i have consumed in the past DECADE. turns out i have stomach flu, which explains the excruciating stomach cramps, and the never-ending niagara falls of crap ejected from my system, as well as the intermittent bouts of nausea.
i have never experienced such incontinence in my life. i had to sit at the table closest to the toilet in the library, so i would be able to make a dash for it when the urge to implode came. i was Moaning Myrtle of the library toilet, emitting periodic groans at the agony of my writhing bowels. i embarassingly, ran out of toilet paper during a particularly epic shit. one really feels the famed wahchong family spirit, when an open request for toiletpaper, is met with a chirpy "Yes Miss!" and a huge wad of toilet paper flung across to your cubicle.
(also ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) leonard_ho connoisseur of hwach toilets- plz note that the library toilets are NOT an ideal place at all. the seats are far too erect to be comfortable such that you're positioned in a perpetual 90 degree angle while taking a dump)
yesterday was spent mugging 1/2 of SEA nationalism, IN THE TOILET. i could not even stay at my laptop long enough to type out my ASEAN notes. everytime i managed to get out of the toilet, it would be fifteen minutes before i was afflicted again, and had to dive back in at doublespeed. it seems like anything i ate, would emerge from my ass five minutes later. an attempt to mug in school, led to me lying flat on the tables, trying to still the medusa-like movements of my large intestine. hee zhengxun in his typical fashion, came up with a delightful ditty detailing my woe, complete with guitar accompaniment- "Amanda's having diarrhea cramps in class! Amanda's having problems with her ass!" etc. etc.
i was suppose to meet bombs and nat at NUS library today, but alas! was struck down so bad, that my diet was forcibly restricted to toast and apples (apparently these aid digestion). the massive dehydration from shitting so much, sapped the lifeblood out of me, and i spent the rest of the day drifting around like a corpse, looking pale while battling a fever and a headache. needless to say, it diminished my mugging efficiency tremendously.
why do afflictions always strike us at the most inopportune moments? it seems so surreal that the prelims are in two weeks. and that's never a good thing. the prelims are worse than the plague. we're all being attacked by a whole spectrum of different maladies. rachael- and her blood problems, fish and his syphilis, karen and her black death which has rendered her mute. and now amanda with her torrential monsoon of fecal matter...
my mugging status REALLY does not bode well for my future. i am going go bathe, and hopefully return to attack some economics, if my bowels do not strike first.
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| The Techno-pocalypse |
[15 Aug 2007|07:11pm] |
| [ |
mood |
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 crushed |
] |
TODAY MARKS THE TRAGIC AND UNTIMELY DEMISE OF 2 YEARS WORTH OF AMANDA'S PHOTOS.
my cursed computer, already tottering at the brink of death, and displaying signs of schizophrenia (monitor breaking out in weird patterns, wireless network card periodically seizing to work) was carted off for a 24-hour burn test to diagnose just exactly what was wrong with it. it might as well have been an autopsy because halfway through this "24-hour burn test" (oh how computer jargon puzzles and confounds me), my computer BURNS OUT. it CRASHES, leaving little sign of ANY of the files on it. despite me having judiciously BACKED IT UP in a separate harddrive within my computer. this is what Computer-Dude told me to do, and he's been copying the "My Documents" and "My Shared Photos" folders into this separate harddrive in order to back-it up. The theory is that the two harddrives are "compartmentalised" or something, so whatever afflicts my main harddrive, is contained within it, leaving the back-up harddrive untainted. but EVIDENTLY, the crash (caused by a corruption in the motherboard) was a complete ANIHILATION of ALL FILES in my computer. it was like the equivalent of a nuclear apocalypse, sweeping all files in its wake.
Very very thankfully, Computer-Dude managed to save the "My Documents" folder, which happens to contain my CV (necessary for uni and scholarship apps), my poetry, and ALL my essays, papers and notes for the past 2 years of my academic life. Unfortunately, everything i did in secondary school, the scripts for the plays i wrote, the retarded performance tasks we did, and other sentimental documents are all gone. But i suppose, what is essential has been restored. If i DID lose all my JC work, you would find me having seizures on my bedroom floor, and my already pallid academic life, would be six feet under, pushing up daffodils.
however, what devastated me the most is losing 2 YEARS WORTH OF PHOTOS, probably amounting to HUNDREDS of hours of camwhoring. All the tangible memories of ELDDFS, Hwach, mole-sting, slews of parties, numerous trips abroad in the past 2 years (The Arvon Course, Philippines, US, London with Bombs and Nat, Church Camp) are gone. Thankfully i put up choice photos for the arvon course and production on the web, so at least i have that. and my eighteen-birthday photos are also safely ensconced in my camera. but everything else resides in some cyber graveyard. the question is why didn't i discover facebook earlier! so i could have uploaded the precious photos on it, and have a comprehensive online repository of memories.
i would really really like to have those photos back. the Computer-Dude said he did all he could to revive the files, and the "My Documents" folder was the only thing he managed to dig up from the jaws of the apocalypse. to his credit, he did this entirely Free of Charge. but he says i'll have to look for some recovery specialist to do a comprehensive recovery of my photos. Does anyone have experience with this? How much would it cost? Is it worth it?
Basically, my computer is now a worthless tainted piece of trash, a ticking timebomb waiting to blow my files into smithereens. i am in the process of evacuating ALL MY DOCUMENTS into an external harddrive, before "The Return of the Apocalypse" or some other similarly titled sequel to a B-Grade Horror Flick occurs. in the meantime, i will be camping out like a refugee on my father's laptop. i will procure a MacBook for myself after the As, but i simply have no time to go computer-shopping right now.
this is such an inopportune time for this to happen, i am an 18 year old who is about to fail her preliminary exams if she doesn't dig herself out from this academic hellhole at record-breaking speed. i have university applications due, a vast terrain of un-mugged territory to be conquered in 2 weeks. i have no time for segues into sentimentality, harddrive archaeology, or confounding computer jargon.
I AM A PRAGMATIC HARD-HEADED TYPE, RESILIENT TO THE CORE. I WILL SOLDIER ON AND RETURN TO MUGGING ECONS AND ATTACKING MY IMPOSSIBLE MUGGING SCHEDULE WITH RENEWED FERVOUR. I HAVE NO TIME FOR STEWING IN SENTIMENTALITY, NOSTALGIA OR TRAGEDY.
OHMAIGAHHH... I AM GOING TO FAINT NOW. AS IF MY ACADEMIC LIFE ISN'T KILLING ME ALREADY.
HYPERVENTILATE.
i need to thank God for small mercies.
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| a note from my womb |
[07 Aug 2007|03:53pm] |
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DEAR WORLD,
how am i supposed to finish my history essay when my WOMB HAS CLEARLY TAKEN OVER THE FUNCTION OF MY BRAIN? while this visit from Aunt Flow is surprisingly not so physically harrowing, instead i am turning into your proverbial hormonal moodswinging wreck. usually my menstrual woes are confined to the physical realm, but now they have levelled up into upsetting the balance of my entire aura.
right now my emotional vagaries are being dictated by the throbbing mess of tissue i call my uterus. i alternate between feeling like collapsing on the floor and hibernating till the end of the year, and throwing down my notes like a petulant child and stomping off to sulk in a corner. i usually find it unnecessary and evil to inflict your emotional irrationalities on the world (cf. my treatise on this subject) but now i'm finding it hard not to.
what happened to the perennially optimistic and idealistic amanda of yore! or the rational, emotionally stable amanda! why is my usually exuberant prose dissolving into slobbery chunks of emoness!! perhaps its my hormones combined with my currently shambolic academic life which is inspiring such a pendulum-like reaction. after i finish my ASEAN essay and editting my KI IS, which will hopefully all be completed by tomorrow afternoon, i may finally begin mugging in earnest. then i'll have to deal with my admissions essays and uni applications. all before the 30th of August, when the prelims begin.
my mother has told me i should go be an amish, and live a bucolic life of farming and bearing children. this would be the cure for all my sleep deprivation and academic woes. i find this option strangely appealing. i think i'm well disposed to a life of motherhood. i love children with a passion, i wouldn't mind have ten of them if that's what being an amish entails (since contraception is a form of technology). i would positively enjoy educating them and romping around the hills with them (this image strangely recalls "the sound of music"). i would organise inter-family football matches, poetry recitals and battle-of-the-banjo-band gigs. i am sure i'll excel at childbirth as well, with my heightened pain threshold from years of menstrual cramps. so, all i need to do is sew myself a bonnet and pilgrim-style dress and head over to the midwest!
unfortunately, i remain an 18-year-old singapore school girl with a major exam to sit for, which has yet to be studied for. its highly ironic that tomorrow i'm throwing an EMO-EIGHTEEN PITY PARTY, which was basically designed to MOCK teenage angst, and the fact that i have yet to experience a major bout of it in my teenhood, thus making me an emo-virgin. i'm making my hwach homies come in full emo-garb. now perhaps i won't actually have to feign the emo bit.
help i'm turning into a uterus-shaped frankenstein!!!!!
<3 The New Emo-Kid on the Block (or at least for the next ten hours.)
P.S. sorry for the incoherence. this entry was written by my womb...at least it was cathartic.
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