rey's ramblings

2008-10-28T00:19:00.000+08:00

I'm having such a horrible migraine (or something to do with the back
of my head throbbing really badly) that i can't even sleep. and sleep
now is all so needed because of all the work there is to be done for my
granddad's wake.

better go check that up.

2008-08-01T23:57:00.001+08:00

Vrooooooom.

Okay, i'm off to the mtv asia awards 2008 tomorrow at Genting's Arena of Stars!
Yes, by some lucky fluke i won a pair of tickets to the event via 98.7 fm when i smsed
in one bored afternoon.

It's been a great week, projects have all been done and submitted and i finally managed
to catch The Dark Knight! and i tell you it is simply awesome! more about it when i get
back, i've gotta go pack now!

this is what happens when an unstoppable force meets an unmovable object

2008-07-10T23:06:00.005+08:00

Had a really short day at school today, only 2 hours of tutorials!

Because after that, our bfi tutorial was for fieldwork so christian, victoria, susi, william,

khadijah and i left for tampines to do some fieldwork on the citibank office. although

we could have actually gone to the nearer branch at raffles place but nevermind..

quickly rushed off to somerset after that for the library's annual titles selection at hmv

orchard which i was chosen for. spent about 2 hours combing through all 3 floors with a

dozen others looking for dvds and music cds that as stated by the librarian "we" would

watch. i took the opportunity to seize concert dvds and tv series that our already expansive

library collection, which trust me is already like quite big, doesn't have. and the feeling of

going into hmv and taking anything you want off the shelf into your basket is like strangely

gratifying. a few customers had priceless expressions when they saw the number of dvds

in my basket, haha!

so 6 seasons of scrubs, 2 seasons of 30 rock, prison break, house and many more later, a

return to the holding room revealed that we probably took everything else our library

doesn't have in music cds and dvds. meaning our library now has everything. and no other

polytechnic or maybe even university probably has such a huge media collection available on rent. haha. with the exception of m18 dvds though, but i probably managed to sneak in

Entourage in the massive pile there too. oh and not forgetting countless indie rock and music

titles amongst the mix. some photos will give you a better idea yeah...

the music/concert dvds i grabbed. can you spot Fall Out Boy and John Mayer?(:

oh and the library needs bob marley too.

my HUMONGOUS pile of dvds (mostly only the tv series still)

oh, some lonely planet and anthony bourdain on the top left ;)

muzik. a lot of it.

anyway, what you're seeing here is only a fraction of the actual finalized pile that we had.

metre-high stacks covering the long table which i wasn't allowed to take photos of cos it's

against hmv rules... anyway we get to reserve whatever we 'tagged' with our post-it's (:

so something to ponder on now.. where on earth does sp's library get all their funding from?

aha.

to practise discretion

2008-07-08T17:48:00.006+08:00

Back to Reality

Yeah, the title says it all. After a truly enjoyable june holidays spent mostly overseas and
kicking back, it's back to the humdrum of daily life as a student in singapore, getting
inundated with a multitude of tests, assignments and projects. Nevertheless, one must
always look for enjoyment in some aspects of our lives to keep us going, right? and yup
i'm seeking that besides having the basic motivation that this is an important and
unavoidable stage of our lives. haha.

i'd like to thank God for the more than decent scores i got despite having barely a couple of days to start studying for my test week after returning from overseas. in fact, i got A's for my macroeconomic analysis online test, banking and financial institutions essay (84!) and probably electronic commerce management quiz. so i thank God because without Him such good grades would not have been possible on my own strength.

anyway, besides project deadlines scattered over next week: BFI fieldwork report,
CRM/RWPS mega report/survey and MA1 practical project, i'll be having a FA test
tmr as well which i'm currently studying for!

yes acronyms are unavoidable in singapore. haha.

july is a truly busy month indeed cos i'll need to get prepared for a leading climbing
competition closer to the end of this month after the bulk of my schoolwork is over and done
with. plus all those promising summer blockbusters coming out!

i can't wait to share my experience holidaying and climbing in beautiful railay/krabi and will do
so once some spare time frees up and i'm out of these freezing cold labs!

until then, about that test..

2008-06-11T01:33:00.001+08:00

The Time of My Life (hopefully)

Despite a series of MSTs post-term break, i'll be embarking on some sort of extended vacation from today aka in a few hours time. first stop will be church camp at KL Times Square. looking forward to first and foremost, spending time with God, hotel buffets every meal, a bit of shopping, probably some studying for my more important modules AND Camp 5! largest indoor state-of-the-art rockclimbing facility in asia! we'll probably try to squeeze in the latter on one of the days where there'll be an extended free time and one utama's only a 15 min taxi ride from the city centre besides.

in case you were wondering why i'm gonna be doing studying in a church camp/holiday, that's because it won't be the only one. once arriving back in SG on saturday night i'll be scrambling preparations post haste for a 6d5n trip with friends to krabi, thailand or more specifically Railay peninsula - one of the best places in the world to rock climb! besides it being ranked for having one of the best beaches in Asia, it has towering limestone karst formations, white sandy beaches, crystal-clear lagoons and pure island life not so commercialized (the place is only accessible by boat). haha sounds exactly like a description from a movie... The Beach to be exact which i just watched a couple of hours ago. and it's the place all travel guides talk about.

so now you should know why i'm gonna do the studying in KL. hahaha.

adios, amigos.

reynard.

2008-06-09T15:16:00.003+08:00

just recently, i find i'm a bit confused by this person.

cos it's like there are times when you're really nice and it seems you've forgotten about
everything past. then other times, and this can be in the blink of an eye, you suddenly get moody and show signs of frustration, probably at me? why the split personality? you should know why i haven't given up. the answer is in your reactions from time to time. if you really wanted to get things over with, you would have done so but why did you not?

if you were to ask for my honest opinion, to me, it seems you're afraid? and perhaps you've got every right to, due to past experiences. maybe all i can do is wait for me to slowly regain your trust (after all time has a habit of changing things from the way we expected them to be and for now, there really isn't any hurry for me), as difficult as it may seem and as cancelled out a possibility to you it might be. especially after what you did tell me sometime ago. but there's just something. and it's that somehow despite all your firm insistence about things, i've got this strange feeling,

that you might be just as confused.

oh well, that's life.

2008-05-25T02:34:00.000+08:00

thank God for the Hillsong United concert.

thank God for awesome rock-climbing competitions.

more to come.. haha.

take time to realize, that i am on your side.

2008-05-14T11:16:00.002+08:00

hello!i havent updated for sometime and since i've been mostly posting self-ruminative
posts with regard to my reflections and my various muses, so let me talk about
things more extrapersonal this time round!

this month's a rather busy season for rockclimbing. there's rockmaster this weekend
and pumpfest on the 30may-1june weekend. sp organizes rockmaster so i'm helping
out but at the same time i also get to participate. i won't be seeing the routes of course!
haha. looking forward to doing well and will be having training later anyway. oh yeah,
do come down and support me if you have the time!(:

i'm having Macroeconomics Analysis I lesson now and i just found out i scored
100/100 in a test! wooot, thank God for it! yeah. anyway it's one of those really
cold and wet days where you just feel like eating something warm huh! even
the aircon in class is so icy that my fingers are going numb from the cold. it really
does make the weather feel all wintry and nice! which puts into mind going overseas
to somewhere like canada or japan to experience the snowy climate and maybe even
live there for a few months if not years? haha. i hope i do get opportunities in life like
that.

anyway, back to reality and studies!

reynard

2008-04-29T01:31:00.004+08:00

A full letter of utmost gratitude to God

Really, sometimes I do see the pressing need to have faith in God's plans for
me and rely on His strength, not mine. All too often i do the latter and i get
heavily burdened, especially when it comes to relationships.

And above all, i want to grow closer to You, first and foremost both in times
of emotional struggles and even in times of celebration and enjoyment, in which
it is always all too easy for us to forget about You and the many wonderful
things You've done for us.

I truly want to walk closer with You, develop a stronger relationship hopefully
through my quiet time with You and as crazy as it sounds, even bond with You.
and well, i feel that it's been quite a long time since i've actually sincerely poured out
my gratitude to the great and wonderful God that i have, so here it is:

I really want to express my gratitude to God for having always been omniscient
and omnipotent in my life even though I am often hardly aware or conscious of it.
I wanna thank him for some of the friends he's brought into my life who motivate
and inspire me, constantly reminding me to stay on track in my life and even though
yes they are not perfect, they are also people who constantly strive to be better
and that spirit in them somehow really challenges me to follow that particular example.

I also really thank God for many things, the friends and family I have, the privileged materialistic life I can afford to lead (compared to so many of my peers around the
world) and really for developing me through the years, in many aspects: physically,
mentally and spiritually, no matter how insignificant the things might be.

There have been many improvements indeed, like for example nowadays i actually do
from time to time watch my diet, unlike last time where i'd just grab anything to eat
without even considering what I'm actually eating, for many years up til recently about
last year or so? and surprisingly, despite obviously being a healthier thing to do, it has
also helped me grow and not be as 'thin' as i used to be. i actually used to think eating
whatever junk food would help me grow more but ironically, that has never been the
case really.

and then, i've managed to find a great sport like rockclimbing which is like so damn fun
and a really great competitive challenge, helping me to scale greater heights (no pun
intended). i've never really found a sport which i felt i could do like really well in probably
due to the lack of passion, but not interest. and i always thought running would always be
my strongest suit but it wasn't really good cos often i would stop running for a while due to
the monotony of it. plus rockclimbing is helping me be more fit besides also having the
regular cardio benefit that you get from running. i really want to go overseas when i'm a
lot more experienced and do stuff like deep water solo! (which is like a climb up a cliff face
without ropes using the ocean as your crash mat) i'll be going hopefully with friends of
course(:

another issue that has improved greatly is that of time management and scheduling. i often
used to run into dilemmas, scheduling conflicts and find myself wasting or rushing for time.
but now i've learnt to plan my day and sometimes even my week ahead which has really
helped me to get a lot more things done including time for some substantial r&r here and
there. notwithstanding busy project and exam periods of course. i still do oversleep
sometimes though haha.

i also thank God for changing my personality to be more charismatic (although sometimes
i still tend to prefer to have my own personal space of course, which is important) and open
to getting to know others, as it has helped me to enlarge my circle of friends. which is a
good thing in itself and also because by getting to know people from many walks of
life, you get to learn some things, like valuable insights, and glean perspective instead of
developing a biased, partial and narrow mindset when you always stick with like-minded people. it helps me not to get so easily blinded by certain ways of thinking and to be able
to adapt when i come across different situations wherever i go. most importantly, often it
does help you to discover what you really want and what's best for you.

last but not least, i really want to thank God for having put me in a place where i can grow
spiritually and really feel Your presence during times of worship and prayer. it is indeed
so different from previous churches where i'd struggle and often backslide because of
lack of interest and really not feeling comfortable. i wanna thank you for my great cell
leaders who are willing to hear any of my problems anytime i call them up and a zone
in which although i've not been around long or have got deep roots in, still makes me
feel comfortable spiritually and unknowingly sometimes even socially.

While i know that i'm still far from being entirely perfect, through the positive changes
and experiences i've had the past couple of years in my life which have really been like
somewhat a re-awakening to a certain extent and also a self-discovery of sorts, i'll
definitely want to strive to bring glory to Your name by doing well for You with Your
blessing, especially the primary objective would be to do well in my studies but also in
the other areas of my life! oh Lord, i want to continue to walk with You all the days of
my life and to make you ever more the centre of my life. i really pray that You continue
to watch over me and even my friends and family as well, through stormy and sunny
weather alike (: Amen.

Reynard!

2008-04-22T22:56:00.002+08:00

well. i'd just like to state this in as much a matter-of-fact as it is and since you'd
expect me to listen to what you have to say, likewise hear this too:

i need you to know that foremost, the purpose of my post is to vent any anger
or emotions that i have about this incident and speak our thoughts, which i wouldn't
think is very different from many of us, who likewise do so?

now i know its important to reinforce that God is standing by you, but whatever it is,
please know that God is on everyone's side except for Satan and his followers. so
let's not talk about whose side he's on especially when it comes to matters such as these.

not all christians are perfect, yes. in fact, none. but i dont know where you got that
i was saying or hinting that.

i did not mention this to anyone who did not already know the whole situation.
and i believe these are the people who also prefer to remain neutral to this issue.
also, i only referred to you on my blog as an anonymous person just like you did
on yours.

i wasn't bragging that you were the bad one. let's face it that we are all human
and when these conflicts arise, it's very hard not to say things in a way that
sounds like we are right, especially at this stage.
i mean, im coming from my perspective and im obviously angry so why would
it sound like im the bad one instead? but nevertheless i did not have the intention
of bragging that you were the bad one. this is just my own private train of thought
and it may have come across that way.

i did not accept the entire blame but let's not look at it as an issue of blame. in
terms of responsibility i did take up what i believe i was responsible for. i believe
so did you. btw, if you felt that by me posting this i was still indirectly blaming you,
then how do you think i felt when likewise even after you apologised, in your posts,
you still kept referring to me in an insulting manner?

let's say if i get into an argument with someone and afterwards i apologise by saying
"hey you loser, im sorry!" is that really an apology? one reason why i felt you were
insincere was because if you read again your previous posts, especially the prayer one,
even in it you were still demeaning the people you were PRAYING for. just read the
first line alone and you'll understand what i'm saying.

i'll stop arguing, in fact i believe i already have for some time. but that doesnt stop me
from reasoning, which is what im doing now and which is also what you were doing on
your blog. reasoning is arguing without the harsh and uncivilised manner.

while i have all this to say, i also want you to know that i do remember and take note
those good times you were referring to. and its not that i dont appreciate them.
but since this is an appropriate time to air things, let me say this: there might have
been times i have taken forgranted although i believe those were mostly actually quite
long ago. but would you believe if i were to say that likewise there've been times i've been
taken forgranted too? and mostly these are times that are unnoticeable, and up til now
i have not said anything about.

so while on one hand yes, it's not like some of you have done nothing or not made a good
effort in trying like doing all those things you said in point 5 but please do realise
that many times as well that i've been taken forgranted, underappreciated or overlooked
and these take place especially when you guys are in moments of cliquish-ness and don't
notice those outside of the clique. which is why i feel strongly about this and which actually
also links back to why i voiced my frustrations at first because i'm not just speaking for myself but i believe also some others who might have felt the same way. while i understand the tag
and the way i came across was not right, i believe the underlying message wasn't wrong
either. so if its a 2-way thing, i hope you guys try to listen to what i have to say as well. it is
perfectly fine to be close friends and be proud (but not arrogant) of it, but i think there
are many examples out there of excellent close friendships that do not have to be cliquish.

also, i hope you understand that while i'm not usually the impolite and brash type of person.
i hope you don't assume that i'm the kind who can be walked over and be told what to do.
i may not be rebellious but at the same time that doesn't mean i'm a compliant kind of person
who has no opinions. (but at the same time that does not mean i dont make the best of
efforts to be reasonable and go the extra mile sometimes)

well, thanks for voicing it out. in fact, there are a certain few that i'm actually very open
to telling me things directly and for some i wish they would do it more often or to put it
in another way: when there is a need to, just to tell me and not wait for things to build
up to a certain point then blow it on me. i always believe open and honest communication
is a very important tool we underestimate. even if you're afraid that what you say might
be something i strongly do not agree with, at least if you tell me in a non-confrontational
way, there can always be discussion and a conclusion we can come to.

i also hope that you do know you can always do away with the name-calling. it's just not
a very mature way to go about settling things, which i can sense you are trying now. i'm
telling you this to try to help you improve likewise cos such a thing would really be a benefit
to your character. and it's really not about trying to bring you down.

about the calling you up thing, its not about being petty or anything. its just that sometimes
im busy or need to get some time away for a while. i believe you do go through all this
"needing some time" thing as well right? yeah. to clear things up a bit. but when the
time's right, i will initiate. anyway, i believe this whole post is really quite a lot of settling
already.

anyway, i just want to thank you for taking the first step and i do appreciate the points
in which you apologised and tried to reconcile as well although i cant address each and
every of them here.

i just hope that you do note that i can be a very vocal person (sometimes) which is why
i'll try to be equally receptive of any of you being vocal, so long as it's in a non-confrontational
way.

if there's anything you'd like to say, i hope you can perhaps keep it to the next time
when we settle. but yeah, i hope there is nothing much left to get our tempers flared up.

regards,
reynard

2008-04-01T14:38:00.002+08:00

Changes

to me, in life we're either moving forward or going in circles.

and to me recently it seems i've been doing so much of the latter. is it the
circumstances, is it the other people, or is it just me?

i used to have an uncle who'd tell me that it's not just the good things you do.
sometimes just that singular bad thing you do or a characteristic of you, can
simply overshadow everything else. and so what can you do when others can't
see everything else? you'll feel pretty helpless right?

but let's not debate about whether i've been forcefully shaped by external forces or
whether it's been solely my decisions or a mix of both that has been the cause.
i think it's quite irrelevant what's led me here.

maybe the important question now is "what do i do?"

sometimes trying again, do i really change? even if i think i have. perhaps it wasn't
enough? the problem is that one part of me doesn't want to change so drastically i
can't even recognise myself anymore. i still love the part of me that is me. or perhaps
i should try a different tact and perhaps it's nt THAT part of me which i have to change
but something else? or the method that i should adopt in changing?

it is ironic isn't it? that we always say the hard part is thinking of what's the best
course of action next when in reality, it's how we ever put it into action when we
are out there.

sometimes, at home in your room has never felt safer and more comfortable. like a refuge.

so, should i try again?

i'll pray o Lord, that you'll change me, mould me to love unconditionally and be a shining
example for You. give me the clarity of vision to make the right choices and the strength
to do them. i trust in You.

When you're dreaming with a broken heart
The waking up is the hardest part
You roll outta bed and down on your knees
And for the moment you can hardly breathe

-Reynard

2008-02-16T19:16:00.001+08:00

An 18th Birthday

i woke up on my the 15th of feb with a very huge disappointment
initially. after breakfast, i had the most terrible case of diarrhoea in
a few years. imagine having broken glass in your stomach being swirled
around by a blender inside. the walk to the clinic itself was excruciating
to say the least and i (WARNING: GRUESOME DETAIL HERE) threw up so
violently that some even came out of my nose.

so, what worse things could happen on your 18th birthday? the gloom of falling really
sick along with the added knowledge that many people couldn't make it due to things
like chingay CIP duty, rockerfella (which i initially planned to attend but because
of new regulations, non-current cj people are barred from attending due to lack of
availability of tickets. sucks right.) and various other school events. what luck that
my birthday had to fall on such a busy day man.

i smsed some of my friends who were still attending the bash later on that night,
expressing how worried i was that i might even have to cancel the party, which would
possibly have sealed my fate for one of the worst birthdays i'd ever have.

really thankful that many of them, rasmus, rastus, joshua and ryan reassured me that
i would get well in time for the celebration.

had dinner at hooters! had BBQ ribs and drank tequila despite being very sick earlier in the day
group photo above and with the twins.

on the right, jia wei who dunked my face with wedges and chili sauce as part of a birthday
surprise! haha you're forgiven bro! x)

with michelle and teresa, thanks for the interesting presents!

ended the night at Harry's boat quay with some live jazz music, although it was pretty noisy so we couldn't hear it really well. opposite the s'pore river coincidentally happened to be the
chingay rehearsal and we had an awesome view of fireworks! :D didn't have any alcoholic
drinks by then though, cos i thought that the tequila at hooters was enough for the night, haha.

to ALL those who wished me an awesome Happy 18th Birthday, whether it was via sms,
phone calls, friendster/facebook, blog tags and also in person, THANK YOU SO MUCH.
it means a lot to me, even from those who i've not heard from in a long while.

(in no particular order)
Diana, Nanda, Sylvia Lim, Audrey Tay, Debbie Beins, Erin
Lucille, Erika Tuason, Cherie Chua, Nicholas Shaw, Bharathi BEE
Xinru, Benjamin Wong, Esther (my cousin!), Bernice, Natalie Ong
Teresa Chua, Michelle Nah, Ryan, Kevin See, Dallas, Stefanie
Darryl, Joshua Fu, Rasmus, Rastus, Jia Wei, Philip Goh, Rachel Jacob
Javier, Kevin Ng, Jun Hao, Sueyen

sorry if i've left out anyone's name by accident!

18 feels strangely sane

2008-02-14T20:57:00.009+08:00

These Festive Days

to wrap up what's happened in the past few days, one must begin with

another 2 steamboat fests over the weekend. one on saturday night after

youth at aunt's house in sembawang. the steamboat was great! it had one of

the widest varieties of food i've ever had at a steamboat. really, she should go
into the business. and extra pizza to boot? what was she thinking?? haha, i don't

think we could even begin to get to the pizza man. there was a bit of mahjong and

21 going on but didn't wanna join cos i was too tired, from the past few days, plus

it was mostly the older relatives playing.

pictures, including some overdue ones!

after reunion dinner on wednesday night with sis and mom

CNY DAY 1:

my sis and I

my dad's cousin's children (which makes them my distant cousin??) very cute, they keep

playin hide-and-seek the whole time.

DINNER AT AUNT'S PLACE:

black label champagne

and from youth before that!

dallas, me, ryan, kevin

LO HEI 14 FEBRUARY

my sis and her pictures with mom and me.

HIGHEST!

and oh yes, lunch/dinner with bharathi at Hip Diner USA,

a branch off Billy Bomber's which wasn't that fantastic but

the concept was novel. plus the drinks.

very amusing indeed....

with Love,

Reynard!

2008-02-09T02:03:00.000+08:00

Pineapple tarts owns hongbaos.

Yep, it is a fact. After all, due to inflation and hence horrendously high
prices of cny goodies, food etc, pineapple tarts are officially worth more than
hongbaos. that's if your average hongbao averages around 10 to 15 dollars or
so. haha. in case anyone wondered what i meant in my sms greetings. btw
a happy chinese new year to all (whom i haven't said to yet!) this year's cny
felt rather alright actually. up til 2006 i used to dread cny because of jarring
unpleasant music, ridiculously hot weather and having to cope with hours of
monotonous visiting. haha, im not very traditional eh?

but ever since last year which for reasons unknown i had no visiting, im kind of
really okay with cny partially cos the amount of visitings we have are a lot less
(wonder what happened to all the relatives? hmm) and the food's getting really
good. in part, i also find myself to be able to bear and enjoy alot more things than
i usually do. must have to do with a new transitionary phase in life yeah? but we'll
get to the good stuff this cny later.

first, watched cloverfield on friday with bharathi and thrishna. unfortunately, thrishna
wasn't a fan of movies with bad cinematography although the acting and special effects
were highly realistic plus the novelty of watching a badass monster attack new york
from a high-def camera beats remakes of Godzilla or something along those lines. i
thought the cameraman 'hud' was a pretty funny guy too. i guess the film does deserve
some kind of mention, it isn't really an excellent effort but i really dont get people
who trash the movie because its so shaky and nausea-inducing. after all, what
else can one expect? it's clearly written that it's filmed on a video camera. you can't
expect it not to be shaky at all. haha.

anyway, besides getting back into rockclimbing ive been trying out something new
called parkour, which for the uninitiated is essentially free running, which if you still
don't know what it means, is basically overcoming obstacles in the most straightforward
manner. jumping over high railings, leaping through tight spaces. just google or youtube
it if you want to get a really good idea of what it is! i've been pretty much trying it out on
my own but also learnt a bit from the twins after youth on saturday.

besides doing a bit of cny shopping after church on sunday with youth friends, had a job
orientation thingy on monday for my marketing job position thing which i mentioned
previously. after getting an awesome super-sized botak jones burger for lunch, met up
with nicholas and headed to eunos. the orientation was rather enlightening on the products
that the company brings in to market and it was quite convincing for me to join. i can't
really reveal much details about it but i'll try it out for a while first to see how realistic
the job prospects offered actually are. the pay isn't $6/hr kinda pay, its very much freelance
and from what i gather, a lot can be earned if you do work quite a bit.

shopped again on tuesday with bharathi and this time i got a pair of white berms which i
think i really like partly cos i've never had any white berms before and i think it looks
really good on me. had a rather freaky encounter with some overly persistent staff at one
of the shops we went to but i don't think i'd wanna elaborate unless you ask me personally.
the shopkeeper was just unusually insistent on me buying something i didn't want to which
i found really weird! anyway, had gelare waffles after that at PS, tuesday is a gooood day
to eat at gelare right? :D

anyway, for cny i've been having a bit of fun doing practically nothing the past few days
besides eating and watching tv series at my granddad's house. battlestar galactica is really
one of the best sci-fi dramas out there and im kinda surprised singapore hasn't picked it
up. although there's a lot of good programming out there that singapore doesn't pick up.

dinner from wed to sun is pretty much fully booked and all are pretty much heavy affairs
plus all the cny food, so i'd better get back to a bit more exercise immediately after this
week! had steamboat reunion dinner on wed night and another dinner, the highlight
being shark's fin soup (haha, sorry i haven't got a thing for saving sharks yet), both at
granddad''s house. plus a bit of mahjong with cousins which is always entertaining. just
got back today from dinner over at mom's side. i sort of just discovered that i have an
older cousin who's one of the top local chefs hence explaining the really awesome dinner
i had! some of the stuff was really good like a dish that mixed crab, lobster meat and
giant prawns with mayo and also mini baked potatoes covered in cream or peking duck
drizzled with wine. actually, typing this alone makes me hungry again so i should prolly
stop. the food was just unexpectedly good though, plus company was not bad altogether.

alright, gotta crash. photos soon hopefully!

reynard

2008-01-31T21:48:00.000+08:00

Absolute Freedom.

YES. so begins the 2 and a half months break, which will probably be the longest
break i ever have in my whole polytechnic life because the break after second year
is used for Industrial Training Programme, otherwise known as our attachment
phase and well, technically after year 3 its graduation! probably also holidays then
but it'll be leading up to national service. oh man. which i don't even really want to
think about for now. its a looong way from here.

anyway, what to do for this extended break? i've already got a guideline of things
to-do because i really do not want to waste the time away this holidays. it's too much
to waste!

Start training rockclimbing more often, since i've so much time
Practise parkour! (otherwise known as free running to the uninitiated)
but be careful not to break any bones though...
catch up on whatever movies, tv shows i haven't caught yet!
and just to sidetrack a bit here, these are the tv series im following now--
battlestar galactica season 1
alias season 4
heroes season 2, at ep 7
prison break, season 2
grey's anatomy season 3
and really a lot lot more... i'm still thinking on whether to continue on lost season 3
cos i heard a lot of people and reviews claiming that season 4's way better.
i'm also thinking of embarking on 24 but that would be almost 7 seasons ahead of me.
like wow. seriously, thank God for american tv programming. it's ridiculously good man.

movies-wise, probably some stuff from previous years i havent caught yet and some of
this year's oscars stuff.. can't wait to catch sweeney todd and no country for old men cos
i heard they are really really good and which brings me to another point.

great news! im turning 18 real soon! which means i can catch the abovementioned flicks
without having to think twice. plus i'm still planning what to do for my 18th birthday... it's
definitely got to be bigger and more exciting than previous years though!

last of all, i've just got this great offer from a marketing agency offering $16.50 for an hour.
yeah, it dropped my jaw as much. im still checking up on it but i heard you can even work
part-time as well although they dont pay by the hour but more like the hours you work
per assignment. anyone from poly interested, just stay tuned! cos i heard they're expanding
as well.

as an afterthought, i may want to start learning how to drive. still, i'm not so sure after all
the government seems really REALLY intent on making private transport just annoyingly
expensive for all of us. just like burning a hole in your wallet with all the taxes etc etc.
so i may reconsider for now, probably not so soon. any opinions on whether i should take
up motorcycle though? i know there isn't a really good image to it and it's very accident-prone
but the latter's really largely to do with reckless or drunk-driving, which God forbid i'll
never ever do if i ever take it up. because bike expenses have pretty much held stable
and i just think taking up a car is really not a smart thing to do for now considering one's
financial status + everyday morning/evening gridlock + taxes + i haven't even considered
how i'm going to get a car, excluding my dad's of course. so really, it's probably either a bike
or nothing til my 20s for now.

anyway, went for dinner with bharathi after the exam today at ajisen ramen ps. haha,
well i met thrishna also because they went for tuition after that at novena. not to forget
that thrishna's soya milk leaked all over the train floor before they got off, haha.

anyway, time to get some sleep first!

reynard!

2008-01-29T23:13:00.000+08:00

That spark!

Simply had to blog about how amazing today was!

Had my econs paper today at 2 and although i was pretty confident before
going to bed the night before, in the few hours leading up to the exam this
morning, i guess i got what is commonly referred to as a mental block and
i was suddenly struggling to remember even some basic concepts. so i kinda
panicked for a moment and furthermore getting on the train there i knew i would
be late, probably missing the reading time of 10 minutes.

so with stress level at a certain peak, i decided to do something which i, ashamedly
enough, hardly do before going for an exam. i prayed. yup and as i rushed into the
exam hall and sat down, i really felt relieved because the concepts started coming
back simply by reading the questions. even the final question, which was based on
the final chapter - int'l finance, which i hardly studied for (to give you a rough idea
about it, i was looking through the chapter on the train) was doable. at first, i
just stared at the question reading it over and over again then suddenly the answer
just came to me like a spark of inspiration. and although later checking with others
i dont think i'd gotten the full marks for that question but my inspired answer which
i really don't know where it came from since i didn't study the balance of payments
concept had at least the basic fundamental answer correct.

i guess it's also probably partly to do with the fact that macroeconomics concepts are
somewhat interlinked all over but i really believe that God gave me that spark and
also, a paper which was really a great relief than the disaster i'd initially expected!

yep, God is really tangible in ways most unexpected. and i believe there's still a lot
more room for faith to be had in our everyday lives man!

anyway, was at acer service center after the exam to collect back my laptop and its
ever-faulty display. i was quite bored while waiting, so guess what i tried and managed
to do? i did some sort of free running by leaping over the railing at the wheelchair ramp
outside. wooo! too bad there wasn't anyone to take a video. haha. anyway, one more paper!

reinvention.

reynard(:

2008-01-27T23:18:00.000+08:00

Today felt very global.

yup. somehow i don't really know why. from the international speaker at
expo to lunch at changi airport. haha i guess its just me. somehow i really like
that indescribable 'overseas' feeling i guess its not uncommon especially when
living in singapore, you go to the same places and see the same things all the time
so often that its difficult for nostalgia to set in unless you go away for a long while.

anyway, went to city harvest exclusively for the guest speaker a.r. bernard who
had a really inspirational sermon. despite being the foremost religious leader in
new york and one of the most influential people there, with multiple committee
roles in their economic and social development board, being a religious advisor to
various political leaders like the clintons, fortune 500 ceos whilst also being the
senior pastor of the biggest church there, he hardly came across as distant and
his message was easily relatable to.

he started off with an introduction to how human civilization was already developed
early on in Genesis from cain's descendants having built some of the basic blocks of
society but due to adam's sin, that whatever we develop can never be of a truly divine nature.but that for each and every one of us God has a plan that he'll work through
someone else to bring you closer to Him, so that you can be redeemed and shine in your respective vocation in the world whether it be in politics, economics, entertainment,
education, the arts etc. so that in turn, you can bring others to him. and the devil
will always try to break this cycle by attempting to isolate us from others both spiritually
and physically.so we should never be complacent when it comes to things like fellowship,
bonding, forming new friendships or simply your relationship with others and to bring
friends to Christ.the devil is always on the lookout to plant thoughts to isolate us from
experiences with other people and hence with God.by constantly walking with God and
having fellowship with others, we'll continue that cycle that God has formed by showing
his unconditional love for us by having his only Son to die for us on the Cross. and in so
doing, he gave each and every one of us the equal chance to be redeemed no matter the
sins we've committed.

i'll very clearly remember this anecdote he used. "why do people create junkyards? so
that even rubbish can be kept in one place in order for junk collectors who see another
use for those pieces of junk to purchase it. similarly, the Earth is like one big junkyard and
God is the junk collector who is even willing to make a purchase for us no matter how
insignificant or useless we're in other people's eyes because he sees the redemptive
value in each and every one of us."

and thus we should continue to strengthen our connection with God and our fellow
brothers and sisters so that we'll make it increasingly difficult for the devil to make a
breakthrough.because the devil is always looking for ways to encourage us to forgo
fellowship in favour of even the most simplest of distractions sometimes especially
when we've risen to or are in pursuit of positions of power, success and wealth.

yup. it was really inspirational. to the point that I could actually recall all this.
admittedly, i hardly remember most sermons in such detail, haha. of course this
is still a summarized version, haha.

[edit] i was doing my one-year bible today and this verse came across to me
Matthew 18:3 - Then he said, "I tell you the truth, unless you turn from your sins
and become like little children, you will never get into the Kingdom of Heaven"
it suddenly reminded me of the sermon earlier and when a.r. bernard recalled
when he was still a jew and working as a banker. his hardworking secretary at
that time would place a bible reading every morning without fail on his desk, which
at that time he found very annoying. but the thing was that he could never get over
her simple child-like faith in her God, which eventually prompted him to find out more
about Christ and hence converted him. it's amazing how God has all these message for
us if we look carefully enough!

anyway, met with bharathi, rina and saran for lunch at changi airport burger king
after the service because they were doing some chingay fund raising thing nearby. for
cip hours of course, lol.still haven't taken a step into T3 yet! planning to do so during
my holidays.any takers?hahaha.we didn't have the time to cos they had to rush off
to return the donation bags!yup.anyway, i've been trying to study econs.a bit
of distractions here and there though.but felt like blogging.anyway, i'll be back
after exams!=)

reynard!

P.S. forgot to mention how funny it was when bharathi commented on my name being
derived from raymond and bernard.loll.first time i've heard that x)

i'll still be waiting man, until who knows when.
maybe even until the end.
giving up other chances. probably. but hey, it could be worth the leap of faith.

2008-01-23T13:15:00.000+08:00

Study, study, study, study...

In an effort to keep things not so boring around here, I've decided to update
on the situation of my exams. Yes! A somewhat boring and mundane issue
but nevertheless...

So far, the Management and Organizational Behavior test and critical reasoning
skills essay (a cheaper version of GP) are over. yay. so really all i have left are
huge 40% weightage statistics, (macro)economics and accounting exams that
i'm trying to study for now. accounting is quite a nightmare because out of a one
year syllabus, we don't really have a clear idea of which topics will be tested.
somewhat similar to the MOB nightmare in which only 10 MCQ and 1 structured
essay question was tested out of the whole syllabus, although that was only half a
year and the content was very understandable. so what to study in poa?! no idea.
oh no.

but i'm sure i'll somehow get through that. econs is somewhat relatively easier and
well, so is stats but i should really learn to speed up in the stats exams because that's
a major weakpoint for me! argh.

okay, but anyway i'll just do the studying and leave the rest to God! (:

oscar nominations are out! yeah, i do somehow always like these awards ceremonies
because they feature some really really good movies, most of them being arthouse,
that the majority of audiences nowadays don't watch. not that i find anything wrong with blockbusters. some are definitely still excellent stuff, although that being said, some are
pretty much crap. well, there's really a reason why some of these awards season movies
are a lot more inaccessible than blockbusters but you've got to take that some of these
films really have either amazing stories and ideas relevant to everyday life or modern
culture that make you think and reflect or just top-notch acting and filming sometimes.
which i hope more of us can start to appreciate man. haha well it does take some effort
to drag ourselves to watch the kind of films we usually don't but yeah i think it's always important to have a more active mind and being globally aware is quite important nowadays
as our world keeps shrinking eh? and besides some of these movies are actually a lot
easier to understand or appreciate than most people would think. i do find it hard to slot in
time for them though, but i've got a pretty big term break coming up (:

so somehow i really really hope that stupid writers strike (which has stalled like most of
our favorite tv shows and movies!) will end soon so that they can actually get on with
the 80th academy awards on feb 24. which for once i can actually, probably, watch the live, unedited telecast in the morning. something i've never been able to do recently because i
always have school around that time? yeah. which reminds me:
2 and a half months holiday beginning on feb 1! =D

and for once, i dont have school on my 18th! birthday too (:

woohoo. yeahhh i simply cannot wait man (:

this was taken uh 3 years ago? and i was trying to wink. lol.

[edit]
oh man, heath ledger just found dead in his nyc apartment.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22788914/?GT1=7701
that's pretty darn sad alright, he's only 28.
the guy's a talented actor in my opinion. and probably a lot of other people's opinions too,
fellow stars and other normal human beings alike. i guess everyone will probably want to
catch his 'final' performance as the psychopath villian The Joker in The Dark Knight this summer now, probably the most anticipated movie this year if i'm not wrong??
(not that everyone wasn't gonna watch it already anyway huh!)

nice poster! it looks rather freaky though.

reynard(:

2008-01-07T17:35:00.000+08:00

Say you'll wait for me.

Sorry guys! I've been mostly busy although sometimes procrastinating about actually
getting down to blog. I know it isn't an excuse though! Partially, I've been experiencing
a brain drain in terms of anything literary. I kind of don't really know what to write or
say although my brain is very much alive still and I do have many thoughts about all
things personal, public and global! It's just that i can't really think of how to say it.
Anyway look, my blog's starting to grow mold around the edges already!

Oh wells, in the meantime a very Happy New Year to all and enjoy 2008 yeah? Loads
of good stuff coming up soon!

Stay tuned after my exams (which are like OH CRAP near) that end on Feb 1st! =)

~rrrrey

2007-09-20T12:44:00.000+08:00

i'm feeling quite lost. it's the sense of feeling you get when you lose that grip
in life that you thought you had and now you're spiralling downwards, falling...

am i really that cursed? it seems the past always catches up with me somehow.
i can never escape it. felt like giving it all up, some really foolish thoughts.. that
were so vivid. i really thank the Lord that he always pulls me back from such
reckless behaviour. but then, if that's not to be, then what is my destiny? i used
to think that everything was based on choices but with the things that have been
happening, it feels as if my choices make no impact and perhaps life's really ruled
by destiny...

i can never get things right somehow... and i should have seen this coming somehow.
is all my happiness really meant to be temporary and short-lived? i mean its not like
i've not been through this before.. each and everytime the upward slope feels better
than before but i should've known its just deceiving me for the bigger fall ahead.

i'm really confused.. a thousand things rushing through my mind. i feel really sick,
like throwing up.

what should i do?

2007-07-19T23:55:00.000+08:00

As the seasons go by

Plug-in: Thank You - Alanis Morissette

it's been quite a busy past two weeks so i haven't really had the time
or inspiration to blog but anyway here's an update on the highlights.

watched transformers a couple of wednesdays ago (4th july) after school,
at night with rastus, rasmus, darryl and it was mind-blowingly good! the

script wasn't exactly high on quality but the plot sufficiently supported the

barrage of special/visual effects and non-stop action which the movie was

high on, and which of course was what made our 8 bucks worth it. it's really

those kind of movies you have to watch at the cinema (unless you have an

equivalent at home) because without a big screen and surround sound, it

wouldn't be so much of a rollercoaster ride. but anyway, to sum it up, it was

definitely very entertaining (and cool) :) it's been quite a while since i last

watched a movie at cineleisure and i was reminded again how loud their sound

system was, haha.

watched a bit of live earth on saturday (7th july) after coming back from church/
dinner and the civil service fair at orchard hotel with darryl earlier in the afternoon.
it was quite dismal actually, definitely way below live 8 and either it was poorly
planned or there was quite a lack of public interest in it 'cos even the live concerts
had poor attendance. oh well, guess people aren't really interested in the environment
yet.

helped aunt patsy with some swimming competition after 1st sunday service the next

day at her CC. she drove us - rastus, rasmus, chih yong, guo xiang, russell and me to

delta swimming complex where we helped out with the stopwatch timing mainly. in

the end, we got to participate in the relay event so we had fun (:

went for rockclimbing training on monday evening, which was quite hardcore 'cos
i bouldered for about 3 hours plus. one dissent i have with climbing at sp though, is
that although the bouldergym there is fantastic, there's hardly any avenue for
high-walling which really makes it quite boring after awhile as bouldering can get
repetitive. partly the reason why i bouldered til so late - 9:30, was because i was

staying over at darryl's place to run the next morning (my classes were shifted til

very late the next day) and i was meeting him and the twins at 10pm. left sp at 945

after stopping at pizza hut/kfc for a while where chih yong, jia wei and edward were
playing dota. met rasmus and rastus on the train that i boarded at dover cos they
were coming from clementi. we train-ed til sengkang to meet darryl. got into a bit of
a tiff on the way with rastus but that was cleared up later on in the night (:

had a very early run at 4:30 am the next morning of about 6 km? something very
funny happened which i'll be happy to indulge only if you ask. anyway, after mee
goreng for breakfast, darryl went off to school and i bus-ed back with the twins.
had a nice morning/noon nap before heading to school again.

met val for lunch after school the next day (11th july) 'cos we both have very free
wednesdays (: haha! we tried out the really good chicken cutlet rice at foodcourt 3,
foodhaven. which i hardly get to 'cos being in school of business means we hardly
bother to walk all the way to other foodcourts.

met val again after school on friday at khatib mrt so i could pass her birthday present
to her. went home to change and train-ed to yishun (so as to make full use of mrt
concession, haha) and met russell and valerie at bk. passed russell his prezzie (oh yeah
did i forget to mention that russ and val's birthdays are on the same day, 12th july? haha!)
and then we waited for the twins and darryl 'cos we were going to watch order of the
phoenix at gv yishun. due to traffic jams etc, the twins only reached 10 mins after the start
of the movie. lucky there were ads though, darryl came later on another 10 mins into the
movie. post-movie we hanged out at mcdonalds for awhile as we met jia wei and valerie
there. jia wei was studying and valerie was with a couple of her friends. took a bus back
home with the twins when it was starting to get late, we didn't notice since macs is 24 hrs.

had a museum trip on sunday after service thanks to delia, who had some free tickets for
us. its been really long since i last stepped in to the singapore art museum, and they
revamped the whole place so it looked a lot better and was more visitor-friendly. but as
it does, visiting your own country's museum (especially considering we're such a small
and young country) is really boring no matter what. haha. darryl, jia wei, the twins and
i had dinner at subway before train-ing home.

today was poa CA2! which went really smoothly even though i was quite unprepared.
but luckily i've been paying attention during tutorials so the test went well (: trained
to dhoby afterwards to meet rastus and rasmus. rastus's classmate, shannon, was there
too. ta pau-ed macs for dinner before we train-ed to kovan to meet russell, chih yong

and darryl. then we took not one but two buses and still had to walk a bit before reaching

our church's recreation centre somewhere in hougang. we went there because the gym
was having a free trial for church members. met ben thia, dexter, sasi and some of the
plmgs girls there too. i guess people were maximising the free trial period, haha. played
ping-pong with ben, sasi and rastus after the gym session and also regretfully tried out
the iGallop, haha! took turns to bathe at the really new and nice showers before aunt
patsy gave us some refreshments in the form of muffins and lemonade (:

i don't think we'll go back there though cos firstly it's too inconvenient and far away,
secondly the admission price of $3 for a rather small gym is not really worth it.

anyway, just got back not long ago. spent quite a lot on bus fare today, haha.

oh wells, there's lsbc fun day this sunday at sentosa! our church booked the whole
palawan beach i think (:

this was taken a while back ago at church camp with some girls
from the sec 3 cell. the one taking the pic was evangeline. haha, good memories(:

~rey

2007-07-15T23:34:00.000+08:00

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probably the first time i'm advertising (or helping someone to advertise) on
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for more, please spare some of your time to look at the designs of these
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can purchase!

ERYN'S DESIGNS <- click here! (:

2007-07-03T23:39:00.000+08:00

Ruishan's Scrumptious Seventeen!

Plug-in: Come What May - Ewan McGregor & Nicole Kidman

before it slips my mind, let me blog about the beach birthday party

we had at sentosa on sunday in celebration of ruishan's 17th birthday!

woke up slightly late on sunday morning, so rushed down with rastus

and rasmus to vivo where we bought presents, cards etc. before taking

the skytrain down to siloso beach. we walked a bit to their spot at the

beach which was just in front of the shangri-la resort. ruishan, teresa,

michelle, ernest, wilbert and yihe were already there. adele, rachel, lucille

and grace arrived later on in the afternoon. basically, we ate (alot of yummy

food you'll see later!), laughed, played games such as twister and ultimate

frisbee, tried to build an underground tunnel which we almost did and got

into the lagoon too(: and oh yeah, the twins and i prepared this acapella
song that was self-composed by us that we performed for her later, yup.

there were a lot of hilarious moments, most of which are highlighted by in

the photos but also some which are not, like jumping into the lagoon from

the rocky side and swimming back to the beach! we left the beach once it

started to get dark and changed, bathed etc. before leaving the island to go

back to vivocity for dinner in terra cafe, where the food was standard western

but they had some really good milkshakes and house specialities! haha, it was

really an enjoyable day (:

photos from teresa:

birthday girl!

the moose and nah-nah (:

wilbert, teresa and yihe. and that's ernest poking his cheek on the right!

starting of the dig!

look who's tired!

charging into the water after digging!

going off to fetch adele/ teresa and nahnah are "very huggable"!

besties doing their "handshake thing"/mus caught being fed!

what they'd call an "unglam" moment x)

~~paul frank~~ adele preparing a hole... / ruishan's feeling suspicious...

well you couldn't hear but ruishan was going "NOOOOOOO!!!"

ruishan relents to her fate...

rastus decides to get in on the burying thing! / and that's adele drawing a torso on the sand!

rastus drawing a skeleton soldier

finished product (: and so rastus decides to do some kayaking, haha!

and yes, another "unglam" photo =D

food! (homemade brownies, wedges and all)

"thong for my birthday present??" yep, we were laughing / adele doing the movie-star thing.

shades on!

the start of a twister game! and the girls call the shots.

getting real twisted! notice the dangerous position wilbert's facing in the left picture, haha! x)

start of another twister game. and look at the precarious position we were forced into! haha.

what a stretch.

nahnah caught red-handed!

the arrival of rachel. and a crazy fight ensues.. (it wasn't real dont worry, haha!)

doing the mirror image thing.

teresa, lucille and michelle!______________doing the elizabeth swann thing!

highly comical.

teresa found a dandelion!

watch what ernest is about to do...

uh-oh.______________________________yihe and ernest, both born on jan 27th.

we tried to dunk ruishan, not successful but still (:

the ijseven and their 7 deadly sins pose.

at terra cafe.

The End :)

2007-06-30T20:17:00.000+08:00

Mid-Semester Tests are OVER

Plug-in: Rehab - Amy Winehouse

otherwise known as the mid-semestral test week, my MSTs are over! and they
were all relatively doable except for ITAB's Excel ICA which was quite a nightmare
as most of us underestimated a test on something like the Excel program.. you know,
that ancient but somehow still very relevant program that microsoft office keeps..

but the others, microecons, statistics and principles of accounting i have definitely
more confidence(: still, i should be prepared for anything! haha.

anyway, had dinner with janice and joel after itab on thursday at lido's mos burger.
just chatted, chilled out and stuffs before window shopping at isetan(:

played pool with og7 plus a few others on friday. met up at kfc with lilin, john and
his friend from ozzie. then others came like sherman and jane! we then walked
to dhoby ghaut mrt to meet nessa and her korean date, dae yeon, haha. more

walking to paradiz ensued and we finally managed to find a place to pool. rasmus
came for a while, then we all had to leave.

LL and her funky goggles! :D_____________vanessa wearing the funky transformers mask

sherman, john and ben_________________

after fiddling around, i realised this photo looked better in B&W(:

accompanied mus for a while after everyone left as he was looking around paradiz/
peace centre for portable amps. then had to train down to sp for the rockclimbing
annual general meeting (agm) which was severely delayed by like over an hour??

besides some hilariously retarded videos, we got to see the new committee for this
year too. anyway, thanks to the delay, i only got back home at 8 plus):

had to meet valerie at the cathay this morning for fantastic four: rise of the silver
surfer. we were both kinda late but anyway didn't miss much. the movie was fairly
okay, i didn't exactly have high hopes for it in the first place so at least it wasn't as
disappointing as pirates 3 or devastating as shrek 3. about roughly 3 - 3 1/2 stars?

after the movie, we walked over to ps for lunch at ljs. on the way, we passed by
the newly opened (or at least to me) toast box opposite carrefour on level one! so
after lunch, we went back and tried some pork floss toast! which was really really
mouthwateringly good.

like the simpsons, i decided to be highly spontaneous! haha, too bad val had to hold the cam):

photos of each other off-guard

train-ed to church for our chill-out day. was slightly late but nevertheless got there
before the games started! bumped into emelyn on the way, we were both late but
still decided to stop at the mama shop nearby to buy some food, haha!

anyway, chill-out was not bad. got to play some really fun games like the four-way
tug-o-war and taboo! had worship after that and our invited friends came, no less
than 5 of them: jane, LL, xinru, xinya and grace. it was quite cool cos i've never really
invited so many people to church before. anyway, we chatted with xinru, xinya and
grace for a while before they had to leave. then, jane and LL stayed back for a while
to have dinner with us at church.. laksa and curry chicken! they also chatted with

some of our other cell members.

afterwards, we headed for bugis to shop afterwards! at that time, it was just pretty
much the twins, jane, LL and me. got a pair of aviators that were quite old school.
so did the twins as well! cos we were planning to use it for ruishan's birthday party
tomorrow at sentosa! anyway, that was pretty much it about the shopping..

we all shortly left thereafter for home(: and so i'm here now.. well i gotta go sleep
got yet another long day ahead tomorrow(:

lasseiz faire
~rey

2007-06-23T22:58:00.000+08:00

Re-encountered God

Plug-in: Now That You're Near - Hillsong

i'm usually not that into christian, inspirational music to be really honest.
sure i enjoy worship and singing, but it's just not my habit to regularly plug in
to such music, especially the more commercialized ones. however, after church
camp 2007, which i've just returned from, i've felt really connected with the
abovementioned song 'cause it just seems to resonate with the whole message
vibe that has been taken away from the camp.

speaking of which, church camp was unexpectedly meaningful in many aspects.

i really did not expect much from the camp and was pleasantly surprised to

be ministered to and spoken to by God himself! now, the theme for this year was

re-encountering God and our speaker was Mike connell who does seem to have the

anointing from Christ not least of the reasons being which was that his sermons were

very sharp and focused, which greatly impacted many of us. he really steered the

direction of the whole church camp.

the venue was great, berjaya times square, right smack in the middle of the city

and its shopping district. we did shop quite often in the hotel/mall itself and the

surrounding malls in the city. anyway, accommodation-wise, i roomed with darryl

and rasmus, just down the corridor from the girls room - stefanie, celeste and grace.

our room had this really great view of the city and whether it was the early hours of

the morning which we would do our quiet time (except for the last morning, we

overslept) or the dark tranquility of the night, the city lights and the view of

glowing tall buildings like the twin towers was really magical in its own way.

food was not bad. breakfasts were usually the best out of the three meals, lunches were
rather sparse and repetitive in variety and dinner was not lacking in the latter but not
all the dishes were fantastic. but anyway, it was a hotel catering for the entire church
camp people, over a 1000 i think, so in that sense it was quite good already (:

here are some of the highlights:

swimming in the morning, which i was reluctant to at first because the pool was on the
14th floor and it was usually icy cold at that time but with some persuasion from the

twins, most of us went. and actually, hard to believe but doing some laps made me

more energetic for the day!

shopping. berjaya times square was great, in fact the one we went the most often to cos
it was like just right below the hotel but despite its huge size and many shops, it was
often quite empty. bought gifts mostly from there. we did not make it to chinatown, the
haven for cheap but fake goods but we did go to sungei wang, the fashion mall. the place
reminded me a lot of far east plaza but didn't get anything because we had a suspicion
that some of the stuff was fake as well. on the second last day, we had lunch at sushi
king, which was this really cheap conveyor belt restaurant. the food was actually better
than sakae although probably not equivalent to sushi tei, but everything was a lot
cheaper! then we cabbed to suria klcc for some shopping although it was mostly window.
jia wei did buy shoes but what we mostly bought in the end were dunkin' donuts!

late night suppers. we had one on the second night nearby at this streetside hawker
place, which had some really good food plus stingray that was super cheap, delicious

and generous in portions! the last night we had supper at this chicken rice/char siew
outlet some distance away, in a more quiet area of town and the food was alright.

oh yeah, i also watched 28 weeks later with some of the sec 3s on one of the nights,
which was really quite a freaky experience (the show, not the people)

last but definitely not least, was the holy spirit night on the last night, which i really
felt that God was speaking to me, but although the experience did not completely
satisfy for me, meaning that i did not get an exact answer, there were some

important things that He spoke to me about.

our speaker, mike connell, also did some really extraordinary stuff like how he

managed to describe the situation and issues of particular people during Holy Spirit

night through his communication with God and minister to them.

spiritually speaking, the church camp was very refreshing and i felt renewed. even
though there were many ups and downs, i thank God that i managed to push through
and i did feel the time spent was fruitful(:

anyway, here are some of the photos taken:

on the way there and reached!

pool view from our room___________________rasmus the prawn killer!

bbq stingray supper~

on the way back and attack of the patrick starfishes!

home sweet home~

school's starting soon ): but the hols were great, i don't regret a bit!

~rey

2007-06-16T23:46:00.000+08:00

It's never forever gone

Plug-in: Read My Mind - The Killers

it's been halfway into our two-week hols already and i'm super busy...

having fun! haha, mostly.. but i feel that profits have been maximised (harhar)
over the past week in terms of time spent and just relaxing from all the stress
of the workload.

anyway, here's a rundown of the week:

for sunday, we did rollerblading at ecp after church service. initially didn't want
to because i wasn't in the mood for falling down that day but eventually someone
motivated me to go (: bus-ed with darryl, rastus, rasmus and jia wei down to east
coast and lunched at macs. shaker fries! then we met grace, stefanie and julia at
the nearby bk. we then rented the skates and this time decided to go in the direction

of the city. as usual, i was like super slow, especially on the way there. so slow that

rastus had to push me to "accelerate" at one point, causing me to fall and scrape the

skin off my right elbow! haha, but it was nothing severe. however, once we reached

the turning point, i started to get better and faster. we paired up in groups for the

inline skating so that we could get back faster and i paired up with jiawei. we were

like the fastest and i didn't fall at all the whole way back! :D

yeah, so it was a great day 'cause i got to improve. anyway, we all left and bus-ed
to dhoby with stef, darryl and jia. stef left so we had laksa for dinner in the end!

had a CD group project meeting for the community welfare service on monday
morning at city hall. after we finished, i went down to lavender to meet up with
jia wei, the twins and cheryl(if i remember correctly?) because they all had to
renew their passports for the next week's camp. once they were done, darryl
dropped by and so the twins and i left with him for lunch at the nearby beach
road food centre for lunch before train-ing back, for me, to city hall, 'cos we wanted
to get climbing shoes from peninsular plaza because they were having a sale.
but all the good HUMAN sizes were all gone, leaving like dwarf sizes so we didn't
get anything in the end. so then we train-ed (my fourth time that day!) to farrer
park for bouldering at climbasia, which was quite okay but i was feeling a bit shitty
on that day so i didn't manage to do the difficult routes. sheila popped by for a while
and then we had to leave afterwards.. we were all planning to catch ocean's thirteen
but didn't in the end because of indecisiveness, haha!

tuesday was our marketing group project meeting back at sp. because anyway the
wireless signal there is the strongest compared to all other public places. managed
to set up the basic framework for our very gargantuan project that's like 35% of the
module marks?! train-ed after the meeting ended to orchard for lunch with eryn,
rastus and rasmus at pizza hut in lucky plaza. oh, the service there is really quite good
compared to umm.. well many other places. yep then we window-shopped for a while
before mustus had to meet someone else and so i walked towards the mrt via lido cos
eryn was meeting up with some of her classmates for a movie. saw fabriz and lester!

umm and yes, ib's also very stressed according to them. i guess there's stress across

all tertiary education. train-ed to sembawang and shuttle-d to saf yacht club to sign

up for the one-star kayaking course. the place there is nice, but the water's err.. really

dirty!

went over to the twins house after dinner and darryl was there too. met their friend
valerie and her friend sharlene who were both there to drop by for a while, apparently

without their parents knowledge :O but yeah, so after both of them left, the four of us

just hung out at their place. i'm trying to pick up playing one last breath by creed on the

acoustic guitar. haha, it's a bit tricky.

had CIP on wednesday! met huihui, ain, ruiling, jonathan, weichong and ruicheng at
choa chu kang mrt in the morning and we were already late! so we cabbed down to
the children's daycare centre, which was actually so much nearer to yew tee but never
mind. upon reaching, we met our administrator for the day, tan wei ling. basically, we
were divided into groups between cooking, teaching and housekeeping. huihui and me
took charge of teaching so most of the time we were marking the kids daily schoolwork
whilst the rest slogged it out in the kitchen and cleaning the windows, haha! oh yeah
and i had to take the kids out to the nearby playground for their 'fun session' and i had
to play 'ice and freeze' and 'blind mice' with them! but it was really hilarious like just
reliving my childhood there 'cos i could actually remember some of those games!

after lunch break, we went back and i had to help huihui to count flyers. kinda monotonous
but it was still better than cleaning the toilets! then the kids nap was over and we all
joined them for tea break. after they recited their buddhist prayers, i accidentally said
grace and halfway i realised everyone was looking at me with their eyes wide open!
hahahah it was super embarassing for me!

soon after, we had our debriefing and then took photos with the kids. it was actually
quite a great experience because although the kids were super annoying at first, they
turned out to be a really fun bunch to be around. and they made us farewell cards,
really nice!

rushed back home for a quick bath before heading down to fish&co at the glass house
for dinner with cherie, su and nick! the food was good as usual, i had the swordfish
collar which was nice but super deep-fried! the live band added to the great ambience
of the place plus it started to rain outside for a while (and seeing rain from inside in the
night with all the lights is really spectacular). took some photos before some window
shopping at plaza sing before we all headed back! it was a great time catching up and
all, plus movie marathons once we are all free eh?

thursday was the start of my 2 day one-star kayaking course at saf yacht club! was
slightly late on the first day morning but managed to cab there eventually. the course
was great overall, a bit boring at times but mostly fun and informative(?). we were
taught the basics of kayaking and often had to wade about highly polluted waters
~~which were smelly and shit-infested~~. i was quite worried for the elbow wound
i had from sunday because it started leaking a lot of pus and i thought it would get
infected from all the crap that was floating about but thank God, despite stinging a bit,
it turned out alright and was eventually healed(:

by the second day, friday, we covered all our basic strokes including some rather cool

maneuvers and also learnt the capsizing rescue drill. then we had a mini expedition

of sorts but it was pretty hopeless because we were going against the really strong

current, so whenever we stopped to rescue someone who capsized, we would be swept

back to where we started, despite how hard we paddled earlier. one of the guys, chong,

made comments like "deja vu, deja vu!" because the coastline on our left was always

the same, haha.

after hosing down our kayaks and bathing, rastus, rasmus and me left for clarke quay

to meet darryl. we then walked to the area outside hooters to meet teresa, ruishan, grace

and adele. after some hesitation, we finally settled with hooters. although the service

was kind of abyssmal because the skatergirls were mostly attending to the caucasian

middle-aged men crowd plus we had quite a grumpy waitress ~~maybe her pay's not good?~~ However, the food was not bad, the chicken drumlets were rather good!

when dinner was over, we walked around clarke quay before heading over to robertson
quay for chocolate factory! which imo, has some of the best hot chocolate locally. then

the girls left for adele's house and so we went back! had a really great time and some

unforgettable hilarious moments, including ruishan's british accent and watching the hooter

girls doing their hula dance. good times(:

photos from teresa's camera (clarke quay looks awesome in the night!):

teresa, ruishan and grace!___________________rasmus n rastus!

caught off-guard by teresa, hence the sudden smile la.

adele!_________________________________ruishan again!

Our wonderful spread of chicken wings, twister fries and THE grilled ham&cheese bread!=p

guys: rey, tus, darryl, mus

the turkish ice-cream man ANDDD the bizarre clinic! wouldn't mind trying it out one day though

look how tall adele is! O.O___we were standing in the middle of fountain! pity the photo's dark.

emo-ing. the girls asked us to do it! haha.

GOSSIP. teresa looks mildy surprised! hahaha :D

the highly fascinating menu.

heavenly.

THE END. ruishan doing the "it's time to go!" routine, haha.

back from youth and the twins house. gotta go pack for church camp at berjaya times square,

kl. quite excited luh :D will be leaving tomorrow morning!

fly me to the moon
~reyz

2007-06-09T20:32:00.000+08:00

How youth slips through your fingers like water

Plug-in: Home - Daughtry

managed to study on tuesday for a while at the macs near my house!
we had a study session and met nahnah first. settled down for a while
but then the twins and teresa were gonna be a bit late and they ate
already so we decided to have dinner, but we didn't want to eat macs
because we were quite sick of it, so we went to have the fried chicken
wing rice at the nearby food centre, which i takeaway sometimes for
dinner. really yummy, right nahnah? hahaha.

rastus and rasmus sprung up on us halfway while we were eating and
then afterwards we went back to macs and teresa just reached. we
settled on a different table on the second floor cos the previous one was

taken up already, but our new one was ant-infested! but somehow we

managed to blow and whack the ants away, haha! overall it was quite a

productive session. yay, but we still succumbed to 3-way worms with

nahnah and teresa in the end after the twins left.

the highlight of the week was teresa's birthday celebration and chalet
stayover on thursday! left after school and dropped by home for a while
before meeting rasmus at farrer park! was supposed to rockclimb together
with sheila, ju er, him and some others but i didn't get to in the end cos i
came quite late. oh yes, and after coming out from farrer park i lost my way!
(i'd only been to climbasia once before) and i ended up wandering up all around
little india for a good half an hour! finally met mus and we train-ed to pasir ris,
meeting eddie and rastus there before taking a bus to downtown east/costa sands.

when we got there, the bbq had already started! and we had great fun! nahnah, rui
shan, grace, adele, ernest, wilbert, donovan and weiliang were there as well! what
a coincidence to meet up with weiliang, chatted a bit about how the njcip program's
like and how it's been since he left for it from acsi in sec2. we ate a lot of all the

scrumptious food that teresa and her grandmother marinated.. including the delicious

butter prawns! we also played chubby buddy (i was watching, haha!) and sua-ku.

for those of you that don't know what suaku's about, its basically a game where everyone
gets a number of satay sticks and then in a clockwise direction, everyone has to say
something (as common as possible) that they've never done before and all those who
HAVE done it have to pass them a satay stick. loser's the one with the least sticks and
winner's the one with the greatest number aka the most suaku! haha, but winning this
game is a double-edged sword, 'cos it implies you're dumbdumb x) anyway, ernest
won!

instead of a birthday cake, a very chocolate-y black forest flavoured walls ice-cream tub
with 17 strawberry pocky sticks stuck into it was presented by luc, nahnah, grace and
the rest of the ijtp clique, which we all devoured in a short while! after clean-up, eddie,
weiliang and donovan left. we then retreated to the room before deciding to head down to

the beach. hanging out near the sea was really fun 'cause it was extremely dark and quiet.

after some aimless wandering around, we made it to this row of breakwaters, which we sat

upon to emo, listen to some downtempo speaker music and star-watch. the view was

awesome and the water was so tranquil that it looked like glass. mus, ruishan and i actually

joked about walking over to malaysia. tried to help teresa find the orion constellation but

to no avail ):

after reaching back to the chalet, we took turns to bathe whilst playing 97, bridge, bluff,
indian poker, this game where everyone has 10 levels to descend to and you can bring
someone down to your level by getting him/her to respond to you and of course, taboo!

wanted to watch when a stranger calls with teresa and ernest but it was already super
late at 430am and i was so dead tired that i fell asleep with the rest instead. the girls
got the big comfy bed and we guys slept on the floor with mattresses hahaha! but had
a relatively good 4 hours sleep before we all woke up to ernest's noisy and funny alarm
that defeated its purpose, because he was the only one who didn't wake up. wilbert and
ernest left shortly, whilst we watched news etc before checking out and going for
breakfast at macs. then luc and adele left before the rest of us: teresa, grace, ruishan,
nahnah, rastus, rasmus and me, went to rent 3 mountain bikes, a double-bike and
skates. grace and mus used the latter whilst the rest of us cycled, taking turns on the
double-bike.

on our way to pasir ris park, we came by this deserted propety which teresa said she
read somewhere on the internet that it was called the "red house" and was supposedly
haunted. but it was broad daylight! so we all climbed over the gate and walked around
the place. there were lots of broken porcelain in the courtyard, plus the structures were
all boarded up or crumbling away. oh yeah and what creeped us out for a while was this
sudden strange smell of lavender and the twins said they experienced such a sudden scent
in school before and their teacher told them it meant that a spirit was passing by O.O

cycled past places that recalled childhood memories like the super ulu hedge maze and
the red spiderweb space-net thingy which we all raced up! (: we also came by this place
which rastus brought us to, where they kept horses for people to take rides on!

then we had to go back to return the bikes, blades and grace left. the rest of us went
to the beach, but we didn't go into the water cos it was really quite dirty. played frisbee
with nahnah and tus, also tried to dig a tunnel network but wasn't successful because of
the high tide, before we settled down on cracking open a coconut. which we managed to!

we then used the coconut juice to play zhong zi mi ma where the one who guesses the predetermined number from 1-100 has to drink the juice!

the coconut we split open!________________the tunnel ended up being a urinal

ruishan!______________________________teresa!

nahnah!_____________________________mus!

3 of us.

so it was a really fun two days, thanks to teresa! if you're reading this, here's to a wonderful seventeenth birthday and hope you like the gifts we got you! :D

instead of youth at church today, we had a session taking care of the p6 kids! then left
with rastus for a dinner with 1t11 at kenny rogers marina square along with some pool.

had some fun catching up with people i haven't seen for a long time!

diane and michelle discovered the wallpaper effect!_________group photo.

maybe we've been here before
~rey

2007-06-03T21:34:00.000+08:00

The Long Haul Talks

Plug-in: I'll Stand by You - Carrie Underwood

e-learning week was from 21st to 25th may. contrary to what it sounds like,
it really wasn't a time of fun, enjoyment and slacking around. in e-learning week,
we got about twice the amount of work to do. there were fom reports, group project
discussions for PBL, poa & econs tutorials, itab excel spreadsheet assignments and
plenty of other online work!

yeah, so basically in trading off our lessons we get a lot more work. hmm.

the first of two fom group discussions was on tuesday. went to buy tix at lido for the
upcoming ig movie gathering first before meeting up with serene, junhao and sophia
at forum macs. which is really quite a cosy place to do work in on a chilly, rainy day
along with sub-standard coffee, haha. yeah, maybe too comfortable, 'cause we were
really trying our best not to fall asleep. and distractions often came in the form of
serene's chicken mcnuggets :D

afterwards, went back to acsi to meet daniel, kai an and kong yew for a failed attempt
at collecting our official o level certs (the actual laminated ones, not the slips of recycled
paper they throw you on the day prior to JAE). get this, we got there merely 2 minutes
after the office closing time and they wouldn't give us our certs despite still being at the
counter. somehow reminded me of the scene in spiderman 2 where peter parker is late
for delivering pizza by a few minutes and the woman refused to pay! so anyway, it ended
up being a catching up time at the sac with some really good prata (:

had the second fom project meeting on thursday at forum macs again but this time round
it was a lot more productive, partially because we managed to find their cleverly hidden
power point, hence preventing us from going into great shock when our laptop batteries
were about to go flat! met janice outside liat towers starbucks afterwards and we cabbed
to simlim in order to redeem my free 80GB ipod video! woohoo! okay to save the long story,
it's a prize i got from the electronics fair lucky draw at imm a few months back. bus-ed to
ang mo kio where we ate at botak jones! (finally! after missing the opportunity at kian's
house the other time) it's really good and really cheap western food, no need to further elaborate, anyone reading this should go try it out! theres another outlet at clementi if i'm
not wrong..

met kai an and daniel again on friday, and finally managed to collect the o level cert. got
a lift from kai an's dad to orchard (thanks!) and met suying, teresa, bernice, oriana and
sheryl at wisma atria's food republic. they were eating toast box and it was supposedly really
good but i didn't get the chance to try it because the queue was way too long and there was
not much spare time to join the queue. we chatted and walked to lido to meet up with dong
xing, angeline, wei chun, rastus and rasmus at lido for pirates of the caribbean 3 and we were
really worried as we rushed into lido one 10 minutes after the timing but thankfully, they
were still showing commercials!

the second pirates sequel was honestly more bland than the first two. i think we all agreed
that this time round the humour, antics were all really stretched thin and the plot just barely
managed to keep us entertained til the end. somehow, pirates 1 and 2 was a lot more exciting
than this final chapter which really lacked the soul of the former two. i guess this time round
they're really banking on the popcorn blockbuster appeal more than anything. but still as
always, the movie was great with the presence of friends :D as most movies usually are unless
they're really really really bad (and then why would we be watching them in the first place?)

walked and talked after the movie, the best way to catch up with friends, before having
a light dinner at macs where i tried out desserts at mccafe for the first time. it honestly
managed to surpass my expectations, because i usually have really really low impressions
at fastfood outlets of anything other than their main selection (burger king's burgers, kfc's
chicken).

we decided to go late night shopping afterwards, since it was the last friday of the month.
the group was only left with teresa, bernice, the twins and i but we had great fun, even
though it was more of late night walking than anything since most of the shops were
still closed!

there was a sonicedge concert at church on saturday which had a really good sermon that
i felt i could actually relate to. had dinner at carl's jr in ps with russell, justin, guo xiang and
sarah. justin had some extremely sick jack-ass stories that made us all feel like puking! xP
then i walked around spotlight with sarah cos it was her birthday. had fun with browsing
through all the home decor and DIY stuff(:

had a graded fom presentation on monday! was ultra nervous, but thanks to wonderful
group members, junhao, sophia and serene, we managed to pull through alright(:
went for rockclimbing after lessons til around 8. left for dinner with joan and matthew
at clementi, char kway teow! and met sheila and her friend carissa at the mrt station so
i had great company on the way back home!(:

as most would know, i end early on wednesdays. so i watched shrek 3 with teresa, rui shan
and ernest at cine. haven't met ernest in a long while! haha, it was great to see him again,
~~farting aside~~. shrek 3 was really not good. one of the most disappointing sequels this
summer because a lot of stuff felt recycled, the movie was super short and the story was
basically crap. it's a far cry from shrek 2 which i found entertaining but this time round, its
really not worth your 8 bucks. oh yeah, something amusing happened! rui shan spilled the
cheese from the nachos all over her seat! haha.

after the movie, ruishan left and we met up with nahnah, the twins, russell and mark for
dinner at kobayashi. darryl came after a while too. then nahnah, teresa and ernest left
to go shopping and the rest of us went to church of our saviour for sonicedge's album
launch concert! the atmosphere there was great and they certainly amped up the
performances but the message did not strike me as much as last saturday's.

was supposed to go for cj drama nite on friday but decided not to and ended up studying
with teresa and nahnah at j8's mos burger. haven't been at mos for really long so i couldn't
decide for some time what to eat! oh yeah, we also bumped into russell there and studying
was rather productive but of course i had my laptop with me so when nahnah came, we
couldn't resist playing worms! (x

had kayaking after church at east coast today with darryl and the twins. we managed
to kayak further out than the last time i was there and we ended up paddling amongst the
cargo ships! unfortunately, rastus got seasick after awhile, so we ended a bit early.
studied for awhile (kinda..) at bk before seeing darryl off at vj for his odac trip and then
went to bishan cause the twins had to pass something to their friend monica, whose house
we crashed for awhile, haha!

oh yeah, i just received my ipod video already! haha, i would have actually liked it to be
engraved but the thing is i did not get it from the apple store. anyway, most ipods
have short life spans alright, nights!

~rey

2007-05-20T22:07:00.000+08:00

Affected in more ways than one

Plug-in: Umbrella - Rihanna feat. Jay-Z

was supposed to catch 28 weeks later with teresa on wednesday together
with the twins and darryl but was informed last minute about attending
a youth friend's grandfather's wake. so bus-ed down with russell, rastus
and rasmus to meet up with the rest for the wake at upper serangoon.

went to simlim on friday after school with wei chong to check out some
electronic stuff. bought a 1gb sd mini card! then i left to meet cherie and
suying at citylink. we had dinner at the pizza place but not before seriously
contemplating queuing for the donut factory (we were highly tempted to
cut the queue at first). chatted over really delicious pizza and baked rice,
although the food was slightly over-priced.

got up early on saturday morning for rockmaster at clarke quay! its an annual
rockclimbing competition held by sp that has both categories for the inter-tertiary
institutions and the open group, which was open to the public and mostly consisted
of really experienced climbers from around singapore and even asia. helped out with
some admin stuff before meeting weixue, who came down to spectate, for a light
lunch and some iced milk tea :D

the highlight during the whole event was watching some really experienced climbers
do really difficult bouldering routes! also got to know some of the seniors better.

went for morning service today with stef, grace, julia and then had lunch at kovan macs
with stefanie and julia. it was really funny watching julia collect different condiments for
her school project x) walked and chatted back to the church bus-stop with stefanie.
met up with the twins at my block void deck because they were locked out of their home,
so we chatted, played worms and watched heroes episodes at my home!

celebrated granddad's birthday at a teochew restaurant in some grassroots club, the food
was really good. my initial disappointment with not being able to sit at the adults table
quickly went away when i realised that the food for the kids table was a la carte, hence
meaning that the dishes there were chosen from their signature menu and were a lot
better than the set menu for the other tables! :D

yeah, but it was great fun catching up with cousins again(:

on the other side
~reyz

2007-05-14T10:21:00.000+08:00

Solace is not found by ourselves

Plug-in: Sophia - Nerina Pallot

i find that the poly lifestyle really suits me. the customization of your own
individual schedule allows you to whereas in jc, there really wasn't room
for anything else. this isn't saying that everything is a breeze in poly. of
course academic-wise, it can become rather hectic at times. like for example,
you could be thrown 2 or 3 projects to be completed in a week's time and
everyone in the group has to readjust their schedules so that meetings can be
organized, even still, in the tightest of timeslots. contrary to what most people
believe, there aren't really huge chunks of free time in the poly timetable.

there is really A LOT to do, both academic and admin matters alike. all the
breaks are usually spent finishing up non-academic tasks or meeting in groups
to rush projects before the deadline. but great satisfaction comes about by
planning well and ahead, because when everything falls into place, it just feels
awesome. that's what i've found and still find attractive about studying in a
poly.

anyway, last wednesday after the couple of lectures, i went back to cj! this time
it was because verin was dropping by as well and she wanted to give me the
sa t-shirt. a big thanks to her(: had fun talking with diana and fiona, both of
who were having suspension for something so trivial as skirt length. i really pity
cj girls, haha! fengheng came by after a while as well and then both of us roamed
around the school. really funny at one point because we happened to pass by
the piano near the hall and there was this quite pro guy who was playing and
fengheng was kinda harassing him about his skills! and oh yeah, i miss the cj
yong tau foo. if there's one motivation to come back, its having that(:

took a bus to church for prayer meeting later in the night but not before having
dinner with kevin and his older friends, yup. prayer meeting was really quite
powerful and i think the purpose was very urgent and clearly laid out. had
supper at the prata place in upper thomson later on with youth pastor and
some other youth cell leaders. the food there is good and cheap, besides their
prata is not the only yummy thing there!

went back to cj on friday as well! wednesday's was actually quite unintended
and impromptu but this time it was planned quite a while ago! met with teresa
at the canteen and suying came after a while. so we just talked and talked, along
with jack snap! haha, it was loads of fun just chilling out there.

then it was almost 7, so we left. met with cherie and went to island creamery
for a while to meet timo, jonathan, stella and yuxing. bumped into andrew wang
and talked about ib for a while. i also met xinru as well! there are a lot of people
you can bump into on a friday night at island creamery, trust me. left with cherie
and jonathan for paradiz and for the first time in a very long while, i actually
lan-ed! all the pool tables were occupied anyway.. played some cs maps for a while
until we got quite bored of it, so we switched to classic starcraft! haha, it was fun.
the last time i remember playing that game was even way before being in secondary
school. managed to rush back to dhoby ghaut mrt for the last train at 12:11, phew!

saturday, after youth, had dinner at s11 before returning to church playing a
modified version of truth and dare with rastus, rasmus and russell in the middle
of the empty carpark whilst waiting for grace and her father to come and unlock
one of the rooms upstairs which the twins left their blades in. then we bladed for
awhile in the very spacious carpark space. and i was really quite bad, haha but
definitely improving over the other time at east coast, which was my virgin blading
experience! (see how deprived i am, lol)

then it was almost 10 so the twins left for grace's house to prepare for darryl's
birthday surprise, while i bus-ed home with russell.

next morning woke up early and took a bus to darryl's place at sengkang. had an
early morning jog around 4km? and it was really quite tiring not only because it
was like only 9am but also because i hardly run these days without pe in poly! haha
but i should actually set aside some time for running. guess i don't want to slack off
and deteriorate into a state of no return!

anyway, the twins, darryl and i left for second church service and then we had lunch
with stefanie, grace and kevin at the prata place next to s11. anyway to cut the long
story short, after going from place to place, including back to darryl's house to get
some of our stuff, we finally got to climbasia at farrer park, which is this indoor
rockclimbing gym. met with sheila and ju er, a couple of the twins friends as well.
tried some interesting and rather tricky routes, one of which i could not complete,
a 90-degree inclined upside down maneuvre needed! oh, and i met mr terry
tan, my primary school maths teacher (who i'm extremely grateful to for helping
me with that a-star (: ) whom i couldn't recognise at first! has it been that long?
hmm.

parents came later and had mothers day dinner at boon tong kee hainanese
cuisine restaurant and the food was really good! plus our rice was the fragant
kind found in their famous chicken rice :D yeah, plus jessie and i sneaked off
later on for the mothers day surprise. and even though its not done everyday,
its great to see your mother smile.

laughin' to her favorite song
~reyz

2007-05-08T22:56:00.000+08:00

Letting things take their course

Plug-in: Makes Me Wonder - Maroon 5

had my first formal presentation yesterday, which was for fundamentals of
marketing. but before i go further, i must comment on the sometimes dire
state of the mrt system here in the morning. wearing a long-sleeved shirt
and a laptop in tow, i ran to khatib mrt only to have not 3 or 4 but FIVE trains
with "do not board" notice passing by. and the 6th train was so crowded, it was
impossible to enter! i finally got onto the 8th train that reached the station and
even then i had to stand throughout the jam-packed journey, which was slightly
under an hour!

i'm really thankful however that our group was going last, so i still had time to
settle down and finalise the presentation agreements. and as it turned out, our
teacher victor joe judged us as the best even though we were all super nervous
and rather worried when we were the only group not to be asked questions by him!

serene, sophia and jun hao! fun-loving people. here's to our next PBL project (:

as for today, after school rockclimbing was really fun. and i think rockclimbing
is really quite something unique because its both a physical and mental sport.
in a way, its not just all brawns and no brain because especially for bouldering
since it does not involve any harness and you have to think very carefully
about the way you have to tackle a certain designated route.

had dinner with poo xiang, marcus liang, wei xue and zhen hui at clementi's
sumo house. the japanese food there is really cheap but still at least above
foodcourt standards.. anyway, i never realised poo xiang and marcus were in
acsp for six years as well! but i guess you don't really remember many people
from primary school. haha, the longest part of your education yet the least
memorable.. strange isn't it? anyway, i always knew there were a pair of liang
twins in my batch during my years in acsp, but i didn't know there were ANOTHER
pair of liang twins as well (although they weren't blood-related to the other pair).
and all 4 of them went to barker as well! haha, thats really cool.

something uncanny and also incredibly interesting to note is that since 2007 began,
i've been meeting so many twins! back in acsi, i only knew one pair of twins in our
level and they were indon scholars. and for some strange reason, since i was young,
i've hardly got to know any twins besides just by name alone. its something that's
really intriguing on hindsight! maybe its some kind of 'twin karma' year in the
dunno-what-ancient-philosophical cycle thing.

anyway, zhen hui kept questioning the reasons why i want to go to poly with my
points. i think she completely forgot that weixue got 8 points?! hahaha.

this time we'll take it slow
~reyz

2007-05-05T01:16:00.000+08:00

Why do we keep going around in circles?

Plug-in: Love It When You Call - The Feeling

i think from now on, i'm going to blog once a week, most likely at the end of it.
reason why is being that i'm starting to get more and more busy everyday with
an increasing pile of projects and assignments along with a seemingly neverending
number of errands to run. plus ccas! even when i finally manage to get in front of the
computer and turn on blogger, my mind is usually a blank space and i seriously don't
want to waste blogspace just talking about random subjects, although i'd dearly love
to once i start to regain free time during term break holidays in which i'm not either half
dead or exhausted. but of course besides just going on in a monotone about what's
happened for the week, i'll try to sidetrack a bit and add interesting "sidenotes?"

actually, part of the reason why studying in poly is exhausting for me, is having to lug
my laptop around almost everyday (besides sp's sadistic layout which makes you climb
at least 5 flights of staircases to get to every class) unlike other classes or polys where
the "timetable people" are nice enough to arrange lessons in such a way that you don't have
to bring your notebook for entire days, i have the utter misfortune of having to bring my
laptop almost every day (except for wednesdays) and i'm seriously trying to find
alternatives instead of having to drag a 2.5kg slab of metal around. it is really NOT cool
contrary to popular belief, especially when the journey to sp from my house is an hour
(another reason why i don't go to school in little bundles of energy) and the thing really
limits your mobility and movement. and you're always inclined to rushing straight back
home after lessons instead of going out, because going out with this 2.5 kg piece of
junk lappy is super inconvenient.

really though, i like my laptop and everything. and i think it's fun to feed off wireless
networks in public and SP, along with draining public sources of power but i must
emphasize again that it really isn't economical(?) to carry a notebook around everyday.
hence, i might want to start thinking of ways to limit laptop usage to IT apps and stats
software lessons. i'm even going to ask teachers whether i can do my online tutorials at
home, hah!

okay, thats about my tirade on cumbersome notebooks! haven't had one in ages.

anyway, the week's been great. had ben&jerry's on monday night with stefanie, julia,
garey, grace and darryl at the cathay along with the twins, both of whom came halfway
through. we are thinking of performing at b&j sometime soon but nothing's confirmed
yet, everyone's really packed even for the june holidays.

slept late on labour day. felt really great to just wake up super late and laze around for
the rest of the day. i highly doubt i'll get to do this at all til our 6 week september holidays,
which i really look forward to (: anyway i'm glad i've got some things settled and resolved
out!

had lunch after school with janice at j8's ajisen ramen on wednesday, then bought a pair
of leather sandals at the leather atrium because i only have a simple pair of slippers that
are a size too small for my feet now.

thursday ran overtime, one of the first times a lesson actually ran overtime by almost 15
minutes! train-ed with weichong and ruiling. one thing cool about sp is that almost
everyone here takes trains as the main mode of transport so you'll always have people
going in the same direction that you can talk with. got down at orchard and met cherie
at far east for a quick lunch at subway. then she had to leave for school again so i spent
my time at borders (i've not abandoned reading books... yet) waiting for elaine to come
and she finally did just in time for our bioskin appointments..

which turned out to be not bad. i realise though that facials are heavy marketing machines
because they don't really do much to improve your skin. in fact, there isn't actually any
definite way to get rid of pimple-prone skin though, you just have to clean your face
regularly and wait it out.. but the thing about it was that the experience felt really good!
plus they give you massages as well. so at the end it was more of a relaxing thing than
helping my skin to get better, haha. i definitely wouldn't have gone for it, if it was at the
original price though. had dinner at sakae with elaine before going home.

today was fun, fridays are my kick-back-and-relax days man. left after school to meet
rastus at the ngee ann bus-stop, then we took a bus back to cj. we were slightly worried
about getting caught since we were wearing casual. but it turned out to be okay, because
the security guard didn't say anything when we walked past and michael tan went past
us countless times when we were there! went to the canteen and met the ex-1T02 people
plus sonia. i really miss these people, they never fail to make me smile! walked around
with rastus for a while and talked to many people, mostly answering "where have you
been??"s and "why'd you want to leave cj?!"s. and it wasn't very easy to explain the
same reason over and over again to different people because after a while, my explanation
became increasingly less passionate and i realise that some part of me still questions why
i left cjc even though at one point, i was quite 100% sure that i didn't want to do the jc
curriculum anymore. i really miss all the people i've got to know over the past 3-4 months
in cj! =/

we walked over to the grandstand and waved to bev and diane, who were having
volleyball training before returning to the canteen. had a light lunch before lucille came
over with fengheng. and then both of them actually tricked us into believing that they
were a couple since january! wahaha but the giveaway was when lucille didn't want to
share food with fengheng. that was SO obvious already! then eddie, mingxuan came over
and we talked for a bit more before they left except for lucille who waited with us til
teresa and michelle came over from their softball match vs rj and then we bridged, jack
snapped and daidee-ed. some of their ijtp-cjc friends dropped over to play for a while,
wanyu and rachel tan. jack snap was super hilarious! rastus had to go back to ngee ann
after a while and by 6 i had to leave too. met erika at the bus-stop and whilst on the way
to orchard, we talked about how much we all missed 1t02! =( your best memories in life
are always the shortest, sigh..

some photos taken with laptop cam at the canteen together with
joel, lucille, erika and cherie!

cherie has a thing for pinching heads (esp erika's)

dropped by joel's place at novena for a while because i wouldn't have enough time to go
back home and reach vivo in time for spider-man 3 later on. but unfortunately, i accidentally
fell asleep! and by the time i woke up it was already 8. so i rushed down but made it in
time to vivo for dinner with kevin and darryl before we met up with grace, julia and garey.
after much hassle, we finally made it into gvmax.

spider-man 3 was to be honest, good. it wasn't exactly the best blockbuster in years but
it certainly was one heckuva extravaganza with brilliant special effects. i'd agree that one
flaw was that its characterization was stretched thin due to its multiple main leads all
having their own story and competing for screen time, even though if they tied up
everything in the end. it was visually spectacular but even though it didn't feel as
refreshing and original as the first two, i thought it was more of an enjoyable ride and
the themes of friendship were good. the last part was kinda sad and also a bit surprising
because i thought there were very strong hints that ____ ____ was going to die instead.

so all in all it was really quite good, better than the 2nd instalment at least which i felt
could have been done away with: the whole doc ock sideplot.

after the movie ended, kevin took a bus back and the rest of us went to the mrt station
only to be told that we would be taking the last train and there were no more northbound
trains from dhoby ghaut anymore. but still wanting to get as near to home as possible, i
decided to follow julia, grace, garey and darryl northeast-wards. however, the train
stopped at clarke quay and they told everyone that there was some kind of malfunction
and the train would be going back to harbourfront and that we would have to take shuttle
buses to dhoby ghaut for THE last train. it was all very confusing at first because the
announcement wasn't clear initially either. but after much trouble, we finally got on to
the ACTUAL last train. dropped off with darryl at sengkang and thankfully my dad was
feeling very charitable and most importantly, awake, so that he could pick me from
opposite the station.

and that's about all, nights!

all i wanted, was to find a way back into love
~reyz

2007-04-29T23:02:00.000+08:00

We construct pretense on impulse

Plug-in: Talk - Coldplay

haven't been able to update during the past week because i've been really busy
with school and even cca at times. one thing about using your laptop so often
is that you don't really feel like staring at a screen again once you come home.
hence, the lack of posts but anyway its better to blog only when you feel like doing
so.

there was a humongous three hour break somewhere in the middle of tuesday
because a teacher fell ill in the middle of class (can you believe that?!) and decided
to call the day off 1 hour early. adding on to the 2 hour break afterwards, (almost)
the whole of the class hence decided to have lunch outside. we train-ed down to
jurong entertainment centre for lunch at long john's before some random fun at
the arcade and inevitably, the neoprint booth! hahaha x) okay the experience there
was super hilarious because 10 of us went into this huge booth and everything on
the touch screen was in japanese so carmen just hit in some random buttons and
then what followed was mass hysteria! the girls all started screaming when the
lights started blinking and we were all laughing and shifting around in random poses
over the length of TEN shots! wahahaha but sadly we only managed to get one of
the shots in digital, all the others were on print :(
the whole thing was super fun!

met cherie after school at raffles place for dinner because i had to run some errands
there.. upgrading my sim card at starhub to a 3G sim card and settling the booking
for the bioskin appointment, the 98.7fm offer, which is going to be at wheelock instead
this thursday.

anyway, school ended early at 11 on wednesday and by right we were supposed to
have a wonderful break for the rest of the day. instead, someone decided to plonk
a portfolio briefing right smack at 430pm. since everyone went back home to get
their notebooks and mine hadn't been delivered yet, i had nothing to do. talked to
alita for a while before she had to leave as well. it was starting to get boring because
i didn't want to go all the way back home either. but luckily celeste came to the
rescue, haha! we had lunch at the ever super-crowded koufu and talked for a while
before we walked out to the bus-stop.

i took a 74 down to ngee ann to meet mingli at the business canteen and met some
of her classmates in the process as well! we went to the main library and hung out
for a while. yew jia and i got ming li to finally start using msn! hahaha yea thats how
ancient ming li is =X

wanted to crash their maths lecture at the convention centre but i wouldn't have
been able to make it back for the portfolio briefing which turned out to be a complete
waste of time actually. met the rest of the class at dover mrt before heading in and
throughout the whole thing everyone was chatting on msn or playing games on their
notebook because everything that was explained was already ONLINE! so the whole
thing was really quite pointless. left afterwards with ruicheng and jonathan to pool
before going back.

had to follow up on a group project after school on friday but it ended quite fast. hung
around with alita for a while at the bizIT library, using our laptops [and at the same
time draining away the library's electrical power x)] before i left to meet joel at city
hall and we went around funan mall searching for a suitable laptop cushion case but
to no avail. the ones that were all my size were either sold out or the extremely
expensive high-end brands. had dinner at long john silvers before going home.

yesterday i went for the sp cyclists orientation which was a whole day event. i wouldn't
say whether the route was short or long but it was pretty manageable. we cycled from
sp all the way down clementi road, through the west coast area and then turning into
the highway, finally ending up at telok blangah where we cycled to the other end which
was labrador park. had some orientation games before they cycled to the jurong end of
west coast park where we had a barbeque. but of course some of us (namely aileen, stella,
yogathi, wee hao..) snuck out to the nearby macs when we realised the food was limited in
quantity haha! afterwards we cycled back to sp and by the time i got home it was almost
midnight already. but the day was really fun and i got to make new friends and know more
people from around sp! (:

highway cycling...________________which way to go?

this was my trusty, cool-looking bike for the journey(:

entrance to a hilarious obstacle course
(notice chankra grinning as he tells a funny story)

FINALLY BACK (:

anyway, i finally got my laptop cushion case today because after church, janice and i met
up with joel again to scout sim lim after church and lunch at tekka mall. and i finally found
a reasonably priced cushion case that met my laptop dimensions! haha i'm really relieved
that i have don't to carry it on hand or put it in my bag because it's always at a risk of
getting damaged! anyway, dropped by ttsh on the way home with jessie to visit mom.
the good news is that she's going to get well soon but she won't be discharged until a few
days later. had a light dinner at square2 before going back home.

i don't shine if you don't shine,
~reyz

2007-04-23T22:26:00.000+08:00

Maybe some things aren't meant to be

Plug-in: Sitting, Waiting, Wishing - Jack Johnson

sometimes i think its a lot easier to believe that no matter what you
do, everything is predestined. it makes life a lot easier because you know
that despite whatever decision you make, you will always end up with
the same result, so why rack your brains and worry about what choices
to make?

then again, there is beauty in choice. because getting to decide and control
what lies ahead feels more satisfying and rewarding. the thing about choice
though, is that it creates a lot more room for regret. for every decision you
make, some part of you always wonders whether it's the best one and its
really easy to get carried away by just thinking about the possibilites and
what would have been different in your life if you had chosen another path.

anyway, i finally ordered my acer laptop on saturday. the registration and
everything took quite long so i met up with janice for lunch at jurong point
fish&co. talked for a while, before i returned to acer inc. near imm to finish
the registering and they told me that the notebook would only be delivered
earliest by tuesday. so today (and most probably tomorrow as well), i have
nothing to do during the online tutorial sessions and i'll have to catch up once
i get my lappy! :\

rushed down all the way to hougang, because i was already late for youth church.
after the service, kevin, rastus, rasmus, darryl and i got a lift from kevin's uncle to
tiong bahru plaza where we had dinner at this cafe which had a really crappy manager
and lousy customer service where the restaurant staff was divided over pricing. hilarious!

we then went to bugis street but we didn't buy anything in the end except for kevin.
took a bus back to kevin's place at queenstown for a stayover because the next morning
we had to help out at henderson cc for the mount faber run. woke up at the unearthly
hour of 5am and we took a taxi down to the place. took away some breakfast from the
nearby food centre because we were slightly late already. however, when we reached
the site, we realised breakfast was provided. -.-

but anyway, we were assigned to help out at the bag deposit section and it was really
hectic dealing with large crowds at 7am in the morning, but it was also fun! we talked
with our section leader during the break, a long-serving volunteer worker, and he's
a really funny guy!

had lunch before we took a lift from aunt patsy back to church for the sunday service.
it was quite similar to ga's adult service as well because both are charismatic but lsbc's
one has its differences as well. after it ended, i left with grace, stefanie, celeste, delia and
jia wei to the macs at kovan. but i didn't eat anything because earlier in the day i lost
almost all my money! =( but i wasn't really hungry because i was quite full from the lunch
earlier. j.d. and jonothan came by after a while and they started studying. so, not wanting
to disturb, i left and took a train to sengkang, dropping by darryl's place. the twins and
their parents came by after a while to fetch us to melvin's place at pasir ris for a combined
cell bonding bbq.

pictures:

stefanie sneaking a shot at us from balcony.

celeste!

russell!______________________________stefanie with gerald

jia wei, ryan and randy

jonothan to the left____________________celeste, amanda, stefanie

nicholas, our masterchef!_________________group discussion with melvin

8 to 1_______________________________flying!

a collage of stefanie's feet and mine! :D

above______________________________under

rising..!

hahahaha! super lameness and super fun!

anyway, i really can't tolerate mondays.. its the first day of the week and it has the most
periods all the way from 9 to 5 with only one hour break! actually tuesday is also quite
bad because its 8 to 4 but at least there are multiple breaks! (not that we would need them)

mega tired.

and I wonder if truly you are,
nearly as beautiful as I believe
~reyz

2007-04-20T23:07:00.000+08:00

The extraordinary Deja Vu

Plug-in: Cupid's Chokehold - Gym Class Heroes

somehow I don't really know what much to say nowadays. perhaps I'm
starting to live my life more in actions than words? because there are some
things that words cannot describe and emotions that are impossible to
explain with literary expressions.

anyway, went to play a bit of basketball with the class after school ended on
wednesday before it started to rain. so jane liew, felicia, cai huang, nicholas,
embleton, gabriel and i took a train to cine for lunch at xin wang hk cafe. we met
wenting at somerset mrt, she came really fast from her home. anyway, i chose
the least value-for-money item on the menu, some pork floss mee and i realised
too late after ordering that you shouldn't order noodles from hk cafes because
they are the least worth it. they use maggi mee for goodness sake! anyway, jane
left after a while so they went to buy jane's birthday present and the shopkeeper
was really nice because upon hearing that jane lived near her, she offered to
personally deliver it to her house! like how many shop owners would actually do
that? haha.

thursday was a particularly exhausting day at school walking up and down many
many many staircases, from the bottom of a hill to the top of a hill, etc. well, there
are staircases almost everywhere you go in sp. it's like as if the whole campus was
built on a long series of hills. which it actually is come to think of it. never mind, haha.
anyway, took a train to bugis to meet cherie for lunch, then we went to bugis street
because i had to change the size of the berms i bought the other day because it was
too big (and a very tight belt didn't do much to help either). talked and walked for
a while before she had to rush off home to get prepared for phantom of the opera @
the esplanade. ahh, how i wish i had tickets!

aviators @ topshop

left on friday to kap macs to pass over stuff to ex-classmates: my donation booklet
(ha!), my whole stacks of notes (except econs of course) and other miscellaneous
cjc documents. it really felt like cleaning out my closet if that's what you call it, because
i had so much cjc stuff lying all over my room before and now it really feels as if i've
removed any final trace of things that would remind me that i was still in cjc (except
the t-shirts of course, haha!). hmm anyway, they all had to leave after a while because
of ccas and i just sat there sorting out my current sp notes, folders and admin documents
(believe me, you still have to handle LOTS of paper in poly) until jessie came for a while
and then we had lunch while doing some work. she was doing this unsw science paper
which looked really complicated at first but in the end we realised the answers were all
in the questions already!

anyway, jane wong came over from acjc after a while and then jessie left to meet her
friends for a birthday dinner celebration (happy birthday jessie!). after hearing out jane
talk about life in acjc for a while, rastus and rasmus came over suddenly and then jane
unleashed her inner camwhore upon them, hence revealing her obsession with twins
as well, hahaha! it was really funny but details for another day.

my shot__________________________________jane's shot

which one makes the cut? haha.

so it was a bit lame because we were competing to see who could get them to look more
similar. but anyway, it was only then and there that both of them realised that they looked
similar (hahh can you believe it?) and that it would be cool if they put in more effort to
look similar. so after we took an alternative route home, they immediately went to buy
contacts after dinner! -.-

anyway, i realised that i'm constantly low on cash nowadays not only because of the high
cost of poly misc stuff but i just realised i cant expect to survive on allowance alone. so
hence im looking for alternative sources of income and the best possibility i can come up
with is to teach tuition, because all other part-time jobs would take up more time. and
anyway, its definitely more viable to do so in poly than in jc because there's slightly more
time on one's hands (but not A LOT more actually)!

so i'll be teaching english and e math. any sec3's and sec4's interested? don't worry i can
be trusted because i've got a1's for both! please call or message 98502344 for more details!

one nocturnal son of a gun
~reyz

2007-04-17T22:52:00.000+08:00

Maybe I'm Amazed

Plug-in: The Sweet Escape - Gwen Stefani feat. Akon

first of all, a moment of silence for the victims of the virginia tech massacre.
when i first heard and saw the news about this tragedy on monday morning,
it didn't really fully register in my mind until a few minutes later when i was
on my way to school. for most of us it doesn't really strike that close to our
heart since its on the other side of the world and most of us are too busy
sometimes to bother about news, let alone world news. but just reading the
personal accounts from students at the scene really sent chills down my
spine.

and it's really uncanny in a way because on saturday night, the twins and i were
walking back from khatib and we were talking about studying overseas. they had
very strong sentiments against going to the states because of the lack of control
of firearms there. i on the other hand believed that even if that were so, God would
not let you leave this world if your time was not up or you were not meant to leave
your loved ones behind. but eerily enough, something on this scale happened the next
day and now i really feel as if my beliefs have been shaken.

anyway, depressing topics aside, left after church on sunday to meet darryl and rastus
at hougang s11. had a small lunch before we took a bus down to east coast park. what
was our purpose for going there? to RUN. haha, i haven't gone for a single pe since the
beginning of the 2nd intake (an amazing series of events involving mc's) except for one
2km run. so when darryl proposed we run 10 odd km, i was really quite apprehensive
about it.

haha, but we ran in the end and although we ran 9km it didn't really feel that long. i
guess running a route doesn't feel as monotonous or as long as running in rounds. we
shouldnt have run shirtless (it was a very very hot day) because i have this sneaking
suspicion that janice and her friends, who were there as well, actually followed us a
distance on their bikes! im quite creeped out now, haha. so anyway, we stopped for
a while at the halfway turning point on this breakwater jutting out into the sea which
was a really tranquil spot! a really hard to find place! i guess the run was useful because
i just realised i shouldn't be complacent in training my stamina because after all ns isn't
too far away. but its still quite okay now because i'm still the same speed as darryl even
though he's in vj odac. hahaha, okay its not good to suan. anyway, bus-ed back with tus
and long bus rides are good times to sleep (:

had my first day at sp on monday. it was really quite hectic and i was late for the first
class by like about half an hour?? because i didn't even have my timetable yet and
when i got it i took ages to find the classroom because the whole place is really like a
maze. eventually got to my fundamentals of marketing class, which was on the 5th
floor of the furthest business block! anyway, i got to know the class people and they
were really friendly! considering how late my admission was. and some of them were
going on about how boring and useless orientation was, so as to assure me that i didn't
miss out on anything.

left after school ended to meet nick and cherie at kap macs to get my hoodie/pullover.
it was raining very heavily and since there was no shelter to kap i decided to stop at
ngee ann for a while. and i bumped into tus and mus at the toilet! haha of all places.
hanged out for a while at the atrium before the rain stopped and then we headed
over to kap. and i got my pullover! haha it was really cool to see it and then wear it
around! after my initial obsession with the pullover ended, we chatted and did a bit
of work before taking a bus back.

during the break today, the class walked all the way down to the foodcourt 5/student
polycentre. there are two things i have to get used to from now on: long distance walking
all over the campus from place to place and long, rather useless breaks. aye, that's poly
life. anyway, 15 of us had lunch at pizza hut before heading over to the cca drive to check
out the ccas. i decided to sign up for sports club, cyclists club, rock-climbing and canoeing
but im probably going to drop the latter because i heard from the seniors that it's really
tough and the 3 times a week training doesn't sound very appealing. considered rovers
because it sounded like a lot of fun but its a lot like a uniformed group and i haven't had
entirely pleasant experiences with uyos, especially in secondary school.

serene_________________________felicia/jane/wenting/carmen/serene

the girls________________________________almost everyone.. haha.

rushed down to dhoby ghaut after my first lecture which ended at 4. met up with bernice
and the twins at the cathay for ben&jerry's free cone day! haha, she had to do something
to the reddish-brown hair she had back in cjc, which goes to prove that cjc's disciplinary
system is really actually a lot more lax compared to some other jc's. anyway, we had a
free cone - NEW YORK SUPER FUDGE CHUNK! before bernice had to leave prematurely
just when teresa and michelle came, so the twins escorted her to the bus-stop whilst i
queued up again with them! the queue was super long, stretching to the floor above but
thanks to efficient service, we could clear it in 10-15 minutes. this time round i got
strawberry cheesecake! which was almost equally good. from what i heard all the other
flavours weren't the very good ones because they had limited choices.

anyway, the twins came back and we walked to ps where we bumped into og7 at the
ground lobby in front of carrefour! so we just talked and talked there, then the twins
and i left to dhoby ghaut mrt station to meet up with their yr2 friend yonglin because
we all wanted to buy stuff from bugis street. oh yeah, another thing that i have to get
used to: i've to constantly look for new clothes that are at affordable prices! anyway,
tus and mus got their berms and i got a new tee. yonglin bought some stuff too.

it's been a long and exhausting but fun day, aye.

you've got to step back to enjoy the moment
~reyz

2007-04-14T23:17:00.000+08:00

Cleverly Disguised

Plug-in: All Good Things (Come to an End) - Nelly Furtado

it's been a strange and long week filled with moments of pure unadulterated
happiness and yet nostalgia filled with melancholy.

it's hard to explain.

left after school on monday with nicholas and cherie to make purchases for our
class decorations. the bus ride was super funny not just because of the incessant
camwhoring (yes, we all submit to our inner camwhores once in a while) but also
because cherie was singing 'glamorous' and i don't know why but we kept bursting
into fits of laughter.

nicholas says that cherie looks like a ghost here, o.O

anyway, we shopped around in queensway for a while but i couldn't find any good
jeans so we walked over to ikea and had some super nice hotdogs before walking
around to buy some stuff such as curtains and an extra dustbin to throw away all
the junk that accumulates like nobody's business everyday. then cherie bought
some random items that ~~were useless~~ we could have a use for. but yeah
anyway she's a really good d.i.y. shopper, haha!

anyway, kevin suddenly gave me an idea on tuesday about trying to submit appeals
to other polytechnics so on wednesday i dropped appeals at sp and nyp early in the
morning. played cards for a while in the canteen after school before studying with
cherie outside the library. then bharathi called and asked if i wanted to go watch the
rugby match sajc vs cjc. so, together with thrina, rina and jacqueline, we took a bus
to sajc and walked to the gallery. there were many cjcians there as well besides some
familiar faces from sajc! after the match, in which cjc quite expectedly lost, met up with
jane, vanessa, lilin, carin and a few others from og7. we walked to the macs at potong
pasir to have dinner and met some new friends like chong sucheng, haha! took a train
back with vanessa afterwards. and thats when both sp and nyp called! at 8pm! to tell
me that i was being offered a place in their banking and financial courses and that i had
to quickly enrol by friday.

naturally, i was quite ecstatic about it because at that point in time, i was already
preparing myself to just continue on with jc because i was being told that all vacancies
for polytechnics were filled up everywhere. least of all, i did not expect to be offered
a place by not one but BOTH of the polytechnics. i decided to choose sp over nyp
after realising that it was more long-standing and thus more experienced than nyp.
but somehow, even though i know i should have been really excited and happy about
this blessing, i felt a bit of hesitation. it's as if i suddenly wasn't really sure of what i was
doing when i was quite bent on it for a couple of weeks already.

woke up on friday feeling slightly dazed. went to sp again to do the final stages of enrolment.
afterwards, i left for cjc to submit my withdrawal. felt really upset when i walked into the
school but i tried to keep positive about it. everyone i knew was like "why are you in plain
clothes?" and diane thought i was going for some competition at first! but i told them about
my decision and some people were quite puzzled but of course there were some that
understood what i was doing and why. before submitting the withdrawal form, i spent the
break in 1t27, playing cards and talking to everyone. it felt really good just to treasure my
final moments as a jc student (:

so as i left the school, i no longer felt very positive anymore. i felt quite sad actually because
i just realised how much i would miss cj and the people there. and i started to question what
i was actually doing but then at the office, i talked to angeline who was leaving for a prize
presentation in her secondary school and she told me that i shouldn't regret the decision
i've made if i'm sure it's what i want to do. i was a bit more uplifted after she said it because
i realised that i shouldn't leave so much baggage behind. basically, you have to keep the
mindset that you're leaving nothing behind but good memories.

after bidding farewell to as many people i knew as possible, i met janice at the bus-stop
and we decided to walk through cjc back gate and navigate our way to acs barker. which
was really quite fun because we were walking along quiet, rather deserted roads through
the jungle. there were hardly any cars so we walked in the middle of the road sometimes,
haha! anyway we did make it to barker in the end! and as we walked through, i reminisced
about my primary school days. it was as if i suddenly remembered everything about it..
both the good and the bad times! then we took a bus to novena and had lunch at swensens.

the twins came over after i got home later in the evening to try to transfer more songs
but i think there were problems setting up the wireless network. anyway, after dinner
i went over to the badminton court near their place to play badminton (haha, what else?!)
with russell and eryn as well. it was fun and when it was my turn to be on the bench, i had
a ball of a time trying to keep t.g. (eryn's dog) under control, haha!

had a steamboat today before the youth. met around 1230 with kevin, julia, grace, stefanie,
j.d. and weizhe at grace's house before heading over to abc supermart to buy the food. we
then walked back to the church to start on the steamboat which turned out to be not bad
actually. kevin said it was their most well done steamboat since they started the tradition
of steamboats, haha! after service, some of us, namely kevin, justin, jonathan, rastus,
rasmus, darryl and i left for carl's jr at ps. the girls came along too but they decided to
sneak off to bk instead. anyway, we played "zhong zi mi ma" which is a game where you're
supposed not to choose the number that someone picks. and the forfeit was drinking this
really horrendous concoction that kevin brewed containing coffee, soft drinks, pepper,
salt, chili... so you can guess how awful it tasted!

eventually everyone had to drink it and i was the last one to do so! it tasted really really
bad haha but thankfully i didn't have to go the toilet afterwards, like kevin had to.
anyway, we shopped around for a while and i got a new pencilcase from daiso. then we
left for home afterwards: justin, julia, the twins and me on a super crowded train
which we were all squeezed in!

i'm feeling a lot better about my decision now and hopefully there'll be no regrets!

its times like these you don't forget
~reyz

2007-04-08T22:43:00.000+08:00

From a Good Friday

Plug-in: Stolen - Dashboard Confessional

truly enough, it's been one of the best weekends i've had so far this year
because i've just allowed myself to kick back, relax and actually have fun
for once.

woke up on good friday morning and for the first time in a long while i actually
did quiet time! amazing, haha. anyway, met up with rasmus and rastus at khatib
before train-ing down to bedok and then taking a bus to east coast parkway to
meet darryl at burger king. on the way, i shared a lot of things that were on my
mind to them and vice versa, including things that date back to our primary
school years and somehow it feels really good to just talk like that because you
really get to know more about each other in such a simple, informal way.

anyway, after meeting darryl we scouted for a beach before finding a relatively
emptier one and then we suntanned! haha, it was already quite late by then so
we didn't get much of a tan but in the end, we still had a lot of fun taking photos,
playing cards, talking etc.

in the middle_____________________________godzilla vs king kong!

we thought these two pictures were badly taken at first, but on retrospect these are really
unique angles(:

then we bathed and left for dinner. darryl actually wanted to bring us to this
really good and cheap restaurant called thaipan which was located inside a condo
but the security guard didn't let us in (darryl told us that the guard was a new one).
so we ended up having dinner at parkway burger king haha. kevin joined us halfway
and then we left for harbourfront.

met stefanie and grace at vivocity where we decided to chill out at ben & jerry's.
we ordered large servings of different flavours. the mango sorbet and the new york
super fudge chunk were awesome! of course, as do all large groups, we played truth
and dare which produced hilarious results:

the test taste team!___________________what the husband and wife would do in a wedding(x

in my defense, mus was supposed to be feeding me too//stefanie and grace w/tus

the feeding thing got really popular after a while...

Of course the truths were mostly unmentionable, haha! Anyway, we hanged out at vivo
and shopped around including this unpleasant incident at topman with some stranger at the
dressing room. Besides that though, it was a really fun day!

how did 4 people get up there??

yesterday was inspiration unveiled in the evening. inspirational message, inspirational
testimonies and inspirational worship! oh and the 14-course dinner was nice as well.

eryn! she doesn't look half as tired as she should be
(she came straight from cca all the way from acsi)

plus there were "glamour shots" as well but those were printed photos so i have to scan
them before i can upload :(

anyway, today was emelyn's birthday lunch celebration at billy bombers in heeren with
grace, julia, stefanie, darryl, guoxiang and kevin. twas really fun as truth and dare came
into play again. videos to be uploaded via youtube soon!

shopped for a while around downstairs where kevin spent quite some time at ed hardy.
none of us followed him in because kevin has a really unique taste in clothes, haha! x)
then some of us had to go home.

eventually, grace, kevin, julia and me left for bugis to wait for rastus and rasmus who were
coming from johor as we all needed to buy some new jeans and berms at bugis street.
we found a shop selling really nice and cheap slim-cuts but there were only 2 pairs left
around our sizes, which are about the same, so i just let the twins buy it first because
anyway i wouldn't have had enough money to get my nice and cheap (you see, everything
in bugis is either nice and cheap or bad and cheap) pair of berms later on!

well, its been a great weekend. i've realised how useful a 3.2 megapixel n73 is (:
anyway, got back quite late and there's school tomorrow so i gotta crash!

we all look like we feel
~reyz

2007-04-05T23:10:00.000+08:00

Taking off and one step ahead

Plug-in: Chasing Cars (Acoustic) - Snow Patrol

the past few days have been quite challenging in retrospect.

after days of much heavy consultation and deep thought, I finally decided to
submit an application to Ngee Ann on tuesday. went down after school to pass
it to the office. met sharon and we spent time walking around the campus trying
to look for the laptop corner. we finally found it after much hassle at the visitors
centre, where the woman at the counter was calling up all her colleagues to ask
where it was. it was quite hilarious because her behaviour was exaggerated all
the while.

anyway, here's the thing. i had expected to get into banking and financial services
considering that my l1r4 was 3 points below the cutoff of 11. however, i got a really
unpleasant shock today when i was called down to be told that there were no places left.
the funny thing though was that after they dropped the news, they offered me
a place in mass communication. and from what i know, isn't mass comm the hardest
course to get in into np??

i'm really suspicious about the whole thing actually partly because of my a1 in english.
but its mostly because a friend of mine (undisclosed name!) tried to appeal into ngee
ann's mass comm but she was told there were no places left. i mean i should know
its pretty obvious that polys like to pick and choose their applicants especially when
it comes to admission other than jae but i still feel pretty upset about the whole
thing. it really isn't that easy to get into the popular courses in polytechnics nowadays.

in the meantime, ill just have to pray that a vacancy is suddenly made available!

anyway, after school on wednesday was pool with the og7 group. vanessa was super
hyper and excited when we met up with her at plaza sing. she was doing the both
hands pointing thing to everyone (its easier to see than explain) and going "wassup!"
and jane said "hi, nerd!" haha but she was really apologetic about it although i could
tell she wasn't being serious (its okay jane!)

hahaha anyway we went over to pool at paradiz, which was more fun than it should
have been because ~~sherman was going around playing gay pranks on everyone~~
we were having balls of fun (no pun intended) playing pool. and i think this session
was one of my best, or should i say LUCKY, for this year because i played surprisingly
well hahaha!

everyone minus sabrina__________________vanessa, lilin and jane!

train-ed back with vanessa, john, zhilun and sherman. we had a great time poking
fun at sherman about lots of unmentionable stuff haha. but its really nice talking to
them! and i just realised i'm not the only one from a jc either who has had serious
thoughts about going to poly. john told me he really regrets choosing jc over poly
and he would want to get into mass comm in ngee ann except he thinks its too late
to try for it already. there are even rjc guys who want to go to poly for engineering
as well can you believe it?

perhaps its no longer like it was.

think twice, because its not over
~reyz

2007-03-31T23:34:00.000+08:00

Stigma Stigma Stigma Stigma Stigma

Plug-in: Bigger Than My Body - John Mayer

why does everyone follow the bandwagon? i guess perhaps human nature is not
to walk down untrodden paths because maybe deep inside we're afraid that if
we get lost, we get lost alone. i think we all would rather get lost with the crowd
because it looks like an option that's a lot safer.

well, for some reason or another i've landed myself into this dilemma of sorts.
either way, I think i'll regret my decision whether it is to go to poly or stay in jc.
granted that jc does have its perks in career options. for example, science-related
careers like engineering, medicine and also law, would be more suitable if you
studied in a jc. of course this doesn't mean that all the other people studying in jc
that have other careers in mind are wasting their time. admittedly jc's do allow
a faster route to the university but the thing is that it has a greater advantage
compared to a diploma only when used locally because due to our government's
emphasis on a levels, demand and supply dictates that for local universities, more
places have to be opened up for a level graduates.

but once it comes to overseas uni, both poly and jc graduates have equal standing
already. so if i know what i want to do in the future and i really don't intend to
study locally because a)i want to be able to get a taste of what it's like to study overseas
and experience something different. and b) i don't want to spend my entire education
here in singapore because it really feels like the whole 'jing di zhi wa' idiom - like its the
easier route and more comfortable but you'll never get to see what's out there! i know
its not practical especially when it comes to the financial part but this is why i've got
to work really hard no matter where i am now so that at least perhaps i could get
some form of subsidy, grant or scholarship from the uni.

on a sidenote, i dont want to end up just like one of those people who climb up all the
way to a masters but end up not doing what they had in mind initially for the rest of
their lives. that would be the most dreadful thing, to spend the rest of your life doing
something you never had in mind.

poly wasn't like what it was a few years back. people went in because they had no
other choice not because they wanted to. in fact nowadays there are many courses
you can't get into but you can still get into srjc, innova for example. and university
admissions were almost zilch. but it really is very different nowadays contrary to
what some people still think, although university admission still isn't a 100%
guarantee thing, so i'll have to work very hard if I want to get a degree.

but then again, who says taking the jc route is a 100% guarantee for university?
sure, the rates are higher but university admission is one thing and course admission
is another. not all who make it through to university end up doing what they had
in mind originally.

really, there are a whole bunch of other factors that i've considered when comparing
poly to jc. a more flexible curriculum and timetable amongst so many other things.
and plus chinese and math are really taking a toll on me in jc. however, for culture
wise i would actually stick to a jc because admittedly enough it really is nicer there.

i guess if you haven't made up your mind on what you would want to do, jc is definitely
safer but the question is what if you have? is it really still wise to stick to a jc when you
can make it in compared to getting a headstart in your 'real' studies?

my whole life i've always been following the whole "grab the best place you can get"
mentality which has been very strongly nurtured by the society at large. But when
has that ever done any good for me? maybe it's about time I started to stand up and
think on my own two feet for myself instead of just taking the most obvious route.

last sunday was east coast park with lsbc youth and i discovered i'm a complete bozo
when it comes to rollerblading hahaha! my sister tagged along and i think she didn't
have her lunch so she got really dizzy at one point and fell, injuring her arm and then
she complained of severe headaches. so there were a lot of problems in getting her back
and at one point we realised we were late in returning the blades so i had to bike back
at full speed with some of the blades. luckily my sis recovered after a while and we all
decided not to have dinner and bus-ed back then.

after school on wednesday, teresa came back from nj bringing each-a-cup bubble tea
with her! awesome, thanks so much (: oh and by the way, each-a-cup is only 1.20 there.
thats like really really cheap. shucks, why doesn't cjc have sweettalk or something huh.

anyway, after we walked around school with lucille for a while, three of us left for
woodlands library where we actually studied! :O okay, this is a positive development in
my studies!haha, lucille's neighbour johnny(?) came over after a while and he was studying
for his O's which brought back a lot of memories :P but anyway, it was really funny and
also weird because johnny kept pestering teresa to LITERALLY rub off some of her
intelligence on him so she gave him the LOOK. hahaha!

it was okay after a while and we asked/helped each other on some work so that was good
and productive (: we had dinner at long john silver's afterwards before lucille left with
johnny, then teresa and me train-ed back home. yeah, more study sessions to come in
the future yup!

went for the sajc life concert with charisse and sister on friday night which was fun but i've
got to admit that the music and atmosphere was still eons away from rockefella. the message
was actually good though(:

met up with some new people later on, specifically og7 which consisted of vanessa, john, LL,
sherman, timothy and jane. was introduced to them by tus and mus because they knew
vanessa. so we all trooped down to newton food centre and although initially i thought their
food would be more ex and less worth it than chompchomp, i was quite surprised to find that
their prices were actually more decent than before. shared stingray, fried prawn mee and
oyster omelette! afterwards we played a bit of bridge and i finally learnt how to properly
bid, haha you see i'm such a noob.

we then quickly rushed for the last train so that we wouldn't have to take midnight surchage
taxis and most of us actually dropped off around the same two stops yio chu kang and khatib,
haha! oh yes and vanessa is really funky. she has to travel from yck to acjc every morning
but she's still so bubbly!

anyway, today was youth again then went back with the twins to their house to watch
time machine before playing badminton with eryn and her brother. anyway eryn is now
suffering the toll of the 1 hour plus journey i've taken for 4 years to acsi. haha i wish her
all the best of luck cos it's really really tiring! left for home later on but thankfully i've just
reached back in time before it's started to pour (at midnight for goodness sake!)

and it's the final bell
~reyz

2007-03-24T23:33:00.000+08:00

The fine line of rhythm

Plug-in: Ruby - Kaiser Chiefs

school has started again and it really feels nothing like the first two months i've had.
the tutorials, assignments, cca commitments are all piling up and to be honest it's really
tiring me down to the bone. i can barely stay awake in most of the lectures.

i miss so many things about the first two months. our fun-loving ig3, which would go out to
town until the latest hours of the night and which made adjusting to jc life so much easier.
i still remember all the times when we'd constantly make fun and tease each other about
almost everything. and all the times in which we'd talk about anything under the sun.
sometimes i still find it amazing how quickly we bonded in a couple of days. next outing in
june, yeah!(:

the crazy 1t02, which i had apprehensions about at first but as the weeks passed, the people
became more and more a part of life in cjc. there were so many memorable things about the
first two months. the after school truth and dare games, the whole class migrating to the
toilet during math tutorials, bollywood dancing at 7am in the morning, groupwork which we
almost never get anything done, poking fun at the teachers, poking fun at each other, the
class jersey, makan sessions with brownies, chicken wings, mee goreng, passing notes like
"there's a footprint on the ceiling" around the lecture hall and taking turns to laugh while
watching people react, plus all the other countless eccentric, spontaneous behaviour that
could fill out the entire length of this post. <3 you guys and we've gotta plan some more barbeques soon yep!

plus there were so many other people and things about cjc 1st 2 months that made it seem
so special. of course cjc is still fun now but as i said it's nothing like it was. OH WELLS.

my class now is 1t27 and it is quite a fun class so far actually. haha we've already planned pool outings and a class hoodie! so by all right, things are looking up =)

left with nanda when school finished on thursday to meet up with rastus and rasmus for
300. nanda and i went to lido at first but we had second thoughts about trying to sneak
in there after recalling the number of times we've known of people who have been caught
there.

then we bus-sed down and met the twins at the cathay. so we were deciding who to
approach the counter first and i went, but it was really stupid on hindsight because i was wearing uniform. so naturally halfway while i was checking the seats, the woman stared
at my badge and then said "are you sure you're 18?" and before i could even reply she
asked me for my ic so that was endgame. then rasmus went forward after a while and he
got the tickets! after all they were wearing street clothes and a beanie so they didn't look
like they were schooling. but actually both of them aren't really schooling anyway, haha!

got some crispy chicken before watching 300 which was breathtakingly awesome, especially
the visuals. there were some unexpected moments of baring including that oracle scene
which i was more surprised to see than all the gratuitous gory violence! although the story
wasn't exceptional i think everything else about the film was so damn cool and spectacular.

after the movie, we sent nanda off at the bus-stop (the 14 which took forever to come)
before heading back to khatib. then we had dinner at new york pizza because there wasn't
any food at home for either of us. the lasagna was quite overpriced actually but it was
really funny when mus tried feeding me it haha! then it was ramly burger time before
heading home.

had swimming this morning with janice and joel at janice's condo. it felt really good to just
not do anything for once when entering a pool! then it was lunch at subway in j8 before
i headed down to the twins church at hougang, living sanctuary, meeting my sister on the
way. the youth service was really quite good, probably even more charismatic than aog.
and the focus on 17 year olds learning how to lead and organize the youths was something
new for me. there was dinner after cell with the twins, kevin and darryl before heading
back to the church to pick my sister from cell before taking a bus back to the twins place
and watching final destination 2. haha, another gory movie again!

anyway, it's about time i shared something. its really cool how i can discuss a lot of stuff with
the twins and not only do they listen but they also give advice along the way. increasingly
i realise that our backgrounds are actually not very different from each other like our family
heritage for instance is just one out of many things. our mothers are both hakka and their
families stay in johor. then the ccas we joined in secondary school are also the same, heck
we even went to all the same camps and imt practices for ncc. and these are just some of
the things.

okay, so if maybe these could all be just a series of coincidences, maybe they really could
be. but it really is uncanny when we compare and realise the similarities. even our family
structure is the same in terms of order and even age except they have twins where i'm
supposed to be. haha, so cool right?

despite having studied in northview instead of acs, they scored better than me for their O's
so that just goes to show that you don't have to come from a premier institution to do well.
it really is all up to your own discipline and mindset. in a way, it's amazing because initially
i didn't think i would've expected to make such good friends with them but the thing is that
they really don't think and behave someone from a neighbourhood school. haha really i'm
not the only one, this is what even a lot of their friends from cjc and sajc say about them as
well. they have very positive mindsets about a lot of things and it's obvious at times how
deep their faith in God is. haha well i guess this is my perspective but hey, in life we all see
something different in others. another thing also is that i don't feel weird or separate at all
whenever i'm with them. its strange to say but it feels like as if i'm with people i've known
all my life.. ahh i'm really blessed to have found such friends (:

fire from the skies
~reyz

2007-03-18T22:25:00.000+08:00

Show me your sunshine

Plug-in: Don't Matter - Akon

these march holidays were one of the laziest i've ever had considering that
there was absolutely no homework to be done because the orientation ended
nicely just before the holidays ended leaving no room for us to get settled into
classes and having teachers pound us with endless tutorials before our break
starts (that will happen once school starts again)

anyway, the hols were really quite fulfilling and it was great that i didn't spend
a lot of time at home because that would have been a major waste of time.

after church on sunday, our cell - joel, charisse, marcus, vanessa, esther, serene
and i headed down to kenny rogers at great world before crossing over to the
opposite complex for bowling because its always fun to watch esther, being the
~~klutz~~ unlucky girl that she is, display newfound ways to strike the longkang
unintentionally. but anyway, the mood's been quite sombre recently because
charisse, marcus and vanessa are migrating overseas. furthermore, joel is
changing church due to parents. basically to sum it up, our cell is splitting up and
i guess we dont really want it this way but its like one of those moments in life
when there's a fork in the road and people go their seperate ways. its just the
part and parcel of life when you cant really expect people to stay rooted in the
same place forever.

the past 5 years or so have been fun and awesome when we hang out together,
worshipping God in church, chilling out and jamming at each other's houses, i
forgot to mention how charisse's party at her house two saturdays ago was really
fun albeit noisy.

hey but im sure we'll definitely meet and catch up in the future soon again though.
i guess we should really see this as less of a split but more of a chance to prove our
unity (: nevertheless, farewell party soon!

anyway, went out to for pool with the 1st intake ig. met up with bernice, oriana, lanz,
wei chun, rastus and rasmus at ps bk before heading down to paradiz. the pool tables
there were quite okay but they were a bit old. after some arcade-ing lanz left and the
rest of us headed across the street over to the rochor beancurd stall, which the twins
recommended. it was really quite the sex ~~estrogen not included~~, plus dipping golden,
crispy yu char kway in the tau huey was heavenly heavenly.

tuesday was dinner with janice at sushi tei vivo and then we walked around quite
aimlessly, window shopping etc. wanted to catch a movie but there wasn't anything
particularly interesting at the moment so in the end we just bought smoothies and
hung out around the boardwalk talking about all things under the sun. sometimes i
think that can be the most fun thing to do.

class lunch was on wednesday at breeks in taka. i miss 1t02 and all the goofiness,
random-ness that came along with it. was slightly late because i had to go for an x-ray
appointment to check my back which was experiencing some sharp pain for the past
couple of days.

the lunch was great but since rebecca and erin bought their boyfriends along it wasn't as
fun as it could have been. still, we headed down afterwards to the basement for gelato.
then it was a really funny bidding farewell to the couples before we headed to lucky plaza
for pool where no one believed it when crenshaw and audrey said that they hadn't played
pool for "very long". eh, i don't think getting to the magic 8 ball in 6-7 turns is anything short
of pure skill. tsk guys!

woke up slightly earlier on thursday and packed before meeting rastus & rasmus then
taking a train down to bedok to meet up with lanz, teresa, terence, sheryl and dong xing
at macs. i then proceeded to devour my packet of beehoon in a somewhat discreet
manner. took a bus down to east coast and we spent the rest of the day biking, kayaking
and getting a mega sunburn. it was quite unfortunate we didn't have a camera
if not there would have been lots of ~~camwhoring~~ fun moments to capture, haha.
we tried to bike to changi village but had no idea it was so damn far, so we gave up
somewhere very near changi airport. headed over to parkway parade where general
george (dong), abandoned us for his 7 o' clock ch8 show.

and to quote teresa "zomg, you are a guy and you watch THAT?"

ended with dinner at pastamania which was like a super cheese overload. played a very
short session of pool in parkway centre and the air-con there was so freaking cold (i was
wearing shorts! because of a rather big graze on my knee from a bicycle collision with
some kid earlier) but the tables were really good plus there was television to keep us
entertained, besides pool of course. took a very long bus ride back home with the twins
afterwards. i don't mind coming to east coast often but its seriously far away. almost any
mode of transport takes about an hour or more.

met up with javier on friday for lunch at vivo and tried out superdog for the first time.
the dogs there were so-so but i think the chilli cheese was good enough. then went to gv
to meet mingli for music&lyrics. which i didn't expect much from at all initially, but boy
it was really quite entertaining despite the rather formulaic rom-com plot. i think the
original songs were really good and the scenes with the shakira pop-queen-alike were
laughoutloud funny. not bad altogether.

yesterday was serene's birthday party and it was actually partially a farewell thing as
well. so it wasn't really fair to serene that we were all quite emo/moody throughout.
so sorry! but the food catered was good and we left for some kboxing afterwards at
cine. kbox isn't really my kind of recreation but it was worth trying out to watch
esther and charisse attempt songs with really high notes xD

came home first before heading out for chomps at serangoon gardens with xinru,
rastus and rasmus. it would have been even more fun if xinya came, and then my
attempt at matchmaking twins would have come to fruition HAHA but we still had fun.
bumped into many many cj people there. talked to diana, heather, eddie and ben before
we finally found a seat. after dinner was haato. GOD ITS LIKE CHEAP, GOOD GELATO
FINALLY! then we walked back to ru's place where we attempted to build sparkler rockets,
to much failure of course and then talked about jc/poly and the whole future plans kind of
discussion.

and then of course it was another long bus ride back with tus and mus. haha, i should
really record the number of times i say this.

had lunch today with family at ivins after church, which has really good peranakan food by
the way. got back home and the twins came over after a while and we watched the prestige,
one of the best movies i wanted to catch last year but didn't because of the o's. the plot was
really good and the way the whole thing played out including the ending was super cool.
we had dinner before hanging out at the computer again listening to music, watching videos
and then my sis came in the room and started talking to them and asking questions. eventually
they left after giving up trying to find out more about my sister's love life, hahaha.

so i'm blogging right now and yes, school starts again tomorrow ahh!

you can take the boy out of philly, but you can't take philly out of the boy
~rey

2007-03-10T14:43:00.000+08:00

March to a new beat

Plug-in: I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor - Arctic Monkeys

well, orientation two's over and it wasn't much of a blast compared to o1 to
be honest. everything, the games and finale night were not as enthu, exciting
and memorable as the ones we had in the first couple of weeks in january, plus
orientation this time round was squeezed into two days due to time constraints.
of course its a lot better than say nj or aj's orientation still but i guess we can't
go around expecting magic to repeat itself.

my ig was not bad though, had cool leaders - eileen, mich and lester haha and
plus some familiar faces around like eddie and inez although there were a number
of first intakers that i couldn't recognise at all and i think elsewhere people were
equally stunned too when their igmates announced they were first intakers. i think
we just get taken aback when we realise that we think we know roughly who everyone
is but we actually don't. anyway i think i would have died of boredom during orientation
if not for xinru, eddie, terence and a couple others haha!

anyway, post-finale night on thursday, some members of our ig went out together
along with our igl's eileen, mich and lester who we waited a crazy 20 minutes for while
they were debriefing. haha, but i guess it was worth the wait and we were one of the
handful of igs who went out that night. xinru, hongzhou, daniel, samantha, zi jian, jia
yi and nicole came along too and we went to subway at far east. and it was ~~annoying~~
great to hear lester's long and pointless stories along with the hilarious aunty at the counter
who kept telling us really funny things.

yesterday after some lame class orientation classes, it was the cca fair where i just slacked
around at the pa pool before coming back to school and talking to some people like felicia,
prema etc. then bathed in school and changed before heading down to taka with terence to
meet tus&mus for dinner at yoshinoya. haha, terence was very amused seeing the twins
break out into singing occasionally (not the first time for anyone) hahaha! then we took a
bus back to school for rockefella! wanted to sit with the class initially but they couldn't get
all the front row seats so decided to sit with terence and the twins a couple rows back.

rockefella was awesome stuff, from the very first performance where there was a 'father'
rocking on bass, brother paul wearing t-shirt and jeans, laughing at the Vacuum Cleaners
and all the hot hot acts like ben's band, hot monks and faq but most of all, getting to see
tan jek suan our vp getting tossed around in the mosh pit. priceless stuff. had supper at
khatib market, prawn mee, char kway teow etc before we walked back to home. its
really cool how they stay nearby, can always have late night suppers haha

well, to be honest, i'm really quite contended to stay in cjc. the student culture here
seriously rocks. all the first intakers who left for other schools like aj and nj are
complaining about how dead and socially ~~retarded~~ inept the people there are. even
those who went ac and sa find their discipline systems annoyingly strict and not to
forget that ac is more chinese than anglo these days. some of them even crashed our
orientation instead of going for theirs. and cj's academics are getting better every year.
these two years are going to be awesome yep.

can't wait for the march holidays to begin! (:

euphoria en masse
~reyz

2007-03-07T22:59:00.000+08:00

Slipped Up

Plug-in: Through Glass - Stone Sour

i'm really quite a fool for not realising that my cca grade was put down as ungraded.
guess it was complacency more than anything but really, how was I to know that such
an error could happen?

anyway now because of this error i couldn't get into either acjc or sajc but i have to fall
back to cjc. at least i should be slightly thankful that i didn't end up in one of the choices
after cjc, that would have been really bad. but i'm really quite upset at the system but
i think more than anything, it was my own carelessness that made me forget to double
check form a thoroughly.

called up the form teacher yesterday about this problem and she said that the only option
is to send in an appeal with relevant cca documents, records and proof of the grade. so
now i have to go and get this cca grade fixed before sending in appeals. but appeals only
go by raw points and it's not going to be easy.

anyway, orientation today was quite okay but it paled way in comparison to the one for
the first intake and i think it's not just cjc. everyone's so much less enthu when it comes
to the second intake because you can't just pretend to feel the same way all over again.

tripped over myself
~reyz

2007-03-02T20:02:00.000+08:00

Catch you with arms wide open

Plug-in: Starlight - Muse

i ponned school on monday to watch the oscars. haha okay seriously i was sick but it
just so happened to be oscars day la. anyway, it was my first time catching the oscars
live and man, there is so much you will miss out on when you watch the encore telecast
aside from the red carpet which is actually kinda boring but a lot of stuff is censored or
edited throughout the ceremony, especially the funnier, dirtier jokes and skits etc.

this year's ceremony was not bad, i think the departed really deserved to get best picture.
I HAVE STILL YET TO WATCH IT, QUICK, MOVIE TIME DURING THE MARCH HOLS.
best actor and actress, forest whitake and helen mirren (king & queen) were like shoo-ins
and all the rest was fine, dandy stuff. you know, there's just something about the oscars to
me that makes it easy to sit through every year, even all the boring technical categories. i
think besides the wonderful wonderful movies nominated (okay maybe not all), another
reason is that its presented differently every year, the gags never fail to crack me up and
it has this alluring sense of formality without being too dry. mm.

anyway, went down to the cathay in the evening to watch dreamgirls with sister and janice.
the show was quite okay, i guess the audience was quite annoyed and irritated with the
never-ending breaking out into song but honestly, they should have known it was a musical
even though there was way more singing than chicago and moulin rouge combined. i also
expected the story to be a bit darker but the drama turned out to be rather fluffy and
family-friendly in the end. although all in all, the music was good stuff.

after school on tuesday (a fabulous day btw, almost all lectures (; ) went to Borders
with gillian, joy, crenshaw and debbie to browse arty farty literature before we met up
with bernice at shaw house and had lunch, long john silvers, whilst delightfully watching
joy and debbie scamper off towards the escalator before they realised it was the wrong
one. it happens to EVERYONE i swear!

wednesday was stoning in school after curriculum because it was raining elephants and
whales, training was cancelled. so i took the time to get to know residents of the canteen
(the students not the stallowners) before bus-ed home via orchard with sylvie and kai an.

thursday was tres fun as a lot of people (like the whole arts stream) decided to pon the
last period of school, which was chinese for most of us haha. anyway, our whole class left
for prata house in annoying weather, which was like drizzling on and off. had a good time,
cheese prata, teh chino and all (:

then i took a bus down to the cathay to meet bernice and tus/mus. the ride was bloody
long and i just realised how hopeless long-haul bus rides are when you have the mrt in
singapore. a train ride down from khatib, my place, to dhoby ghaut = duration of bus ride
from thomson to same place x2. and thomson is like how much more near in terms of
actual distance la. anyway, was just in time and we watched letters from iwo jima which
was really good.

its very different from flags of our fathers and saving private ryan because those have a
perspective that is deliberately in favour of the US. i think what caught my attention the
most was the sound effects which were brilliant, especially when felt in a cinema. the story
was good but at the end of the film, i still couldn't understand the conclusion and whether
it was more of a political commentary or just simply a narrative set in a war. anyway,
bernice kept covering her ears/eyes whenever the gory scenes came on, haha.

ig lunch today at far east plaza with our igl jon lauw along with sheryl, oriana, bernice,
nick, lanz, joey and i had the chicken rice upstairs which was a lot better than eating
fast food. jon left for his CL a level results and we met xavier, jasmine, tus/mus, angeline
and philip at the basement. discussed a bit about possible march hols gathering before
sheryl/oriana/bernice/joey/tus/mus and i left to lucky plaza to pool. my first time there
and the place was kinda shady with its obscene drawings on the wall but its far cheaper
than monster cue plus people playing there were decent. haha, i need to practice more
often not irregularly if not ill never improve and i think that's how pool works lo. finished
about 6 and then train-ed back with the twins.

nice summary of the week's events eh.

take it to the back
~reyz

2007-02-24T22:26:00.000+08:00

Pineapple tarts must have had liquor

Plug-in: What Goes Around... / ... Comes Around - Justin Timberlake

wasn't really into this year's chinese new year mood and i think a lot of people
in my generation feel the same way too. Heck, even my parents weren't as
enthusiastic as before. I think as singapore advances closer to cosmopolitan status,
all the traditions and cultural customs will slowly die off just like it does in most
asian cities. Hmm.

anyway, last saturday was reunion dinner on the paternal side. Yusheng tossing was
fun but i think even better was mahjong and ban la. Had a winning streak in mahjong
but blackjack was a different story altogether because granddad killed everyone by
betting 50 bucks at a go and getting multiple 21s throughout the session. xO But still
had profits in the end via mahjong so it was okay i guess.

left for johore on sunday morning. The car ride there was damn fun because cousins
tagged along and we were mostly talking trash or trying to see who could survive longest
with festive music playing on full blast, haha! The festive mood there was slightly more
upbeat probably because people there aren't held back on the use of firecrackers and
fireworks. Besides pyrotechnics display on sunday night which was really awesome,
sally and i tried learning how to drive.. to much disastrous results of course. I'm really
trying to get a headstart though and not turn up for driving license test like a numbnut.

came back to little red dot late on monday afternoon and rushed to national library at
bugis to meet nanda, verin, erin and erika for econs project. We slacked around and
brainstormed before getting around to filming which was so damn hilarious because verin
was making funny faces whilst i was doing my take. We took 2 hours to film a 5 minute
clip. Haha, talk about efficient time management. Then we shared uber freaky ghost stories
on the way home. hyukhyuk and i thought i was over the whole spirit world thing by now.

was treated a belated birthday lunch by javier on tuesday at the soup spoon in raffles city,
a big thanks for that! (: afterwards we did some catching up over drinks at mix and having
some nice ol' trash talk. rushed back to yishun on train and walked a distance to tus/mus
place for a brief cny visit before we cycled over (got tompang-ed lol) to my house where we
had dinner cooked by my mom. then headed over to my room to bum around, listening to
music whilst transferring tus some recommended songs until 11-ish, before sending them
off.

school next day was basically the usual blah-blah. did some fun stuff in class again. then
thursday was movie gang outing with crenshaw, nanda, john and joy. gillian tagged along
too but she was only with us for lunch at bk. we watched norbit at lido and it was friggin
hilarious but at the expense of the plot. i think its just one of those movies that prioritise
on the comic appeal instead of the overall quality. there were some serious gross-out
moments with the presence of fat-ass rasputia but eddie murphy was still super funny
especially as mr wong. Whale Ho! haha.

anyway, went over to the twins place again after training yesterday. a little sidetracking
but i always used to think that twins were generally dao because they would be close to
each other but i'm seriously proven wrong. there are quite a number of twins in cjc this
year and all of them are the fun, outgoing sort. anyway, ate a bit before hanging out at
the coms and helping them install itunes, something they should have gotten long ago haha.
then it was supernatural before i had to leave for home and we raced there on bike. haven't
raced on bikes for a long time, fun stuff (yea i know, i'm deprived of fun)

and i think you know what i mean
~reyz

2007-02-17T15:22:00.000+08:00

Aiyah, still not 18 yet la.

Plug-in: Snow (Hey Oh) - Red Hot Chili Peppers

i'll start off first with tuesday which was the day verin, erin, erika, crenshaw
and me went to queensway after school to get our class jersey done!

we had a bit of a hassle deciding on what designs to get because all the good
ones were gone and poor erika was ~~salivating~~ fawning over this really
hawt red and gold dry-fit tee. eventually after lunch at macs and much hesitation,
we settled on the red version of 1t04's blue adidas jersey. haha it was actually the
best and cheapest around so we didn't have much of a choice. red is definitely more
hot than blue though!

browsed around in converse after getting the design and names settled, where erin
went on a lengthy discourse about 'didi' which i found really amusing. it was his
birthday and she almost bought him these rainbow-coloured sneakers, which luckily
she didn't because we all honestly felt it was too gay :D

afterwards i left for revenue house at novena to meet up with joel, charisse and vanessa
where they treated me to a birthday dinner at the suki sushi there which was different
from the others because there was a large menu on grills, really yummy stuff. thanks guys!

thursday was really great. the class people were bloody awesome to sing 'happy birthday'
in the canteen and then in the lecture theatre at completely unexpected moments.
haha a BIG thanks to all those who wished me a happy birthday via sms/msn/personally:
joanne, nicholas, gwen, natalie, sherry, rasmus, rastus, javier, wei chun, sheryl, petrina, kah
woon, max, eric, philip and a number of other people from cjc, sorry if i couldn't remember
your names! and to those who got me a card: oriana, joel, charisse, janice, marcus, weiling!

for the reebok cap, angeline! for the polo ralph lauren t-shirt, vanessa! for the box of chocs,
joel! and for the freshly baked brownies jen! (: thanks everyone for making this the best
birthday ever.

dinner at hoagies with family was great in part because i haven't been spending much time
with them, plus the tiramisu was good stuff!

after school yesterday was the birthday lunch with ig3 at nydc wheelock. bumped into
gerald who got posted to pioneer, who was at lido with his og. nydc lunch was great, complete
with magic tricks, inane chatter, random photos and good food whilst waiting for nicholas and
dongxing to arrive for the cake. oh yeah and i was on a dare to tell one of the waitresses that
she was gorgeous and beautiful, which i actually did and then a few minutes later, another
waitress came along, handing me some wrapped-up cookies and said "she feels the same way
too". HAHAHA.

_______________________________________tus&mus. whoa, freaky.

angeline's date for the day!__________________the girls

the guys, rastus's dog made me happy :D______my, the dog is popular indeed.

himbo on call!____________________________lanz trying a new look

it's just brotherly love, what were you thinking?//the number 17, for those visually challenged.

so cute.________________________________double trouble!

star+light = starlight______________________sorry, this was just random.

the three 'R' amigos._______________________the big O cake! i like.

the surprise ig birthday card!_______________and on nicholas's cue, i cried. ;(

HOOSH.__________________________//tus trying to impress the impossibly hard to impress bernice

Pressure = N/m2_______________________that didn't work on the frozen cake, so... plan B.

oriana!________________________________THE END (:

(thanks guys for the combined ig card and tus&mus for the u2 album. <3 you all guys!)

afterwards, bernice, the twins and i left to window shop... blazers, aviators, dunks. anything that was out of our budget, haha. train-ed back home together and met up with the twins
again after dinner for ghost rider at gv yishun, which had a really lousy story but really good
performance from nicholas cage. super hungry post-movie, so we went for bak chor mee
supper before bus-ing home.

2 more weeks left :( dancing under the stars
~reyz

2007-02-14T23:05:00.000+08:00

Roses are Randy Stuff

Plug-in: Here (In Your Arms) - Hellogoodbye

valentine's day in cjc is crazy stuff. Everyone's going around giving each other
kisses and hugs, gifts and LOTS of candies, chocolates. I swear I got more
chocolate today than on any given halloween. And the council came up with this
crazy idea to peg each other with messages. I think I must have looked like some
kind of decorative art at one point. Nevertheless, all the hugging and faux kissing
definitely made me high (:

anyway, earlier in the morning met up with rasmus (rastus's twin bro yo!) at khatib
station. I was taken aback by how similar they looked. Although on closer inspection,
rasmus ~~is fatter~~ has rounder cheeks and they smile differently. They were
swopping places for one day, something twins always get to do and not us singles :(
rastus went to sa instead, so i was supposed to be like rasmus's guide for the day
besides dong xing who was the only other one clued in to the swap. dong handled
pretty much the class side since dong and rastus are in the same class but i think
the class somehow figured out by break time, lol.
hey, but it was really cool how rasmus fooled a lot of people that day, haha!

lays and tania came in during chinese to bid farewell as they were withdrawing to
go to poly. blehh will miss those two!

anyway for those who were curious to know, yes I did meet her after training and
it was really awesome to just hang around, have dinner and do plenty of other
memorable stuff like letting go heart-shaped ballons into the sky... =)

i'll never forget the memories you saved for me
~reyz

2007-02-11T18:10:00.000+08:00

The Doors that Close and Open

Plug-in: Like a Stone - Audioslave

After much waiting and nervous anticipation, the results are finally out.

Everyone in school on that day was so bloody nervous I could feel it. every teacher
that came to class that day made some comment about how our parents loved us
very much and we shouldn't "do anything silly", haha. school ended early after volleyball
pe and our class met mr tay in the canteen where he sprang us with the "surprise" which
was a well-wishing cake from bengawan. hung out around for a while chatting with some
people all the while sharing the same sense of dread. bus-ed back to acsi with honwei,
zonghan and kai an where we spent most of the time speculating the o level results this year.

We coincidentally met up with sae cheong and daniel when we passed by njc and then kai an
was like "mr. 9a1s has just entered the bus", haha. caught up with some old classmates at
the new sac when we reached school before we headed to the old audi to listen to the results.
all in all, this year's (half)cohort didn't do that well at all. our average of 12 was like pretty
bad compared to cat high's insane 9.6 and mgs's 10. it was quite expected though that results
were going to get worse every year with the introduction of ib.

After all the drama, sae cheong, daniel, kong yew, shixian, ghee and me headed down to the
canteen extension to treat sage and daniel prata for getting 9 and 8 a1s respectively.
the stallowner was quite impressed that we ordered the cone-shaped paper prata because
apparently no one else in acsi had ordered it previously. anyway, it was mighty delicious!
afterwards, i bus-ed to plaza sing with daniel and kong yew for starbucks before they left
and i met up with rastus, his twin brother rasmus, and charmaine and we walked around
and hung out for a while. both brothers got a l1r5 of 9 and they're going to ngee ann, can
you believe it? haha but to be honest i'm actually envious of those who go to poly because
they are very sure of what they want to do and not those who go to poly because they're
forced to. I guess its because they're willing to give up the prestige of a jc in order to do
what they're more passionate about or focused on. and they also get to forgo the crazy
mugging and workload!

Frankly speaking, I'm quite disappointed with my score even though I know I shouldn't
be. I know many who are dying to get a L1R5 of 10, have limited jc choices or some
who don't even have anywhere to go. But on the other hand, there have also been
friends who have completely unexpectedly got 7s, 8s, or 9s. More surprising still,
was the substantial amount of people in cjc who have managed to hit sub 10s as well.

Honestly, I was aiming for somewhere between a 6-8 and I thought my careful
calculations after every exam were accurate (and even still I added some casualty marks
here and there). Well, it turns out that the O levels are far more unpredictable than I even
expected. Slightly disappointed now that I can't make the cut for the likes of rj, vj and nj.
But to compound the problem, after careful consideration an aggregate of 10 now leaves me
in a 3-way dilemma. Should I return to the ac family (acjc), pursue the alternative (sajc) or
just simply stay in cjc?

Now of course when you read this, you'd be wondering why the heck i would still be
considering cjc after getting 10 points. There are quite a number of factors to begin with.
Firstly, it's the nearest out of the three choices. Now I know this doesn't seem to be of
much importance but trust me, after having to travel over an hour and 15 minutes for about
almost every morning for the past 4 years to dover, the relief of getting to wake up at 630
everyday now is simply amazing. No more supermassive eyebags to deal with and having to
drown myself in caffeine, whilst looking like a zombie. Of course a general retort would be that
singapore is such a small place and the distance relatively compared is nothing. But being in
a jc means a lot of time being devoted to studies, ccas, social life etc. And whilst everyone
gets back at around 7-8 i'll be home at 10 everyday if let's say i choose acjc.

Although this doesn't seem to be that much of a deal for now and as much as i would like
to go to acjc, TRUST ME when it gets around to the A levels however, i'm sure i'd be
wishing that i lived a 5 minute walk away from school.

Also, something you'd often hear from many jc graduates is that most people would have
settled down in the social environment already, making it harder for newcomers to get
adjusted. But then again, it's hard to say because i'm sure that just as there are people
entering into a new jc post-jae, there are also almost as many leaving for other jcs. So
truthfully enough, this isn't really much of an issue.

Out of the three choices, cjc is the most academically weak according to the as of now
ranking. So by right, sajc looks like a good choice as it balances up the opposites of acjc
and cjc. It's more than decent in academics, a lot nearer than acjc, the campus is also
spanking new (hawt facilities i've heard) and by word of mouth, the student body there
is equally friendly as cj's. But cj is steadily improving and judging from what i hear around,
there are many 6-7 pointers staying put so who knows whether cj this year might actually
improve vastly compared to previous years?? It would be great if this were to be so because
i've got to know really nice, awesome people over the past 5 weeks, even though there are
quite a number of them intending to move elsewhere as well.

I'm never good at making really big decisions :( Closing date for jae will be valentine's so i
do hope i'm going to make the right choice.

tell me which way to walk
~reyz

2007-02-08T22:32:00.000+08:00

Next stop, Road Kill

Plug-in: Suddenly I See - KT Tunstall

How time flies when you're having fun.. it's been slightly more than a month
and I don't even realise it. I just hope that time doesn't fly by this fast when
the a levels are approaching next year. Gah.

Anyway, just as rapid as the snapping of fingers, the results are officially out...
tomorrow.

Had lunch at gelare in far east on tuesday with bernice and her sa friend. The
waffles were lip-smackingly good because they were at half price so yeah, make
every tuesday a gelare day! :DD

Yesterday was cjc x-country meet and i was pretty worried about whether i
could make the top 20. Although I was quite sure it wouldn't be as competitive
as it was back in acsi, I was still worried that I'd underestimate the competition.
Only two people from our class were in competitive although most classes went
in as a whole. So the entire class's hopes were resting heavily on us to at least get
a prize (the top 20). Erin was constantly pampering us but of course it was subjective
because while she massaged my back, she told me very succinctly that she would
whack me if I didn't make it to the top 20 :O

So anyway, the race began and it was quite annoyingly unorganized because both the
j1 and j2 guys started off at once and it was rather chaotic. Eventually I managed to
find my footing and rhythm, pacing rastus throughout the jungle route as we both
tried to overtake each other. It was good that I had rastus as a pacemaker, if not I
would have been a lot slower due to very irregular and insufficient preparation for
the meet. Oh and it was somewhat satisfying to overtake mr tay (i guess it comes
from overcoming the whole teacher is better than the student mentality haha).

I sped up during the road pavement part, leaving rastus behind (sorry dude!) and
just chionging forward. Eventually, I managed to finish a few steps behind kenneth,
my swimming captain so I thought I'd did quite well but imagine my utter look of
disappointment when I got a number tag '31'. I was pretty flustered as there weren't
many competitors around and rastus, who finished 15 seconds behind me was also
quite skeptical. Then one of the pe teachers told us that anyone who got a tag would
win something, meaning they had gotten into the top 20 and whilst girls were numbered
1-20, the guys were 21-40 which meant I had got the 11th place whilst rastus with '33'
had gotten the 13th position. I was rather elated at that point and so was audrey who
had finished 16th in the girls cat.

Then came the prize presentation and there was a screw-up which resulted in me and
audrey's names not being announced. Apparently there was an error in the registration
for our class and our names were not recorded whilst the 21st person got bumped up to
the 20th place. Both of us were rather frustrated so we told ms smith, our pe teacher,
who eventually informed the pe head, vp and our principal brother paul. We were upset
and frankly quite pissed to be told that they could do nothing about the error for now.
Luckily we have super nice classmates and igmates that managed to spread the word
around and somehow or other, the lists that were put up on the general notice board
this morning was corrected and had our names on it.

We were still slightly pissed over not being able to be presented a prize. I mean who after
having ran their hearts out and not being able to be given recognition due to an admin error
wouldn't get angry? The only reason why we didn't pursue any action was because we felt
that most people were already aware of it and I think the winners were all really really nice
to have helped us by transferring the medals upwards. I guess it really made our day to
know that other people had the compassion and were determined to give up their medals
so that we could get ours. We couldn't have done anything if they wanted to hold on to their
own but everyone was just really nice about it!

champions in our own right

Anyway, yeah drama aside, we had another ig dinner after the x-country meet at pepper
lunch in lido. Another class was there too and rastus was busy impressing everyone with
magic tricks. Then we did some other unmentionable crazy stuff outside wisma afterwards.
Chilling out on a night with school the next day is just immensely liberating for some reason(:

because it's times like these, we learn to live again
~reyz

2007-02-04T22:51:00.000+08:00

1t02 class bbq!

Plug-in: Maneater - Nelly Furtado (za bo song)

We had our class bbq yesterday. It was a bit chaotic at first because the
supplyman for the raw food was already at east coast carpark, threatening
to leave and someone was supposed to be there to collect it but in the end,
erika and me, having just arrived at parkway with audrey and oriana after
meeting them at eunos mrt, ran all the way from the mall to the carpark which
trust me, is not something anyone would opt to do under normal circumstances
but we didn't really have much of a choice though.

Anyhoo, slight administration problem aside, the rest of the bbq went smoothly
and was pretty enjoyable(: plus the food was really yummy. adriel makes one
hell of a mean salad and he picks up all his cooking on his own. amazing, how
many people our age nowadays can actually cook, let alone guys!

The rest of the story's pretty picturesque...

FIRE!! AAAAAH.

me, LAYS, rebecca, adriel and varying degrees of masochism

i remember mingli said something about how// "PLEASE DON'T BURN ME!"
lixian looked like a ghost that popped up and
i responded "mingli, you look real pervy. and
perv > ghost."

v for vandalism_________________________Our Invaluable Entertainment System

this isn't going to sit well with debbie x)______erika!

oriana, audrey, me and erika________________RAWR.

me, lixian(ahgirl busy chatting away) and aniszah/ packing up.. wanna buy?

the long bus trip back with lays was fun! and had a great time sharing with each other
about christ and life (:

lingering scent of joy drifts across the endless ocean
~reyz

2007-01-31T22:03:00.000+08:00

Up and Coming

Plug-in: Stockholm Syndrome - Muse

It's the end of the first month and so far it's been crazy, tiring and loads of fun.
This really wasn't what I was expecting before i entered jc but then again, maybe
everyone's very bo chup now and taking it easy. But all in all, things have been
awesome around here and even going for trainings aren't such a pain in the ass
now (no not literally).

And speaking of swimming, I've gotten to know some of my fellow swimmers there
better and it seems we are pretty well-connected (damn! not literally again) to
other people. Its really cool to trace back and see the network of connections, which
brings me back to the whole six degrees of seperation theory now. But i'll save that
for a gp essay. Dinner on monday after training was an absolute exercise in fastest
fingers first! x)

Last friday, met up with javier at great world for dinner at al dente, whic was very
expensive and not really worth the cost. Then we watched bobby, which was equal
parts Crash and JFK. The large ensemble cast (we counted over 20 famous actors)
was really fun to watch but one downside was that character development on each
was not as much as it could have been. The pace was also unflinchingly slow, which
is the problem of expanding 24 hours into a 2 hour feature length film. However, the
dialogue was good and they did an excellent job in pieceing together the characters.
Post-movie, we went down to orchard to grab a hazelnut latte at starbucks and lots
more chatting and clear trepidation at the O level results release.

After the dreariness of tuesday, MATH TUTORIAL INCLUDED, adriel, nanda and
i bus-ed down to island creamery. Funness aside, both of us were supposed to help
nanda with her math but i think in the end, it was mostly adriel helping and I stoning
with my lit essay, looking at the waitresses and wondering wth she's still doing here
(thanks to nanda's story of rich girls working in island creamery)!

Today, i got to appreciate my class and the 'oobs gang especially. See, here's what
happened: my bottle of chocolate milkshake decided to take a big leak after hearing
ms yoong make some catlike noises, on the entire floor at the most inhumane time of
maths (which thankfully was ending) in the morning. However, thank god the next
lesson was econs and mr ang was being replaced by a teacher fresh out of nus who
gladly acquiesced to our request to mop the floor and hence began the great operation
which involved 2 cleaners, 4 mops, 6 ragcloths and 15 pairs of hands!

Here's where i have to express my deepest gratitude to the class for being so patient
and eager to clean up the mess, even going out on a limb to comfort me and the bottle
(no really!). You guys are the bestest! (:

during math, we are afflicted with a disease and its known as...

...FOWOB!

say juubjuub birds!

2007-01-26T22:37:00.000+08:00

Speaking of the right direction..

Plug-in: You Learn - Alanis Morissette

CJC is a pre-u institution that happens to be the only jc located on the side
of a major expressway and also only accessible via expressway. Just one of
the many unique elements about this jc that i've come to know so far for the
past month or so. This may sound utterly random but i've just realised that
there is something that establishes each and every jc as being unique or
different from the others contrary to my belief that most jcs in the above 10
points range were all the same.

After swimming on wednesday, philip and i met up with the rest of the ig -
angeline, oriana, sheryl, bernice, wei chun, xavier, nicholas, and cheryl cher - at
crystal jade kitchen in j8. Our ig3 is certainly a fun and lovable bunch to be around,
i'm rather grateful for that (:

Had shopping with adriel, rebecca, crenshaw and nanda yesterday for our class
bbq stuff at taka's cold storage. And grocery shopping is something i haven't done
since the last time i accompanied my mom to a supermarket, i think 4 or 5 years
ago, haha. But anyway, the bbq originally on tomorrow was eventually postponed
when we called and found out that all the bbq pits were fully booked already... My
my east coast is in high demand eh. So now the groceries will have to be stuffed into
adriel's refrigerator for a week or so.. no longer fresh anymore! :(

More tutorials, projects, assignments due next week not to forget i still have not
decided which GC to buy yet...

c-c-c-hanges!

2007-01-21T23:34:00.000+08:00

Bling, Bang, Boom!

Plug-in: This Ain't a Scene, It's an Arms Race - Fall-Out Boy

The past week's flown by in a blaze, but almost every moment was worth it.
It might be the new jc system or maybe it's just that my lucky side's finally
showing up but so far i have had absolutely not a single moment of worrying
about teachers pouncing up on us with harsh penalties if we talk, sms, have
due homework to pass up.

The funny thing is that most of the disciplinary system in jc seems to have been
scraped off. Whereas you had to be constantly conscious of whether what you do
would be deemed illegal by the administration and teachers in secondary schools,
being in a jc suddenly feels like you have this vast space of freedom, in a way very
much like that of a university but still maintaining the basic framework of punctuality
for classes, lectures etc. No one here orders you to keep quiet during classes, greet
people, pull up your socks etc. but the utter irony in this is that there are less
disciplinary cases and the occurence of teachers scolding students are almost zilch,
unlike back in secondary school. Plus everybody's just so much happier. So were
harsh rules ever really necessary?

It did feel a lot as if the teachers were constantly breathing down your neck back
in secondary and sometimes often making morally ambiguous judgments. Somehow,
junior colleges manage to weave in and out of the whole moral decisions dilemma
with ease. It's super good just to be able to focus on learning, making new friends
and having tons of fun crapping around with your classmates and ig group people.

Speaking of which, my class people turned out to be a really great bunch. Despite
their lack of internet connectivity (1/4 of the class doesn't use msn :O) they are
still a very fun and open group of people sticking together everywhere from the
canteen to the lecture theatres to the class. I love the back row, we ask the wittiest
questions (blame it on erika tuason :D) and do the most random things sometimes!

We went out on tuesday for a class lunch at pastamania cine. It seems like i'll have
to pass through orchard almost every other day nowadays - either going home or
having lunch/dinner and walking down from far east throughout orchard has become
so commonplace because the buses from cj only stop at far east but don't pass through
orchard. Anyway, at pastamania we met acjc j1s that some of us knew and so the group
turned out to be quite huge in the end. Afterwards, it was off to starbucks with crenshaw,
adriel, erika and nanda for coffee/dessert before we disbanded too and i went to the
cathay to meet joel and charisse to catch blood diamond, which had a really powerful
message about war-torn africa and humanity, including lots of high-octane action. Plus
dicaprio's accent was priceless.

The workload has already begun to pile up, worst of which is geog and econs. I'm so
not taking geog after the first 2 months, right now it's just because cj doesn't really
have the subject combination i'm looking for, although I've heard from seniors that
it will only be available post-JAE intake. I have a feeling getting A's for pure geog
in secondary school won't necessarily translate into distinctions or even a B for A level
geography, the content is just super mega huge and a lot to swallow.

Anyway, I went for a couple of swimming trainings on monday and wednesday which
turned out to be quite alright on the whole. Might consider staying in swimming for this
pae period because the trainings aren't as much as other sports ccas like canoeing, which
is super crazy... 5 times a week?!?! Had dinner at some hk char siew cafe in toa payoh
after training on monday with philip, xianyi and joseph. After some heavy discussion, I
might consider odac as cj's is the best by ranking and they play games beside just running
and gymming. Still not so sure about choice of cca yet but its not really that important
considering the pae period's only 2 months.

Friday was a humongous relief, TGIF! Looking forward to the weekends not because of
school but because of sheer exhaustion and the dire need to have mega sleeping sessions.
Took a bus to vivocity with mingli to grab some stuff from candy empire. Had lunch at
carl's junior and then walked around before having to leave - her for french and me for
the bed!

Had geog group project meeting earlier today at lido after church with mingli, erika and
nanda for which we are supposed to do an evaluation of hiv/aids in a particular country -
ours being zimbabwe - and suggest policy changes to help stem growth of the disease.
Groupwork so early in the year! But mostly productive anyway and later at orchard
library's galilee to finish up econs.

these were the unproductive parts:

mingli (cut-off), erika, nanda, me

I really don't know but contrary to what i thought previously, cj's been great so far and
the people are friendly and welcome you instead of sticking to their own cliques and all.
I'm not so certain whether only cj is like that or that it rings true in all the other jc's as well.
In a way, its kind of a good culture shock, i guess blame it on being in an elite boys school
for 10 years, haha. ACS was good in a lot of ways too - for example you could do things
then that girls would freak out at - but it really makes you miss out on a lot of other things
as well, not just merely the lack of interaction with girls on an academic level but even the
dynamics and hence, the whole system in a co-ed school is just a lot more different. Being
in a boys school was fun while it lasted but now, as its time to move on to the next phase
that is jc, i'm pretty glad that everything is co-ed now.

Well, i can foresee a dilemma on choosing jc's coming up soon. Decisions decisions.

out of your comfort zone, blind beliefs and into the real world

2007-01-14T22:55:00.000+08:00

Rain, rain go away

Plug-in: You Give Me Something - James Morrison

The past few days have been not too bad despite the horrendously bad
weather. Didn't go for the day activities at east coast on wednesday - some
kind of amazing race - because I was down with a slight cold from the rain but
that cleared up soon enough and i made my way to the finale night on which we
had with our super crazy, complicated but fun mass dance and campfire was loads
and loads of fun. Debbie, my dance partner from ij katong convent happened to be
a dancer so thankfully we didn't look too bad!

Thursday marked the start of official lessons and we had mostly introductory
lessons for our subjects, everyone was sleeping in maths not surprisingly. The
whole new system of having to shuttle from class to lecture theatre and back is
somewhat refreshing from the staleness of staying (and rotting) in classes during
secondary school but i do miss air-conditioned classes :( although the really cold
weather makes it unnecessary for now. Got to know my classmates better by
chatting throughout breaks (and sometimes the lectures). The canteen now is a
super hotspot for social activity and i get to know about 3-4 new people everyday
from other classes via their friends. The atmosphere's almost akin to that of a beehive.

Speaking of which, the canteen's food isn't remarkable for school standards but
fairly decent. It's slightly better than the old acsi canteen food with same or lower
pricing sometimes, so it's a fairly good trade-off. The noodles stall is supposedly the
best although i haven't gotten around to trying it out because of its intimidatingly
long queue (due to its inefficient order system) and the western food stall also has
an amazing range - thai, french, korean, italian, mongolian?, bbq - such that it should
be renamed the International Food Stall.

Had some cca tryouts on friday.. fencing, canoeing and choir which i was reluctant
to try but due to eager persuasion from bernice... However, the cost of fencing
equipment at $640 was hardly worth the cca and I also declined from choir eventually.
I'm faced with canoeing or I can wait til' the end of next week where there will be more
cca trials and auditions for the various other ccas, which I probably will.

Left for dinner at subway cine with bernice, sheryl and nicholas after everything, which
ended at around 7. Chatted and people-watched (bernice's favourite pastime, haha)
our way til 10, bumping into many friends both old and new, nicholas's ex-cat high band
members included, before deciding to head home, due to nicholas having drank 3 bottles
of _______ but not before grabbing some popcorn. Watched click on dvd rental with dad
and sis before bumping off at 2.

sheryl and i taking pictures of each other whilst nicholas
attempts to look innocent (hint: bottom left corner)

I'm really quite burnt-out from the week's activities, had barely any sleep. Today's lunch
with charisse and joel was fairly entertaining with our own stories to tell about being in
a junior college though (:

it all happens too quickly

2007-01-09T20:49:00.000+08:00

All work all day makes jill a dull ___

Plug-in: Supermassive Black Hole - Muse

The second round of orientation begun yesterday as we got to know our new
class. I'm not too upbeat about it but there are certainly nice people that I've got
to know so far.

Yesterday was the announcement of the academic class for the next couple of months
and we had to immediately regroup into them, hence I bid goodbye to my orientation
group, which i will sorely miss being in and entered the new class of 1T02. We started
off with the routine orientation games but because they were cut for time, the focus
was mostly on getting to know each other. Our class is mostly girls, there are only 7 of
us guys which is fairly okay considering that there are classes with only 2 girls or vice
versa.

Then it was ig3 dinner and we took about half an hour to gather at the canteen before
very slowly making our way to taka for dinner at seoul garden so that by the time we
reached there it was already 7. And then it was just pure pigging out + camwhoring
although it was probably more of the latter. It's amazing how games like 'chubby buddy'
and 'eat your own desserts' put a whole new spin on eating with big groups at buffets :D

More unsolicited camwhoring ensued post-dinner before heading home. It was possibly
my latest time out on a monday (and the first one of the school year no less).

Today was super tiring not just because of last night's events but also because we were
at kallang doing some activities, most tiring of which was dragonboating and this was all
in the RAIN. Which decided to be a pain in the arse by lightening up just so it could deceive
us to get out into the open before flushing its bowels repeatedly. Thus, six hours later, we
were all soaked by a possible load of 20 olympic pools of water. Ergh. But dragonboating
was fun nevertheless although i would rather it had been under the sun instead. Luckily,
we were dismissed almost immediately after returning to school.

Took a bus back with lixian and an utterly random occurence happened when we were at
the bus-stop outside the school with a J2 guy who was carrying a black crumpler bag and
his girlfriend.

J2: Hey, your bag colour design is super cool man.
Me: Err...
J2: I'm quite bored with my one, wanna swap?
Me: Huh?
J2: I'll pay you 5 bucks too.
Me: Err okay, no thanks.
(the girlfriend stares on dumbfoundedly)

Then the bus came with much great relief, both of us got on and moments later we were
laughing our heads off. It's amazing what crumpler bags can do to you.

Anyway, pics from yesterday..
WARNING: This is going to be image-heavy.

random girl pops in at the bottom :D

whatcha lookin' at? _______________________bernice! my extended cousin, haha.

looking all innocent... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...NOT.

angeline! who drinks a lot of milo>>>>>>>>>>>>>our table

prawn love: courtesy of bernice & me>>>>>>>>>petrina, our bubbly OGL!

oriana, from mg!_________________________jasmine, from ij!
jon, our other ogl, simply can't resist camwhoring with my camera
outside and inside... a lift?

(Bleh, blogger refuses to accept anymore so this shall do)

IG3 - will be missed.

2007-01-06T22:53:00.000+08:00

The Polar Bear Hunters

Plug-in: Something About You - Jamelia

I took the first step into jc life on wednesday with much dread and uncertainty
initially but whoa, impressions do change fast. Although coming for the first day
of orientation late and just recovering from the insane diarrhoea i'd been having
over the past week wasn't too much of an exciter, but the moment i stepped into
cj orientation, things were quite a blast. I was placed in og3 (or IG3, IG standing
for index group as it is affectionately known in cj) with a bunch of wonderful
people... wei chun, wei zhou, joey, xundong, philip, lanz, xavier, rastus, shi lam,
derrick, nicholas, dong xing, bernice, oriana, deepana, angeline, cheryl cher, jasmine,
vrinda, sheryl and gwen! Most of the girls were from the various IJs around...
ijst.nicks, ijtp, ijkc, ijst.theresa's with a couple of exceptions from swiss cottage and
mgs. The guys were more diversified, some being from sji but mostly from various
other schools like fairfield, catholic high, chung cheng etc.

The first day started off with introductory orientation games, e.g. those which
require you to remember the names of other orientation group members in
order to save your skin and although everyone was hesitantly silent initially, by
the time it got to the 5th or 6th game everyone was nosily chatting away. The first
few people I had full-length proper conversations and got to know about for that day
were bernice, rastus, oriana, angeline, gwen and nicholas. Bernice, rastus and oriana
are really great people to know. Very chatty and willing to talk about everything
under the sun. Interestingly enough, most of the people in our ig did not put cj as
their first choice and are aiming for other jc's so we had a very strong sentiment in
common but we were still determined to make the most out of our 2 months here.

The second day started off with a talk on subject combinations. Everybody fell asleep
when it came to general china studies in english... Chose plme on the computer: physics,
lit, maths, econs with physics being the h1 here. The rest of the day was spent on more
orientation games like captain's ball etc etc. Spent breaks in the canteen mostly getting
to know new people around like friends of friends and a lot of introductions going back
and forth around. Took 105 down to far east (omg, i'm so exhilarated that orchard/town
is only 5 mins away by bus!!!) to meet janice who's posted to temasek where we went to
coffee bean @ wheelock to share our experiences throughout the first two days and
exchanged presents! Thanks muchly for the sony headset! =D

Friday was over at the police academy doing even more games... plus the cca fair back at
school. There and then we had the disappointing news that for the rest of the orientation
next week, we would be in our academic classes instead, which would be announced next
monday and our ig would hence be split up which was kind of sad considering how well we
had bonded over the past 3 days.

Have I forgot to mention that we have the nicest ogls ever? Jonathan and petrina who
were virtually the most enthu and caring people were really great and didn't once make
us feel unwelcome (petrina's the ex-ijtp head prefect shh).

Took a train down to vivocity earlier today at noon to meet javier for lunch at sushi tei
and swapped albums, my 'futuresex/lovesounds' with his 'loose'. We shared our experiences
from our own jc orientations.. whereas his has already finished, mine has yet til wednesday
and talked about the various other orientations. I'm relieved cj's orientation isn't anywhere
near the worser ones.. Somehow or other, it's still very surreal to us that we're no longer
secondary but jc students already and in different schools...

Afterwards, we went over to gv to catch a sneak peek of pan's labyrinth which is by far
one of the best foreign language films i've ever seen! Set in World War II Spain, it tells
the story of a girl whose mother has remarried with a fascist general in charge of wiping
out the guerilla rebels. Moving into the woods where the general has set up a base to begin
the extermination, she escapes from the harsh and brutal going-ons by stumbling into a
fantastical world stemming from the nearby ruins of a labyrinth belonging to a faun where
she gets the chance to leave the cruel reality behind her.

I didn't get some of the political undertones in the film but the way they seamlessly
intermixed the worlds of fantasy and reality was amazing. The entire movie throughout
never felt draggy at any one point because of the appropriate pacing and the engaging
scenes plus the score suited the dark fairytale atmosphere really well, the best part being
the lullaby sung by the housekeeper mercedes at the end which is coincidentally the best
and most moving part of the movie (which i wont reveal because it also happens to be a
major shocker/spoiler).

Minds still reeling from the excessive imagery and nachos, we popped over to harbourfront
to chat some more before I left for home.

I'm so super tired but yet my mind's fully awake now... i'm somewhat eagerly awaiting
school this monday, plus the ig dinner after it. And shoot me, but that new year feeling
still hasn't worn off yet..

2007-01-02T17:44:00.000+08:00

Two Double-oh-Seven

Plug-in: Waiting On the World to Change - John Mayer

New Year's Eve was just simple and awesome. We had the last service of
2006 in the morning and the message was meaningful. It was all about the
necessity to forgive and being able to take great strides forward into the
unknown. Then, esther, charisse, vanessa, joel, serene, marcus, janice, roy,
kenneth and I went to cartel at ps for the last lunch of 2006! It was really
great just to share our targets, goals and hopes for 2007 in a noisy chaotic
environment. I think I'm greatly inspired in terms of motivations for the
rest of the year.

I'm not making any resolutions but this year I'm really going to strive to
become more determined to follow the goals and plans that I've set out
(something I'm never really good at). This means a lot of courage and
focus, especially when it comes to studies. I guess the next 2 years or so
will be really hectic ones and I'll probably hardly have much time to laze
around so busy is or should be the operative word here. Procrastination
is a deadly sin and downfall, especially when living in such a fast-paced and
demanding society so I'll definitely try to be a lot more proactive and I'll
have to sustain my energy levels at a high rate, so LOTS of sleep is going
to be required!

Mistakes are and will be inevitable but I hope that I'll be able to rise quickly
from any falls or stumbles, learn from them and carry on more confidently.
In a way, this really isn't a resolution of sorts... it isn't a particular objective
but more of something that encompasses being positive in life.

What happened on new year's eve(ning)...

So anyway, we had a relatives steamboat dinner at night but here's where the
horror story kind of began. I started feeling really nauseous and all, eventually
ending up at the toilet to puke like 3, 4 times and by the end of it all, I was just
experiencing a super-giddy sensation with slight exhaustion setting in. What
luck, I've never gotten food poisoning for the whole year and it just had to happen
at the turn of the year close to the stroke of midnight. Thankfully, with the help
of some medicine, I got a bit better and was even able to drag myself briefly to
marina bay to watch the breathtaking fireworks display (I was not about to let a
bit of stomach upset ruin the new year by spending it in a toilet). So I managed
to get home safe, intact and all but ended up spending the next couple of days
trying to withstand the effects of diarrhoea.

Right now I'm feeling a lot better than on sunday night/monday but I just hope
it's completely gone by tomorrow when jc orientation will begin or else I'm either
gonna miss out on a lot or suffer more!

Before I sign out, thanks to everyone who sent me festive greeting cards, postcards
e-cards, notebooks, calendars etc. Am so thankful that I'm going into the year of 2007
fully equipped with new shoes, bag, stationary, clothes (but not like i'll be able to wear
those to school) and other miscellaneous items :D this is such a marked change from
the usual humdrum of starting a new year in secondary school, i really feel as if it's
starting anew!

what a new year really means

2006-12-30T23:00:00.000+08:00

All Good Things...

Plug-in: River - Sarah McLachlan

It's yet again that time of the year when we wrap up everything and reflect
on what has passed in the last 12 months.

But first though, some events of the past week to recall. Family christmas dinner
was held on tuesday night at morton's steakhouse, really great steaks they have
there. Then we got over to lido to catch curse of the golden flower, which despite
all its gaudyness was relatively well constructed. And despite what it seems, its
subtly more of an anti-wuxia film unlike what you'd expect it to be - those chinese
period epics and dramas you see on channel 8 that romanticize dynasty rule. This
show exposes all the undoings of having a patriachal system in place and the tragic
chain of events that follows. I suppose its one of the better chinese martial arts
films I have seen, crouching tiger hidden dragon nevertheless, is still the best.
I'd give it 3 and a half stars.

This morning was bowling with esther, vanessa and joel opposite great world city,
where strangely enough, we all had the same number of strikes each! o.O This was
followed by lunch at crystal jade kitchen. We then caught night at the museum,
which really didn't have a very stable plot but contained sufficient laughs enough
so that we weren't bored from beginning to end. Poor esther had to rush off to the
toilet more than once due to severe laughing episodes! I'd give it 3 stars.

I guess 2006 was a fairly eventful year where I got to learn many new or old
things about life. It was certainly both fun and stressful at the same time with
the O levels, my first national exam in 4 years, taking place. But besides just lots
of studying, there were also plenty of new things that helped alter my perspective,
I made many new friends especially towards the end of the year during the holidays
and also I think I widened my general knowledge (by heavy newspaper reading) and
helpful stuff! I have to be truly thankful for 2006 because it was a year that really
made me treasure all the small things in life and I learnt not to overlook other people
and the stuff that is part and parcel of daily routines.

Things like these are hard to summarise, you just can't put down all the wonderful
stuff that happened in a year on one page or even a short story. I'm just very thankful
for church.. joel, charisse, vanessa, esther, marcus you guys all truly rock!

All those in school.. javier, elgin, johannes, abbie just to name a few have been great
friends and how could i ever forget our super hilarious and wacky class of 3.2/4.2?

There're just so many more people that deserve a mention but right now i just don't
feel its right if i can't put in the best words to thank them.

I really look forward ahead to the great year of 2007.. there's just going to be a lot
of new opportunities and challenges lying ahead and i know it all sounds cheesy but
yeah, it's going to be a change of environment for sure and i'm really excited about
what's in store for jc life and I guess everything else!

Anyway, 2007 will also be a superbly wonderful year for entertainment and just like
I would do every year to cap off 2006, here are just some lists I made so that I won't
forget about all the great stuff that was around this year too:

Movies Watched in 2006 (new releases):

The Constant Gardener (a wonderful socio-political commentary about corruption
and the plight of human rights activists)
V for Vendetta (has its flaws, but was still a great action-political film making snide
references to modern corrupt conservative governments)
Inside Man (a great mindboggling heist thriller that was overlooked)
Rent (good, but mostly because it was borrowed from its adapted play)
Mission Impossible 3 (blockbuster action..)
X-Men: The Last Stand (more blockbuster action...)
Cars (nice animation with good themes but too SLOW for a movie about cars)
Superman Returns (grand, but too stale for younger audiences tastes)
Pirates of the Caribbean Dead Man's Chest (very entertaining! ^^)
The Devil Wears Prada (Meryl Streep killed everyone else with her portrayal)
Snakes on a Plane (very overrated but still a fun ride)
Little Miss Sunshine (WONDERFUL MOVIE, VERY HEARTWARMING. GO WATCH.
Expect it to win a number of Golden Globes, Oscars etc.)
Casino Royale (a marked improvement over the latest Bond flicks but still not up
to the standard of the Connery ones)
Step Up (a touch better than your average teen flick, dancing was A+++!)
Happy Feet (good animation, good music, bad ending)
Eragon (slightly overrated, not as epic as other fantasy trilogies etc but worth a watch)
Curse of the Golden Flower (cleverly orchestrated period epic)
Night at the Museum (draggy and flimsy but good on the laughs)

Since there are just countless lists out there naming the best, there really isn't a
point in listing what was good this year. Favourites would be a more appropriate theme:

Top 50 fav songs of 2006 (both old and new ones in no preferential order)

Pop/Dance/Country
1. Hips Don't Lie - Shakira feat. Wyclef Jean
2. Promiscuous - Nelly Furtado
3. My Love - Justin Timberlake feat. T.I.
4. Hurt - Christina Aguilera
5. SexyBack - Justin Timberlake
6. Breathe (2 AM) - Anna Nalick
7. Unwritten - Natasha Bedingfield
8. What Hurts the Most - Rascal Flatts
9. Life for Rent - Dido
10. Jesus Take the Wheel - Carrie Underwood

Rock/Alternative
11. How to Save a Life - The Fray
12. Move Along - The All-American Rejects
13. Starlight - Muse
14. Crystal Ball - Keane
15. Here It Goes Again - O.K. Go
16. America - Razorlight
17. Chasing Cars - Snow Patrol
18. Fidelity - Regina Spektor
19. Snow (Hey Oh) - Red Hot Chili Peppers
20. By the Way - Red Hot Chili Peppers
21. Love Like Winter - AFI
22. Crazy - Alanis Morissette
23. When You Were Young - The Killers
24. Boston - Augustana
25. Suddenly I See - KT Tunstall
26. Black Horse and the Cherry Tree - KT Tunstall
27. Bad Day - Daniel Powter
28. Smile Like You Mean It - The Killers
29. What Sarah Said - Death Cab for Cutie
30. Love Me Like You - The Magic Numbers
31. Goodnight and Go - Imogen Heap
32. Bohemian Rhapsody - Queen
33. I Write Sins Not Tragedies - Panic! at the Disco
34. Dakota - Stereophonics
35. Steady As She Goes - The Raconteurs
36. Let Me Go - 3 Doors Down
37. Times Like These - Foo Fighters
38. Float On - Modest Mouse
39. Chicago - Sufjan Stevens

R&B/Soul/Hip-Hop
40. Get Up - Ciara featuring Chamillionaire
41. Irreplaceable - Beyoncé
42. SOS - Rihanna
43. So Sick - Ne-Yo
44. Ordinary People - John Legend
45. Crazy - Gnarls Barkley
46. Diamonds from Sierra Leone - Kanye West

Jazz
47. Georgia On My Mind - Ray Charles
48. All at Sea - Jamie Cullum
49. Home - Michael Bublé
50. Dance Me to the End of Love - Madeleine Peyroux

the joy of music to carry you away

2006-12-25T22:09:00.000+08:00

And on this day...

Plug-in: Grown-Up Christmas List - Michael Bublé

Ironically enough, christmas shopping over the weekend wasn't really
as crowded as would be predicted.

This was especially so on saturday, which was officially "Relatives Day" :D
Spent most of the day out with my cousins, whose age ranges are amazingly
wide!

We met at toa payoh for lunch at the fortunATE dimsum restaurant, something
I've never tried before, especially in singapore. The food there was pretty good,
definitely more authentic and tasty than the dimsum menu at crystal jade outlets.
Our sinful indulgences were har gow and gong bao chicken, which were the best
items on the menu.

MMPF. Then went shopping around town. This is my fourth, or fifth? record-breaking
time shopping this week! I got to check out places I hadn't been to yet, like e.g. velocity
at novena square which is an extension of the old block but isn't really anything much
honestly.

We finally ended up at paragon's coffee club and spent an extra long time just talking
about a lot of stuff. Took the train back to their house at bishan where we had a christmas
party. Had a great time exchanging presents and tucking into the wonderfully prepared
christmas feast. Thanks so much for the topman vouchers and i'm also grateful to my
aunts for the crumpler bag. Orange and brown colours are a strange combination but
nevertheless it's well appreciated! :D

Yesterday afternoon's lunch was at vil'age, with esther, joel, charisse and vanessa, where
the old marche was in heeren. Funny though, their concept's hardly different from marche.
Then it was a simple dinner at country manna with family before heading off to church for
the midnight service! Loved this year's message about forgiving and moving on.. It sounded
very inspirational and they tied it very well to the story of Christ's birth.

Woke up this morning slightly dazed (it always happens on Christmas Day, don't ask why)
and prepared to go for our church's christmas lunch at marina mandarin! The food was
really good and the company was even better.

In due thanks:
for the topman voucher (again!) esther
for the FiRST subscription (unusual present!) charisse and vanessa!
for the converse tee joel
for the chocolates serene!

and for all the cards and hugs everyone else!

Merry Christmas!

love, white as snow

2006-12-22T23:55:00.000+08:00

Whispers from above

Plug-in: A Great Big Sled - The Killers

The effects of bali still have not worn off me yet. The whole experience
still feels very much like a vivid memory.. I guess some places do have
a hold on you.

Went with jessie, esther, joel and serene for shopping on tuesday not
heeding the very likelihood of a heavy downpour. Turns out that was
one of the single worst-hit days in recent singapore history for rainfall
and floods.

We had breakfast at roti prata house along thomson road before going
off to vivocity. I had only been to vivocity twice before, so i took this time
to explore the place in greater detail. We shop-hopped a lot and bought a
number of gifts. Had lunch at earle swensens, the grilled cod there was simply
done but still managed to be very delicious at the same time.

Afterwards, we left to pool at cineleisure. Never been there before, the place
was great although i still preferred meridien. My pool skills are quite okay
but i'll probably lose to anyone who's been playing on a regular basis these
holidays though as evidenced by a defeat to joel... :O

We hopped over to heeren and paragon for a bit more shopping afterwards
but we didn't get much especially at paragon because we had made most of
our purchases already and i think we were on a rather tight budget. =P

Orchard was like Manhattan on steroids that day. The roads were all flooded
and the heavy downpour was so relentless that you'd get soaked by simply not
being indoors.

Yesterday evening was sarah's (other) house party which was deep inside the
ulu seletar airbase. Got to know some of joanne's and her friends. Played some
random games like murderer. Mm the homecooked food (mussels, wedges,
salad) was also great stuff. Oh and there was a treehouse, which we climbed up,
tried not to fall off and climbed down.

joanne, rachel, nathan, matthew, me (it was a very dimly-lit place...)

A big thanks to sarah for playing the hardworking host despite not looking too well!

2006-12-18T22:13:00.000+08:00

Tropicana Paradise

Plug-in: Somewhere Over the Rainbow - Israel Kamakawiwo'ole

Just got back from bali at night yesterday. The three or so days spent there
were really fun. The trip was quite a wind-down on city life so it was very
relaxing and therapeutic although some parts of bali are starting to develop
into mini urban sprawls as well. Still, its mostly low-key and noise-free
thankfully. Went with my sister, esther, her parents, joel and his dad. My
parents couldn't make it in the end because my mom had to pull out and
as a result, my dad as well.

We took a flight on friday morning from changi to denpasar international.
Upon arriving, we were whisked off straight to the Ritz Carlton Bali in the
seaside resort town of Jimbaran. We got this really lovely villa suite facing
the ocean and plus the whole hotel's perched atop a cliff so the view's quite
panoramic in the evening. We spent the afternoon mostly at the beach, playing
volleyball and beach soccer.

We had dinner at LIA, one of the seafood restaurants along the stretch near
the Inter-Continental and it was super delicious. Everything was grilled on
coconut husks instead of charcoal and smothered in layers of sauces and spices.
The tiger prawns were simply to die for. O.O After that we went night shopping
at the Kuta night market, which was the biggest one on the island. They were
selling all kinds of stuff on the street sides such as pirated CDs, imitation clothing,
jewellery, handbags and souvenirs such as indonesian handicrafts. The only things
we bought were the souvenirs... the handcarved paperweights, back-scratchers
etc. xD because all the others weren't really necessary and could be found in most
other places. The shopkeepers there are really scary though, some of them tried to
chase and trail us in an attempt to sell their wares!

Supper was at this streetside cafe where they sold really good banana fritters
along with milkshakes.

The next day, we had the hotel continental buffet breakfast which was quite on
par, if not better than an average 5-star hotel's breakfast buffet. The selection
was really wide.. they even had sashimi, frankfurters and lobster bisque!

We lazed around at the pool afterwards, which was a really magnificent one - it
had an infinity edge to it, such that when you swam to one end and you looked
directly down, it would look as if you're floating right over the edge of the cliff!

Spent some time reading Life of Pi before we were off to sanur for lunch at a
place called Gateway of India which had some really yummy indian food. The
tandoori chicken here was especially good, but one problem was that the place
was in open-air and it wasn't the best of times to have such spicy food in the
midday sun, but nevertheless!

After lunch, we left for this parasailing centre at nusa dua beach where we had
a go at it. Most of us were screaming our heads off (esther, especially the loudest!)
whilst high up in the air above the water. The motorboats were going at incredibly
crazy speeds so it was quite a thrill ride.

We went back to the ritz, where we changed before leaving for dinner at this
place called kuni's which was in an open-air garden setting, a very charming
idea in the evening. They served modern japanese cuisine and some items
like the beef shabu shabu salad were really not bad. The grilled swordfish,
eel etc. were all very nice too.

The next morning we had the continental breakfast buffet again. Immediately
after that, esther, joel, my sister and I tried out surfing further down the beach
with rented surfboards. Couldn't surf very well since it was my first time but
managed to get a wave or too. We were all beginnners, excuse us. x)

Our last meal, lunch, was at Padi's, a thai restaurant in the hotel itself. The food
was authentic, the mango salad very delicious, but it was not as spicy as thai food
should have been.

We checked out and took a shuttle back to denpasar international and caught an
evening flight back to changi. On the rather short flight, I watched a couple of choice
episodes... grey's anatomy "as we know it" and the pilot of this new series studio 60
on the sunset strip, which was a drama about the politics in a studio producing a prime
time talkshow. The plot's quite interesting and it's a lot like grey's anatomy except that
of course it's not in a medical setting.

Was quite happy to touch down back in singapore but bali was really a beautiful place
(albeit an expensive one) and I would definitely want to go back sometime in the future.

Christmas is a week away and I haven't bought anything yet.

2006-12-13T21:50:00.000+08:00

That epic trilogy again

Plug-in: Keep Holdin' On - Avril Lavigne

Went for the Eragon premiere yesterday night at cine with han an. I received the
tickets at a really late hour (the very night before) and almost everyone I knew was
either overseas or at camps already so I was initially faced with the prospect of having
to go alone or sell the tickets but luckily, I managed to get han an eventually.

About the movie, Eragon is really not a story with great literary depth or abound
with creative flair. After all, the novel was penned by a 15-year old who although
was trained in creative writing, did not have enough experience to draw ideas from
his own mind. There are many close resemblances to other epic trilogies, series etc.
For example, there's the archetypal aged mentor Brom who is mysterious and seems
weak initially but turns out to have played a very important role in the past. He dies
midway which is a great opportunity to evidence for the emotional resolve in lead
character. Isn't this all like Star Wars, A New Hope and Obi-Wan being the mentor
instead? Yet another example would be the presence of the main villain who stays
behind-the-scenes (at least for the earlier installments) letting his super bad-ass
protege do all the work for him. Sauron and Saruman in Lord of the Rings?

Basically, Eragon has many borrowed ideas and concepts mish-mashed into one
story but let's not get ahead of ourselves here. The movie in itself is great, the
special effects and panning shots are stunning amongst many things. In fact, the
movie can even be said to be on par or better than the book itself. This is because
reading the book feels stuffy as the themes that run throughout have been reused
in countless other epics before but watching the detail come to life. And you've got
to admit one thing, the dragon is just so much more good on celluloid than in your
imagination.

One gripe about eragon is that the running time is way too short for an epic: 104
minutes, roughly the length of a rom-com. It's probably in part due to the novel
itself being a very short one anyway. I'd give the movie 3 stars.

After the thing ended close to midnight, we took one of the last trains back after
stopping by at centrepoint macs. Chatted about holiday plans on the ride home.

The Golden Globes 2007 nominees are out and the selection seems quite good
from this year. Some of the major contenders are Babel, with the most nominations
at 7, The Departed and The Queen. I've watched Little Miss Sunshine, The Devil
Wears Prada and Thank You for Smoking which were all really well-crafted satires
so I suppose the rest of the films on the list are more than commendable. I still have
not managed to catch The Departed, which I really so badly want to watch (many elder
peers have said it's bloody good! no pun intended), and Borat which is going to be
impossibly difficult to catch here as it's been slapped with R21. Babel, The Queen, Blood Diamond, Dreamgirls and Letters of Iwo Jima all look really good as well so hopefully I'll
be able to view them.

MOVIES

Picture, Drama: Babel, Bobby, The Departed, Little Children, The Queen
Actress, Drama: Penelope Cruz, Volver ; Judi Dench, Notes on a Scandal ; Maggie Gyllenhaal, Sherrybaby ; Helen Mirren, The Queen ; Kate Winslet, Little Children
Actor, Drama: Leonardo DiCaprio, Blood Diamond ; Leonardo DiCaprio, The
Departed ; Peter O'Toole, Venus ; Will Smith, The Pursuit of Happyness ; Forest
Whitaker, The Last King of Scotland
Picture, Musical or Comedy: Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make
Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, The Devil Wears Prada, Dreamgirls, Little
Miss Sunshine, Thank You for Smoking
Actress, Musical or Comedy: Annette Bening, Running With Scissors ; Toni Collette,
Little Miss Sunshine ; Beyonce Knowles, Dreamgirls ; Meryl Streep, The Devil Wears
Prada ; Renee Zellweger, Miss Potter
Actor, Musical or Comedy: Sacha Baron Cohen, Borat: Cultural Learnings of
America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan ; Johnny Depp, Pirates of
the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest ; Aaron Eckhart, Thank You for Smoking ; Chiwetel
Ejiofor, Kinky Boots ; Will Ferrell, Stranger than Fiction
Supporting Actress: Adriana Barraza, Babel ; Cate Blanchett, Notes on a Scandal ;
Emily Blunt, The Devil Wears Prada ; Jennifer Hudson, Dreamgirls ; Rinko Kikuchi, Babel
Supporting Actor: Ben Affleck, Hollywoodland ; Eddie Murphy, Dreamgirls ; Jack Nicholson, The Departed ; Brad Pitt, Babel ; Mark Wahlberg, The Departed

TELEVISION

Series, Drama: 24, Fox; Big Love, HBO; Grey's Anatomy, ABC; Heroes, NBC; Lost, ABC
Actress, Drama: Patricia Arquette, Medium ; Edie Falco, The Sopranos ; Evangeline
Lilly, Lost ; Ellen Pompeo, Grey's Anatomy ; Kyra Sedgwick, The Closer
Actor, Drama: Patrick Dempsey, Grey's Anatomy ; Michael C. Hall, Dexter ; Hugh
Laurie, House ; Bill Paxton, Big Love ; Kiefer Sutherland, 24
Series, Musical or Comedy: Desperate Housewives, ABC; Entourage, HBO; The
Office, NBC; Ugly Betty, ABC; Weeds, Showtime
Actress, Musical or Comedy: Marcia Cross, Desperate Housewives ; America
Ferrera, Ugly Betty ; Felicity Huffman, Desperate Housewives ; Julia Louis-Dreyfus,
The New Adventures of Old Christine ; Mary-Louise Parker, Weeds
Actor, Musical or Comedy: Alec Baldwin, 30 Rock ; Zach Braff, Scrubs ; Steve
Carrell, The Office ; Jason Lee, My Name is Earl ; Tony Shalhoub, Monk

It's a great time to catch up on primetime TV series that are airing in the states now
but have not made it here yet because their network programming there follows a
certain routine and all major series have been paused for the year-end holidays until
the start of next year in 2007, roughly around january til' early februrary.

Anyway, I've finally gotten around to starting on Neverwinter Nights 1 (yes, old!)
ever since I got the Diamond Edition which includes all expansions, add-ons etc.in
august, so now that there's more time available I shall embark on the 100-hour
campaign (more sleepless nights included) and i'm borrowing daniel's nwn2 after
i'm done. (Or maybe not, see whether i want to risk the first month of school :P)

Found this out courtesy of joanne. Just watch the girl with "Boy" pasted on her
back. This is an ominous sign.

3 parts fool, 1 part courage

2006-12-08T22:44:00.000+08:00

There's always tomorrow

Plug-in: Here It Goes Again - O.K. Go

The good news I've just received is that my mother's steadily recovering
and she will be back by tomorrow. Nothing serious for her in the long term
but she will have to go for regular medical check-ups.

Went for lunch with my sister a couple of cousins who came to visit my
mother today. We ate at the pizza hut across at united square before having
some snacks at the cedele bakery depot in novena square. They were really
encouraging and nice even though I haven't seen them. One of them, amelia,
also just took her o's and we talked about pae and everything. Her choice is
quite interesting, she wants to get into sajc at least if not she would rather
go into polytechnic instead of compromising for lousier jc's.

Anyway, in the meantime I've been catching up on primetime television series
that are airing in the US and haven't made it to sunny singapore, cable or other
wise. The seventh episode on the 3rd season of desperate housewives, Bang,
had a hostage scene at a supermarket which was extremely tense and a very
emotional ending, which finished off with an uplifting postlude. Although the
quality of DH has deteriorated slightly recently after the non-stop tirade of
scandals, this one's really well made and had very high ratings. So far, the 3rd
season has been pretty okay.

I've just began following this super-hyped up brand new series that started airing
in the states a couple of months ago called "Heroes". Apparently, it's the most
watched series right now there and the story seems very closely related to the
whole x-men mutant thingamajig. Which should probably be a recipe for disaster
and at first glance the whole plot about individuals across Earth discovering they
have powers like altering time, being indestructible etc. seems cheesy and very
been there, done that before. But I guess it holds its ground well by stuffing each
and every character's closet with dark secrets along with the provision of lots of
drama and internal conflict in their lives amidst the special effects, the kind of tactic
that recent hits like Lost, Grey's Anatomy, Desperate Housewives and House have
utilised to make serials hip again and knock off reality programmes.

Looking up the official websites of Fox, ABC, NBC etc, I realised there are a lot of
critically acclaimed shows in the US that I've never heard of before or never watched
an episode of and all of them have really intriguing plots and premise. Sadly, I don't
think I'll ever have time (especially once December is over) to get down to try to watch
all (or even half) of them unless i want to risk addiction. Sigh, if only we had such good
programming.

It's Official: Pirates 2 Joins Billion Dollar Club!

I know it's a bit late but the facts and figures listed are still astounding. Hopes are high
for At Worlds End out next year on May 25. Will the 3rd and tentatively final installment
top the best sequel of all time or sink? Apparently the teaser poster with chinese cloth
background was out long ago (without a title). Footage was also revealed at San Diego
Comic Con at an exclusive showcase:

-> "The footage was about two minutes long and included brief interviews with producer
Jerry Bruckheimer and Orlando Bloom. Chow Yun-Fat's character had many speaking
lines in the clip, which featured lots of Singapore floating village shots(!), a
rescue Captain Jack Sparrow scene, a scene where Sparrow has to convince the crew to
run back and forth on the shipdeck to rock a ship over, Jack the undead monkey in
Chinese Warrior armor, shots of Barbossa and Sparrow amid a huge shipboard sword
battle, and a swordfight between Sparrow and Davy Jones atop a crows nest in a giant
storm."

just because it ain't over yet

2006-12-07T23:33:00.000+08:00

The passing blur of lights and sounds

Plug-in: Mad World - Michael Andrews

Something really upsetting happened on monday. Just some time around the
late evening when I reached home, my mother suddenly collapsed and had to
be immediately rushed to the hospital. Apparently the doctors said she has a
severe bout of stomach flu but somehow the virus has spread to her kidney
as well.

When I was in the front seat of the ambulance (we had to take one because my
father wasn't around at the time), I had some time to reflect on life and the whole
fragility of it. My mother was glowing with health just a few weeks ago despite
being in her 50s so this came as a really abrupt shock to our family. Being a youth
certainly doesn't give you much opportunity or responsibility to really grasp the true
value of life because we get over things easily due to our capacity to be able to move
on emotionally and we really can't be blamed for not being able to do so but sometimes
I just wish it wasn't so.

I haven't really been like the best a son could be to her and I don't talk to her often
because she also happens to be a very busy woman.

I just hope everything's going to turn out alright.

2006-12-04T01:49:00.000+08:00

Sleepless in Singapore

Plug-in: Starlight - Muse

I've been sleeping at increasingly late hours these past few days.
And i'm afraid it might be getting into my biological routine because
i get restless when i try to sleep earlier. Not in that sense which you
have a lot of things to ponder about but just plain ol' body refusing
to sleep. Hrmph.

I'm still a bit dazed as to why acs(i) is probably like the only school to
not only hold their grad night before the exams and have it at their
school hall. The life! newspaper article today which elaborated on
how top secondary schools and jc's hold their proms extravagantly
didn't help much, especially when they mentioned how proms being
held in school halls and auditoriums were a thing of the past. Oh my,
we're outdated.

Spent friday night at vivocity watching fireworks (yes, i'm a sucker
for those) and then retreating to pacific coffee company with jessie
and annabell. That night, I truly comprehended that the target consumer
of most shops at vivo aren't as wide as the shopping centre itself.

Hauled my ass to the Sitex fair at expo on saturday to meet vanessa
and marcus as we walked around the entire place viewing and mulling
over whether we should purchase anything. It then dawned on me
that I should really have gotten a temp job over the holidays although
I intended not to move my bum at all after a major examination like
the 'O's but I guess the problem of having not enough money will always
be knocking on your door. Sadly, I wished the world wasn't so money-centric
(i'm starting to sound like a communist), but enough bohemian thoughts!
Back to the fair, we left afterwards for marcus's house to stone and ended up
watching movies I've sworn never to watch like AMERICAN PIE: BAND CAMP
and GIGLI (how on earth did you acquire these movies marcus?!).

Earlier today, went to BK for lunch after church following which we decided to
do something I swear I've never done for a long time (i don't think anyone else
has!) - GO FLY KITES @ marina south. But it was super duper fun and windy
conditions just made it a lot better (watching ourselves go mad running about
the entire field). Yay, i'm quite glad i did something so simple and enjoyable in a
long while.

take it easy, sparkle up your life

2006-11-30T22:53:00.000+08:00

Riddle me this

Plug-in: Time Is Running Out - Muse

My sister just walked into the room with one hand supporting the cordless
phone (she likes to walk and talk around the house aimlessly) and another
hand was twirling her hair. Seemingly, that's how she dropped her entire
bottle of pink nail polish and now it's all over my room floor, making the
whole place smell like lacquer squared! Esther reassuringly tells me that
the smell won't go away for another three days at least. mmm, okay its time
to get a gas mask.

Anyway, a rundown of what happened this week!

Firstly, sunday's lunch post-church was spent at my current fave budget eatery,
the soup spoon at raffles city basement with esther, joel and vanessa. Their soups
there are really great and supposedly healthy (they got the pyramid symbol of
health thing!). Had beef goulash along with thai chicken salad side which was
spicy, sweet, sour and tangy all at once and we shared wedges. The items on the
menu were all adequately priced around $4-$6, no different from food courts like
banquet and food republic nowadays and besides, the place charges NO GST even
though its like right smack in the middle of the city and that's an added plus because
we all know how super expensive restaurant trips (and everything else) is going to
be next year when dear PAP raises the gst to a whopping 7%.

Went to watch step up at gv plaza on tuesday with joel and charisse. For all its hype,
it wasn't really superb or anything. Everything besides the dance sequences were all
mediocre and slightly cheesy, so the former was definitely the movie's saving grace.
Still, it's certainly watchable despite its mediocrity, just not particularly outstanding.
I'd give it 3 stars. We ate at carl's jr afterwards and esther decided to hop over to
carrefour to buy her fbt's. Fbt's are a super in thing for girls now, so yeah. Hmmm.
After some indecisive moments (involving us watching people perform some super
weird dance at the mall entrance), we decided to head off to meridian for pool. The
place is one of the less shady places in orchard for pool so it wasn't too bad and we
did have quite a fun time! :D

Met changming, han an and paul on thursday at cine to watch happy feet. I hardly
watch animated movies but yeah, happy feet was pretty good. It was a bit lame at
times but there were a lot of good moments like the music and tap-dancing sequences
along with the lovelace character dragging on in an asphyxiated manner with the
plastic thingy wrapped around his neck which was a super hilarious side-joke. The
way they wrapped up the show with the whole humans and united nations thing was
a bit too sudden and overwrought though, so i didn't take that too well. Overall, it
was definitely still a very feel-good flick so i'd give it 3 and a half stars.

Subsequently, we had lunch at pastamania and han an gave up on his spicy chicken
like in a matter of minutes :O (too spicy la), then we went to hmv which i haven't
been to for oh-so-long and apparently, it shrank -.- But never mind, still a lot of
fun browsing cds and stuffage. Finally bought confessions cd because it was at a
lowered price (yes after all the procrastination). We also happened to see, browse
and laugh at someone's horrendous-sounding and looking album xD
Went to starbucks later, we laughed a lot at han an's expense (haha, sorry han an!).

Oh and by the way, i'm hooked onto muse for the moment, both on absolution and
black holes & revelations. Their stuff is soooo good although they are a bit
ambitious and extravagant but hey, u2's a lot like that too so yeah. Guitar riffs and
electronic mixing is just so funky!

to hold you in my arms

2006-11-26T03:20:00.000+08:00

Reckless Driving

Plug-in: The Name's Bond... James Bond (Theme) - David Arnold
+ You Know My Name - Chris Cornell

I like how the holidays makes most of us forget that school ever existed
and everything study-related. I also like being free and having a lot off
my mind during this period because the weather is best now, meaning
very un-singaporean weather. =)

Was originally intending to go to jb on thursday but some problems with
the passport cropped up. Apparently, they don't allow anyone into their
country if it expires any less than one month's time. Oh please, it's not as
if singapore will send 16-year old spies to your country or anything.

Consequently, I had to spend the rest of the afternoon swimming, eating,
reading etc. which was a very good alternative. Yup, swimming can be a
lot of fun.

Yesterday there was a class hotel stay thing organised by alex at the
grand hyatt. Alex, jerome, jack, daniel, steven, shixian and sae cheong
were there when i came in the afternoon and they were lan-ing at a
shady-looking corner of far east shopping centre. We had a few rounds
of dota but mostly played cs, which was quite fun to revisit after god-
knows-how-many years. Went back to the suite where we played halo
2 and need for speed carbon on the 360 (4-way!) with the uber-sized
plasma tv for a while before crossing over to lido and meeting alex lim
for casino royale.

The latest installment in the bond series was by far one of the more
serious and less crassier ones, meaning it was good. I mean so far I've
only watched the pierce brosnan ones and er... octopussy but yeah I
could tell that it had a very raw edge unlike its more sleek predecessors.
The story was engaging and the characters interesting but it did get
super draggy, especially the whole segment post-Montenegro with
the rather unnecessary lovey-dovey scenes that look as if they popped
out from some cheesy romantic flick. Overall, I'd give it about 3 and a
half stars.

Dinner was at mezza9, where we had a yummy western grill with
many different kinds of selections for the marinated meats. Didn't
get to try the 8 other kinds of dining concepts but i don't think we
had the stomach for more. Couldn't stay over due to an eye check
up early next morning, so i left for home afterwards.

Today was mostly spent at home. Have been keeping up with this
exercise routine as i'm ever more reminded that ns looms nearer but
more importantly because looking anything short of healthy in jc is a
no-no. Running's no problem for me but i think paying more regular
visits to the gym/pool should be in order. I try to alternate running,
swimming and going to the gym on alternate days, so yeah i guess it'll
serve me well soon.

Hmm, today's evening was an incredible mood-setter. Normally i wouldn't
really talk about weather, environments etc. but i think everyone has
their day when the weather's just nice and the whole crescent moon +
no clouds + wind smelling of sweet ocean spray just happens to make
my day.

Anyway, speaking of oceans, mother's making mussels, mm! must makan.

"Three measures of Gordon's, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet,
shake it over ice then add a thin slice of lemon peel"

2006-11-22T22:00:00.000+08:00

Changing Scenes

Plug-in: When You Were Young - The Killers

This week's been quite eventful so far. Went for prelude @cube opposite
central mall organized by joleen, maria and a bunch of other ny people on
monday night. The party got off to quite a slow start as the crowd there
was mainly 16 and being first-timers, most were hesitant to initiate anything.
However, it did pick up quite some time into the evening around 11. The whole
hip-hop/r&b theme was safe and okay but i think a bit of house would have
been welcome. On the whole, it was quite a good first experience, not something
too big or anything. There were relatively few ac people there though, most were
from hci, ny or raffles, although i did see a few familiar faces from the o levels track
and more surprisingly, some from ib. Got to know some new faces around.

Left early, around 1 plus because I was sorely reminded that the pae briefing
was next morning, or more accurately LATER that morning. Hanged out at
riverside point's 7/11 with jin, paul and fish talking about singapore's nightlife
(or the lack thereof) until jin's parents came to fetch him. Took a cab with paul
and fish to balestier for supper before heading home on the insistence of dad's
car.

Tuesday morning's pae exercise talk was nothing much, pretty disposable. I
think everyone didn't really want to come back to school again but on the orders
of our dear level vice-head! Speaking of provisional admission, if i haven't told
before, i'm pretty disappointed with my prelim results of 11 pts after deduction
all thanks to a screw-up in maths.

Still very indecisive like many others over which jc i should go to. However, prelims
leave me with no choice but acjc although many seniors tell me that it isn't a very
good place to go. Oh dear. Never mind, i'll see how it goes for the first 3 months.
I think i'll have made up my mind by februrary when the results should come out
sometime around my birthday. Yikes. I'll definitely do better than the prelims but
hopefully, a single-digit L1R5 will materialise leaving me with more options. Some
people have recommended vj but that's just simply too far away for me.

Anyway, after the pin number collection, cabbed with ben, samuel and marcus to
kai an's house who oh so happens to live a few doors down from junior Lee. Played
need for speed carbon, x-men legends etc and with the two very excitable dogs
before leaving for lunch and watching samuel desperately trying to recall his one-day
old puk code before succumbing to the nokia phone care centre @ wheelock XD

Didn't go for surge later in the night because of the combined birthday parties that
joel and siew hwa were having at hard rock cafe (but partially also because i didn't
think i could survive another night of clubbing). Food was pretty much hard rock
cafe standard - not bad but also not scrumptious or anything like that. Music was quite
okay, there was a live band performing but then two-thirds into the whole party,
the band disappeared and someone had the wise idea of putting on dance music.
joel: "oi, please lah, go somewhere like surge if you want to club!" X)

Conked out today until lunch because i was simply too tired from the past two nights.
went out later in the afternoon to marina square for a hastily planned class movie,
death note, with daniel, kong yew, shixian and kai an.
We watched it at gv and i think it was officially the last timing in singapore for it.
Personally, it wasn't a choice movie for me but i think the story was quite engaging,
never mind the bad CGI. Would give it around 3 stars. Decided to arcade afterwards
and we pretty much owned house of the dead 4 (: Had dinner at long john silvers
before heading home.

Was just wondering why other schools grad nights are all after their 'o's and only
ours(?) is before it, stuck somewhere between prelims and the big O in a somewhat
awkward manner.

But nevertheless, before i forget, some class photos!

Got tonnes more photos but can't find some of them and one post
can only take so much.

Haha, i'll miss 4.2 Jacob!

now is forever

2006-11-19T20:29:00.000+08:00

And you know it's only just begun

Plug-in: Rock Steady - All Saints

The comeback album Studio 1 by All Saints, famous for their unforgettable
single 'Pure Shores', has a very hip number called Rock Steady which has
a funny music video involving a bank robbery: "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dpS4F4kRvE".

Spent yesterday afternoon kicking back at vanessa's place with joel and esther
mostly by the pool or in it. Then we went upstairs and I got to try out the latest
FF installment (twelve) on the ps2. The graphics engine is amazing and the
cutscenes were breathtakingly real (i still can't get the 7 minute long wedding
battle introduction out of my head). What everyone's being saying about FF -
the music, story, gameplay etc. is all true. I've never really been into the series
but I think this one might just change that. The whole gameplay was quite
complicated though so I didn't really get far before having to get home.

Today, immediately after church was the post o levels lunch at New York New
York at citylink with charisse, joel, esther, vanessa. Siew hwa, zhi ting, candice,
serene, kenneth, roy and jan also came along so we had to have 2 whole tables. The
bacon-and-cheese wrapped bratwurst sausages was really good amongst a couple
other items on the menu but the service did leave a lot to be desired. I think most
of the waiters were like hastily-trained temps or something. Hmm.

We went bowling at marina square next to gv afterwards. It was a whole lot of fun,
I managed to get 3 strikes out of the 5 full games that we played. Went into the gutter
a handful of times and all the rest were spares or open frames. It was relatively okay
considering I haven't gone bowling for ages. Candice, being a school bowler, made us all
look really inexperienced with her skills. Quite annoying though, was how a group of
kids that came in midway through our games wanted to snatch some lanes from us.
Despite there being a lot of other people around, they found 12 people using 4 lanes
unreasonable. Although there were only six of them, apparently the three remaining
lanes weren't enough for them. Ergh. It took away 15 minutes from our game, but
thank god they were evicted by the management subsequently.

The euphoria of the 'o's being over still hasn't left me and I hope it doesn't until the
holidays are over!

bags packed, ready to go

[p.s. new spiderman3 trailer just out yesterday on iFilm! watch it in HD
-> http://www.ifilm.com/presents/spiderman3]

2006-11-17T21:34:00.000+08:00

Electrified Atmosphere

Plug-in: It Ends Tonight - The All-American Rejects

It's finally OVER! That's what set the tone for the end of exams, either
for those who finished on thursday or today on friday. Utter craziness
involving cartwheels, random dancing about, people screaming happily
etc. Thanks to all those who've wished us the best and been there to give
support for this difficult period, difficult in the sense that everyone's having
fun whilst we are studying :(

Spending the last whole month in captivity: otherwise known as studying
does have its pros but i don't think i'll ever go back to that anytime soon.
Not at least until the 'A' Level year i suppose.

It'd be quite fine with me if I can get a >10 L1R5. Paper reviews amongst
classmates and friends was quite a good gauge of the potential marks I'll
be receiving. I just hope something unlucky or bad doesn't happen and the
Cambridge markers aren't super picky this year. Oh and that nasty bell curve
as well. But overall, minimum expectations are 6 distinctions.

Anyway, that's all about 'O's. A chapter of Singaporean education closed there.
Walked around VivoCity after the exam with chu ting and checked out really
cool stores like Gap. Initially we were supposed to watch Step Up but I got a
very last minute information that my grandmother's birthday was today, so
had to rush off to one of the Tung Lok restaurants at New Bridge Road. It
was quite fun to catch up with some of my cousins especially those who've
also just finished their 'O's, spent a lot of time talking about future plans.

I've a humongous list of movies to catch this holidays. Although missing out
on The Prestige (argh), there are still quite a number of good movies out this
holiday season. Still have yet to watch Step Up, Casino Royale and possibly
Happy Feet which has a long line of A-listers voicing tap-dancing penguins.
There should be some amusing results to this. December will bring Eragon,
Charlotte's Web, The Nativity Story, The Fountain, The Holiday and some
Chinese flick going to the Oscars next year starring Chow Yun Fatt and Gong
Li which should certainly be better than The Promise which from what I heard
was an abyssmally bad movie. But honestly, the most anticipated movies will
all be coming next year. The summer line-up alone will already have not 1 or 2
but 5 major threequels (most likely final installment to a trilogy). Obviously
everyone's heard about Spider-man 3 but besides that there's going to be
Shrek 3, Ocean's Thirteen, Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At Worlds End and The
Bourne Ultimatum all opening within a few weeks of each other. And let's not
forget about Order of the Phoenix, which you've got to admit you're probably
going to end up watching.

Got lots of stuff to keep me busy for the following couple of weeks. First
up, to get the party started: prelude @cube and surge @MoS next week!