It's another 10 minutes till the end of the year. How odd it is that this year is ending! 2007 has been very memorable, to say the least. The liberation from A's, the swell time at CLEO, the holidaying before school, the school term (though it was tiring to live through, there are still memorable times), and the holidays. Amazing things happened this year that I'm very grateful for. I think many of us probably grew up this year, especially during the time when we had to decide where we wanted to go, why, and deciding the path we'll take in future.

On an entirely separate note, I was just wondering why some of us chinese in the new generation don't exactly embrace our traditions very much. I personally find that there are many traditions or customs that parents and grandparents insist on continuing, without actually knowing the significance behind it. During my cousin's wedding recently, I asked my mum about the reason behind certain customs or acts (like why must the girls avoid the bride during the tea ceremony?!) and she didn't know. Isnt it odd that people just do things without knowing what it's for? And whether it serves any purpose at all? I'm probably being a bit too anti-tradition here, getting tsk-tsks from the adults, but I personally would like to understand the reasons behind things and why I should be made to continue it, which is why sometimes i feel that the western culture is much more appealing.

Anyway, Happy New Year!!

back from KL!! it's been great fun and especially shiok cos we stayed right in the shopping district. I think we walked and shopped so much we probably shed some weight haha. It was such a focussed shopping trip that we really don't have much photos, besides those of nice xmas decorations in the mall.



the results of our conquer!!

i am absolutely hooked on HEROES. it's super nice and i absolutely love that chubby japanese guy. He's so cute and funny lah! but i don't like the future him where he becomes all serious and straight-faced, with an american slang. he's actually been living in US since he was young so that means he imitated the japanese slang very very well. his other jap friend is in actual fact, a korean! Man, they really do that jap accent thing so well lah.

today i took the bus and there were some jc students who had just finished their last A level paper. and man, that hit me - gosh, it's been one whole year

somehow i don't feel like i am one year older than those people..though i have experienced lots of new and wonderful things in this one year, it seems so fleeting. and man can i remember those library mugging days in jc clearly (and i miss those days compared to now!!)

this is exactly why i say xmas always makes me feel melancholic cos its the time of the year when u sit down and think and reflect about the year that has passed and make some kind of judgment about how much / well you have lived through this year.

gosh..havent blogged in a gazillion years even my tagboard got deleted. but since attempts at trying to study maths for econs failed terribly..i shall blog a bit abt school. one word - BUSY. the exams are in one week's time and i am still in the process of consolidating projects. one term in school has really made me 1) more vulgar 2) more sleep-deprived 3) more prone to succumbing to retail therapy

i cant wait for the holidays to come!! and xmas is back again!! one year has passed so quickly. soon its gonna be graduating from school and working :(. i think xmas always makes me feel melancholic..somehow. the thought of how another year has passed, how things of changed etc. oh well.

i watched the movie lakehouse on cable and it was really nice! of cos keanu reeves made it even better. but anyway, yah, it was just really bitter-sweet how they actually met and missed each other so many times. and the part when she realised he died was so heart-wrenching. but its really cool that she could change his fate.

do u think that time really exists simultaneously? like if u could find the break in the fabric of time u can actually travel back in time. haha, think its really cool if it does

school has been really overwhelming for the past 2 months and times passes so quickly that it's been 2 months!! and i've been a hermit for 2 whole months, even though i pass by town everyday, i've never really been there. sigh. how sad.

and now it's the mid term break, and half of it is gone already!! :( there's still not much of a break though, with assignments and projects going on. now everything that i want to do is being pushed back to the agenda for the nice long break next year. i miss having lots of time to do what i want to do! like read, swim, play the piano, watch a movie, or just slack, really.

and doing the AS essay is killing me! plus i still have 2 to 3 projects and more assignments coming up. help :(

my i havent blogged in ages. school has been qt busy, esp cos there's a lot of self studying and it takes a lot of self discipline to do all the work, readings and revision on you own cos there're no more teachers to guide and nag. and i hate this having to download the notes ourselves thing. irritating.

when i finally got down to placing a bid for my lesson it was a heavy load off my chest. its just really complex how there are so many factors to consider. Like which classes have the least competition from seniors (who are very rich and can outbid us poors lads), which classes are not too heavy, how much money to bid, how many vacancies left in that class. sigh. and i'm totally dreading class participation, cos since it's a grading criteria there're definitely ppl who'd grab every chance to talk (regardless of importance and whether its meaningful). I shall just hope that there arent too many of such irritants in my class (though i highly doubt so!)

school starts for me tmr! oh well..bye bye couch potato life, hello homework

omg...school is starting in 2 wks time!! i know i shouldnt be complaining cos the other schools have officially started today. BUT BUT BUT my brain's still like mush and it cant absorb any thing serious, only trash from tv programmes. and the manual on how to bid for lessons is so mind boggling it's like an econs lesson in itself ("students need to manage their available resources..." "students will need to make their choice by carefully considering the demand and supply of courses..."). i sincerely hope i can successfully meet the course requirement because i still cant figure it out. (would love to hire a personal course-bidder. salary being one bowl of ice kacang a month. any takers?)

ok pictures from UK!































the town we used to live in. it was pretty cold (18 to 20 plus) though it's the summer. but the weather's just nice i think. over our blazing heat anytime.
















pretty flowers! every house had pretty gardens

that's my teacher at playgroup! my mum could recognise her but i couldnt haha


we took a roadtrip one of the days, and it was pretty cool cos summer means long daylight hours (cue miss law's globe slanted 23 deg and sun at tropic of cancer) so the sun rises at 5am and sets at 9.30pm. which means we had a lot of time to sightsee. was a bit rainy though. we were lucky to escape the floods, which started the day after we got back!

Oxford (before flood)! ok this building is just some part of Oxford uni, dun even know what college it is but yeah it's just these nice old buildings around (that i really like) and i envy esther and jasmine cos they'll be walking to school with nice views like this in nice cool weather while i'll have to walk to mine in 32 deg heat.


this is a place called Bourton-on-the-Water. It's in this district called Cotswold where the houses are those traditional english cottages. very pretty!

doesnt this look like a house from some xmas card picture?



the city of bath.

and that's the bath (which is a hot spring) that the ppl used to bathe in. there was a cool pool in another section also, like those japanese onsen.


last stop of our roadtrip was stonehenge. was a little disappointed cos i thot it'd be bigger. anyway, if you wanted to get in you'd have to pay so we just cheapskate stand outside the fence and my dad took this picture by holding the camera up haha. but its good enough anyway.



last day in london! finally acted more like tourists and did some sightseeing instead of just shopping.


the royal albert hall


i really <<33 this building. the museum of natural history. i love it cos it's soo pretty and check out the windows. it's like some palace but nooo it's just a museum. and the building is really long by the way.

there're much more pictures but i dun have the camera now. so till then, ta!

as the start of school draws near, i grow sadder! knowing that i havent done quite a lot of things that i'd wanted to do during this long 8 month break. like taking up a language, or a sewing course. and each day of free time gets more and more precious! and there's still a looong list of to-reads (and the list is growing!!) so i hope to finish 2 books before school starts (i read qt slowly). it'd be utterly nice if i had a nice pool to chill by and read books. but no i don't have that. haha.

and i also have a big clean-up plan in mind, and i want to become a neat freak and bag-and-tag everything i have because i'm too tired of having no space to put my new stuff!!

am back from the UK! i really love the place. there's just something about those old buildings, some having been around for centuries, that attracts me. i guess the mix of new and old is something that makes london so unique. we went for a roadtrip to various places such as Oxford and Stonehenge. My dad was using this GPS guide thing to drive and by choosing the "shortest route" option it brought us through small narrow roads along farmlands and plains. It took a little more time but the view was gorgeous! It looked as if it came right out of the pride and prejudice set.

i cant stand this freaking hot weather. i cant walk out to the bus stop without sweating from every pore of my body. and it was so hot to sleep with a blanket (in aircon) that i spent half of last night not having a blanket. and now i'm having the fan blowing full blast right at me. it's sooo hot. i'd be sweating by the buckets if i'd gone to egypt.

ok ok. i succumbed to facebook. I just needed to find out what's so great about it! haha, but i think it's definitely easier to search for ppl than in friendster.

only about 1 and a half months of couch potato life (which i'm totally loving) after working for a few months, i really cherish my couch potato time. i wake up late and slack and watch movies on cable for the whole afternoon and i watch more tv from dinner onwards. really rocks. damn, im dreading working in future!!

singaporeans are ugly. esp a certain group called the aunties. we had a roadshow for this magazine with the target grp being mums/middle-aged women, and i tell u..the aunties are very good for business. (of cos the goodie bag's very worth it). if the booth's empty, noone would come. if there are ppl arnd, the queue would be tttttttthhhhhhiiiiiiiiisssssssssssssssssss long. and they'll peek into other ppl's goodie bags, and ask to change flavour, change this change that. or they would buy 3 or 4 copies just for the goodie bag!?! (of cos it's business for us haha)

then there are those who board relatively empty mrt trains and they sweep like vultures to a carcass to the empty seats, and yelling to their buddies across the carriage to snatch a nearby empty seat (slaps forehead). i mean of cos, everybody wants a damn seat, but if someone gets there before me, then fine, i'll just stand. no need to shout across to your friend and let the whole world know that u want that seat, so noone else can take it.

there was this girls out loud episode i watched about people queuing up even though they dunno what it's for. they set up a covered booth (with nothing inside, but you'll just get a free pen) and said there'll be free gifts and the queue started forming. and they interviewed ppl queuing and they don't even know what it's for!!

so, moral of the story. please don't develop the auntie-complex. i'd die to find out that one day, a few decades from now, i've become an auntie myself..haha.

met a friend today after almost half a yr! and it was great just doing a short catch-up, asking what we are and will be doing. it's intriguing how our lives diverge from this point on. people take their own paths and it makes me wonder how differently we'll end up. i'm procrastinating the acceptance of offers because i don't exactly like the finality of it, how it closes off all other options and puts an end to the overseas dream.

oh well, wonder how life's gonna be like for me without work. gonna swing back to the slack life before!! but this time it'll be filled with shopping at GSS! cant wait already!!!

have been too tired to blog!

anyway, who'd think that matriculating would be such a hassle! there seems to be a lot of things to do, a lot of dates to remember (more dates to consider when planning THE holiday!)

oh, i just cant wait till i'm free from work, then i can shop till i drop at GSS!!! the thought of it excites me haha

there's this show on ch 8 called mars vs venus and it's pretty hilarious. there's this part saying how wives love to nag and guys just have to turn off and let them hit their daily quota of 6000 words. reminds me of my parents. i think my dad has mastered the art of tuning out cos my mum really nags a lot when she starts on certain topics. she just doesnt know when to stop! i mean if i were my dad i'd be angry/impatient myself. i think that's what staying at home does to u.
don't u think that generally hsewives are the ones who possess auntie characteristics? than say, working mums? firstly, i think it's cos if u stay at home all day, all u care about are the nitty gritty stuff and u go nagging abt those. but if u're working u've been burnt out at work and all u want to do when u reach home is relax.

i hope i don't morph into an auntie in future :S

went to watch spidey today and must say it was so-so lah. though i didnt watch 2. but i think it's cos there were too many funny characters around lah, that it just sort of loses focus. anyway, this is like my first movie since...since...night at the museum? damn sad. AND pirates 3 is coming! whee, i wanna catch that!

finally went to watch phantom on tue and i must say it was great. how wrong can you go with that wonderful plot and music. the stage was lovely, with gold statuettes and all.
i absolutely loved
-the props and backdrops! so sophisticated!!
-the opera managers. very very funny
-the swinging chandelier!
- the part where the phantom descended on a...thing...after their song on the roof - cool!
- the boat! curious how it actually works
- the masquerade scene! majestic

but i didn't like raoul's quacky voice. (after that i found out that it was the aussie cast actually. thot it was the original london cast. hmm, wonder if the london props are the same..)and i also prefer the point of no return set on the movie though, with the bridge and all. but all in all, nice!