was just reading some article about sg in the coming years and i think its sort of exciting to see how everything will change, and start to become all exciting. and i'm kinda happy to be part of this whole era of change.

anyway, i just finished a book called falling leaves by adeline yen mah. it was amazing, and so so touching. it's her autobiography, about how she lived through her unhappy childhood yrs with unloving stepmother and siblings, and it just made me so bitter at the end after she found out how her siblings betrayed her for the inheritance when all the time, all she did was for some kind of acknowledgment in her family. all in all, definitely a book i'd recommend!

It's one thing to ask for a favour, another to be critical while at it.
Something my mum needs to learn.

i find it sooo hard to shop for my dad, who's not a tech-geek, not fashion fwd (and alrdy has enough ties/cufflinks/belts/watches etc) and doesnt exactly read. so we always just end up having a dinner. mums (and women in general) are so much easier to shop for! even a shopping voucher is appreciated hahha.

on a separate note, i must say that something DEFINITELY needs to be done about shopping in sg. after coming back from the US, i definitely think that our stuff are horrendously overpriced. which will probably explain why it is taking so long for sg to become asia's fashion hub.

anyway, i find that i cant work with people who are simply not practical or grounded when it comes to planning certain stuff. lofty ideas that are out of the box and creative BUT so ludicrous! and the fact that they dont even think about the practicality and refuse to budge just gets on my nerves so badly.

there's this recent article about whether we should preserve some of our local landmark buildings, busstops, schools etc. and my answer is definitely yes. anyone who has been to Europe, UK or US would know that any building they see can easily be more than a 100 years old.

The reason why sg may be lacking a culture, may be precisely cos we improve everything much too quickly, not preserving pieces of our past that people may be able to relate to deeply. Maybe it's cos we're too small, so improvements tend to spread to every corner of the country. But though improvements are good, wouldn't it be nice to keep more of our history? in the countries mentioned above, buildings just survive generations after generations, residences turned into shops etc. why should we demolish everything and start building again?

the impression that ppl have abt sg would probably be that we're modern, etc, but what attracts me about the other countries is precisely the fact that they blend the old and new together so perfectly. that's what sg should learn.

a really touching story

Little friend of a lifetime: The heartbreaking friendship between two tiny girls with cancer

(p/s: prepare some tissue)

sometimes i just feel like i want to be somebody. i don't want to be just an average. i don't want to be a so-so anymore. i want to be up there and be somebody.

its the end of exams, and by right, im supposed to feel happy and rejoice over it but im just feeling so empty and kind of aimless? Cos there's a long 4 months ahead of me and i'm not so sure what do with it. im also feeling kind of lonely because looking around me, i feel like i have very very few true friends. though i may know a lot of people, how many of them can you truly consider your true friends? those u know u can talk too anytime, about anything. maybe its just me, but i feel like im a drifter, drifting from group to group and there're only so few friends i can hold on to constantly

haha i've been MIA for exactly 2 months! school this term has been hectic, which is too mild a descriptive word.the one week "holidays" are ending in one day and honestly, what holiday!?!?

I am amazed by the astounding ability of humans being able to get back to where they are after repeatedly being beaten and being on the verge of giving up. It's like reviving after dying again and again and again. And this is exactly how i feel this term. I've felt like i'm dead meat for so many times but life has to go on and things must move on right? So once again, we pull ourselves together and brave it all again. Amazing.

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.