Sketching in the Straits - Irene Lim
The Mechanic's Tale: Life in the Pit Lanes of Formula One - Steve Matchett
National Museum of Singapore Guide - Iola Lenzi
The Playboy Prince - Nora Roberts
Santa Baby (anthology) - Jennifer Crusie, Lori Foster, Carly Phillips
One Hundred Years of the National Museum: Singapore 1887-1987 - Gretchen Liu

taking a break from work, i opened up my design linkz and found a treasure trove of inspirational stuff. what caught me most was how even clocks can be designed in out of the box ways.

check out these two clocks!



This is a clock that looks like an LCD display. It has the ability to change from black to white depending on the lighting conditions! It's self powered and doesn't have to be plugged in anywhere, making it look slick yet self contained. Designed by Vadim Kibardin, a Russian designer.




This one is so cool! It's called the On-Time Clock because it gives you the illusion of having three minutes more than you really have! The fake time is 1010 while the real time is 1013. Designed by Tak Cheung.

did i mention that i saw sun yan zi's concert for free?

because i did! all thanks to the ayg appreciation celebrations on friday night!

when we first saw the itinerary, we were like "international recording artiste? what international recording artiste will come to sing at an appreciation night? they must be nuts!" we thought maybe electrico will come to sing the national day song or the people who sang the ayg theme song but on the day, the staff told us sun yan zi would be performing! of course we all went crazy! hello, it's sun yan zi! SUN YAN ZI!

in our heads, we kept thinking she would just pop out on stage and sing like a couple of her famous songs and be done with it. but she came out in all her concert regalia, all sparkly and shiny, and performed her concert! O.M.G! i thoroughly enjoyed her concert, even though the energy in the stadium was pathetic. well you can't really expect those old fogies to jump up and sing along right. well after a bit, serene and i couldn't take it and when First Day came on, we just stood up and went high! and guess what, the rest of the youngsters also started standing up and high-ing too! and sun yan zi waved to us! total fangirl moment! lol!

her concert took on a really out of this world theme. aliens, spacemen, jellyfishy stuff from the ceiling, weird asymmetrical outfits, weird coloured wigs, sparkly and shiny head gear. most of her songs that she sang were really obscure but i guess for a hardcore fan they would know. some of them were also new songs. her new songs are rather weird. good weird, not bad weird.oh and she had this really cool 3-d hologram image of herself singing before she came out from the other side of the stage. it was so realistic it got people speculating whether it was real or not.

overall awesome awesome concert! :)

i am uber bored right now. karen's not in and all the other interns aren't in as well for various reasons. bahhh.
the reason i am still here is because i might need to sub jieyin for the cfa booth duty at commencement. sighhs. is bored bored bored.

the week started out ok. mostly working on research for a new exhibition. listening to audio transcripts, reading CHINESE transcripts. wah i almost died from that.

run down to commencement ceremonies almost everyday to take photos with the graduates. it was really bittersweet to see so many of them graduate. on the one hand, you are exhilarated for them and on the other, you selfishly want their company for another year.

i ordered my macbook pro on monday and i received mahhh preciouussss on tuesday! woots! i have been playing with it the whole week. it's really quite easy to use, but of course with every new thing you have to figure out their functions as well but so far so good!

sent Shiwen off to Australiaaa on tuesday morning. had to wake up at those super ungodly hours. but it was worth it. crapped with the other two all the way to clementi. i think we irritated the whole train. oh wells...

and then Daddy's birthday dinner on Wednesday night at Li Bai. it was a really good dinner, with red wine, scallops, codfish, ostrich and asparagus among others. but that meant i also missed evelyn's surprise birthday dinner! :((

Thursday was the Pupuk opening! Like finally after working on bits and pieces of the exhibition, mostly editing the brochures and the catalogues. wah, that was a pretty difficult one. but it was really worth it! the catalogue and brochure is gorgeous! for our hard work, rita and me are credited in both publications! :))

oh and in the morning, in a flurry of twits. suddenly camy, tien kwan, evelyn and me are booked on a jetstar flight to bangkok and staying in the citin pratunam in two weeks! woot woots!

Ah today was super exhausted but this irritating couple standing above me in the bus and they kept talking and the guy's saliva kept spitting out. groossss!

going for the Asian Youth Games appreciation dinner. let's hope there's good food and programmes and that we can have lots of fun! :)

- made a visit to jalan peminpin to meet camy and tien kwan for lunch. we ate at jai thai and it was the yummiest thai food i had in a long long time!

- first time i sat the circle line! it's really fast but super small. and it's infested with rj and ny people.

- nua-ed around the bishan library, it's a really big place. and they have so much more books than cheng san!

- first day volunteering at ayg. without the integrated training, i was definitely lost, confused and trying hard to follow all the instructions. i definitely ran into some problems at the start but i think i learnt from it. i will definitely try to be less frazzled and more calm the next time. media relations might sound glamourous but it totally isn't.

- i can now put a face to the name behind all the bylines on the sports pages

- there were two 987 deejays, whom i totally have no idea of, who were making a radio report! they have pink hair!

- the other media relations volunteers are all really cool. there were two more girls from ny who recognised me from council! lol! all of us got along famously and i am really looking forward to working with all of them over the next three days.

1) i am neither here nor there. i don't really know the house nor can i stay with the ocomm because they are busy

2) my social skills are sorely lacking. i can barely muster up an interest in making friends with the freshmen

3) i really got no energy to run around looking for stuff. (ie. feeling old)

4) floors are super hard to sleep on. i think i didn't realise this last year was because i am usually knocked out by the time my eyelids are close and therefore have no time to ponder on the hardness of the floor

5) the freezer has air con on sundays. pretty much the only place in arts that has air con on sundays

6) i have no dance skills whatsoever as evidence by me flailing my way through the rag dance portion. but we had fun.

7) there really could have been a bit more creativity in some aspects

8) the video is even more awesome than oweek! and i didn't think that could happen

9) our bitching skills has not waned after one year, neither have old hurts

10) how did i run around like a mad woman for 5 days straight for the past three years? i am exhausted after only one day!

because i finished up most of my work and really have nothing to do...

- been conversing with camy on gmail chat and tk, jeremy, evelyn, cindy, xiaoyan and serene on twitter. it's probably the new-ness of twitter and the fact that it's conveniently on my firefox browser (courtesy of tweeterfox) that i am using this instead of other chat software like msn.

- watched artists' documentary with the rest of the interns.

- suddenly thinks justin long is very good looking. now i want to watch 'he's just not that into you'.

- is plotting to buy more everyday minerals blushes. like i dont' have enough blushes

- my crocs are insanely comfortable. i have never worn shoes the first time and not be gifted with blisters

- converting more sytycd videos for my ipod.

hallo everybody! i am currently in macau and having a fantastic time!

i arrived here last night at the itsy bitsy macau international airport which could easily fit into terminal one. chew chor meng was on the same flight as us and my brother actually took a photo with him. other than looking tired, he seems fine and he was walking ok.

we went straight to the venetian to dump our luggages and settle in. had dinner at the international foodcourt (shared ramen with shawn + pizza with the girls) and then walked around the shopping arcade. the venetian is hugggeee but it was really empty and deserted. very unlike the venetian in las vegas which was teeming with life. most of the shops were empty despite running some good sales. unfortunately the only shop i was interested in - LUSH - didn't have much discounts but i am sure i will definitely make a purchase there in the next few days.

we went to the casino as well. my first ever time legally walking through a casino. again many many empty tables and slots machines. observed a few games like blackjack, roulettes and da xiao. they seem simple enough but the overwhelming impression for me was the desensitization of the value of money. they are just chips which you throw away or gain back or credits where you keep pressing little buttons and see the numbers go up and down. very terrible...

this morning the sky was overcast and we decided to put off sightseeing till the next day and go to zhu hai instead. we took a quick bus ride to the customs checkpoint. the checkpoint is pretty much like JB! you walk through the customs on both side and boom! you are suddenly in another country. in this case, i was in ah tiong land aka china! funny thing is that there are actually lesser ah tiong accents here than in pgp.




macau customs


grouchy brother and me in the customs queue


zhu hai shopping area. this is just the tip of the iceberg! china flags waving to remind you where you are



ate lunch first at this cha chan teng/restaurant. we had the usual dim sum of har gao xiu mai and this fantastic butter buns. it's is so superbly yummy! and then it was time for shoppinggg! ok i am an absolutely terrible shopper. i hate to haggle for discounts and i usually can't do it convincingly. i am pretty sure i got taken for a ride by many of them! lol! but whatever i got a reasonable haul for about 100sgd and i am happy! :)




Singaprian Fried Rice


super yummy butter buns. anyone knows the exact chinese name?


full to the brim and ready to shop


One of the many thousand shopping lanes




part of my shopping haul for the day...



after walking the entire day, we went to the gym. ohmygod, the gym like super high tech to the max. you can actually watched tv on the treadmill screen! actually you can watch tv on any electronic equipment.

i got up early yesterday morning to make my way down to the national stadium for a briefing for ayg volunteers. i am assigned as a media relations assistant and at sentosa for beach volleyball. i requested a change of venue to bishan stadium because of transport issues. hopefully everything will work out.

after the very short lecture-style presentations, Serene and I took bus 16 out of the national stadium. At first we thought of going down to orchard. but spur of the moment decided to go museum hopping when the bus went past SMU! we visited the Singapore Art Museum and Peranakan Museum, and had loads of fun walking through them. the Peranakan Museum was freaking gorgeous and with the stuff from the conference still rattling in my head, it was really enlightening. but still, the Perankan culture confuses me.

had wonton mee and tofu at Park Lane at this obscure little eating house. very yummy, i will definitely go back there if i am in the vicinity for cheap stuff. after lunch, we did some shopping around and met up with kok siang to help him with his grocery shopping for steamboat. and then yong cheng enlightened me about his theory of socially disturbing acts which was hilarious!

steamboat at kok siang's place was entertaining and hilarious as usual, with all the same characters back together for a meal. after the dinner, we cleaned up the place, leaving everything spick and span. sum introduced us to karaokeparty.com! it was damn funny, trying to hit the pitches and following the rhythm.

it was a good saturday...

1) The man who was called 'bastard' by an indian and then called the indian a 'bitch'
At first I was engrossed in my quadripop game (sony ericsson game! haha!) then i realised that there was someone shouting. Apparently some ruckus had happened between this Chinese salaryman uncle and an Indian construction worker. The Indian called the Chinese a bastard. And then the Chinese started screaming along the lines 'don't insult my parents, don't call me a bastard'. I couldn't hear what the Indian said over my headphones. Just bent my head to my game and pretend never see anything. At the next stop, something must have happened again because the Chinese got even more agitated and started shouting louder. And then he called the Indian a 'bitch'. Now to my thinking if you don't permit people to call you a 'bastard', you jolly well stick to your principles and not call other people by derogatory terms as well. It's kind of hypocritical I think.

2) The girl who just had to squeeze next to me
When the ruckus started, this chinese girl suddenly popped out and squeeze herself next to me. Now the train was pretty crowded but it was not that crowded that she had to squeeze. I was leaning against one of those glass panels on the opposite site of the opening door. My bag was very full that day so I wasn't learning flush against it and I took up more space than usual. Plus I was carrying a couple of bags in front of me as well. And there was an uncle that was leaning on the doors in the centre. So this girl just had to squeeze in into the tiny weeny space between me and the uncle! Wah piang. She was practically cheek to cheek with me. And she doesn't have a very good sense of balance so obviously she was swaying back and forth. When the crowd emptied, she moved in front of me and basically squeezed me in between her and the emergency button thingy. Seriously, no air to breathe. I was so irritated. There's clearly more than enough space but she had to squeeze. kns.

3) The boy who didn't want to take out his ez link card
This happened when I was trying to get out of the turnstiles. This group of young ahbengs was in front of me and one of their friends got stuch. Turns out his card was in his back pocket and he had to perform some sort of jump on top of the card reader. The ez link card must have been like super glued to his ass or something. Why can't he just take it out instead of performing three of those stupid jumps and wasting everybody's time! Hello, it's 9pm, we are all tired and want to go home, just take the card out of your pocket!! It's really not cool or funny to see you do some stupid jumps.

i don't think nus ever will have as cool a commencement speech as this

what a weekend it's been! i barely had any time to breath after finishing my last paper on friday afternoon.

headed out for a celebratory dinner with the ps gang to cathay. we originally wanted to have aston's but the queue was like the space mountain queue at disneyland. and it was only 6pm! changed plans and headed down to billy bombers where the milkshakes are like a meal by themselves! we walked around the place, checking out the artsy fartsy shops. the notebooks were super cute at Wood Would but alas, very out of my price range as well.

headed for home where i spent half the night tossing clothes out of my wardrobe for Fleaker of Hope, a flea that Camy booked us in for. i came out with quite a pile of crap! but clearing out some stuff means i have a little bit more space for new ones.

hauled everything down via mrt to clark quay. i had a total of 3 big plastic bags of shoes, clothes and bag! we spent the whole day at the flea, haggling with customers, checking out each other's clothes, talking/chatting/bitching among ourselves. it was fun and we are plotting to join more flea to get rid of our stash. everything is at TK's house which makes for easy transportation! lol! oh and i made like $45!

sunday was kbox day with the girls. we really need to find some other activity soon! (coughcyclingcough!) went shopping at dorothy perkins for more tops and yay! they were having their 3 for $33 basic tees! i wonder if i should grab more before their promotion ends again.

by the way, sotsogyou omedettou (congratulations on your graduation) to xiao hui, dawn, kai wei, zhi min, yeng hong, chuan seng, reuben, jing jun and carol!

THIS WAITING IS KILLING ME!

I have two more hours to my last paper and then two more hours before I officially bid Year 3 goodbye. Have I mentioned how much this is killing me? I have butterflies in my tummy and they are flying about happily. The frogs haven't made an appearance yet but soon they will.

AAHHHHHH AHHHHHH!!!

- - -

YEAR 3 SEMESTER 2 is officially O.V.E.R!
It feels very weird, to be sitting at my desk but not to have any material to review or to cram into my head and that I can do whatever I want :)

finally finished 75% of the exams. just need to chiong for the last 25%.

today's JS2225 paper was completely and utter nonsense! the instructions before the paper was that we would be getting a concept that has never been taught to us before. From looking at past years' paper, we all assumed that it would be an untaught topic from marketing and consumer culture. When we flipped the papers over, the word SOCIOLOGICAL CONCEPT starred straight back at me! Now if you know me, you will know that I have consciously avoided all sociology modules because I just don't have any brain cells that are the least bit sociological. I am immediately like "shit!" As I read the paper over, the shits just multiplied. It was a concept of Something and Nothing. Besides sociological, it became philosophical as well! Then I just kind of went numb and just did the paper on autopilot. If I thought P&C was bad enough, I think this is even worse. And I have no S/U for this. Lucky science bastards who can S/U this. Hrrmph.

After the paper ended, all of us went to PGP for lunch. Then we went to my room where we chatted the afternoon away. After the rest left, I had dinner with Remmy and Bingde where we continued talking about life and our future. You know you are getting old when you start talking seriously about the future. We talked talked talked till 10pm. Good destressing session, I must say. Time for a good night's sleep and then back to the grind. IS, I am coming to getcha!

Day 5
Erm, forgot just about everything about this day except for two things. Kaiwei and I placed our bet/predictions for hong xing da jiang and I watched the video for the NUS Spiderman. That guy is either too brave or he went crazy from cramming.

Day 6
Had to go for tuition today. Criss crossed the whole of Singapore before coming back to sch at 4pm. Highlight of the day was the Chinese Paul Potts. He was singing some sort of opera and we could hear him from Level 3 while he was halfway across the road to the bus stop and until he disappeared from view as he walked towards RH! Serious, cross my heart and hope to die!

Tan Chuan Seng complained that he wasn't mentioned yesterday. So petty, right?
He visited us yesterday and today, mainly to come irritate us when he got bored with his honours mates. (or maybe they kicked him out of the room instead). Yo, got a job already but still must study okays! :)

Continued on with my P/C lectures but in the afternoon I switched to European Politics. It was murderous just trying to get through one measly little reading. I am so not a European Politics kind of a person. It just doesn't interest me. I thought it would be good to go beyond Asia with this module but it just confirms the fact that I prefer the Southeast Asian and Asian politics arena. To me, EU is only for travelling and admiring pretty sights.

Kaiwei and Bingde bought little clip on fans for us today! They are damn cute! They are colourful and have flashing LED lights. Who needs the power plugs to have some air blowing around! Hah! Gosh, the days are really hot lately despite the showers. It's so hot that after taking a cold shower, I immediately feel sticky again. Ugh!

Today we started pasting up stuff on the walls again. More will come soon!

Today was  a day for strangers! When I got there in the morning, there was this random AT sitting at the other table. And the other two strangers were Mei Ling and Zhi Min! Haha, finally, ML is here after promising to come on Tuesday instead. I finally got my very belated present of Havianas from her. Of course I paid her like 2 bucks because giving slippers is bad luck. ZM came by later in the afternoon. He certainly livened up the whole area, making his usual Zhi Min-esque jokes. A lot of laughter and talking today, it was fun especially since some of us could be graduating and we will never be like this again.

(oh, just heard some random fire alarm going off)

Studied P&C today as a break between my PS mods. I went through about 6 lectures today. Mygod, it's seriously a lot harder to study for a closed book mcq than an open book one. All the memorizing that I had to do....My brain is like one big fried gigantic mess now. Let's hope something was retained in my teeny tiny puny little brain.

Kaiwei and me gorged ourselves on nuggets for our dinner today. We each had 10 pieces and a sundae!

ML and me swapped iPods just now. She introduced me to Big Bang and I introduced her to philharmonique and Clazziquai Project.

I think that's it for day 3. Time to take a bath and go sleep!

Day 2
Continued right on with IS yesterday. I spent just about the whole day with Offense/Defense Theory. Sounds very exciting yes? As usual I was slower that I preferred but I am quite happy that I completed O/DT because it looks like it will be a pretty important topic for the exams.

Yesterday was actually an exciting day for another reason, I had an interview with the NUS Museum to discuss about volunteering there during the holidays. I applied about a week ago to intern at the Museum but they replied that they didn't have any available spaces but they are really interested in the paper that I did for Pop Culture on one of the works in the Constructed Landscapes exhibition and asked if I would like to volunteer instead. While talking to the Assistant Director, Ms Lee and the curator, Ms Lim, I explained that I don't mind being an unpaid intern because an internship is more valuable on my resume rather than just a volunteer experience and Ms Lee agreed that it would be better and since the work that Karen had in mind was quite extensive, it would definitely be better as an internship.

So yes, I got an internship! It's not paid and everything but there are some pretty good trade offs for it. I don't have to be at the museum everyday and I can generally work from home because my job scope is actually quite research based. I also can join in the Museum courses for free and they will also train me as a docent (gallery guide) to conduct tours for the CL exhibit which I can continue to do after my internship period. I really like the fact that they are thinking beyond just the 10 weeks for my involvement with the Museum. Gives me something to do while slowly withering away in Honours classes next year!

I will be assisting in the research and compilation of gallery guides for the CL exhibit which is pretty much an extension of my research paper! I am super excited about this because I did a lot of surface research to understand some of the paintings but didn't manage to go particularly in depth and now I get the chance! My second assignment is to develop secondary level worksheets for school tour groups based on my research! I will also get to help Karen with her next exhibition and learn more about how an exhibition gets put on and curatorial work in general. I am super damn excited about everything because these are stuff I have wanted to learn but never know how and where to. Thank you HY2254! Even if I don't score well, there's still something positive that came out of it! :)

first day of reading week for year 3 semester 2. where have the previous 5 semesters gone too?!

so first day today. woke up at around 7ish, decided to loll around in bed rather than heading to the gym (BAD GIRL!). lolled myself out to the toilet by 745 and was ready to head to sch by 830. but of course being an internet addict, i fiddled around with some of my daily links before heading out to school.

first to arrive at third floor as usual. took advantage of the time alone to get back into the mugging groove. i started out with international security today, aimed to work my way through lectures 1 and 2. unfortunately the inertia that everyone dreads haunted me after lunch. no matter how many times i read the same paragraph or tried to concentrate, nothing sunk in. it was terrible terrible terrible. after much effort, i managed to finish the fearon reading by dinner. it took me an entire day to do that. so yes, my schedule is off now.

came back early to do laundry. i actually intended to do something but i have a headache and i am feeling very very off right now. i am going to read some P&C lecture notes and have an early night. wake up bright and early to go gym and then study. let's hope i have a more productive day tomorrow!

i just submitted my last essay for the semester! hooray!
i can finally watch youtube without feeling guilty, like maybe for a day or two.
i am just going to pretend that there's no such thing as examinations for the next 48 hours.