hello 2010, 

if i have any say in it, my room will look like these come 2011.

I am leaving for




See you after Christmas! :)

finished all examinations.
went back to work.
packed up my room.

the end of the second last semester of school.
it's time to start psyching myself that i am really going to graduate and that i will need to start being a different kind of person, someone more mature and more responsible.

the hardest thing i've ever done is keep believing
there's someone in this crazy world for me
the way that people come and go through temporary lives
my chance could come and i might never know

the carpenters, i know i need to be in love

 Broke up the monotony of school life a little this morning by going over to the museum to help out with a school tour of Constructed Landscapes. This is despite a deadline looming over me like the archangel of doom and gloom. I really didn't care, I knew I wouldn't do much anyway in the morning so why not spend some time volunteering instead?

The kids were from sec 2s from Bowen Sec. The first group was really quiet but you could see them absorbing the information. The second group was more active, speaking up, asking questions and generally engaging more with the art works. I even conducted part of the tour for the woodblock prints section! One little boy was so cute. He came up to Karen and me, complaining that the tour was too short. He wanted to learn more about the paintings in CL and to see the rest of the collections as well. I was really touched by it, I mean, even at my age, not many of my peers would want to even spend an afternoon at any museum and here's a 14 year boy who wants to learn more. (Notice I said peers, not friends. I am blessed to have friends who love to visit museums as well! Ng Shizhen, if you are reading this, better make sure you clear space in your calendar to go to the National Museum with me! I know you are very 'busy'!)

Had lunch with Karen and Ahmad at some West Coast hawker centre. Ohmygosh, I finally had a good bowl of mee soto! It's been so long since I had a really good one! Yums! I spent pretty much the whole day in the office after that, working on the darned essay. And back to that darned essay, I go :(

 4Tomorrow - Tomorrow
Secret - I Want You Back
4Minute - MUZIK
W & Whale - Born To Rock
M-Flo Loves Boa - The Love Bug
M-Flo Loves Melody and Ryohei - Miss You
Whale & Jo-Kwon - Dunk Shot
Boa feat Verbal - Bump Bump
Brown Eyed Girls - Abracadabra
Many many different versions of Libertango

as you can tell, i am on a big kpop kick at the moment.
and i remember saying years ago that kpop was terrible and jpop was better. look who's better now...

 This week has been really hectic but yet extremely fulfilling in every aspect of my life.

Academic wise, I am being pummeled by (what seems like) thousands of essays. I finally presented my South China Sea topic on Tuesday and now I have to write out my paper within a week. At the rate I am going, I think I may end up with more than 20 pages. Longest paper I will have ever written! Not to mention, I still have to be diligent and keep up with daily readings so I can open my mouth in class and make (hopefully) intelligent comments. And right now, I have to work on a draft for my CPT paper to submit by tomorrow if I want some constructive comments for my paper.

This week I also attended both the Kent Ridge Ministerial Forum and the Straight Talk: Is Singapore=PAP? forum. Both forums were interesting in their own way. At KRMF, of course I finally got my first glimpse of LKY! I enjoyed his answers to the questions very much even if I didn't enjoy the questions themselves. At Straight Talk, I enjoyed the questions as much as the answers (even though they were obviously skirting around the questions). I also bought Men In White and had them autographed by Teo Ser Luck, Christopher De Souza and Zaqy Mohammad!

I didn't lack in the cultural department this week either. I went to the opening of Ruckus Rubix at NUS Museum on Tuesday. I was kind of hoping to meet Jeremy Sharma after corresponding with him through email about one of his pieces but I don't think I saw him there :( I also went across to the Conservatory to check out the Wind Chamber concert. I enjoyed it slightly more than A Wind Evening but Cellisimo is still the best one for me so far. I really really liked the Debussy piece (put a smile to my face) and the Bassoon version of Carmen was interesting as well.

Obviously I have been holed up in my room typing like a mad woman and flipping pages faster than drunk drivers are flipping traffic cops the bird but I managed to find time for friends as well. I had lunch with Shizhen and Serene on Monday. Shizhen mugged with me on Wednesday. Thursday, I met up with TK, Xinyu, Cherie, Jeremy and Remy for dinner at Munchy Monkey's. MM was having a Mandopop Top 40 Night by CAC Voices. The singing may not be stellar but I really enjoyed the pub-like atmosphere.

Honestly, life is tough as year 4. The amount of work and expectations piled on you is no joke. But this is the first time in four years which I can honestly say I am really working hard and playing hard. I am disciplined and conscientious. If I ever said I was in the past three years, all those were lies. This is the real deal. And even if I do hate the suffering that I have to go through to accomplish all my work, I relish the challenge of doing so. And at the end of the day, when I complete this semester, I can tell myself honestly that I worked hard. Because I will never have this experience ever again.

So let me remember this week...
And remind myself that I can do it...

serene, shizhen and me finally got to meet up for a dinner after ages of having to endure clashing timetables this semester. since all of us were broke and had little time to spare, we ate at KFC at Clementi. very unglam but hey! it's the company that counts right? we discussed our lives, moaned about school work, exchanged snatches of gossip, insulted one another, discussed poetry and translations.

serene shared with us, probably the most lovely Chinese phrase I have ever heard so far. it's the third sentence of a english haiku translated into mandarin

蓝天可归我？

sighhhh...

Week 8 is ending soon or have ended for some people but for me, this is always the toughest part of my week. I have to finish up readings for two seminars tomorrow and try to get some sleep to get up in time for 9am class. After almost 8 weeks of honours year, I can tell you, it's no joke. The pace of honours year is KILLER! It's nothing like years 1-3. I now understand what JJ meant when she told me last year that you really don't start studying until year 4 and you wonder what the hell have the last three years been all about.

Now that I have 5 essay deadlines coming up (I think I have been whining about this to everybody I know), I am finally forcing myself to be as efficient as possible. Not that I have given up my internet but basically my life is just sleep, school, homework, youtube and occasional lunches/dinner with friends. I have no time in my life for anything else. I am trying very hard to cut down on the youtube part. I am already pretty successful at cutting out reading thrashy books and obsessively checking my bookmarks, so now youtube must go. I think I should delete it from my bookmarks bar so it won't be so accessible.

I am very proud of myself this week actually. I completed most of my readings for classes this week before Wednesday. I actually started reading on Sunday night! And I finished 3/4s of my Visual essay. If I can continue being this efficient for the next two weeks, I should be able to complete the first three essays that's due on Week 11 all on time AND complete my daily readings. If I can accomplish this, I think this will be the greatest achievement of my academic career to date!

Gosh, I just realised what a nerd I am to be blogging about school. I sound so secondary school. Doh.

my newest aim in life is to own all the Friends and Will & Grace DVDs.
all eighteen of 'em!