Cogito Ergosum

Planes and Trains

2008-05-27T15:30:00.000+01:00

Am now sitting on the train from Manchester Airport to Durham and watching the English countryside zoom by the windows. It's been a long and pretty torturous journey but I've arrived and it feels utterly amazing. Last time I took this train I was fortunate enough to sit next to a Durham Lecturer, Pam, whose company and assistance marked the start of a wonderful year. Now, I know that in 3 hours Laura and Timmy would be waiting for me at the train station while Waynie would be finishing off his last paper. Of course there is some trepidation since I hadn't seen these people for a year (well, with the exception of Wayne of course); but I'm mostly looking forward to a jam-packed exciting roller-coaster of a time in Durham.

But since I can't get into that right now (considering I haven't even spent my first day there), let's talk about my flight. It was a pretty typical flight, cramped, unable to sleep and pretty uncomfortable. But I made one crucial mistake, I chose the wrong movie to watch - P.S. I Love You. I thought it would be funny and full of romance and hearts, clouds, fluffiness and generally uplifting things. WRONG!!! My brother told me it was a pretty good movie (at least I think he did), what he didn't tell me was that I would spend the WHOLE (and I'm not exaggerating) WHOLE 2 hours crying my eyes out and trying not to make a sound. I'm not kidding. Every time she received a letter from her husband, I just couldn't stop tearing up... The lady beside me probably thought I was crazy, and gosh knows what the flight attendants were thinking.. It was so weird, everyone was watching different movies all around me, and there I was.. I was an absolute mess by the end of the movie and had to watch Dodgeball to cheer me up. Haha.

At any rate, I'm pretty tired right now. It's 2221 Singapore time and I had left at 0200, so excuse the drivel. I'll write more soon! I've got a formal dinner tomorrow =)

P.S. I'M FREEZING!!! My fingers are numb =(

Afterword: The total journey time to Durham was 23 hours. Pwah...

And so it begins again

2008-05-19T09:26:00.004+01:00

An academic year has passed since I left Durham. A lot has happened since then. It's been an eventful year... I vividly remember slogging through 6 hours of philosophy every monday morning for half a year; this was, innocently enough, called "Geographic Thought" and still gives me shudders till this very day. And those jam-packed days when Wayne came to visit and we were up and about with no time for a break. How about the time where, after a drunken night out at East Coast Park, I ended the trip sprawled out on a bicycle track chatting to a random stranger (whose facial features I still cannot recall) while both of us were petting my dog. I think I was chatting in Chinese... Hmmmm.. It's been a smashing year, and spent with the best honours class I could possibly ask for.

But, the year has passed, and in less than 10 days, I'll be back in Durham and staying with Wayne, Laura, Timmy and Luke. Exciting times ahead. So I have returned to my blog, and we'll see where it goes =)

silkstalkings gleefully waves

RE: Genetic Sexual Attraction

2007-07-07T16:01:00.000+01:00

Oh, I have also found out that most people visit my blog cause it's apparently one of the 6 best links regarding genetic sexual attraction

http://buzzfeed.com/buzz/Genetic_Sexual_Attraction

Mine is the "Why Adoption Can Lead to Weird Reunions as Adults" heading

And currently, the still they have of a page of my blog is Tim passed out over my fridge...

How hilarious is that?!?

silkstalkings in rolling around in laughter

Cooking!!

2007-07-07T15:21:00.000+01:00

Phew, I hadn't written in my actual diary since April, so today, I thought I should start writing down the stuff which went on in my last term in Durham. Have a pretty heavy head now, spinning once again with memories, good and bad. It was a whirlwind of a term, with friends visiting, a ton of college events and a ton of gradual goodbyes and resolutions to the year's happenings. An emotional roller-coaster; I'm angry, yet elated at the same time right now =)

And I'm gonna whinge awhile in this paragraph, stating that I still can't write about most things on this blog because though it's been 2 weeks now since term's ended, I'm still sad that I'm leaving.

So, anyway, since I'm not doing anything at the moment with my life, I thought that the productive thing would be to learn how to cook =) The lyrics of "Female of the Species", by Space, is playing in my head now =)

"shock shock horror horror shock shock horror"

Yes, yes, I know, it's shocking to most of you, imagining me slaving away in the kitchen. I know I seem very atas lah.

*sidetrack*
I still remember in JC when I went to Commonwealth Hawker Centre to eat fish kuay teow and met Soony there. She said "Stacy?!? I never thought you ate in Hawker Centres!"... And my mum was all "what ever do your friends think of you?".
*sidetrack over*

Well, bugger off! I happen to just carry myself elegantly... You heard me... Now... Shut up!

Moving on, rapidly, I haven't held a frying pan since I was 14 and in Home Econs, but hey, how hard can it be right? I must say, I did surprise myself. I sort of expected burnt meals that I had to choke down for the first few days. But my meals have been more than edible. I've rather had a good time actually. By using kikkoman fragrance soy sauce, I'm created chinese resembling meals instead of ang moh grub, and I've been hanking for some Singapore cuisine for ages now!!!

Anyway, my first meal had to be simple right? So ang moh food lorh. Fast to cook. So I had sausages fried with onions and egg accompanied by baked beans. Sorta remember my dad cooking something like that you see... All my meals are concocted in my head based on logic and observations of Luke, Wayne and my dad.

Day 2, I got more ambitious. So I had fried chicken (marinated in kikkoman soy sauce) with rice. For veggies, I had fried peppers, lettuce and egg (with kikkoman soy sauce added in for good measure).

Muahahahahahah. Most of my food can stretch over 2 meals. Now, below, you see chicken noodle soup with lettuce (it was supposed to be macaroni, but I figured spaghetti was more flexible and I could make more varieties of ang moh food with it, so better to buy than macaroni, right?). There was also a side dish of lettuce and egg.

I've also had bacon and cheese with scrambled eggs, a burger and other stuff =)

How accomplished.

You know, I never did care about the singlish sprinkled into my entries till now. Not only singlish phrases, but also singlish grammer... It's an easy way of saying if, for some reason, you're reading this post, and you think it's bad grammer, it's probably a singlish way of talking =)

If you are Singaporean or understand singlish, and it's still bad grammer... well... fuck off...

ta!

Silkstalkings is back in business!!

More reviews

2007-07-06T22:11:00.001+01:00

Also, the amount of peopel who have passed out or fallen on my bed (mostly in drunkeness) is pretty impressive. Here's Tim... Twice....

And Darius:

Here's Coughlan:

And Wayne and Laura:

Luke:

And at honourable mention spot is Martin and Laura rolling on the corridor outside my room. I was shortly thrown out of my corridor for the night for making too much noise.. Haha!

Reviews

2007-07-06T21:59:00.001+01:00

So, I've been going through the pictures I've taken over the past year to see which I should print out when I return. It's pretty amusing to see some of the evolutions that have occurred. One of the most notable ones was the ever increasing food and alcoholic stash in my room =)

Day 1:

See, when I first arrived, such wasn't an issue at all. I had the one bottle of vodka from duty-free and 2 bags of crisps to tide over the hunger pangs.

Start of second term:

Post-winter, I'd accumulated abit more. I had the bottle of Martini Rosso, a lemon liquer and a malibu. You'll also note that aside from the 2 bags of crisps, I now stocked twix, McVities, wine gums, cup of soup, and hot drinks!

Some time in second term:
Ok, so now the malibu and the martini are both finished. In it's place is now peach schnapps, vodka, another malibu, another vodka and er... something else... And the food stash has again multiplied.

Term 3:

Ok, now we're talking! The food is no longer in neat stacks and the alcohol, well, see for yourself!

End of year:

All the bottles are now empty =) This is how my shelf looked on the last day of term! Woohoo!

xxxxx

"To remember a day would take a day. To remember a year would take a year" ~ Martin Amis, Time's Arrow

2007-07-02T23:39:00.001+01:00

Gosh, it's been forever since I last wrote, hasn't it? Ok, well, not forever, just about 6 months. I'm always telling myself that I should post up some stuff about what's been happening, to keep my nil readers enthralled, you know? But somehow, things just tapered down gradually. I'd like to think it was cause I was so happening that I could just never find the time. I sometimes convince myself that it was probably because having been here for a certain amount of time, I settled down and things just didn't seem as fresh or exciting and thus, as bloggable any longer. Most likely though, I just couldn't be arsed any longer.

The difference now is that I'm leaving in 2 weeks. Returning from whence I came. Obviously, at this point in time, reflections on the past year occur. I've been more introspective these last few days and my mind seems to wander whenever it has the slightest opportunity to.

At first, during the last week of term, my mind kept skimming through scenes from my year abroad. I remembered the first time I met most everybody here - Laura, Wayne, Martin, Laurent, Francois, Marc, Marion, Tim, Tom, Jamie, Poul... Well, the list is pretty much endless. I can still feel, even now, my exact sentiments the first day I reached Durham. The exhilaration, the dream in fruition, the fear... Those first few days when I rambled around by myself. My trip to Seaham. All the nights drinking, clubbing or just hanging out in someone's room. Winter travels. Seems so foggy yet so clear. That last week of term was one of the most painful ones I've experienced to date. The last time I recall feeling so utterly despondent was when I was taking my 'A' Levels. I couldn't get my mind away from how much I loved this place. How much I would miss everybody. My mind would keep wandering. I wished so hard that I could just forget. Heck, I even wished I never came. Sure, I would have missed out on the best experience of my life. But I would also never have to experience that pain, that desire to just rip myself apart. The first time I turned to alcohol to forget (and hopefully the last). That Saturday, as everyone left in dribs and drabs, it was so emotionally straining. Somehow it felt like I was overreacting. I was the only one who went around constantly bursting into tears. Yet, it was because of all the freshers, only 5 of us were leaving. Everyone was saying "bye" for the summer. I was saying "bye, it was nice knowing you". I wished with all my heart that I was staying. That I was 19. That this was only my first year in University. Things would be so different if I were staying. I sure can't put myself in anyone elses's shoes, but to me, I had it the hardest. The Frenchies and Belgians, sure, they were leaving too... But firstly, they're still in Europe. They're so close. To visit would cost, what, 70 quid? I'm on the other end of the world. 500 quid away. Not only that, they came in pairs, they still had each other... Laurent could talk to Martin about everything, and he'd understand. As could Francois with Marc. I was alone. Alone and far away from home. The only sod who hadn't even been back for nigh 10 months now. And when I went back, I'd be alone. And all this a dream. I found that so hard to accept, to comprehend. I've never had to leave a place before. No one would understand. And a year gives one ample time to put down roots. If I'd left in December or came in January, things would be easier. It was good, I had a great time, bye. But a year... I was invested in Durham. I hated that week. And I know Francois, Marc, Laurent and Martin hated it too.

It was easier once I'd left college to move into Ustinov. Sure, my mind would wander and I'd be sad, but not having to be in Grey helped the sadness fade. And once the students had left, I could slowly come to terms with the situation. And I still had Laura and Luke and Wayne and Philippa and Francois with me. Then Wayne and Philippa and Francois left. And life moved on.

It's been just over a week since term ended. A lot has happened. I've met new people. I've moved 3 times and have now settled into Laura, Luke, Wayne and Tim's house for next year. I'm alright now. Occassionally, curveballs get flung at you. When I first moved into this house, I could just imagine next year for all these guys. The four of them moving around this house, and everyone I know moving around in their own houses. I won't deny I wish I could be a part of that too. But since I can't and I won't be, I'm ready to come home. I'm ready for this holiday and this dream to end. It was everything I expected and more...

You know, I'm even looking forward to going home. Two days ago, a transition occured. Aside from flashbacks and memories of Durham, I began to have flashbacks of my time in Singapore. Going to the Zoological Gardens with Kelvin. Chels birthday in the Botanical Gardens. Sleepovers at Duana's. My brother bursting into my room to lie on my floor to talk. Drinking in my balcony with Soony, and cycling with her overnight in ECP and our weekly meetings. And haha, to finally not have to do my own laundry or to wash dishes... Bliss =) Today, I hardly thought of Durham, I thought of Singapore and what I wanna do when I get back. Lop off my horribly long hair. Go see the dentist. Eat all the food I miss. Laksa, tim sum, cha tao kuay, mee tai bak, itek tim, my dad's stir-fried beef, sushi at Sakae with Soony, stingray, chicken rice, nasi lemak, even fish ball soup. Oh, kuay chap, tom yam soup and just anything SPICY! I wanna go back to Sentosa. Go for Mortini's. Go to Blooies with my brother. And sit on my balcony getting drunk with Soony =)

And I felt like writing on this blog again. To capture the last few moments, the last few thoughts running through my mind. I've grown in this year. Not from the country, not from the people, but from being away. And there's so much I enjoyed, and I can't express how much I'll miss. Forget the bad times, remember the good.

It was a good year.

I love having my own fridge =)

2007-01-27T20:46:00.000Z

What a compliment!

2007-01-17T16:41:00.000Z

So there I was at the post office queueing to purchase some stamps when I start glancing at the books on the shelves while waiting. One particular book caught my eye - Brad Meltzer's "The Millionairs".

You know how they sometimes put the best reviews of a book on it's cover to attract people's attention?

This one read:

"This is about as Grisham as you can get without having his name on the cover" - The Times

Oh wow! Yah, that's gonna convince someone to buy your book... I mean, why bother getting an actual John Grisham? Get a Meltzer instead. It's close enough without being a Grisham.

I'm sure the author took it as a compliment too... Oh wow... I'm almost like Grisham... But not quite... That's gonna get me somewhere... Don't get me wrong, Grisham has written some pretty great books. A Time to Kill comes to mind. But still...

silkstalkings waves

Day 8: Amsterdam

2006-12-21T14:35:00.000Z

Before I go any further, first, an announcement - my parents have absolutely no idea that I went around Amsterdam by myself and will NEVER know for fear of sending my mum into hysterics, so on no grounds should anyone mention this fact!

Now, the reason for my solo jaunt around Amsterdam is the aforementioned illness that plagued us since London. Unfortunately, Laura and Luke were in a worst shape than I and needed to stay in and rest up. On my part, though I wasn't exactly in the best of conditions, I also knew that I won't get another chance to ramble around Amsterdam again for a long while, so despite intial trepidations at exploring a foreign city on my own (especially one with legalised pot use), I woke up bright and early and began my sightseeing.

The first stop of the day was the Rijksmuseum which I got to with minimal difficulty after boarding a tram at the Central Station. It was pretty easy since there was a straight tram there and I knew I got on at the "Central" stop and could thus track my route the whole way.

You can see the ice-skating rink in front of the Rijksmuseum, though at that early hour in the morning, things were pretty quiet everywhere.

The Rijksmuseum was under renovation at that time and thus, had only a few selected works on display, the masterpieces of the Dutch Golden age. Up to now, I still can't decide if that was a good or bad thing. I mean, it was good cause I didn't have much time to spend at the Rijksmuseum and the fact that they condensed all their masterpieces into a few galleries was a great time saver. However, I only got to skim the surface of all the art that they actually had at the museum and I left feeling as though I didn't get to see the Rijksmuseum in all it's splendor and rather unsatisfied at the limited works that I got to view, nice though they were.

But ah well, such things can't be helped.

2006 was the 400th Anniversary of Rembrandth's birth, so there were special exhibitions going on all around Amsterdam and in the Rikjsmuseum which had a large proportion of it's second level devoted to the painter. Below is one of the Rembrandt rooms and amongst the paintings, you can see "The Jewish Bride", better know to us as "hey, that guy's touching the girl's boob" (it's not really an artsy comment, but hey, it's the truth, google it). The rightmost portrait is of "Catrina Hooghsaet".

I loved the detailing on the Rembrandt portraits. An image which particularly sticks to my mind was his "Portrait of Maria Trip" when you look at the pearl bracelet she was wearing close up and the play on light and shadow, the reflection on the pearls... breathtaking...

Other highlights I found in the Rijksmuseum included Verspronck's "Portrait of a girl dressed in blue" which is below.

Also saw Vemeer's "The Kitchen Maid". Gijs also talked to me about the Ruisdael's in the museum and the mastery of the Dutch landscape and light.

By far the most famous of pieces showing in the Rijksmuseum had to be Rembrandt's "The Nightwatch", where he employed a revolutionary style of creating portraits by showing the company of Captain Frans Baning Cocq in "motion". Each of the gentlement who appeared in the painting had to pay a fee to be painted and because of Rembrandt's chosen style of portrayal, supposedly some of them wouldn't be too happy as they were blocked by another person and had only half their face showing the stuff like that. However, the painting was still accepted and Rembrandt got his pay.

Read with pangs of regret that in order to fit the painting in some previous display location, they actually trimmed the sides (something that wouldn't happen in modern times of course). So there was also a picture showing what the painting in full would have looked liked. Which reminds me of my X-files movie poster at home and how my dad had to slice of the sides so it could fit into that IKEA frame... But I digress.

It was also here that they again employed the x-ray to peer beneath the painting and see the underlying sketches and changes that Rembrandt made to his painting, which was pretty interesting.

Also, do you guys know that in 1975, a psychotic man actually slashed the painting and it was seriously damaged. I mean, parts of the painting were lying on the museum floor if I recall correctly... They have since fully restored it of course, however, a small sign of damage can still be seen in person if you go really close to the painting. You can see traces of cut marks above the dog in the bottom right corner.

After the Rijksmuseum, the next stop was the Van Gogh museum, my absolute favourite museum of the trip!! It houses the largest collection of works by Vincent Van Gogh in the world and has a very well thought out chronological layout.

First, you go to the permanent exhibition of his works which showed his evolution from when he first started out in the Netherlands and moved around there, to Paris, Arles, Saint-Remy and his final days in Auver-Sur-Oise.

In the Netherlands section, there was what Van Gogh himself regarded as his first masterpiece and which he was extremely proud of - The Potato Eaters. it was done after more than 40 studies of the heads of peasents and such and such in order to get a realistic portrayal. He declared to his brother, Theo and a painter friend (can't remember who) that it was his best work yet, only to be met with criticism from his friend who pointed out how the painting still looked posed and some of the perspectives in the painting were false. Which cheesed him off royally.

In the Paris Section, they showed the beginning of his experimentation and him being influenced by those Japanese woodprints, producing paintings such as "The Courtesan" And "The Bridge".

In Arles, his painting of floral still life's began. In Saint-Remy, his bold brushstrokes and distinctive technique really emerged. I loved how they showed paintings in which Van Gogh took masterpieces by Rembrandt and the like and reinterpreted them. He redid Millet's "The Sheep Shearer" and Delacroix's "Pieta" as well. It was interesting to see the "original" and "reinvention" and you could see the different worldviews and technques that these painters had.

Anyway, after you see the chronological progression of his work, you ascend to the next level where you see the other paintings that were done during that period - the works that inspired Van Gogh and what other artists were doing concurrently to Van Gogh. Some of the notable works include Rousseau's "The Forest at Fountainbleau", Seurat's "The Seine at Courbevoie" and Monet's "Bulbfields and windmillsnear Rijnsbury". There were Gauguin's and Cezanne's as well. Thus you can see other examples of the brushwork techniques and painting theories that Van Gogh experimented with, such as pointillism and impressionism.

There was also a temporary exhibition going on entitled "Van Gogh and Expressionism" which showed the works that Van Gogh inspired. This was very well executed as they had first the specific Van Gogh painting and beside it, the painting that copied it's style and because of the layout, the similarities in style and technique were easy to observe. For instance, they hung Van Gogh's "The Zouave" next to Max Pechstein's "Young Women with a Red Fan" and you could see their similar use of bold contrastive colours... Google it =) Naturally the Van Goghs seemed much better to me and in my notebook, for that section of the exhibition, I've failed to note down any other artist's work's that impressed me, only the Van Goghs. But hey, what do I know about art? I'm stil learning =)

So I left the Van Gogh museum with much regret in order to catch the 2 something canal tour of Amsterdam - I figured a Canal tour is a MUST in Holland afterall. Before I left, I entrusted my camera to the hands of someone else for the first of two times in the whole trip to get a picture in front of the museum. The painting on the left is one of Van Gogh's self-portraits, the one on the right is an expressionist's usage of Van Gogh's style for his own self-portrait.

Now I'm on the boat to tour the canals. I have to say, it was quite a disappointment. The first 5-10 mins was all "wow. I'm on a canal boat in Amsterdam and it's so purtty"... Then it became

nothing's happening

nothing's happening

nothing's happening...

I can't help but wonder if my time would have been better spent at the Rembrandt house instead, which I couldn't visit due to time constraints....

Anyway, after the Canal tour, I had to get back up to the center of Amsterdam for my next "pit-stop". I couldn't take the same tram I took down to the Rijksmuseum as I'd walked away from that stop to the canal tour. Ok, no problem right?

WRONG

Here's when wondering around alone in a foreign country with no grasp of the local language can get you into trouble. I looked at the map and knew roughly which route to take. I then hopped onto what I thouht was the right tram and thought "right, now just to figure out which stop I'm at, which, from my experience in the morning, the tram's system would announce".

Any of you ever heard the dutch language before? All I got was "(next stop) ker-urgh-argh-errrr"... Seriously, I don't even know how to use onomatopoeia to convey what it sounded like to me... Perhaps it sounded like a man chocking on his own saliva while gargling the alphabet with a foul tasting salt-water concoction he took to alleviate his sore throat.

So I think, ok, no problem, I'll just stay on the tram till I recognise either some of the stops or where I'm going. Flashback to the previous night where I'm asking Laura how safe is Amsterdam for my solo day tour. She replies that as long as I don't wander off into the wrong areas, it's perfectly safe. I began to worry that I'll drop off in one of those "wrong areas" without realising it... Then I'm totally screwed. With that in mind, I left the tram and walked back to where I began the ride, concluding that I should just walk around Amsterdam instead.

It was actually quite a rewarding experience and I got to see a few gems along the way. Here's a nice view of Amsterdam.

And a bunch of people playing chess on this large chessboard. How cool is that?!?

So I made my way back into the center of town and stopped for a tea (I skipped lunch) of croquette - a typically dutch snack

After the croquette, I made my way to the Amstelkring museum, the second oldest museum in Amsterdam. The highlight of the museum was a whole church hidden in the attic of this house. This was set-up in a time when practicing catholicism was against the law and catholics had to hide their churches in houses. It was pretty amazing to see that whole church squeezed into a narrow elongated room. The width of the room was just slightly bigger than a tutorial room in NUS. It was interesting to see the way they decorated the central altar to draw your eyes vertically instead of horizontally in order to give the illusion of space.

So, by the time I left the Amstelkring museum, it was already dusk and I headed for my last stop of the day - the Anne Franks House. Now, I had three maps of Amsterdam with me, all of which were woefully inadequate in terms of directions. This essentially meant that I was wondering around central Amsterdam in the gathering dusk, lost. It didn't help that I was supposed to meet Luke at the Anne Frank's House at 1700 so I was in a rush for time...

I decided to ask for directions and resolved to enter the next shop I saw. Now, this is a true story. The shop had a very zen like name - peace or something like that. Know what I mean? So I think, ok, could be a spa or somthing like that. Next thing I knew, I'm surrounded by window displays of pot plants and pipes and such and such and I think "oh my god, I just entered a pot shop to ask for directions!... Ok, no problem, just back out the way you came and it'll be fine".

So back out into the streets and off to wander the canals again. By this time, it was already dark and I couldn't just get out my map anywhere as that'll show me to be a helpless, lost, female tourist. There I am, hopelessly disoriented when I run into Luke, who's also lost among the canals. What were the odds of that? He says he just came from the Anne Frank's House and couldn't find a way to get in. I decided to give it a go myself and he points me in the direction he came from and we parted ways (he was heading back to Gijs and Dea's apartment).

Little did I know that he pointed me in completely the wrong direction. Fortunately, I went into a proper shop and got the directions I needed. After wandering the canals awhile longer, I reach the Anne Frank's House, only to find that it closed early today. I later learned (at the tourist office the next day) that they closed early for a company christmas celebration. ARGH!!!

I then begin to make my way back to Gijs and Dea's place and get hopelessly lost among the canals AGAIN!!! I'm wondering around in circles, about to breakdown. Lost alone in the sidestreets in Amsterdam among the canals in the dark... I was getting desperate. When, all of a sudden, I bump into Luke again! He got lost heading back to Gijs and Dea's apartment and there we both were wandering the canals. Imagine the coincidence!

Pooling our heads together, we made our way back to the apartment only to find that we couldn't get in!! We couldn't call Laura cause her phone wasn't working and we couldn't call the main apartment as we didn't have the number. After ringing the doorbell several times with no luck, Luke and I gave it up and went to the playground to sit on the swings and scout the apartment for signs of movement. Fortunately, around 15-20 mins later, Gijs came along and let us in.

We went to this great Thai place for dinner before heading over to the infamous red-light district of Amsterdam to have a look-see. It seems wrong to say but the women in the live window displays were good-looking. Gijs brought us to the most upmarket district in Amsterdam so we got to see the best girls. No nudity or anything like that. At most, girls were in lingerie and some other outfits depending on personal interest (such as nurse uniforms).

Anyhoo, I won't elaborate any longer since this is turning out to be a really long post. Suffice to say, it was a hectic day in Amsterdam with clearly insufficient time for all the attractions. I wished I had one more day there...

silkstalkings reminds you all to keep quiet about this post!

Day 7: London - Amsterdam

2006-12-20T16:52:00.000Z

We got up bright and early on Wednesday to catch our flight to Amsterdam. While at the airport though, we were soon to learn that our flight was to be delayed till gosh knew when. So off we went to get some eats and to find miscellaneous means to while away the time. My parents will be proud to hear that I did the Sudoku on the Metro that day.

We then cracked out the Monopoly which successfully occupied us till the flight. A great investment.

So there I am waiting to board our flight. We were joyed to see and feel the sunlight streaming down on us after experiencing cold, foggy days in London.

We later learnt that many flights were using this window of sunlight to escape from the terrible London weather, which explained the over 2 hours of delay at the airport we endured. When we landed, we found out that we were lucky to get out of London at all. Apparently, due to the fog, many other flights had been cancelled

By the time we got to Amsterdam, it was already past 1600. Imagine my shock that the sun was still up. It set at around 1700 in Amsterdam! Yes, an extra hour of daylight to look forward to!

In Amsterdam, we stayed with Laura's Aunt and Uncle - Gijs and Dea - and they were wonderful! They came to pick us at at the Central station in Amsterdam which was gorgeous... There I am in front of it. Can you imagine Somerset or Orchard MRT looking like that?

Gijs and Dea's apartment was in a great location in Central Amsterdam, walking distance from the station in fact. And right beside a canal, so you could see one through the kitchen window. There's the street they lived on (it's not open to cars, but everyone in Amsterdam rides on bicycles!).

Here's the front of their house.

And the bed which I crashed on.

After a day of travelling, we decided to just spend the night resting and getting our energy back. Besides, Luke and Laura were pretty ill with bad throats and I could feel mine starting to act up as well (shouldn't have polished off Luke's fried rice at the Thai Restaurant in London... But it was just too delicious...).

So we laid around till 1930 whereupon Laura's Aunt and Uncle then brought us out to this Belgian place for a very great dinner (and totally unaffordable to poor students such as ourselves). Wine... We had tons of wine. Such a luxury for the budget traveller.

Basically, the concept of the restaurant was many small appetiser-sized dishes so you could have tons of different choices. Looking back at what I had that night makes my mouth water all over again..

For starters I had
(1) Portobello Mushrooms with Cream Cheese and Truffles and
(2) Veal with Creme Brulee

And for mains I had
(1) Steak with Red Wine and Butter Sauce and
(2) Deer in Balsamic Vinegar

I also tried some of Laura's Hare.

The dessert menu looked so tempting, but we also had some belgian frites and salad so I was too full to indulge myself.

The restaurant was within walking distance from Gijs and Dea's apartment so we basically had a nice stroll there and back. At night, the canals are all lit up and it looks magical; as you can see from the picture below =)

Stayed up late that night after Laura and Luke crashed in order to plan my route for the next day. Only had one day in Amsterdam afterall, I had to make the most of it and see as many attractions as possible!!

Also msged my Mum telling her of my sore throat. I received one order - gargle salt - and promptly obeyed. Guess what, it works!!! So anytime you've got a sore throat, always remember to gargle salt. Heck, it worked better than conventional medicine and lozenges for me. I wonder what the science is behind it...

silkstalkings waves

Day 6: London

2006-12-19T16:38:00.000Z

Having a meager 2 days in London, which was never going to be enough time to see everything there was there, we embarked on a desperate whirlwind tour of London to try and catch as many of the sights as possible. Unfortunately, we lost our morning settling financial matters for our trip and visiting the various banks, so that cut our daylight hours even more. After grabbing some sandwiches in the town centre, we headed towards the Tower of London in hunt for a suitable eating location, ideally along the River Thames. Along the way, we caught sight of the Tower Bridge but could find no seats along the river to lunch.

In the end, we reached the Tower of London and decided to eat at the plaza there. I'm amazed at how many outdoor skating rinks have been built all around Europe for the winter holidays. And they're placed outside the tourist attractions so, for instance, imagine skating outside the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam... There was also a skating rink outside the Tower of London and I amassed a collection of pictures showing the outdoor skating rinks of Europe while on my trip =)

Anyway, so there we were, outside the Tower of London wondering which way to go... I mean, I had a sheet of paper detailing all the must-see attractions in London, but only had their addresses, not a map... Man, I wished my dad was there and I could just follow along behind him till he says "we're here, this is ____". So anyway, with the limited daylight we had left, I decided that investing in a map of London was the best thing to do to hit as many attractions as possible. And there we are on the Tower Bridge checking our route. Basically, from the Tower of London, we crossed the Tower Bridge.

Along the way to the London Dungeons, we crossed the Southwark Cathedral which was arrested our attention for awhile. I've seen some of the most renowned churches in the past month... The Duomo in Milan, the Notre Dame in Paris, St. Peter's Basilica which is the seat of the pope, and I've been awed most of the time. But I also loved how, walking down the street, you pass by these "everyday" churches in Europe which are beautiful architecturally and I'm amazed that people go to these places weekly for service. In Rome as well, we passed these huge monumental churches that were simply designated as a "normal" church on the map, but they were all so beautiful.

So we hit the London Dungeons, but didn't go in. Same old spiel, not enough time... And even if there was some time, I'd rather go to someplace like the Tate Galleries than to the London Dungeons.

Basically, the main reason why we crossed the Tower Bridge and went to the London Dungeons was so that we could cross the Millenium Bridge. It is one of the newest "attractions" in London after all. The Millenium Bridge had a great location across the River Thames; on one side was the Tate Modern and on the other was St. Paul's Cathedral, which was our next destination.

If you can't really see from the photograph above is that the side of St. Paul's Cathedral was under renovations. What they cleverly did though was that they drew what St. Paul's Cathedral should look like on the boards covering it up so that from afar and from pictures taken from afar, no one would be able to tell the difference unless you looked really closely. One of the joys of winter travel is that since it's "off-season", there're cheaper prices and much shorter queues into the attractions... In fact, less crowd in general. However, a problem is that because it's not tourist-season, a number of the attractions also take this opportunity to restore or renovate, which can get pretty annoying at time. The trick done here helped ease the blow of not being able to see St. Paul's Cathedral. It really was very well executed. Which is more than I can say for the Duomo in Milan... But that's another story.

Moving on, after St Paul's Cathedral, we headed over to Big Ben, the Houses of Parliment and Westminister Abbey. Along the way, we caught many glimpses of the London Eye.

Big Ben was pretty impressive, but to me, it's just a big clock really... I rather liked the houses of Parliment. As we went at dusk, the place was already beginning to light up and it was a magnificent view. Those few cars who were allowed to drive into the houses of parliment, I can imagine how those drivers must feel all important, having tons of tourists flanking your car, snapping pictures of the parliment houses but not being allowed in; and there you go, stop by the guard house and enter, and everyone thinks "I wonder who that was"...

So there's Big Ben and the London Eye from the Westminister Abbey grounds -

We proceeded to Trafalgar Square to see Nelson's column and to go to the National Gallery. By the time we reached, the sun was already on it's merry way down and with the foggy winter atmosphere, the sky was a red-purple hue which gave Nelson's Column a very surreal backdrop.

You can tell how quickly the sun set by the fact that though Nelson's Column sat right in front of the National Gallery, by the time we reached and entered the museum, it was already dark.

We only had two hours in the National Gallery and I can already hear my dad screaming in protest that that's not enough time to cover the gallery to my heart's content - which was true... Unfortunately, due to the short amount of time we had in London, sacrifices had to be made and two hours was all we could afford in the National Gallery. This meant one thing - strategy! In order to see the best paintings, I had to plan a proper route and grabbed the National Gallery brochure in order to cover all the highlights.

Unfortunately, photography isn't allowed in the National Gallery. Which is perfectly understandable actually. A lot of the other galleries I've been to - such as the Rijksmuseum, allow photography, just no flash in order to not damage the paintings. However, it's really hard to police all the visitors, and many idiots just use flash photography until they're "caught", with no real care for the paintings themselves, which is perfectly ludicrous. Most tourists are such idiots!

Anyway, ranting aside, some of the highlights of the National Gallery include Holbein's "The Ambassadors". I'm sure most of you would have heard of it, his play on perspectives was absolutely amazing... His is the painting that when viewed from the left, all you see is a distorted shape on the floor, but when viewed from the right, it suddenly becomes a skull. Google it. It sent chills up my spine...

Also saw two beautiful Da Vinci's - "The Virgin of the Rocks" and "The Virgin and child with Saint Anne and St John the Baptist". Rubens "The Massacre of the Innocents" was particularly poignant.

I was lucky that while I was there, a temporary exhibition was also taking place that was "Manet to Picasso" and I saw a ton of great paintings. Van Gogh's "Sunflowers", Seurat "Bathers at Asnieres", Monet's "Bathers at La Grenouillere", Pissarro's "Portrait of Felix Pissarro"... My favourite of that temporary exhibition was Van Gogh's "A Wheatfield with Cypresses".

But my personal darling of the National Gallery and my second transcendental moment of the trip (two in London! I know!) was seeing Gainsborough's "Mr and Mrs Andrews". I was basically moving gradually from room to room looking at the collection highlights following a chronological pattern when I looked at what the next painting on the list was and I saw - "Mr and Mrs Andrews" and I thought "oh my god! oh my god!". A great part of it's appeal was that this was the only painting I "studied" in University when taking a module on Cultural Landscapes so to actually see IT was completely MIND-BOGGLING!!! I rushed over to the room, looked hurriedly left and right to spot the painting and there it was... And I stood there in front of it. Stunned. Oh my god. I remember my hand was clutching my chest at that point and I thought "there it is"... I definitely said "wow". I saw several Gainsbroughs at the Ashmolean and some around the National Gallery and everytime I saw that name, I thought "Mr and Mrs Andrews" and never knew that it was in the National Gallery as well...

After the National Gallery, we had dinner and returned to the Hostel where we had a game of pool, our last in England for weeks, before calling it a night and prepared to greet Amsterdam the following day

silkstalkings waves =)

Day 5: Newbury - London

2006-12-18T09:54:00.000Z

After a good 4 nights of rest in Newbury to recuperate from university and to prepare for travels, we next headed over to London. By taking the coach as opposed to the train, we cut our travel costs in half, which was great! So here's Andy (Luke's dad) dropping us off at the bus station. Actually, I wanted to take a picture with him, but since we were running late, I had to take a picture of him instead. He was like "what....". He was so much fun and made us feel really welcomed in his house.

I mentioned earlier on that he was a show jumper and now does training and commentating on horsing events. Coincidentally, at the same time as we were staying with him, Olympia, this huge international horse show in London was taking place; so we often saw Andy in front of the TV watching all the events. Occasionally, when timing allowed, we would join him as well, which was great as I got to learn a lot regarding show jumping and the rules and the like from a professional.

The first time we joined him, this event called the Puissance was on, which is basically jumping the horse over a "brick" wall (made of cardboard but to resemble bricks) which kept rising each round. Each horse can only make 5 jumps (if I recall correctly) so it's up to the "referee" guy to decided how high to raise the wall each turn to narrow the field. If there was more than one guy remaining after the final jump, they'd split the prize money. Apparently, a lot has to do with the rider cause there is this special distance from the wall that they have to hit perfectly in order to clear the wall. A lot also has to do with the horse, both it's temperament and training. Basically, since the horse can't see past the "brick" wall, (s)he has to trust in the rider that there's a safe landing spot on the otehr side of the wall and just go for it and jump. These walls go up to over 7 feet, which is higher than the wall in your house. Can you imagine jumping over one of them? Must be exhilirating to clear it.

Some of the other events were really intePublishresting as well. There was this one knock-out competition whereupon each horse has to go through a set course of hurdles, both testing their ability to jump high and their ability to jump far. After the rider completes the course, (s)he then decides which obstacle (s)he wants to raise or widen to make the course more difficult for the next rider. And this goes on and on till only one person can complete the course. So it's pretty strategic. At first, you raise or widen barriers that you know you yourself can clear. After awhile though, you observe your opponents and see which they have trouble clearing and modify those instead... Pretty nail biting stuff.

I also learnt about about the personalities in horse racing, such at the Whittaker family of fathers, sons, cousins, which is this huge horse riding clan. And it requires tons of training and hard work. It was pretty cool. When Andy was a teenager, some one came up to him and offered him a job as a stablehand in Amsterdam (I think). Anyway, not knowing anything, he packs up and leaves and starts his show jumping career as a stablehand mucking out horse crap and stuff. Through hard work, determination and brains, he made his way to the top and was a successgul show jumper. I saw some pictures around the house of him on a horse jumping over the Puissance wall. Totally cool.

And some nights, while we were in Newbury, he travelled to Olympia to attend some of their black tie functions and the like.

Most of you know that I watch a lot of different sports. If Singapore did telecast show jumping, I very possibly would start watching that too, it's really interesting.

So, we finally got to London around lunch time and went to our first hostel of the trip - the Globetrotter Inn. We found it online through this website: hostelbookers.com and I would SERIOUSLY recommend it to anyone who intends to go "backpacking" around the world. They charge absolutely no commission, give the best rates possible and also, travellers rate the hotel based on service, facilities, room, location and such and such so you get really good hostels for affordable prices! I know what you're thinking - "only a certain type of traveller would be lame enough to return to the website to rate the places". That's what I thought as well and was pretty nervous, but they're really good. After our stay at each hotel, hostelbookers.com actually followed up and sent us an e-mail asking about our stay and to take a few minutes to just give some evaluation an comments, and since the hostels and so good, we did also just spend a short span of time to help other travellers make the right choices.

So anyway, the Globetrotter Inn was voted the best hostel in London in 2005 an I could definitely see why! The location is really really good, just a few metro stops away from the centre of town. It was affordable, at 12.50 pounds a night. The toilet facilities were good and it was really clean. Within the hostel, there's a shop, a bar, a movie room (free movies!) and breakfast was provided. The staff were friendly as well. My favourite part, and this was the only hostel on our trip that had this, was that you had a "bed curtain" for each bed along with your own personal light, so you got your own space of sorts at night. I could stay up later than the rest reading and planning for the next day without my light disturbing them and keeping them awake. Very nice!!

There's the exterior of our hostel...

And there's my bed. The strings you see at the right are my curtains. More about that Arsenal shirt later =)

First order of business was to get lunch and around our hostel were tons of good and affordable eateries as well. We found this italian (authentic since the staff and owner were all Italian!) sandwich bar. Throughout the whole trip, we ate tons of sandwiches since they're basically the cheapest thing you can find.

After lunch, we immediately set off to see the MOST IMPORTANT landmark for me in London and the first thing I brought up when we talked about going to London - the EMIRATES STADIUM (or for people who don't appreciate corporate sponsorship, ASHBURTON GROVE)!!! So there we are on the metro heading over to ARSENAL STATION!!! YES! You heard me right!!! Arsenal have their own station!!! Take that Chelsea and Spurs!! (Don't know if Liverpool or Man U have their own stations...). The best part is that the location of Ashburton Grove is really good, within the metro demarkation of "central london" so we could travel there without paying extra on our day travel passes.

Do I look really excited?

And Luke (spurs fan... need I say more) does not look impressed.

There I am, in front of the Emirates which was REALLY REALLY REALLY IMPRESSIVE!!! Even Luke had to cough that up. And take my word for it, I know, I've seen St. James's Park, White Hart Lane and supposedly one of the most impressive club stadiums in the world, the San Siro (but more on that later), and Emirates tops them hands down! It's the second largest club stadium in England, Old Trafford is the first and St. James's Park the third. So beautiful.

I had numerous "wow" moments on this whole trip, where I'm just standing somewhere, shocked that I'm actually fortunate enough to be there and to see what I'm seeing. Where I start thinking I'm still a Secondary 3 girl dreaming of studying in England and I'm going to wake up in a moment. Being in the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam comes to mind. In this whole trip though, I had 4 pronounced moments in my head, where I felt my knees trembling, my heart pounding so fast my head felt so light, where I could feel tears springing to my eyes because what I saw in front of me felt like beauty personified. You know how people say they see the presence of a divine creator when they see a beautiful sky, an awe-inspiring sunset. I had 4 of those transcendental moments and this was one of them.

I felt like an excited kid again, running all over the place shouting "look at this", "look at that" and "oh my god...".

We're the GUNNERS!!! So we gotta have them cannons somewere! I think this picture below has to be one of the top 2 favourite pictures of my trip. I'D ARRIVED!!! After supporting Arsenal since 1999, since I was 14, since I was in Secondary 2... 7 years of cheering them on through the tube. I was there! I was at Arsenal's stadium! It just grounded my whole football existence. It was almost earth-shattering and I do not exagerrate. Oh my god, I loved it so much.

Of course I had to go into the store. I was thinking of getting a new kit, though I have 2 home kits and one away one in Singapore already. Seeing the 40 pound price tag made me change my mind though... Even though my JVC one is actually really old and my O2 one was last year's maroon commemorative version for our last year in Highbury... But anyway, my longings for a new Arsenal shirt aside, I wanted to buy everything!!! Look, Arsenal teddy bears! =)

At first, I wanted to get this red spagetti strap shirt with the cannon embroided on the bottom left corner. However, they didn't have my size... I have to admit that the Arsenal Women's shirts are appallingly paltry. So I was wondering around the shop whinning to Laura. "I want a shirt... I want a shirt... What am I gonna do... I want a shirt". And she hit on a brillient solution. We headed over to the boys section and found this realy nice arsenal shirt so in that picture of me on my bed above and I now proudly own - an Arsenal shirt meant for boys 7-8 years old... Haha! Luke says it's so embarrassing that I should stop telling people that, but I just find it really funny. And it fits very well too =) You guys can see it when I get back to Singapore cause I will DEFINITELY wear it to Uni frequently.

Oh, I also bought a little Arsenal Teddy bear... I couldn't help it... Besides, all my money was going to help my team anyway =)

Come on you Gunners!! (See my shopping bag? I even kept the bag.)

I was then obliged to go over to White Hart Lane for Luke. By then, it was already getting pretty dark. White Hart Lane was only 2 metro stops away from Ashburton Grove, but it felt like a totally different neighbourhood and atmosphere. I'm sure during match days things are a lot better, but the neighbourhood felt pretty dodgy and I was glad to have a guy with us on our trip. It gave me an impression of a really poor neighbourhood. And those two metro stops pushed us out of the "central" zone, so we had to take a bus there.

White Hart Lane was no where near as impressive as Ashburton Grove. I have to admit that the female section of the store was much better though... Anyway, here's one shot of White Hart Lane.

We were pretty scared on the bus back from White Hart Lane. As I said, everyone looked poor, and for some reason, the bus was filled with predominantly black people, so we really stood out. When we were boarding the bus and walking towards the rear, this stoned dude suddenly grabbed Luke and started swaying with him for what felt like eternity before saying "sorry" and letting go. I told him to check his bag after to make sure he had everything. Also, I saw a guy nearly get pickpocketed. There was the would-be thief standing on the steps leading to the upper level of the bus and this guy was getting out, so he walked past him. Suddenly, the exiting commuter turned around on the stationary thief and said "hey, watch it" cause he felt the guys hands on him. He glared at the "thief" while feeling his pockets and couldn't find his wallet. He then looked on the ground and there was his wallet at the corner. I suspect the "thief" knew he was "caught" and dropped the wallet in the corner so nothing could be proven. And this was only at around 1730 in the day (though it was dark since the sun set at 1600 in the winter).

So anyway, we were mighty glad to get back into the metro and we headed into Picadilly circus to see the place brimming with life in the dark. We stopped for a coffee there, but the food was way out of our price range so we headed back to our hostel and found this great and affordable thai place within walking distance. Tom Yum soup!! It was heavenly...

We returned to the hostel for the night to rest up for a long second day in London.

silkstalkings waves

Day 4: Newbury (Daytrip to Oxford)

2006-12-17T09:50:00.000Z

Woke up really bright and early after our third night in Newbury to head over to Oxford for the day. It was so cold the night before that the car windows had frosted up so we had to wait a couple of minutes for it to defrost.

When we arrived at Oxford, we were pleasently suprised to find out how tourist-friendly it was. There were maps posted at numerous places and thus it was easy to find out exactly where we wanted to go and never lost our way. We first went to see the Radcliffe Camera which was just an architectural attraction. We then headed to the Church of St Mary the Virgin where we were told that ascending the tower would offer us splendid views of the town. The stairs were winding and really narrow and even I got vertigo. I mean, they had to attach a rope to the wall for people to hold on to for support!

The seemingly endless track was worth it though. we really got a bird's eye view of Oxford and I really loved the place. It looked like a life-sized version of my little Durham town. A distinctly English landscape. Laura and Luke both started wondering what things would be like if they had applied to Oxford instead. I just kept thinking of my JC E Lit teacher back in Singapore and "the Oxford Voice".

Anyhoo... There I am looking out over the town.

And here's an example of some of the sights:

The viewing walkway was really narrow as well, which was a nightmare when other people tried to get by you. A huge problem was that there was only one way up and one way down, so you're bound to run into that problem where you have to squeeze somewhere to let someone else through... That made going down those narrow stair a problem. As we were heading down, a group of large English folk were walking up and they kindly stopped to let us by. They were also gracious enough to stand at the broad part of the stairs. You know how in a spiraling staircase, the steps get narrower as they approach the middle? Yup, that left us to tread down the narrow part of the narrow stairs gingerly. It was hard for me with my size 3 feet, think about Laura with a size 6 and Luke's is like double my size. One of the females also took it in her stride to hold us as we move past her, supposedly for support. Really, so you gain your balance, then have someone reach out and grab you causing you to nearly topple over, and hear her say "there you go"... NOT HELPFUL!

After the church, we headed over to this "Japanese" noodle bar for lunch. I just had chicken noodle soup, which tasted so great after all the fried english fare I'd been fed for the past couple of month. I actually felt healthy again for awhile. No oil or stuff like that... And just what I needed - hot soup!

After lunch, we headed over to Christchurch College since I read that when in Oxford, it's a must to tour a college. It was a pretty nice building and all, but we decided not to go in since they charged 7.50 quid and we wanted to go into the Ashmolean Museum as well (which was free entry). Before hitting the museum though, we had a pit stop where I had a delicious brownie and Laura and Luke had ice-cream. How Singaporean isn't it, that I remember what food we ate where daily =)

So, we first went to see the Sheldonian Theatre (pictures up at picturetrail.com, type "stacyvacation1" under member name), then walked past a graveyard in the middle of town. Curious...

The Ashmolean... The first museum we visited on our trip. A sort of baby step to get us into the museum way of mind =) It's not a big museum by any means, and had about a 50%-50% ratio of artefacts and paintings. Seeing as how we only had 2 hours there, I first glanced over the Greek and Roman Sculptures before deciding to go up and see the paintings first. I realise that I much prefer seeing paintings that ruins and ancient artefacts. Luke and Laura are the other way around (though they also enjoy paintings and conversely for me).

I remember on the train to Florence, I was coming up with dichotomies to see what everyone's views of things were. You know, stuff like "bird in the sky or fish in the ocean". So when I asked "inside with a gallery of painting masterpieces or outside among sprawling ruins", Martin and I chose the paintings and Laura an Luke the ruins.

But sidetrack aside, the Ashmolean had a Monet and a Van Gogh, but they weren't all that good... Every artist has their masterpieces and duds. And museums like the Ashmolean can write things like how they have a Van Gogh, but really, it's not a huge draw factor...

I think what I loved best in the Ashmolean was the Camille Pissarro paintings. I'd never heard of this painter till I got to the Ashmoelan and his works immediately stood out. So there's an example of one of his paintings below. Idiotically, I failed to take down the title of the painting so...

Here's a close up of a section so you guys can see the brushwork. I love how he uses these short strokes and dots to compose the entire picture. I don't think it's pointillism exactly which is dots of contrasting colour that the eye will merge into tones, since the colours aren't that contrastive here... But correct me if I'm wrong, I'm still trying to learn =)

The Ashmolean was our last stop before heading back. It's been our plan since we're travelling in winter. In order to maximise our daylight, we hit all the outdoor sights and buildings and nature and stuff the first thing in the morning. Then we'll go to a museum at around 3 or 4 in the afternoon, stay for 2 hours (I know, I know, NOT ENOUGH TIME!! But we didn't have much time in each place and didn't have that luxury), emerge when it's dark and go for dinner.

Before entering the train, I ended the day with a nice apple spice tea to warm up the body in the cold winter night. Very nice =)

silktalkings waves

Day 3: Newbury

2006-12-16T09:39:00.000Z

We actully took it pretty easy in Newbury, basically just recovering from our mad rush in the last week of college. Was supposed to go to Bath today, but decided to just stay in and bum around instead. Got a tour of the farm and saw the horses and I started to truely grasp at this moment how different a life I've had from everyone else here; we've come from some pretty diverse backgrounds.Petting a horse. Can't remember the last time I did so... Probably when I was a kid?

So that evening, we watched the Villa-Bolton match on the huge television, then Monty Python's "Quest for the Holy Grail" (while indulging in a tasty ice-cream treat from Luke).

silkstalkings waves

Day 2: Newbury

2006-12-15T09:18:00.001Z

Woke up to a traditional English breakfast - fried stuff... There was a sunny-side up, bacon and mushrooms washed down with orange juice. I took the opportunity to write in my diary as I was to tired to pen down anything the previous night.

Did I mention that Luke stayed on a horse farm? His father's a show jumper and now he does more training. So there I was, having a cup of tea and walking around when I glance up from the kitchen and this was his view from the kitchen window!

Imagine my shock to see two people training on horses right in front of me! Well, imagine they're shock to see a strange Asian suddenly pop up at the window, stare at them for awhile then rush to get a camera to snap pictures of them... Haha.

After breakfast, we headed into town to do some shopping and bumming around.

So there I was in HSBC, slumped against a wall waiting talking to Laura while everyone was settling some bank account stuff. Suddenly I heard

"Is that S***y? S***y O**?"

I turn around and OMG, there, right in front of me, in this small town in England - Kristen Khor - the sister of one of my Guiding friends. She's studying in Oxford, but never did I expect to meet her in Newbury! I stood there for absolutely a...g...e...s... with my mouth gaping open! She'd got a job there.

We chatted for awhile before I had to leave.

One of the joys of christmas travel are the wintery christmas scenes and nativity scenes and we came across this one at a shopping centre in Newbury.

There's Laura's shocked expression as they placed some seal cubs in front of a Polar Bear. Haha, this the season of friendship, joy and laughter right?

silkstalkings waves

Day 1: Durham - Newbury

2006-12-14T22:27:00.000Z

Gosh, this all seems so long ago. The end of term was a frantic rush - saying goodbye to everyone who was leaving earlier, settling last-minute travel stuff, finishing off the end-of-term assignments, packing and, of course, partying.

To fully appreciate this fateful first day, you need to understand the build-up as well. Basically, it's the usual tale of woe... Before term ended, I had 2 essays and one essay plan due. I'd blown the entire weekend plus Monday, the 11th, working on my essays. This entailed burning the midnight oil and little sleep. The reson for the rush though my essays were due on the 13th (Wednesday)? The 13th was the last day of school and everyone was leaving then, so the 12th signaled the unmissable end-of-term parties. This meant limited sleep on Tuesday night too.

Wednesday was spent shoving clothes into my suitcases and carting them over to store in a place that shall not be named for fear of getting into trouble =) Then, I had to BEGIN packing for my 29 day holiday and do some other chores. 3 hours of sleep after a stretch of limited rest is not exactly an ideal way to start the holiday.

So there we were, 0530 and trudging down the cold streets of Durham on our half and hour hike to the train station with all our heavy luggage. We had to get to Newcastle to catch our flight to Bristol. The thrill of beginning the vacation kept me going though and spirits were pretty high as we arrived at the train station.

Naturally, the first order of business upon arrival at the airport was to get breakfast and a coffee =) I sacrificed straightening my hair for and extra 15 mins of sleep so I had to tie it up.

Ok, so I know that while travelling, not everything's going to go your way. You're gonna hit roadblocks and obstacles and you'll have to react and handle them as they arise. However, I didn't expect trouble to smack my face at the very start of the trip while I'm running on empty. So get this, I was so exhausted the night before that in my haste to pack and sleep, I had put my toiletries into my hand luggage. I was totally clueless to this fact and even walked past the security at the departure gate saying "no I have no liquids in my bag". As I was queuing to get to the X-Ray machine though, I suddenly thought "oh s*it!".

Ok, ok, no problem, all I had to do was to open my bag and throw all the liquids away. I mean, all I need to do is just buy more at Newbury right? Problem solved.

WRONG!!!

The lock on my bag decided at this very moment to jam. I was standing there furiously working the dials and typing all numbers I could think of. I could swear both my locks had identical combinations... Yet... What if I was wrong? Man! I opened this bag just 5 minutes ago after breakfast!!! What's the combination!

Of course, Luke's no help at all. All he can say to me is "this is going to look so suspicious to them..."

We inch closer and closer to the X-Ray machine and I get more and more franzied. I begin to think, they have to cut my lock and I have to buy another. What if they can't cut my lock? If they cut my bag and I can't lock it for the whole trip... Nearly brought me to tears.

So I reach the security guard and give the lock up as a lost cause. I say "I'm so sorry, I have a problem. I just realised I left my toiletries in this bag and in my panic, I've forgotten the combination. Is there anyway you can cut my lock?" And the guy goes "we don't have that kind of equipment".

I think I'm totally screwed, I'm not gonna be allowed on the plane, I can't ditch my bag cause all my valuables are in there... I'm screwed... And this does look so suspicious.

The guard then offers a solution - to go check in my bag instead. However, I only had about 15 mins till the flight began boarding (yes yes, should have gone in earlier... Darn). I rushed down, said I needed to check in a second bag and get whacked with a 10 pound charge for it, but there was no other solution so I handed over my money and ran back up.

The queue to the X-Ray was horribly long and I waved my ticket about madly saying "I'm going to be late, so sorry, can I go first, I'm going to be late". A lot of people are naturally cheesed off. I do remember one woman though who started to talk to me... I stopped thinking she was saying how I shouldn't cut in front of her and just look at her desperately. She then repeated herself, and she was telling me to go quickly and I was heartened by her "support".

So I made it to the machine and made it to the plane alright. Phew.

The long day was not over yet though... Upon our arrival at the Bristol train station, we found that we'd missed the straight train to Newbury by a matter of seconds... Meaning that we had to take a much longer route of Bristol to Salisbury, change train, Salibury to Basingstoke, change train, Basingstoke to Reading, change train, then finally Reading to Newbury (where Luke stays). So there I am, on the train, fiddling with my jammed lock in a vain attempt to open it.

In the end, I created a space big enough to squeeze my two zips past and gave up on that lock in disgust.

We were pretty knackered by the time we arrived at Newbury, but were heartened that the long journey was finally at it's end. And yes, the sun in winter sets at 1600, so it was dark by the time we'd arrived.

So anyway, Luke had run off to the bank to settle some financial stuff. He was to return in 10 or so minutes and his grandma was to pick us up. So there Laura and I are sitting on our suitcases chatting when we see this car pull up and an elderly lady emerge. Simultaneously, we go "oh my god, is that his grandma? What do we say to her? Where's Luke?" and I'm like "she's coming, she's coming, she's coming... What do we do...?!?". We sit frozen, staring at each other when she comes up and asks "are you Luke's friends" and we go "yes" and pile into her car waiting for Luke's arrival.

Turns out that she was really nice and friendly, as was his grandpa. Meeting his dad was such a pleasure since he was a real charmer and joker and we immediately felt right at home; promtly demonstrated by the fact that we immediately fell asleep on the couch in Luke's room until dinner.

There's a HUGE television in Luke's living room, great to watch sports and movies on, and we did both in due course.

And Luke's dog - Bomber - was really friendly and cute. He's allowed on one of the couches, not on the leather one, and he promptly demonstrated this by jumping up and joining Laura and I.

We had a good dinner, I particularly remembered avacados in our salad and also pasta, before retiring. It was a long day...

silkstalkings waves

Back in cold, cold Durham

2006-12-13T22:12:00.000Z

For anyone who still bothers to check this little section of cyberspace since my last post was over a month ago - I'M BACK!!!

The travel's too much to condense in one flitting sentence, so I'll post separate entries as the desire, time and such and such arise... Let me just put it this was - 3240 photos - I'll be sorting through them for a loooooooong time...

And if anyone's worried, I've made it back in one piece, with no injuries and thankfully no serious incident. Success for my first "solo" trip around!

silkstalkings waves - 12/01/07 (the false date on the entry above is due to layout stuff, don't let it bother you... haha)

Holiday Plans

2006-11-25T14:27:00.000Z

The deed is done. Rooms are booked and money has been sunk it. I have to go traveling now; no if, ands or buts about it. Hopefully things will pan out well and we'll be able to get transport everywhere we need to. So the plan is as follows:

Durham - Newbury
Laura and I will be staying with Luke at his father's horse ranch type thing. His dad trains racehorses!! So I won't be able to feed the horses sugar lumps, but I can feed em their oats =) Haha. And no riding, but I'll pet (if they aren't scary). We'll take day trips to Bath and up to Oxford (since we don't wanna pay for accommodation in those places). Luke's gonna join us for the travels!

Newbury - London
Big Ben, London Eye, Changing of the guards... Yes, I wanna be a proper tourist! Oh and the museum of natural history too!! I wanna see the fossils and bones! No West End for me... But yes, Emirates Stadium is on the cards! Just outside that is, no tickets for me... Phooey...

London - Amsterdam
Rijksmuseum, the Red Light District, Canal rides... We're staying with Laura's Aunt and Uncle so we'll get an insiders perspective as well

Amsterdam - Brussels
Laura's brother may come up to meet us here. A third member of the Da Costa clan for me to meet. Chocolate factory tours and such and such

Brussels - Paris
Paris for Christmas. The Lovre, Museum de Orsay, the Champs Elysees and the Arc de Triomph, the Eiffel Tower, the Obelisk of Luxor and French men all around =)

Paris - Aix
Laurent's gonna open his home to us. Day trips to Avignon, perhaps Marseille. Laurent's Sauna. A French Market, amazing scenic views of mountains, insiders trips around the area. Martin's gonna join us here on out!

Aix - Nice
The winter retreat of yore, lazing by the French Rivera...

Nice - Florence
New Year's Countdown in Florence. Pehaps a day trip to Pisa. The Basilica di San Lorenzo, revisiting the Renaissance...

Florence - Rome
Into Vatican City, ton's of ruins, the Forum, the Colosseum...

Rome - Naples
Trips to Pompeii, Herculaneum, Sorrento, the Amalfi Coast, the Isle of Capri...

Naples - Venice
James Bond, Casino Royale!

Venice - Milan
Fashion, architecture and splurging if we save money throughout the trip =)

Milan - Newcastle
To begin the new term

As you can see, I haven't done all my research and there's tons more to look up on places where we wanna go but here's hoping =)

I am the champion!!!

2006-11-25T14:05:00.000Z

I beat Luke at pool on Thursday! Muahahahahahahaha! Yes, even though he's beat me about 20 times already it's still an accomplishment alright!!

The Aftermath of the Tutor Formal

2006-11-23T14:56:00.000Z

Last Wednesday was the Tutor Formal. Basically, everyone in college is assigned a tutor who is a post-grad student from Grey as well. This person is paid some money to be our tutor, bring us out for meals, treat us to drinks.. You get the picture. The tutor formal was great! Best meal in my college life! We had pate for starters. A huge slab of it! I related to Martin how, in Singapore, my dad would get just that same sized chunk of pate to share among us while watching the football. And now I had one all to myself for starters! Naturally, I couldn't finish it...

The wine was great as well. Normally, we get two lousy bottles among 4-6 of us. This time, our tutor brought us 4 bottles of good wine among 6 of us, and he wasn't even really drinking cause he had to work after the formal, so it was pretty much almost a bottle a person. Mine was one of the rare tutors who brought 4 bottles, most others only brought 2.

It was pretty funny seeing some of the tutors bringing in the wine. There was this woman who was around 50 years old, and she was clutching 2 bottles of wine (one in each hand) as she marched back and forth among the table. She really looked like an alcoholic.

After the Formal, we headed down to the bar to continue the shenanigans. Our tutor bought everyone drinks, but I declined as I had the honour of polishing off the last bottle of wine =) So there I am below with my bottle and a glass to drink it from, though I was highly tempted just to swig. Yes, I was pretty high by that time. And oh, I'm with Tom West in the picture.

Such a coincidence that on the very day of the tutor formal, Laura's brother came to visit =) He's a steward on Emirates Airlines and lives in Dubai. It was fun to meet another member of the Da Costa clan and my goodness, they share many similarities amongst them, not least that when they both first heard my name, they burst into "Stacy's Mom"... Very funny...

Yes, Wayne is also clutching his own bottle of wine from his tutor.

Yeah! Two glasses of wine now!! Whoopee! As you can see, the three of us are suitably liquored up...

Moving over to the JCR since Luke, as always, wanted to play pool. We're all piled onto one couch.

Two girls on the couch yet Wayne and Luke go for Martin instead... Hmmmmm... And I doubt that Martin's getting any reading done right now. We've all lost our gowns. I don't know what the others did with theirs; mine went to Laura's room for safe keeping =)

That's not Wayne's purse, and that's not my glass of beer... And nope, up to now, I still don't know who's beer I'm holding... I didn't drink it though (I think).

Now that's my drink! A Tropical Blue Sourz with Lemonade. When everyone saw my cup, they all thought I'd been pennied and egged me on to down my drink. I wasn't pennied though, I just accidentally dropped my change into my own glass, I have no idea how. It was delicious though (the drink, not the coin, which I did retrieve and place in my pocket).

Yes, I happen to like suits and I happen to like ties. I collected three ties on that fateful night =) The most I ever got in Singapore was one... Woohoo! Achievement!

Drunken pool... Man was it hard to play in those ties. Well, at least I still knew to hit the white ball. Looks like I'm going for the double. Let me be the first to admit, I don't recall potting a single ball that night...

Well that was fun, we should do this again some time =)

silkstalkings waves you goodbay

Weather and the average Englishman

2006-11-23T10:43:00.000Z

When Luke and I were walking back from the New Inn last night after the Champion's League match, he was complaining about how cold he was; to which I retorted "you're English, aren't you used to this weather?"

His reply?

"What you don't understand is that the average Englishman spends 1/3rd of his life freezing his ass off, 1/3 of his life freezing his ass off while soaking wet and 1/3rd of his life being too hot"

Though we don't get the four seasons, right now I'd settle for Singapore weather anyday!

Male Waxathon

2006-11-20T11:23:00.000Z

Ok, seeing as how I'm known to chiak kantang and that I have fairly liberal views on most subjects, I never thought that I'd experience as much of a culture shock as I did on Friday. I never thought of myself as a prude, neither do I believe I hold very conservative views, but the openess of the culture here has made me take an about turn. Listen to my Friday night at the bar and then judge me if you want.

So, I was planning to sleep early on Friday when I received a call from Luke asking me to go down to the bar, it was the male wax-a-thon for charity. Basically, guys sign up to get waxed, specifing the body part and amount of money needed. Then, at the bar, cups go round with the guy's names and people donate money; once the target is met, the guy is waxed on centre stage.

It all starts off innocently enough. First, a couple of guys get their legs waxed. Everytime a strip is pulled, everyone who's watching flinches.

Then we move on the the chest waxing where these ripped ruggers come up to sacrifice their body for charity. Of course at this point, the emcee is shouting "over the nipple, put it right over the nipple!". Wax strips also go on the happy trail, the hair leading to (yup, there's no delicate way to put this) the nether regions...

A really REALLY brave guy steps up for armpit waxing. I really don't need to go into how painful that is. He didn't make a sound though his eyes started to tear.

So, before the night began I thought that's a far as things would go.

WRONG

Next come the pubic hair waxing, one strip over just the beginning of the... yah... Two guys come up and they yank each other's strips off in unison (yes, I did intend for the sentence to sound like that).

Then begins the butt-waxing. Another two specimens come up and promptly drop their pants, yup, right in the middle of the bar, before bending over. By this time, the enthusiastic emcee is yelling "right between the crack, yes that's it". I'm also pretty much telling Luke that the English are weird.

But that's not the worst place... The night culminated in two guys going for the ultimate - testicular waxing. Yes, you heard me. And they stood on a chair as well. Yes. Dropped the pants, covered their package and stretched it upwards (apparently, if you don't stretch your skin taut enough, ball ripping ensues), and stood on chairs. Balls at eye-level. Nothing can explain how surreal it is to see the balls of someone you know right at your eye level. I'm suprised they didn't fall off their chairs once the waxing commenced.

And yes, pictures were being taken left, right and centre, but though I brought my camera down, I just couldn't bring myself to snap any pictures of THAT. Guess I'll just chalk it up to my memory. And admit that as liberal as I believed I was, there are still things out there that can shock me.

Autumn

2006-11-14T15:19:00.000Z

To gaze outside my window and watch golden leaves swirling and dancing around in the wind...

Sometimes, it's hard to imagine that this will be my only Autumn here in Durham.

Asian Festival at the Oriental Museum

2006-11-13T17:18:00.000Z

On Sunday, the Oriental Museum had an Asian Festival and seeing as how there's nothing much to do on weekends besides watch the football, Laura, Martin, Wayne and I decided to head on down to check it out. Besides, entry was free and it really sounded like fun! Plus, the Spurs Reading game didn't really appeal.

The Museum had this guy dressed all funny who went around every half hour or thereabout to announce the events and activites that were taking place. He kept giving me a shock as he had this booming loud voice and when I'm engrossed in reading the display information or talking to the others, his voice startled me and I would jump (how embarrassing)... Being the tourist I am, I HAD to get a picture with him. I loved his outfit!

There was a calligraphy exhibition and two chinese girls were basically translating everyone's english name into chinese and writing it down for them. A great idea and a nice souvenir to bring home. Despite all my own personal sentiments, I'd admit that seeing chinese characters as a singularity (i.e. I'm not force-fed pages of it to study), it looks pretty cool. Hence so many ang mohs tattoo chinese characters on their arms and such and such. Laura and Martin first got theirs translated. It's pretty funny cause they were just translating their names by their sound, so they got the weirdest names. Like Martin's "ma" became "horse" and Laura's "ra" became "la" - pull).

At first, only Martin and Laura got one, then I thought how great it'd be for each of us to have one to remember the day by so despite it not having it's novelty status, Wayne and I got one too!

I didn't know that Wayne could do calligraphy! I recall that when I was in Primary school, they tried to teach me and it was just so impossible. It's a real technique as you're using a rounded-tip brush so to get the little ticks and such, you have to twist your paintbrush as you write. Wayne asked them if he could try then proceeded to write his name (as you see below). And his chinese is the older one, not the simplified one we learn in Singapore. Look as Martin's "ma" below or in my picturetrail and you'll see what I mean!

Here're the finished products, taken outside the Oriental Museum. I love this picture =)

In the Chinese section of the exhibition, they naturally had a zodiac wheel, listing down which animal you were and what traits you possess. This was, however, the first time I saw a wheel that dished out a compliment then an insult. It was hilarious.

Martin and I are Oxen - "Honest and Stubborn"
Laura's a Dragon - "Strong and Irritating"
Wayne's a Rabbit - "Quiet and SUPERFICIAL"

Haha, I laughed so much when I read Wayne's. He was like "what...."

Fortune cookies!!! Haha, how can you go for an Asian Festival and not have them =)

Martin's fortune: Your determination will bring you much success

Laura's fortune: Happy news is on its way to you

Wayne's fortune: Your infinite capacity for patience will be rewarded sooner or later.

Haha, I love that they added "sooner or later"

Mine says: You will soon achieve perfection

Which reads as pretty nice, yet sounds pretty ominous at the same time... Hmmmmm...

silkstalkings waves you goodbye... When she remembers...

A Battle of Conscience

2006-11-13T17:06:00.000Z

For all who were unaware, for the past few weeks, I've been battling with my inner conscience. What happened is that on one of our walks back to College after a night out, I found a 10 pound note on the street. That's $30!!! Initially, I was loathe to pick it up. It wasn't my money after all... But if I left it there, it wasn't as if the original owner would find it. Yet, is that justification to keep the money? What would you do if you came across a $50 note?

I didn't know what to do, so I called out to the others and Wayne came bounding over. It was pretty funny. I pointed out the note to him, the first thing he did was to step on the note, then he picked it up. I then took the note from him. 10 quid is a lot of money!

I thought long about what to do with it. Actually, I didn't really. However, I did keep it in a back compartment of my bag, separate from my other notes. I refused to spend the money. In Singapore, whenever I picked any coins or notes up, I would immediately donate it to charity. I was brought up fearing anything you could pick up on the streets. My mum always told me that you wouldn't know if it was cursed or jinxed or something... Well, superstitious yes. But aren't we all?

The others were bemused and befuddled about me refusing to spend the money. What else could I do with it anyway? Besides, finders keepers and I later saw someone who found 20 quid and spent it! They said I should just buy them a round of drinks or something.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I simply couldn't spend it on anything frivolous yet, neither could I keep it in my bag forever. I hit the perfect solution! I found a second-hand textbook for one of my modules for 10 quid (it costs 30 quid and the other 2 second-hand copies of the book were both priced at 22 quid and were snapped up). How is that not a sign? So I recycled the money into my education and think I made a great purchase!! I saved over $70 and got a nice textbook. Whoop-dee-doo!!

Black Tie College Feast =)

2006-11-10T16:38:00.000Z

Last Thursday, we had the College Feast which was to celebrate all things Grey =) Basically, it was just a free meal with supposedly better food than regular dinners. However, this hasn't really proven to be the case (the good food that is). The huge drawn though is still the free (though crummy) wine. How could I possibly refuse? Lest anyone gets the impression that Formals are free, this is often not the case. However, at some formals, people pay for you. For instance, at the Parenting Formal, it's your college parents who pay for your meal. In this case, it was the College Master who paid for it. Free meals are always a big draw are they not? In this case, the online booking for the Formal opened at 1900 and it was fully book in a mere 2 minutes!!

Dressing up is always fun, and being the camera whore that I am (cheerfully coined by Zalina...), compounded by the fact that I was done dressing early and had free time to kill, well, see below =)

When Martin and Wayne saw this picture later, they asked me when I wore the dress!! Shows you how much people can see under the gown we have to wear... And yes, it's the same dress I wear everytime. My fashion sensibilities lost out to baggage allowance so I only brought 2 dresses with me...

We hit a little snag upon entering the dining hall. I don't know how many of you know this, I certainly didn't (with good reason - I'm no guy!)... Anyway, when they say it's a black tie event, it means that you gotta go with a black bow tie - true penguin suit.

OMG, penguins are SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO cute!!!!! The other night, while waiting for the pool table to free up, Luke and I were watching this documentary on "Ice Worlds" by Sir David Attenbrough! So they had a whole segment of penguins waddling here and there and sliding on their stomachs!!! It was tres adorable!!!! =)

Anyway, distractions aside, there we were, outside the Dining Hall, waiting for seating to begin. Martin turns to me and says "I think we're going to be in trouble... We're the only ones here wearing ties, everyone else has a bow tie on". Of course, by then it's too late for them to go try and borrow a bowtie, so there's nothing to do but wait to see if they could sneak in...

Which, of course, they couldn't. They take their traditions REALLY seriously here! As you will see later... So there Laurent and Martin were, stuck outside. And there I was inside wandering back and forth wondering if I should just leave as well and we could all go for a dinner together, or if Wayne and I should stay and partake in the feast.... It was a confusing couple of minutes...

However, thank goodness they finally relented and let the Frenchies in. Laurent pleaded with them saying "I'm French, I really didn't know. I thought black tie meant a black-coloured tie". I don't even know why they're so stodgy about it considering some of the high table guys and the master's guests were also wearing ties... The food was achingly slow, so what's there to do but take pictures =)

There was a tad of a scene at our table as well since two guys wanted to use the washroom badly. At formals, you aren't allowed to move, not even to stand up or stretch, once the high table arrives and until they leave. So these two guys were not allowed to leave on threats of black marks and disallowed entry into future Formals or something like that. Being slightly inebriated, they got pretty riled up and started ranting and raving. A deal was struck, but I think there were consequences of getting up (apart from not being allowed back in again) since only one of the guys left. The other braved it out.

After the Formal, it is kinda custom to go down to the Grey Bar to continue drinking and talking. Even some of the staff who were overseeing the smooth-running of the formal will come down for a drink. It's also way less formal. I normally go back to my room first to change out of my dress, though you can't really see from the picture since I'm wearing a jacket...

Film Night!

2006-11-10T16:33:00.000Z

On Wednesday, I had pretty much resolved to stay in for the night. I had 2 tutorials tomorrow, both of which I had to prepare essay plans for. However, over lunch, Laura and Martin started talking about how the Durham Film Society was screening "Vovler" at the College of St Hilde and Bede and that was too good to pass up. It's been ages since I last caught a movie! Last time I actually went to the cinema was too see the Lake House. Gosh, how long ago was that? I saw the DVD out at HMV some weeks ago... Sidetrack aside, since it was screened in a college hall (think movie screening in the NUS Multi Purpose Hall, with a cinema sized screen and surround sound of course) it only cost us 2 quid per ticket! How great is that!

If you guys haven't read my previous entry yet, Laura, being the kiasu person she is, was absolutely terrified that we wouldn't be able to get tickets, so, while the movie was only showing at 2000, we were there by 1910. They were just carrying down the boxes to set up when we'd arrived! So, as you can see, we basically had the pick of the seats and an empty hall.

So what else is there to do but to snap pictures. Yes, I have started to wear a scarf out, it's so blasted cold these days.

And yes, there were movie goodies as well. That candy bracelet cost Laura 15p and all chocolate bars were going for 35p! That's at least 10-15p cheaper than the vending machines in Grey. Very cool! I got a Twix.

silkstalkings waves you goodbye

hamster huey and the gooey KABLOOIE!!!! (come on, don't you guys read Calvin and Hobbes?)

2006-11-10T16:27:00.000Z

Yay! The weekend's finally here! To all those who've been noticing my elusiveness over the past few days, it's been a really REALLY busy week! But since it is officially a crime to work on weekends in my book, it's time to PaRtAy (and no, contrary to all appearances, I'm no geek).

So anyhoo... last Saturday was GUY FAWKES NIGHT; also known as BONFIRE NIGHT (well, actually, Guy Fawkes Night is on the 5th of November but we got classes on Monday you know)! For those who have no idea what Guy Fawkes Night is, wikipedia.com it =) I, for one, will be the first to admit that all I know about Guy Fawkes Night I read from Enid Blyton's "Brer Rabbit" series. The way I see it, Guy Fawkes Night is basically a nice excuse to set off fireworks then go party!!! And yes, unlike in Singapore, Fireworks aren't banned here!

by the way, if you still don't get it, this is why this entry's title is "KABLOOIE"

Basically, some societies (such as the Singapore Society here; who, by the way, I've never met since all their functions involve me paying money... 5 pounds to attend their Guy Fawkes celebration!) have their own Guy Fawkes celebrations, but Grey College is the ONLY College with a fireworks display, and it's supposed to be the best in town! Best of all is that it's free of charge though they spend thousands of pounds on the fireworks. So all we had to do was troop out of our buildings and on the lawn, I was literally around 10 meters away from where they were setting off the fireworks.

The display was supposed to be at 1900, but Laura (who's way more kiasu than me) was convinced that if we didn't go early to chope places, we'd get blocked by the huge sea of people coming up to Grey to view the display; it was open to everyone. So at around 1740 she trooped down with plastic bags and a clothe to lay on the ground and we began to sit-and-wait. Yes, I'm convinced that she is positively crazy! IT WAS FREEZING!!! Thank goodness the wind wasn't all that strong that night. So below, you see us hunkering together for warmth in a vast dark and empty field. I bet you that people were staring out of their windows thinking "those crazy international students!".

Gradually, more and more of the gang started to drift in at just after 7, we were all in place ready for the show!

This was the first time I've seen fireworks live and up close ( i.e. not through a window at Cairnhill Court). Yes, yes, I've skipped going to the Esplanade to watch the fireworks festivals for obvious stinky-crowd reasons. I think the closest I've been to the fireworks before this was a night at the New Asia bar... The show lasted for a good 20 minutes and was coordinated with music, such as Guns 'N' Roses's Paradise City. There was tons of other displays going on in the city as well and we could see other fireworks being set off in the background. Apart from fireworks, there was also some other pyrotechnics such as sparks flying out in the shape of a pheonix (our college mascot). Go to my picturetrail account, "stacyoon4", if you wanna see what I'm talking about. Amazingly, all this was organised, set up and excuted by a STUDENT committee! Students from other Colleges and even the locals here came up to watch the fireworks. It was pretty crowded (something like 2000-3000 people) but it wasn't squashed so there was atmosphere without it being stifling. Whoopee!

After the fireworks, we had a pizza in the guys room to make up for the less than satisfactory dinner. Needed to get our energy up for the college bop later on after all. Have I already mentioned that we have our own pizza bar on college? There we are having a double pepperoni with jalapenos =) Yum. Sitting on the bed is Sally! Yup, the geographer who came over to Singapore on exchange last year. We'd met up after the fireworks.

Here's my ticket to the college party!

So at these college parties, our Junior Common Room and the Dining Hall are converted to dance floors and our bar's, well, where we get the alcohol. High on the ceiling of the dining hall are portraits of all the former College Masters of Grey so it's kinda surreal that as you gaze up while dancing, you see all these solemn men looking down upon you. Never fails to crack me up =)

I was the only one among the gang to stay on the dance floor throughout the night. The others kept taking their turns to sit on the table to rest... There were times where I had to pull them back up to have a partner! Hey, I paid 5 quid for the party, I'm jolly well gonna make full use of it! I kept telling myself "losing weight... losing weight..." =)

So it was the end of the night and they started playing "New York, New York". What else is there to do but the can-can! Well, in my defence, it seemed befitting at that time... Wayne and Laura were kind enough to join me. It was so much fun! Keith (the guy on the extreme right and our night porter) was doing his rounds in the dining hall at that time and he joined in too!!! =)

Keith's a really cool guy. He's our night porter, meaning that once the reception closes, he takes over. I don't know his exact job description but he patrols the grounds at night to ensure that everything remains in order. If a student get too drunk to make it back alone, he heaves them to their room. Once he even had to call an ambulance as one girl got so drunk she started convulsing and stuff and stuff! Luke told me an incident where he looked out the JCR window and saw a guy pissing into the bushes. Keith came along and wrapped his arm around the guy and pulled him away. You DO NOT want to get on the wrong side of him. Haha. He's always telling me to go back to my room to study since he catches me either going out for the night, or in the JCR playing pool, or at Fountains Hall indulging in a pizza. The staff and students here are all pretty much friends, there isn't a real divide. Sometimes, after formals, we see some of the supervisors in the bar drinking and chatting to the students and stuff like that =)

Oh, there was this one time, Luke, Martin, Laura and I were playing pool in the JCR (it's only 30p per game, so it's worth it; though yes, I still bite at pool). Anyway, after putting in the 30p, one of the balls didn't come out and we kept searching and couldn't find it. Along came Keith at that very moment and when we told him of our woes, he came over and lifted up the pool table by himself! And trust me, that table is one heavy SOB! At a future game, the same thing happened, and Luke and I had to lift the table together to get it up, and trust me, it felt like I was lifting an elephant. and I've a bruise on my arm to attest to the arduousness of the task...

Whoop-dee-doooo!!!

silkstalkings waves you goodbye

Anyone knows any engineers?

2006-11-07T14:44:00.000Z

I've been so ultra busy!!! I'll write about my Guy Fawkes Saturday soon.. I hope... 3 assignments due this week... Anyway, for now

"Children with classic autism have language delays or deficits and difficulty relating to others; they display rigid, often obsessive behaviors; deviation from routine disturbs them. Some are mentally retarded. Those with milder conditions on the spectrum — Asperger’s is one of them — exhibit some or all of these characteristics to lesser degrees. But Asperger’s is also distinguished by average or aboveaverage intelligence, an early acuity with language and singular passions ... Of course, high-functioning people on the spectrum have long attended college. Tony Attwood , a psychologist and author of “The Complete Guide to Asperger’s Syndrome,” tells of trying to spot the professor with Asperger’s when he’s on the lecture circuit. That is, unless Dr. Attwood is at an engineering school, in which case he tries to spot the professors who don’t have Asperger’s." (New York Times, 7 Nov, emphasis mine)

The New York Times really has some great articles =)

Wanna read the whole thing? It's pretty interesting:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/05/education/edlife/traits.html

Seeya!

silkstalkings waves you goodbye

Anyone knows any statisticians?

2006-11-03T13:42:00.000Z

"To err is human. To demonstrate at least associate membership of the human race, statisticians also make errors..." (Huxham and Sumner, 2000: 16)

The gems that make readings worthwhile =)

silkstalkings waves you goodbye

I'm studying =)

2006-11-02T21:55:00.000Z

Bummer

2006-11-02T17:44:00.000Z

It is so unnatural that the sun sets at 1700!!! How depressing to walk back from class in the dark. You automatically feel waned, drawn out and tired...

Happy Halloween!! and other random musings...

2006-11-02T15:08:00.000Z

So there I was in Grey bar, 2 pound 50 cowboy hat atop head (I really didn't wanna spend that much on a costume that I would only use once or twice. Besides, cowboy hats have always been special to me) excitedly stating to Luke that this was really great cause we don't celebrate Halloween in Singapore. To which Luke scoffs "Celebrate?!? It's more of an excuse to get dressed up and go drinking really". Well, whatever... It was a spiffing good day, so who cares?

Actually, I went to the Halloween party pretty late. One hour before Grey bar closed to be exact... Curses good football and an amazing Barca Chelsea match! I don't regret my decision and anyone who did watch the match would know why. That Lampard goal and Drogba last minute equaliser, indescribable really...

But on with the narrative. After Grey bar closed at 2300, we ajourned to the Loveshack to continue the evening since it was only a pound entry. I must say though that the music that night had much to be desired. At it's best, the Loveshack brings you to a higher plane. If you haven't read about already or seen in my photos, imagine this...

*lights dim and smoke fills the room*

It is 0150 in the morning. You night started at 2000 or 2100, you've been drinking, hit your high, sobered up, danced for the past 3-4 hours and are running on pure adrenaline now. The last song, the last dance of the night. You hear the sound of water and soft refrain. Barely is there time to register that you're hearing THE Oasis... Champagne Supernova... Bubbles starts to fall down from the ceiling. The lighting mellows and everybody's just looking upwards, swaying to the music... EVERYBODY HAS TO KNOW THIS SONG (well... you do anyway). Hands outstretched, you sing along....
"someday you will find me, caught beneath the landslide, in a champagne supernova in the sky"

*end of daydream*

Surely I've experienced nothing like this at Zouk! But anyway, tonight, there was no Oasis (they played 3 on Saturday), only 1 Franz Ferdinand, they cut Guns 'N' Roses short!, no Scissor Sisters "I don't feel like dancing" (Wayne's favourite).. There was a lot of techo music, just beats... Bugger... But anyway, we still had a blast and stayed till closing. Got back at 230, slept at 4... My one and only halloween =) Pictures will be up on picturetrail, but I was too sian to take pictures that night for personal reasons, so there's only about 6 shots.

Wednesday was spent recuperating. I did have a Geography Erasmus Social to welcome the international Geography Exchange students. Some of the Brits who have been on exchange and who want to go on exchange came along too. And get this THEY SERVE WINE AT THE DEPARTMENT SOCIAL HERE!!! Imagine Major's Tea in NUS with Tim Bunnell, Shirlena Huang and Victor Savage standing in a circle with students, glasses of wine in hand. It was actually a really great idea and helped to break the ice between everyone. In NUS, I remember that after the events, there's refreshements served, but people start drifing away pretty quickly most of the time. However, over here everyone stayed behind drinking and eating and we had to be chased out of the room as it was no longer booked. I met the other exchange students here (all Erasmus students, meaning they're all from the European Union. Poland, Germany, Denmark...) and some of them are taking my modules, so I'll know more people in class now =) Whoopee!

We seem to talk alot about movies here. Well, today, this afternoon, before lunch, I had a "Dude, where's my car" moment. You know that scene when they realise they both got tattoos the previous night?

"Dude, what's mine say?"
"'Sweet'... What's mine say?"
"'Dude'... What's mine say?"
"'Sweet'..."

What happened was that I was messaging Luke and he sent me this reply "Je ne sais pas!" Obviously, since I don't speak french, I catch no ball. So there I was in Laurent's room

Me: Hey, what does this mean?
Laurent: I don't know
Me: What does it mean again?
Laurent: I don't know
Me: But it's French...
Laurent: Yes, and it means "I don't know!!"

Haha, and it's a true story... *Whacks forehead*

silkstalkings waves you goodbye

Photos!!

2006-10-30T20:29:00.000Z

Ok everyone!! I've finally got around to uploading all my latest pictures!! So go see them if you want, now my pics are spread over 4 accounts at www.picturetrail.com

stacyoon
stacyoon2
stacyoon3
stacyoon4

See the trend? Latest photos are at stacyoon3 and 4. Some are also on this blog, but there are new ones as well.

And Laurent, don't bother. They're all on facebook =)

Sat Sat Satturday.....

2006-10-29T10:20:00.000Z

If any of you have read my previous entry (which I doubt since I only just finished it, so you're going to have had to check my blog within the past hour or so), you'll know that on Saturday, I had to get up at 8 am for a day-long field trip, only getting back at 5.15 pm. This was after having gone clubbing till 1.30 am the previous night. As you could pretty well gather, I was knackered by dinner. We had all arranged to go clubbing on Saturday night, so it came to pass that at 9.45 pm, after a two hour nap, I dragged myself down to Grey bar to meet everyone... Martin, Wayne and Laura were swung out as well. So here's me with Martin at the start of the evening. Save me...

Of course things picked up once alcohol started pouring in. Here's me with my pint of Stongbow. I have no idea what Wayne's drinking... Probably a barcardi coke or double barcardi coke; but who really cares. Peter thinks that Cider tastes like piss. Laura disagrees and claims that ale tastes like piss. Hmmm... How would they know? And contrary to appearances, I'm no alcoholic. If I recalled rightly, the only other drink I had for the night was a shot of Baileys (yummy!).

Crisps anyone? Thanks to Laura, I'm now horribly addicted to Salt and Vinegar chips. I also snuck a bag of Luke's chips with her in his room on Friday night while waiting for the others to turn up. Don't ask me why she opened the bag upside down. Or was I the only one to notice it? We're eating "The Real McCoy" chips, so donch pray pray! God.. What's with me and all the PCK references the past few days... Argh!

We had our usual crowd of the crazy English in our bar. We speculate that this particular group of people were on a bar crawl since they disappeared soon after... And don't worry guys, that's not a really ugly girl, that's a bloke. Don't ask me how these people don't freeze moving around outside.. Crazy English.

So here's the group of us just before we left (except for Wayne who's taking the picture...). Notice Peter's incandescent shirt (it's Banana Republic and every picture we took had it flashing out all night!).

Halloween's coming, can you tell? We ran across this busker along the way to the Loveshack. Yes, you guessed it, Wayne's terrified of horror movies. Me? I ain't scared! Uh uh... I gave the person 20p after this; I'd have felt bad not to have since we did take a picture of him. And no, that's not my scarf by the way. My "warm" clothing is pretty inadequate here so the others are often offering me their scarves. Tonight I was wearing Wayne's. Martin's also offered his up previously.

We had to have another pit stop along the way for people to withdraw money, so while waiting at the cashpoint, what else was there to do but snap a few pictures =) By this time, we were also joined by Cecile and her friend. Lauren't very proud of the straight line of heights we made from Martin in front to him at the back (unintentional, so it is pretty cool I guess).

Yeah, Lurveshack!! As I recall, "Sweet Home Alabama" was playing at this time and I was dancing with Martin. Luke just popped his head into the picture since he's damn extra. I do love the way we look in this shot though... It's really funny that each of us really has a distinctive dance style that's different from the next. Over lunch on Sunday, we were imitating each other's style =) The most distinctive styles belong to Martin, Luke and Me... Me mainly cause I suck at dancing and just keep doing the same action over and over again the entire night... And if you think Martin's face is a weird colour, it's just the lighting...

The end of the night and the club's shutting down, so here's one last group shot for the road... We were pretty upset. You see, the club has to shut down at 2 am due to licensing. Daylight savings time (where all clocks are pushed back by an hour) began at 203 am. If daylight savings had begun just 3 mins earlier, it would only be 1 am and the club could have stayed open for another hour (you understand what I'm trying to say?). Phooey... Yes, by then we were pretty high and running on adrenaline, so I wasn't all that tired no more.

When we hit Grey again, Laurent, Martin, Wayne, Luke, Laura and I went over to Holgate house to get a drink. Mainly cause Laurent wanted a coke... I had an imitation Ribena. No fizzy drinks for me!!

Cheers!!!

silkstalkings waves you goodbye

Quaternary Studies Fieldtrip

2006-10-28T23:45:00.000+01:00

SCIENCE WARNING!!! Article with some scientific content written below. All the intellectual content will be labelled with a *SCIENCE WARNING* to allow unappreciative people to skip it.

It's been absolutely ages since I last talked about my lessons; well, this Saturday, I had a Quaternary Studies field trip to the North York Moors to learn about field methods with regard to sediment stratigraphy with specific reference to Late Quaternary peat stratigraphy.

I must admit, I had a tad of trepidation at going for this trip... Afterall, I didn't know anyone in class at all, and now I'd have to work with them. Also, I only had a pair of Wellingtons and jeans (which weren't the recommended pantswear for the day). Plus, some of the risks present included hypothermia (if you fall down in the wet part of the bog), Lyme's disease from ticks (meaning I had to "check regularly for ticks, and remove carefully"), back/neck injuries from the heavy equipment and being trapped on the bog... Furthermore, after having a 3am night, an 8am day didn't really appeal...

So anyway, I dragged myself out of bed in order to make myself a packed lunch (no lunch was to be provided and packed lunches from the dining hall weren't provided over weekends). I made myself some ham and cheese sandwiches with wholemeal bread (which tasted pretty good if I may say so myself). After getting changed, I rushed down to the bus and was the last to get there. One person didn't show up at all. And so began the hour and a half drive to the Moors. I guess I slept through an hour of it. Was listening to Snow Patrol, The Kooks, The Killers, Gorillaz and the Goo Goo Dolls, not that anyone's real interested... Anyway,

*SCIENCE WARNING*
Our fieldsite was an ancient drainage channel that was formed as during the last Glaciation, while the bog did not get covered by ice, glacier ice did reached it's fringes. During the deglaciation, all the ice melted and there was a huge amount of meltwater which formed this huge drainage channel.
*SCIENCE WARNING OVER*

The sides of the valley were pretty stable, but the middle got pretty wet. And it's a peat bog, so the peat just absorbs all the water. The ground looks stable, with vegetation growing on top of it, but as you walk, you begin to sink into the ground and your feet get inundated with COLD water, which freezes your feet.

Now, I don't know about you but my initial impression of a peat bog before I had arrived was (and no, I'm no geek) like that marshland that Frodo and Sam had to cross to get to Mordor. You know, the one on the field where the previous huge war took place, leaving tons of dead people lurking under the water and Frodo fell in? The one that only Gollum knew how to cross? This is attributed to the bog series of poems by Seamus Heaney that I had to study... Heaney wrote about his facination with bodies found in bogs that were extremely well preserved... Anyway, if anyone is curious, we did not stumble across any bog bodies, thank goodness. A group did find a sheep's skull though...

Obviously, my impressions were totally false. Below is the picture of our field site and 2 other groups doing their studies (we were split into 5 groups). Yes, that's how huge the drainage channel was. Perhaps you'll get a better impression of it from the pictures up on picture trail, though I couldn't get many shots since we were working and my hands got very filthy.

And here, you can see what I was talking about with regard to the ground looking stable, but that as you stand still, you begin to sink into the bog and your feet got covered by water as deep as calve level at some points. And it's not a uniform terrain, it's undulating under the vegetation, so one minute, you're walking, and the next, you've shrunk by 10 cm as you step into a deep point of the bog. You look and feel like you're going to sink in all the way and never come out again when that happens!!

*SCIENCE WARNING*

So as I mentioned above, we were split into 5 groups, each group having around 5 people. We then spread out along the length of the channel to see if there were any differences in the sediment stratigraphy lengthwise. At each of our spots along the channel, we had to do a transect, which means we collect 3 - 4 cores edge to middle to edge of the bog in order to get a cross section of the soil stratigraphy at your point in the channel.
*SCIENCE WARNING OVER*

We used a hand-held corer to collect the sample, which is basically a rod which you can extend meter by meter (by screwing on more poles). At the base of the rod is a hollow to collect the sample at the depth you want (between 1-6 meters for us). You have to use the same hole you plunged the rod in everytime inorder to avoid contamination of lower layers by the upper ones. Basically, you're just using your brute strength to ram the pole in until you hit bedrock.

Below, you can see our corer at it's longest of 6 meters. Imagine that we had to plunge the whole thing into the ground. And you remember how wet the ground was and how muddy.... You can imagine how filthy we were by the end of the day...

Phew... Here we've driven it in almost all the way. Just a little more to go guys!! I'm so glad to have had 4 guys in my group with me. I definitely did not have the energy to push the pole in then pull it back out.

That isn't to say I didn't give it a shot though =) I had the energy to drive the corer in when it was only a meter long.. And yes, I still couldn't pull it out.

So we pulled out the corer and below we have a soil sample which we analyse by counting the number of distinct layers we see, then by collecting some soil at each distinct layer to describe it.

*SCIENCE WARNING*
We have to

Estimate it's contents. How many percent clay/silt/unidentified humus/roots... You get the idea
How dark is the soil? (Which indicates the amount of organic material in it
How humidified is the soil?
How saturated is the soil
Any stratigraphy within that layer
How clear were the boundaries from one of the layers to another

*SCIENCE WARNING OVER*

This is an example of one of the cores we pulled up.

Can you see the 2 very distinct layers, very light inorganic soil on the left and dark organic soil on the right? Of course there were other layers within these, but my camera wasn't sharp enough to catch it.

*SCIENCE WARNING*

Anyway, this is pretty facinating as it indicates that this bed had encountered some environmental change. This core was extracted from pretty deep down already and probably originated from the Holocene. The layer of inorganic soil indicates a time of colder climate where vegetation could not grow. Then, as climate warmed up and vegetation occurs, the soil becomes organic and dark instead.

You also observe stuff like charcoal layers in the soil. The charcoal could have originated from anthropogenic or natural forest fires. To deduce this, you have to bring the sample back from the field and do some pollen analysis. If the layer above it contains the same vegetation as previously (known by looking at the species of the vegetation the pollen belongs to), it was probably a natural fire. If, however, the pollen indicates agricultural crops, the fire was probably set by humans.

There were other observations to be made as well, but I'll spare you the details =)
*SCIENCE WARNING OVER*

So here we are below recording our observations in a field notebook. You can see that the bloke on the left is holding the soil in his hand and feeling it to note his observations.

The fieldtrip lasted from 9 am (when the bus left campus) to 5.15 pm (when the bus had arrived back). So here we are below, trekking back the half hour to the bus! It was so different from Singapore fieldtrips that just last the morning, a couple of hours at most... I can't wait till my glaciation fieldtrip which is a proper weekend trip!

Here's me arriving back at college. I'm in Martin's and Laurent's room to tell them I was finally back as we were planning to go out that evening. You can see my Wellingons, though you can't really see how filthy my hands were.

I throughly enjoyed myself... The place we went to, it was truely THE OUTDOORS and there weren't any convenient facilities anywhere for miles! As I said, we had to bring our own lunches. There werent any toilets either, so thank goodness I did not need to use the washroom... One of the guys in my group did so he said "guys, I'm just going to disappear over the hill for abit". At first I was going to say "I'll go with you! I want to see the view from the top", then it occured to me what he really wanted to do so I thought "no no, you don't want to go there...".

I particularly liked the fact that the field trip was for pure interest purposes. If we were in Singapore, we would definitely have to do a project or produce a write up on the field trip, but here, they told us that the data was not going to be used for anything. So basically, everyone was doing it because we just genuinely wanted to learn how. And my groupmates were all really interested. Some wanted to do dissertations that would require this specific field method. So it was really fun and relaxing. We weren't under any pressure to produce the "correct" results, so everyone just pitched in, got their hands dirty and gave it a try without fear of screwing up the data for the group. In Singapore, there would be people who were dragging themselves around, only at the field trip because they had to be there as it was compulsory. Here, it was because we really wanted to know.

Because there weren't any washroom facilities, and all our hands got covered in dirt, we were all dipping our hands into the dirty water to clean up (you can see how dirty the water was by the picture of my wellingtons submerged). Lunch was a game of eating without actually having direct hand-to-food contact. I didn't have anything to eat with since I only brought my lunch in a tupperware I borrowed from Luke, so I had to ask one of the guys in my group to tear me abit of aluminium foil so I could use it to handle my food. Everything was all very free and easy, no specific designated lunch hour and no direct supervision. We could just call over the professors for help and they came around every now and then to check that everything was alright. Really a total difference from fieldtrips in Singapore. We could have sat all day just eating our lunch if we so desired, and no one would have said "get back to work". Very much based on independent study.

It was a pretty windy day, with little sun, but thank god the weather held and there wasnt any rain. Was pretty cold still though, since I kept pushing up my jacket sleeves (didn't want to get them dirty).

So, I wonder how many of you were really interested in this entry. Haha. You know how when I get all excited I start ranting and raving about everything? So I was relaying the whole fieldtrip to everyone over lunch on Sunday and Laura went "that's really interesting". Singaporean that I am, and surrounded by the friends I have back home, the pessimistic side of me came out. I said to her, my eyes growing slit-like, "I can't tell if you're being serious or sarcastic...". Haha, she was genuinely interested, so nyah to all of you who skipped through 90% of what I wrote!

silkstalkings waves you goodbye

Friday Amusements

2006-10-27T22:49:00.000+01:00

So at dinner on Friday, the others were discussing what to do, and going to Castle bar came about (every college here has their own bar, if I haven't mentioned before). I mean, it IS Friday after all, we do have to go out... The only thing I said we shouldn't do was to go clubbing since we were planning to go on Saturday to celebrate Mariann's birthday (it was more an excuse to go out to party though.. Haha). So anyway, we arranged to meet at Luke's house (it's a house within the college with around 5 - 6 people; still considered college accomodation) at 2000 for a bit of drinking before heading off into town.

And you know what happens with drinks and a room to bum around in... =) Here's Wayne and I attempting to dance... I didn't really trust him all that much to hold my weight though in all honesty, he turned out to be pretty reliable.

I hate that one hand just hanging there limply... I always have that problem in my photos.. I don't know what to do with my hands! I asked the others for advice and this is what I got:

Laura: you need to keep it doing something!!! like put it around your ear, or hold your scarf! (I was wearing a scarf then...)

Wayne: dont just leave your hand hanging there~

Luke: Laura is right, you could try putting them over your face..!

Yah, thanks guys... Very helpful...

Anyway, here's me with Martin! For the whole week, I've been telling the Frenchies to shave. They keep not shaving cause they find it a drag but I hate it cause I think it makes most guys look neanderthalish. Only some guys can pull it off you know =) Anyway, Martin was so proud today cause he finally shaved and was pretty hurt since I didn't notice it at lunch. So at Luke's, he asked me "do you see anything different about me today?". I replied "err... You're sexier?" (Joking of course), but he said "yes, why?". When I informed him that I didn't know, he was so hurt "all week you've been telling me to do this...", which was when I saw that he'd shaved!! So I definitely had to get a picture of that!!

And for some unknown reason, I was holding my bottle of vodka and Luke's pernod at that time... Hmmm...

Here's Wayne running away from me... Meaning that he's probably just suanned me... Am I really all that suanable?!? It hurts inside you know!!! Boo hoo... =)

We found that Luke owned a pair of Freddy Kruger claw gloves, which was totally cool. The other night, Martin, Laura, Wayne and I were talking about horror movies, and I'm totally older than them by 3 years. Haha, so I was reminiscing about the past horror movies that totally freaked me out, like "It" (hey, so sue me, it totally freaked me out when I was a kid k?) and "Nightmare on Elm Street", which Laura has never watched... So it was extremely coincidental to see the knife-claw in Luke's room.

Yeah, do I look scary? Wayne looks terrified =)

Yes, all good things must come to an end, so we left Luke's room and headed over to Castle College, whereupon we turned left instead and went to St. Cuths (another college) where we had Brownie Bombers (a delicious drink that only St. Cuths serves. It contains, among other things, Cider and Cranberry juice.. I must get the full recipe from Luke..). We then headed over to Hog's Head and rapidly left to Coach and Eight where we had shots and partied on the dancefloor (see picture below)...

Thus it was that after dancing awhile at Coach and Eight (not a club) that I was put in the mood for dancing. Against my better judgement and my proclamations during dinner that we should not do so, we then ajourned to Walkabout (an Australian themed Club) to dance the night away. This was after having a 9 am Thursday, a 9 am Friday and a 9 am WHOLE DAY fieldtrip on Saturday... We left Walkabout at around 130 and got back at 2. I slept at 3 to wake at 8... But that's another story for another post...

silkstalkings waves you away (when she remembers to...)

Coffee!!

2006-10-25T22:03:00.000+01:00

Least anyone get the impression that all I've been doing of late is drinking and clubbing and such and such, that's isn't true (I only do that 80% of the time). On Wednesday, I realised that I needed to get some shopping done since I had a Quaternary Studies fieldtrip on Saturday. The briefing notes specified that I needed to wear boots or Wellingtons (or have very wet and cold feet the whole day) and a pair of waterproof trousers. Over lunch, I had mentioned this to the guys and since we were all free, a spontaneous trip into town for coffee came about. Oh, by the way, every one has Wednesday afternoons free here as it's the designated sports training day.

So this is Costas, our regular (well kinda...) coffee haunt. Looks nice? A cup of hot chocolate here (no, I don't drink cold drinks, it's freaking 10 degrees here for cripes sake!) runs me about $6 which is fairly reasonable I guess =)

Cards anyone? I was keeping my change in my wallet when, upon spotting my Emirates frequent flyer miles card, I pulled it out to gloat to the others that I had my own airline loyalty card. The others soon began taking out their own (Laura, for instance, had a British airways one) and card pulling ensued whereupon everyone was just taking out all the cards in our wallets! Martin got so vexed as he was trying to get us to take a picture with our cards, but all we wanted to do was pull out more; especially myself, see, I got the most cards. He began warning me that I'd lose some of them... I was boasting that I win since I had the most cards, but Laura interjected that she had the most colourful ones. Wayne pointed out that he had a dragon on his card, which automatically made him the winner, and Laurent agreed. Phooey... What do these kids know anyway... How childish right? Haha =)

Here's Laura and I. It was really hard to take pictures in here as we had to turn off the flash so as not to disturb the other clientele. A lot of the pictures we took turned out blur...

On the bright side, this meant that Martin didn't have any red eyes (for once...)

Here's Laurent and Cecile (who is Laurent's friend).

And we have very educational times together too =) Here's Wayne learning how to speak spanish from Laura (well, how to say 1 - 10 at least). Just a few moments earlier, he was learning French from Laura, Martin, Laurent and Cecile (yes, they all speak french)... Why didn't I learn? Well, you guys already know my chinese abilities... I'm monolingual and I've learnt to accept it =) After, Wayne and I were trying to teach Laura and Martin Chinese... Yes, I can hear you scoffing in the background! Don't choke on your food, at least I've pretty well-versed in counting from 1 - 10 in chinese, as I am in simple words like fire and water and writing my own name =)

Am I getting to be a good photographer or what? Well, at least I can experiment with coloured tones right? This was pretty much when we were leaving already.

Oh, so I got myself a pair of Wellingtons in the end (don't worry, they're dark green, not yellow, so no PCK fears). Haha, it's funny that the moment I hear Wellingtons, I think "PCK" but the others think "Paddington". I didn't get waterproof trousers though.. They cost S$120. I just couldn't choke up the money. I decided to borrow one of Laura's trousers that could pass off as waterproof instead. Afterall I won't be using waterproof trousers when I come back..

Romping in the Grey Bar

2006-10-24T21:02:00.000+01:00

You know how I said I didn't really wanna upload tons of pictures onto my blog since it'll lead to long load times and such and such and since all the pictures will be up on picturetrail anyway there's really no point? Well, screw that! Haha, It's nice to put pictures up here since I can give 'em a longer commentary. Also, since people complain that my entries are too wordy and a regular cure for insomia, I'll give them people visual aids. Plus, after my youtube video embedding I'm all the more confident about picture uploading and navigation on blogspot (by the way, I've been chastised by Laurent for posting up his beach video, so I had to take it out. For those lucky ones who caught it before it was too late, congrats!).

Anyway, it's strange that for the 4 weeks I've been here, I've been out to numerous bars and clubs (well, a fair number at the very least...) yet I haven't really spent much time hanging out at the Grey Bar. The exception was the night of the Parenting Formal, but it really doesn't count since it's pretty much a blur to me. So anyway, yesterday, in our second unsuccessful attempt to join in the Rock Society Social, Laurent, Martin and I went to the Grey Bar. We were joined there by Luke, who was attending a Ski Social, and Laura. It was a rollicking good time! This was dispite the fact that 75% of the time, everyone was just suanning me (am I just very suanable?)...

So there I am below, sitting in the Grey Bar. It was a Tuesday night, so it was pleasantly occupied without being irritatingly full; meaning that things didn't get too rowdy or riotous and we didn't have to push, shove and queue for ages to get our drinks. I drank a Castle Eden, which is a locally (well, in Durham County anyway) brewed ale.

Nowadays, we're always trying to do something whacky for the sake of the camera =) Ok, I should write more about this picture to justify it being here as opposed to only on picturetrail but hey, I just really like it alright?

Did I neglect to mention that the Ski Social had a French theme? Haha, contrary to what misrepresentation my pictures may provide of Durham University and Grey College, people don't go around dressing up all the time =) But it does happen on a frequent basis. The Frenchies were particularly opinionated regarding the English perception of what French people wear. All the scarves and berets, "yeah...not at all...french guys don't look gay!!!!!". Haha. But they were more than happy to be around these French maids =)

I stole a beret from one of the guys who was at the Ski Social. Do I look French at all? Haha, I know, I know, I just look like an idiot. Ah well, can't blame a girl for trying... Hey, at least the colour of the beret goes with my outfit right?

Look at this, even the French don't look french in berets =) I think it's safe to conclude that in general, people just look like idiots in berets yah?

So, I'm not sure how many of you know what the gesture below means, but I do tend to utilise it whenever the need arises so as not to affect my demure sensibilities. And over here, the need to employ it is hundredfold for some unknown reason. Normally, you're only supposed to be doing it with one hand, so that's how you should picture it. What does it mean? Read between the lines man!! If you still don't get it, I can't make it any clearer than that. Anyway, tonight, I gave everyone a lesson on how to do this gesture correctly. So, see the teacher do it...

...

And now the students. What do you think guys? Are they succeeding? If they are, it only goes to show what a great teacher I am! If they aren't, just means that they're cruddy pupils...

Well, you know that sometime during the night, finger pointing has to ensue... It's a he said she said sort of senario.

You see, it's contagious. Finger pointing spreads!!

The French are becoming so passe aren't they? Well, Laurent's wearing a puma shirt, so staying in the realm of big cats, can you imagine him as the lion in those MGM brandshots before a movie begins? Or how about as a swarmy French guy who's growling at you as he starts up his sports car (ala Bridget Jones's Diary when Daniel Cleaver comes to pick Bridget up for their mini break?... Hey, it's the only DVD I brought with me alright? I'm allowed to bring it up!). I love Hugh Grant... Anyway... Moving on...

You know that any form of agression in my direction only merits one thing - a tight slap to the face..

Yes, sometimes, you just want to strangle those around you. Especially after a night of being suanned by them... Martin's eyes seem to be popping out in this picture. And Laura pointed out that Tom's like "what the h*ll is she doing?!?" in the background of this picture.. Haha.

Well, if you can't really tell, this was one of the last shots of the night. Yes, we were not drunk, this was just for fun. No really, we weren't sloshed. Laurent did tell me though that "That's my real nature!!!!!"... And everytime I see Luke, that's how I picture him anyway...

The Grey Bar closes at 2300. I know what you're thinking. It's pretty early isn't it? Well, it's mainly cause the Grey Bar is run by students of the college, so it has to close early since people do have classes the next day you know? For those who are looking for a NIGHT, well, Grey College is normally just the starting point for a Durham bar crawl and since everywhere's within walking distance anyway, it's all good =)

silkstalkings waves you goodbye

Our coastal videos on youtube

2006-10-23T22:18:00.000+01:00

Remember, I warned you that these pictures are pretty poor quality as they were shot on a camera with a lot of outside noise and uploading them onto youtube also altered them a little.. But anyway..

Here's the gravel coast we went to after lunch:

Here's the crab-hunting expedition. Haha, you can see the Steve Irwin parallels in this nature documentary when Luke says "I want a stick, I want a stick so I can poke it!" and Laurent goes "you're dead man".

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

And lastly, here's Laurent's take on "Lost"

Yay! I'm getting more computer-savvy by the day =) Uploading videos on youtube... Embedding the videos onto a blog.. Whoopee!!

silkstalkings waves you goodbye

Coastal Expeditions

2006-10-23T20:02:00.000+01:00

"Let's go surfin' now,
Everybody's learnin' how,
Come on and safari with me

Early in the morning we'll be startin' out
Some honeys will be coming along
We're loadin' up our woody
With our boards inside
And headin' out singing our song"

~ The Beach Boys

But I shouldn't get ahead of myself here =) On Wednesday, while we were bumming around in Laurent's and Martin's room, I suddenly exclaimed that we all should go travelling this weekend.

"Edinbrugh anyone?"

Laurent then pointed out that we should start small first and the idea to go to the beach was hatched. What made it all the more special was that Saturday was also Laura's 18th Birthday!!

Thus it was that at the bright and early hour of 0830 last Saturday, we were all sitting around in the dining hall breakfasting while feeling extremely groggy. Well, not all of us, we were all streaming in bit by bit (first Martin, then Wayne and I, followed quickly by Laurent, then Laura), but by 0900, everyone but Luke had arrived (who could blame him, he didnt even wake up for his 0900 lecture this week). Anyway, after breakfast, we all went our separate ways to prepare then reconvened in the French guys's room to head off for the bus station.

Remember the picture I showed you guys earlier of the "laundry machine incident"? Well, this time, the occupants had posted this notice on their window =)

Upon boarding the bus, we paid 4.90 pounds for a day ticket then headed off to Seaham where, by inference, the coast was! The mood was high on the bus and everyone was in great spirits. Well, almost everyone... Luke's not a morning person (see my pictures).

Here's Martin and I! Thank our luck that that day was a day with exceptional sunlight (it's been quite rainy), and we got to wear our sunglasses. It only rained for a brief spell.. Yay!! The bus trip was slightly less than an hour (it takes longer to get to East Coast Park from NUS).

Having finally reached the beach, everyone was snapping away like tourists =) The first highlight of the day was all of us drawing in the sand like little kids again! I'd decided that I wanted a photo of me "surfing", so there I was standing with Martin, hands outstretched and knees bent all ready. Luke started proclaiming that I looked like a fool with extended hands and that no one would get what I was doing. Brainwave!! Draw a surfboard in the sand! The resulting photo is above. As you can see, our sand-drawing was still at a preliminary stage and the surfboard was half-drawn. We then became more advanced and started drawing full pictures and developed a language and wrote notes in the sand. As you see below, guess who didn't come to the beach with us!

After the sand-writing spells, Laurent and Luke went on a crab-hunting expedition, the videos of which I will post on youtube. I must warn you guys, the quality is pretty bad, and uploading the pictures on youtube screwed it up even more, but you guys'll get to see the people in my pictures actually in motion.. Haha. Suprisingly, they met with success and did manage to find a crab, albeit a dead one... Can you tell how shocked I was at this? Luke just looks like he wants to eat the crab. Yes, the food at Grey is that bad...

Rock climbing was next on the list. and we scaled a rockpile and got this great picture. Yeah I was proud of myself =) I climbed with no assistance mind you!!

After lunch, we went to another part of the beach that was gravel. Tossing stones into the sea gave my right arm a workout. The guys were laughing at my stone-throwing technique, but I thought I was pretty good alright!! They also began a stone-throwing contest... Well, boys will be boys... I decided that since I had travelled all the way to the beach, I had to get in the water. Off came the shoes and socks and I rolled up my jeans before making my way into the water. (Hence my state of attire in the picture below). The water was freezing cold!!! Very refreshing. The others weren't adventurous enough to join me. Stupid Luke proceeded to run away with my shoes. Guys are so immature.. Let me tell you something, know how painful it is to walk through those acupuncture rock paths? Try not putting the stones on level ground but have some stones higher than others all ready to jab you and you can imagine how painful it was to track across that gravel beach! Luke kindly offered to carry me to my shoes, before carrying me even further away from them!! ARGH!!! Yes, if you look carefully at the picture below, I did finally manage to retrieve my shoes.

Well, after our long day at the beach, we stopped for coffee while waiting for the bus back to Durham.

Getting back just in time for dinner, we were pretty much pooped out. However, it being Laura's birthday, the night was still young. After dinner, we all took an hours rest before heading over to Luke's place for a few drinks as a prelude to heading to the clubs. There I am below bumming around in Luke's room. You'd recognise that the cap is the one Luke bought for the Army Bop. The scarf is Laura's, she's the mastermind of this shot =)

We headed over to Jimmy Allens first where we met one of Laurent's friends who's teaching in England now. Her name's Cecile. The music there pretty much sucked, so we then made our way to the Loveshack where we stayed till 200. By the time we got back, it was 230 and after my shower and stuff, I slept at 400... a long but very fun day...

Pictures up on picturetrail, input "stacyoon2" and "stacyoon3" under "member name". Picture trail account limits are so tiny! I can't believe I'm on my third album with them already...

I've even more pictures up on Facebook (there were 4 cameras snapping that day, so there are close to 300 images of our outing on my computer!) which allows unlimited pictures. So come find me on facebook if you wanna see em =)

silkstalkings waves you goodbye!!

A little bit of this, a litle bit of that

2006-10-15T11:59:00.000+01:00

I dreamt of someone over in sunny Singapore on Friday night. Yes, it was one of you. Don't bother asking me who it was though, I'd never tell! To everyone out there who knows that I'm enjoying myself, you don't know the half of it! It doesn't mean however that I don't miss home on a daily basis; be it the luxury of withdrawing to the comforts of my own room, or the close friends I have and the people I left behind; I say, without lying or exaggerating that I do think about some part of home every single day, even if only in passing.

Anyway, I've been quite averse to placing pictures up on this blog since I've arrived here, partly due to the long load times it will cause (for those of you who've seen the huge amount of photos I've posted on picturetrail, you know what I mean) and partly cause I find the business of navigating through both text and pictures fairly trying... Yes, I'm pretty computer-illiterate after all. However, today I make an exception because, well, sometimes I feel like mere words can't really describe what I've seen and done - especially the fog that I love. Yes, yes, last time I mention that, I promise! So onwards with the picture presentation...

First things first, I just took this picture of me tonight because I felt that my hair was particularly nice today; do you not agree? =) Self-admiration aside though, when wondering what made my hair so different today from normal, I suddenly realised how long it'd gotten. Am I imagining things? I really think it's pretty long. If I were in Singapore, I'd go chop it all off right now... By the time I get back, since I can't afford a cut here (and even if I could, I don't trust anyone but my hairdresser at home with my locks), it's going to be as long as when I first entered University... Well, even if not, it's still going to be long. Bugger... I love shoulder-length hair.

Moving along,

This sign was on the window of one of the houses I walk past when heading into town. Note the use of the word "incident" as opposed to "accident"... Doesn't that make you wonder what exactly happened? I mean the washing machine overflowed, that's an accident. The whites all became pink, that's an accident. The washing machine ate my husband as he was peering in, THAT'S an incident. Very "Little Shop of Horrors". I can't take credit for this train of thought though. While I was trying to verbalise what i felt was amiss with the sign, Peter said the above. It's so weird though. If something went wrong with the washing machine, you'd call the repairman. What's with the "can you help?" and "information wanted"... The sign's gone now though...

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The days are getting colder and the trees are increasingly turning yellow.

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I walk past these trees when I head into the science site for lectures. I love the colours and it makes me think of Eva Cassidy's "Field's of Gold" (I know, I know, it was about fields of barley, but you see what I mean). And yes, I know, everyone but me prefers Sting's version, but hers is the one I think of alright?!? The deciduous trees still catch my eye.

To digress a little, people have been asking me how my lectures are. To reply to this, I will quote one of my readings

"Thermoluminescent properties (the TL signal) are reflected in the intensity of light emitted by the sample as it is heated ... and measured by a highly sensitive photomultiplier. This produces a glow curve in which peaks are found at temperatures characteristic of the energies of the trapped electrons in the sample. The radiation dose received by the sample since the zeroing event, a measure that is referred to as the Equivalent Dose (ED) or palaeodose, is establisehd by comparing the TL signal of the sample reflected in the glow curve with the TL signal induced in it by exposure to a calibrated laboratory radiation souce. The latter is a measure of the TL sensitivity" (Wintle, quoted from Lowe and Walker, 1997: 255)

Now if you got through that, I congratulate you. I know most of you are not Science people, and, while I'm not belittling anyone's intelligence, if you fully got that, you deserve a prize. Now, that is just one paragraph in a 60 page chapter on dating methods used to establish a chronology for the Quaternary. Get what I'm trying to say? While my modules are interesting, I'm very lost...

With that in mind, you understand why after 6 hours of classes and 4 hours straight (I had 2 before lunch, 4 after) of feeling like a total idiot, I had to get out on Friday and dragged the gang down to the New Inn for a pint. Well, they were pretty willing =) After that though, I wanted to walk down to the Cathedral and, I guess cause it's a Friday night and everyone had pretty much little to do, they came along too. It was another foggy night and Martin and I kept snapping pictures throughout. I kept taking pictures because I just wanted to convey to everyone what it's like to walk around the fog...

Below,

Yes, it's around 2230 and the sky's not black, it's orange. I don't really know why... I speculate it's the city lights reflected in the fog?.. You think Singapore's bad, over here, you can't see the stars through the fog at all! Look how creepy the Cathedral looks with the orange backdrop and you can see wisps of the fog as well. The windows look opaque because they're all stained glass and are, by the way, very beautiful. I wish I could get some snapshots of what it's like inside, but it isn't allowed; and I'm a good Singaporean.

Here's the Cathedral from another angle. Don't worry, the spooky blue light in the bottom right is Martin's camera.

If you turn 180 degrees from the previous picture, you get a glimpse of the town shrouded in fog and with orange coloured sky. Don't forget, the Cathedral's on a hill. If you can make out a bridge in the very middle of the pictures, it's the train tracks.

Oh, and everyone should go get a facebook account. It's like friendster in Singapore, except facebook's like a global thing, and EVERYONE in the US and UK uses it. It'll be the future of online communities and we sure need one consolidated one. I mean, I get all sorts of different invites to programmes like "you've been tagged" and "Hi-5" networks and stuff? There's no point in having a million and one.. Everyone should just use one you know? Like everyone has MSN now, not ICQ or Yahoo Messenger or whatever. Even if you do have any of those, you'd still use MSN to chat. Facebook's like that. www.facebook.com. Go check it out. There's an NUS community as well. Anyway, I'm not on anything like Friendster, so if you want me, I'm on Facebook (like that's much of a draw... But ah well, can't blame a girl for trying).

Anyway, it's getting late (actually 0130 already, but for records sake, I've changed the clock to reflect this post as a Sunday one), I gotta get up early tomorrow to finish this reading cause the book's due in. Did I mention how I gotta borrow books, type the notes on my laptop and return them now? No photocopying wholesale and reading and highlighting here.. the prices are exhorbitant! I mean, it costs 3 Singapore cents per page to photocopy at NUS, over here, it's 18 Singapore cents!! Just think, 200 pages in Singapore would cost you S$6, it costs me S$36!! So now I take about 5 times longer to get through a reading since I'm typing things out and such and such. Printing ain't much better by the way. It's 12 Singapore cents per page! So I now take my laptop to lectures and copy notes to the computer... I prefer studying with paper (like when reading my essays and such), but can't afford it here...

Hope things are going well for everyone, and do tell me what's going on in your lives as well! I love hearing from you guys =)

Starbucks/Coffee Bean

2006-10-11T17:10:00.000+01:00

I was just commenting to Peter the other day, cause he was talking about Starbucks coffee, how I really miss there being a Starbucks or Coffee Bean here. Don't get me wrong, there are coffee places here like Cafe Nero and Esquires, but I just want a familiar brand you know?... Anyway, I was telling him about how in Singapore, my friend(s) and I would just get a cup of coffee and sit at Starbucks or Coffee Bean the whole afternoon talking and people-watching. I really miss that...

So at lunch today, I couldn't find the Frenchies (they're my main port-of-call for mealtime companions since they live just two stories below me and on the same floor as the passage to the dining hall), but coincidentally, I met Laura and we had lunch together. Well, we had what they tried to pass off as lunch here.

After, since she had to go into town to settle some bank stuff and I had to go to NatWest to get my bills paid, we decided to head into town together. I realised along the way that we hadn't walked into town together for the longest time - two saturdays ago as a matter of fact - so it was really great to catch up again. Afterall, in those first few days here, when it was just us internationals, we would go into town everyday together. After breakfast, we'd head down, walk back for lunch and return to town again since there wasn't any programmes planned for us. Those were great times.. But I digress. The point I wanted to make was that after getting our errands done, we went over to this new coffee place that Laura found and liked - Costas (perhaps because her last name is the name of the shop) - and we sat there for close to two hours I think, just talking and watching the world go by. It felt wonderful and made me think of those times in Coffee Bean at Taka with Soony. Soony, the topics of conversation, while not similar, sort of paralleled...

As I've also mentioned, I had my parenting formal last night. Before we even went for the dinner, my parents and brother came up to my room with a bottle of white wine, which we had to down in about 10 mins, in order to make it on time for the formal. Good start to the night... Before the high table big-wigs came in and it got all stuffy, the JCR president gave a little speech - "there are two things in life you shouldn't do, morris dancing and incest. Enjoy your evening" =) As with all formals, we had wine at our table, 2 bottles between the 4 of us. Apparently, it used to be much better. At first, it was that you could bring your own wine, then it was a bottle per person, now it's only half a bottle per person. There's also something which happened alot at formals called "pennying". What this entails is that if a person drops a penny into your wine glass, you had to down it immediately, meaning alot of wasted people. The master found it so irritating to see people downing their drinks and taking pennies out everywhere that you can now get into serious trouble with pennying. Thank goodness there was none of that last night.

After the formal, we went down to the college bar for more drinking. First, one of those vodka mixes in bottles. You drink it by sticking a straw into the bottle and curving it outwards, you then tilt it over and drink the bottle in one breath (the straw lets air in so you can down it, makes sense?). After this college tradition, we had a glass of ale and more wine, before proceeding to the New Inn for, you guessed it, drinking!... Yah, I was pretty well sloshed last night. After the New Inn, we proceeded further into town for more alcohol (there's nothing else to do at night here). The night ended at Walkabout which is an Australian-themed nightclub. Don't worry folks, I made it home in one piece and was able to get up for my 9 am lecture on the rise of the Roman Empire, which was pretty interesting. Whoopee for me!

I've fallen sick again, I guess it's a combination of the late nights and the weather... I've now got a cough and a cold. Hopefully it's just a one-day thing, like my sore throat was, and I'll be right as rain tomorrow =)

I do miss home. And I really miss my dog... I keep looking at all the dogs I walk pass here... But no miniture schnauzers as yet...

What have I been up to?...

2006-10-11T14:52:00.000+01:00

A big shout out to anyone who bothers to continue reading the miserable details of my oh-so-boring life. I'm supposed to be studying right now, but somehow, there always seems to be something better to do right? Haha, my dad was looking through my pictures the other day and he dropped me a message along the lines of "glad to see you're having a great time, but take some shots of you on campus too, not just the parties. Don't forget the reason for your Durham stay"... Ok ok... I'll start mugging soon, then my blog will get more boring than ever.

Hmmm... I've been keeping myself fairly well occupied these past 2 days, with school in the mornings and afternoons and there's always something on at night. Well, so far anyway... On Monday night, i went over to Luke's for poker, movies and white russians. Last night, Peter and I took a brief walk into town. Tonight? I have a parenting formal with my college parents, so it's back on with the gowns and dresses and ties and suits.

The weather's been absolutely horrid nowadays. It basically rains on a daily basis now and last night, it was all foggy! I felt like I was being transported back into Old England or something like that. Oh, and with the quaint houses and streets, it was almost Sherlock-Holmesy - you know "the game's afoot Watson". The fog leaves the perfect cover for crime afterall! Brutal murders... Tossing bodies in the river... But no worries, Durham is the third safest city in the UK.

The fog also made me think of "Long Day's Journey into Night". When Mary says "I really love fog ... It hides you from the world and the world from you. You feel that everything has changed, and nothing is what it seemed to be. No one can find or touch you any more".

And remember when Edmund goes "The fog was where I wanted to be. Halfway down the path you can't see this house. You'd never know it was here. Or any of the other places down the avenue. I couldn't see but a few feet ahead. I didn't meet a soul. Everything looked and sounded unreal. Nothing was what it is. That's what I wanted - to be alone with myself in another world where truth is untrue and life can hide from itself. Out beyond the harbour, where the road runs along the beach, I even lost the feeling of being on land. The fog and the sea seemed part of each other. It was like walking on the bottom of the sea. As if I had drowned long ago. As if I was a ghost belonging to the fog, and the fog was the ghost of the sea. It felt damned peaceful to be nothing more than a ghost within a ghost"...

If it wasn't so dangerous, I wish I could walk along the river during the fog at night...

Humour me, and skip this paragraph as well cause there's one last thing I wanna quote which totally discribed my mood during our walk into a foggy town

"Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for a while, then closes
Within a dream"

As you can gather, it was quite a surreal experience, especially looking up and seeing the cathedral shrouded in fog... Spooky. And I know, I know, there's a haze problem in Singapore right now so the last thing anyone wants to read about it fog... So onwards.

Food then. If I haven't mentioned it before, the food here is going downhill rather rapidly. Now that the conference that was going on here is over, we don't get good leftovers from their side anymore. Now that it's a week into term, we don't get the "welcome back" good food either. Instead, I get what they try to pass off as Thai Green Curry, Sweet and Sour pork, (totally inauthentic, I would know!), Lasagne (total swill according to the Frenchies!), stale bread (trust me, it's all hard and gross), heavily rationed meals ("if you take cooked veg, no fresh salad for you, or bread!")... You get the idea... I miss chilli sauce (anyone wanna send me some?). I miss soy sauce with my eggs. I miss sting ray and chicken rice and prata. I miss my dad's stirfried beef...

I do feel all grown up and responsible, collecting my own mail =) Even though all I've been receiving are bank statements, not that I'm hinting anything. I did get my NatWest card today which serves as an ATM card and a Debit card. Whoohoo!

Yup, nothing else's going on in my boring life. Bugger.

Touristy amusements

2006-10-08T13:38:00.000+01:00

Today, despite having slept at 330 the previous night, I woke up at 820 in the morning! For some reason, over here, I just automatically seem to wake up... I guess it's a combination of both the noisy morning radiator pipes and the light that streams into my room. Not forgetting that since the bathroom's away from my room, once I do get up to go, I'm too wide-awake to sink back into slumber.

So anyway, tiredness aside, and nursing a sore throat (let's put it this way, salty bacon for both breakfast and lunch and two weeks of daily fried food ain't exactly the way to go), I slunk down to breakfast (rice-crispies softened in milk... Times like this I just wish I had a huge bowl of porridge) and afterwards, I went over to the Botanic Gardens, which was gorgeous. I won't bore anyone with the details of what I enjoyed, seeing as how everyone will just roll their eyes at me, suffice to say, it was very interesting and i saw several squirrels =) Just indulge me for a moment as well. If you'd looked through my photos, I had a picture of a weird tree that I liked -

http://www.picturetrail.com/gallery/view?&members=1&p=3&uid=4229108&gid=13026988&&imgid=192710960#top

This is the Monkey Puzzle tree from Chile and this species was even alive during the Cretaceous period! Dinosaurs ate off this very sort of tree! How cool is that to see such an ancient relic. Almost feels like I'm in a time machine over here...

Oh, the temperature was 18 degrees celcius today (according to the thermometer at the Botanics which I don't believe), so I was pretty cold. It was a pretty good change to go into the tropical rainforest greenhouse (where the temperature's supposedly 27 degrees celcius) and think of Singapore.

After lunch, I went over to the Durham Heritage Centre to learn about the city's past, and I found out some useless, but interesting, trivia. Did you know, for example, that the girl who inspired Lewis Carroll's Alice used to live on a street here? And did you know that William the Conqurer ran down one of the very streets I take into town daily? Apparently, he was running scared and was sick after insisting on seeing the body of St. Cuthberts, the saint that is entomed in the Cathedral here. The statue of Neptune at the market place on my pictures? Well, apparently, at one point of time, the people here had great dreams of linking the river here to the sea for transport. The closest Neptune ever got to water here though was he was placed above the main well in the market place. And the statue of the man riding the horse? It was supposed to be so faultless that the creator offered a reward to anyone who could find a flaw on the statue from top to bottom, everyone searched, but no one could find a thing, until a blind man was hoisted up and he discovered the only problem with the statue - the horse was missing it's tongue!

Oh, Thomas Gray, an English poet who lived from 1716-1771, had this to say about the Durham river (apparently alot of poets and artists were inspired by the beauty here and people like Wordsworth have even stayed in the Royal Court Inn before) -

"I have one of the most beautiful Vales here in England to walk in with prospects that change every ten steps,

and open something new wherever I turn me,

all rude and romantic,

in short the sweetest spot to break you neck or drown yourself in all that was beheld."

So anyway, as you can probably gather, it was a really educational day and I had a great time. I'll see Durham in a whole new light yet again now. I think whoever walks with me into town over the next few days is going to get really frustrated as i sprout off my newfound knowledge to them, but hey, it is interesting ok! And be grateful you're not here with me right now, I'll talk your ear off (once my sore throat heals up).

Let's bop on down to the party

2006-10-07T16:59:00.000+01:00

Go check out my picturetrail account if you want to see pictures of the Army-themed party =)

The Army Party - called a "bop" - is basically the culmination of Fresher's week whereupon we're all enlisted into the Grey Army. As lame as it can sound, it really is a barrel of fun! For one thing, here, everybody does take the pains to conform to the themes and no one is afraid of sticking out or looking silly, so it's really a huge fancy-dress party with alcohol and dancing. There was even a bouncy-castle "assult course" on the grounds outside (but no, for reasons I decline to share, I did not go on it).

Neither is the party confined to Freshers. All the post-grads on my floor actually bought tickets to the Army Bop too, so basically, the whole college gets dressed up, all our doors are open and we get costume advice from each other. Things such as face-paint are shared and extra fabric given away to decorate someone else's outfit. Also, corridors make it a point to drink before going to the Bop, just to make things more fun. So my corridor was drinking wine and chatting, all in uniform already; and Luke also asked all of us over to his place for Barcadi Cokes and the like. It really is a stark difference from NUS where drinking in the halls is frown upon, if it isn't actually disallowed altogether. Here, they even sell alcohol in the Student's Union shops.

I thought getting a costume on my part was going to be a nightmare, but thankfully, Luke lent me his stuff and I was good to go. People were dressed as hippies, casualties of war, spies, trojans, grenades and missiles... It was quite the spectacle. The Bop ended at midnight but the party continued on in the various houses and dorms, though i was just hanging out with the others so we didn't go for the after-bop parties.

Anyway, it's been a long night, so...

I want mooncakes....

2006-10-06T16:59:00.000+01:00

Was a really long day today, probably compounded by the fact that I had minimal sleep the previous night. I had alot of fun though, so it was totally worth it.

After breakfast, I went for my GIS and Remote Sensing lecture which was basically just an introduction to Remote Sensing. You know how those first lectures are? Practically useless... Anyway, I thought I was doing alright until I went for my Quarternary Studies Lecture, and promptly fell asleep in the second row! Not good considering it was a small class or only around 15-20 people? I did get a pack of mints during the break though, so i was back to my usual self in the second half.

Lecture ended at 1230, and the Geog schedule said I had a Glaciation practical at one. Rushed back to college, queued to get food, sat down at 1250, scoffed down my food and ran back down to arrive for the practical at 1305. An achievement, if I may say so myself. But this feat was negated since the schedule was wrong and there was no practical. We were all sitting in class thinking "I knew there was no practical... Bugger...".

Anyway, after my really long day, I resolved to have an early night and was very good. Took an ealy 2030 bath and was waiting for my hair to dry before sleeping at around 2230? Then, who should come knocking on my door but Wayne with a box of pineapple tarts. He said that since it was the mooncake festival, he mum gave him a box of pineapple tarts at the airport before he came over, so he wanted to have a "mooncake gathering" or sorts, which was great (it would have been even better if he had brought with him a double-yolk snowskin mooncake though... Sigh.). So he left his stuff in my room before going to gather Mariann and Martin. Peter was MIA (as always) and we didn't know where Laura and Luke were.

So anyway, we spent the night eating pineapple tarts and talking, which strangely enough, made me think of home (strange because I never ate pineapple tarts in Singapore...). We listened to my fine music and everyone left at around midnight.

I wish I could eat some mooncakes...

Loveshack baby

2006-10-05T19:47:00.000+01:00

It was the first day of lectures today. I only had one. To those who have been asking, I'm doing the following modules:

(1) Archaeology: From Roman Empire to Nation State
(2) Archaeology: Discovering World Prehistory
(3) Geography: Environmental Processes and Management
(4) Geography: Global Climate Change
(5) Geography: Quarternary Studies
(6) Geography: Glaciation
(7) Geography: GIS and Remote Sensing

Most of my geography ones have to do with Climatology and I'm really excited about that. I heard that Quarternary Studies is supposed to be the hardest year 2 module though, so I have abit of trepidation with that, but hey, my grades don't count right? So on with the fun!

I really won't get the opportunity to do half these modules in NUS, so a part of me feels really excited while the other half is asking what I am getting into!

Other than that, I spent the day trying to study (but I slept instead). Gosh this crummy weather, it either makes you feel like sleeping or eating... I'm going to gain so much weight... Bugger... The weather's been getting absolutely awful! It's getting colder by the day, the sun doesn't really shine anymore... All I see are overcast skies. It rains everyday. And it's not like Singapore whereupon it rains then it stops and everyone goes out. Here, it keeps starting and stopping - sometimes in the span of seconds - and carries on like that throughout the day. Most people dont even bother using an umbrella when it rains, it doesnt last long enough, I still use mine though; I'm cold enough as it is without getting wet. The rain's aren't even monsoonal rains which are showers. Here, they're so light, you can't really feel it, you know it's raining cause you see it; and everything just feels dank and dreary.

It's been torturous since I get cold, pile on the layers, then the sun shines right on me, or I begin my ascent of one of the hills, then get hot and remove the jackets. This lasts about a minute before the wind blows and I get cold again. Indoors, it's so so hot, but after awhile in lectures, I get cold, so it's really stripping off and putting on the layers and it's such a drag. it's either too hot or too cold and autumn's just starting... I'm missing the sun already. It's nice to wake up each day and see the trees gradually changing colours though.

Things picked up at night though, when I met the rest for dinner. We first went to the JCR for X-Factor, which was some whacky karoke.. I can see some of you rolling your eyes now, knowing my aversion to all things singing in Singapore, but it was a good laugh. Laurent and Darius got up to sing "Bittersweet Symphony" and they had dance moves and everything! And some of the Fresher-helper guys wore cheerleader skirts and sang "Gay Bar" by Electric Six, trust me, you were missing out if you didn't see it... Well, then again, i did see more than I wanted too as well...

After that we (Laurent, Martin, Laura, Mariann and Wayne) all headed to this new club that was opening in town - the Loveshack. Cheesy name, but, haha! The great thing about living in a small town is that you can walk everywhere, so we walk to the clubs, then dance and party before walking back, whereupon the cool night air will sober you up. No cabs for me over here...

The Loveshack was a ton of fun. Because they screwed up and even though Grey College had an agreement with them, they couldn't let us in and made us queue instead, they compensated by giving us each a free beer and shot of Bailey's. The shot of Bailey's was also served in a chocolate shot glass, so after you take your shot, you eat the cup =) Shots here are cheap, they're a pound a shot. Oh, they also had lingerie-clad women dancing on stage, and they were HOT (if I may say so myself). I know Martin in particular appreciated it =)

The good thing about clubbing in Durham as opposed to Newcastle - it's not as smoky. Yes, it's less smoky than in Singapore as well and I don't have to wash my hair three times before I sleep.

The clubs close at around 130-200 am on weekdays (not sure about weekends). So I got back at around 145 am? And I've got a full day tomorrow! 3 Lectures, the first starting at 9! Would never do that in Singapore... I'm gonna die...

Genetic Sexual Attraction (GSA)

2006-10-03T14:20:00.000+01:00

Thicker Than Water?

When SEBASTIAN LANDER first met his biological mother, he feared losing the bond with the woman who had adopted, loved and raised him - but the result was a three-way friendship

"Sitting opposite Sally (his birth mother) for the first time, I had two anxieties. First, I was consumed by the fear that I might feel the urge to kiss her. I had been told by the adoption society that dealt with my case about genetic sexual attraction (GSA), which can occur between relatives who first meet as adults. We are often attracted to faces similar to our own and it is easy to be seduced by the intense feeling of infatuation. Sally agrees. 'For the first couple of days it was like being in love, I couldn't think of anything else,' she told me."

The Times, Tuesday October 3, 2006

Settling in

2006-09-27T16:32:00.000+01:00

Day 2 of my time in Durham started off at a nice leisured pace. I woke up at around 0730 after sleeping at 2030 the previous night. Strange how quickly I adapted from being jet-lagged. At 810, I called Maz about breakfast since I didn’t even know where the dining hall is let alone how everything works. All the Freshers Representatives were playing drinking games the previous night and were pretty much hung over, so breakfast was a funny affair, hearing all their antics of the night before. One of them – Graham, had spent the morning calling everyone in the Freshers Reps list asking for a towel. “I need a towel, do you have a towel, can you get me a towel?” Apparently, he even called his mum asking for a towel, his mum just told him to go back to sleep. Haha.

After breakfast, I headed over to town to check out the banks. Things looked pretty grim at first as all the banks – Barclays, Lloyds, and NatWest – informed me that I needed a letter from the University addressed specifically to them, giving them all my course details. I thought “oh sh*t, how am I gonna get that, and how long would it take?!?” I was planning to open a HSBC account since they were international and I wanted to go travelling. However, all they did was shove me a flyer and told me it would take 7-10 days to process after I applied online. Furthermore, I had to make a commitment to them that theirs was the only student account I would open. Knowing that I didn’t have that kind of time, I went with a heavy mind into NatWest and immediately made a slip when instead of heading over to the information and enquiries booth, I went over to the Cashiers instead (sorry, my mind was rather weighed down). But the lady was super nice to me and came on over the counter and brought me to a room where they got a gentleman to introduce their whole student account policy to me. I was really impressed, the human touch instead of just shoving a flyer into my face just cause I’m a student you know? Things brightened up when he reassured me that they would be able to open my account in a day once I get a University letter.

Before lunch, I went to the college reception to ask where to get a Uni letter. That’s the thing about Durham, it’s totally a college based university, in the past 2 days I’d been there, I’ve only been in contact with the Grey people, I had no idea where the University office was. Anyway, the college said they’d write a letter for me instead, to be collected at 1600, so I headed off to lunch then to my room to unpack all my stuff. Collected my letter; went to the bank to open my account, yippee! And headed back for dinner where I met another international student called Peter; he’s from NY studying law as his second degree. I also met Laura, a 17 year-old international student who’d just completed her IB. Her mum’s a diplomat, currently based in Holland and she’s stayed in places as diverse as India and Venezuela.

After dinner, I headed over to a pub – the New Inn – to watch the Liverpool Galatasary champion’s league match. It was pretty cool, firstly, to watch the football as such great times. Also, to sit in an English pub flooded by Liverpool supporters clad in all their Liverpool regalia and finery and watch the match… Very fun.

By the time I got back, I was pretty much really tired. Productive day.

Comings and Goings

2006-09-26T12:30:00.002+01:00

I think the fact that I was going away for 10 months only really sunk in at 2330 that night as I printed those airplane labels:

Full Name: S***y O** P** S***
Flight Number: EK0017
(Singapore-Manchester)

Before that, I could have been packing to go camping for all I knew… And after that, I only had one more precious hour at home before I was whisked away to the airport… I kept thinking, if I only had another day, the things I would do…

Saying goodbye to the folks was very hard to comprehend. It felt like I was walking in a dream, thinking that I won’t see my family for at least the next 6-7 months was an ungraspable concept. Soony and Chok had also come to see me off, defying my instructions for them not to. However, I was really happy that they came, it did put me in a more jovial mood as things with my parents were pretty serious and everyone was rather bummed, as we rightly should be.

I thought I’d feel lost and confused, but I moved around alright. It’s amazing the things you didn’t know you were capable of taking charge off until the opportunity arrives. The plane trip to Dubai was torture. Let’s put it this way, on a 3 am flight, no one’s in the best of moods. People were tired but couldn’t sleep, well, some did, which intensified the problems. For instance, they didn’t give out any headphones for the flight for the majority of people went to sleep. Thus, those who did want to watch the TV couldn’t. This was compounded by the fact that the person next to me was a large sized bloke who snores. He had this amazing ability to sleep in any position. Leaning backwards, leaning forwards, leaning over the table, leaning towards me… You name it! Come on, he even slept with the table down waiting for the flight attendants to clear his tray after our snack. My sleep was intermittent at best.

The transit in Dubai was breezed through and the flight to Manchester was great! Firstly, contrary to what I’d been told, the flight wasn’t full. The seats were 3-4-3, and I was sitting on the left aisle of the “4”. No one was sitting at the other 3 seats! I was looking forward to sprawling out when a gentleman sat on the other aisle side, but I figured, what the hey, no point in me being selfish, sprawling out on 2 seats would be fine. This Emirates flight had over 100 movies; I kid you not! And this isn’t even including the TV dramas, comedies, cartoons, games… The radio was incredibly equipped with numerous complete CDs like the Red Hot Chilli Peppers “Stadium Arcadium” which I made sure to listen to. I watched “Thank you for smoking” – really funny, and “V for Vendetta”, along with “The Office” and “Friends”.

But my favourite part of the flight was that the aircraft was fitted with cameras that faced forward and downwards, so as it took off, you could see the ground falling away beneath you and the landscape changing... It was breathtaking. The flight first flew over the Middle East, so all I could see was sand and deserts and the occasional green patch. The cities were all in the middle of the desert. I tried to identify the dune formations, but all I could see were what I thought are longitudinal dunes. The plane then went over Europe, like over Poland, Warsaw, Hungary… You get the idea… and all the sand became wide rolling green fields, obviously farmed since there were clear liner forms. I wondered if I would be just as taken aback flying over a natural forest or the like.

I found myself tearing up a little as we flew into Manchester. The thought that “I finally arrived” kept running through my head, along with the trepidation of finding my own way to Durham with heavy luggage; which incidentally I did whine a lot about in Singapore. The Manchester landscape was beautiful. Instead of seeing trees among houses, as in Singapore, it was houses among trees. Pastoral ruminations, that’s what kept running through my head.

I think I had my first real scare of my trip when I was collecting my baggage. I found one of my bags just fine, but the couldn’t spot the other one… People were arriving later than me and collecting their stuff and leaving before me. I kept telling myself that perhaps they still had unloading to do, but there’s only so much you can disillusion yourself. As I msged my mum to tell her I had landed safely, I kept wondering if I should worry her by telling her I was missing luggage. When I was left basically alone watching the bags of luggage pass by, I was gonna give up and burst into tears already… I didn’t know what to do about lost baggage, and I was going to be missing all the clothes I brought, some of which were rather dear to me. The thought that I was not even going to stay in Manchester, but move on the Durham freaked me out more! How were they going to get my luggage to me? I was just about to go report my lost luggage when I gave the belt one more sweep through. Then I saw it, right there, this very same bag that had been going past me right from the start… I knew it looked familiar! Serves me right for carrying an all-black bag… The reason I didn’t spot it before you ask? Well, it was upside down… Now, before you laugh at me, just think about it this way – the world looks pretty confusing upside down right? If you stand on your head, once familiar objects take on a new perspective? Right? Right? Anyway I can picture people already rolling their eyes at me so moving on…

If you had bothered to read this far without getting bored - congratulations! I harbour no disillusions about the riveting nature of my prose but ya boo sucks to you, this is as much for my record as it is for anything else…

Moving on, at Manchester, both the coach and rail are connected to the airport by pathways and thank goodness I was allowed to use the airport trolleys to cart my stuff all over the place. I was oscillating between taking the train and the coach, the coach being longer but cheaper. After thinking about my nightmarishly long travel times thus far, I decided to splurge ₤38.70 on the train. It was really enjoyable to watch the landscape race by me while listening to my iPod. I had the English countryside experience watching the rolling plains and hills go by. Every experience was novel and new, I just wished I were fast enough to capture that beautiful babbling brook I rode past… Changing trains at York to head up to Durham was trouble. The British rail puts no where enough room for traveller’s huge luggage and with no space in the middle of the train storage compartments, I had to put my bags beside the door just behind me, where I had to keep looking back to ensure that they were still there.

It was such a coincidence that I sat next to this Archaeology professor at Durham and we got to talking. She told me of the places I had got to visit, such as Lindisfarne and the Durham Light Infantray Museum, along with the Cathedral Treasury. Funnily enough, she did say that the Archaeology Museum here was rather on the dull side. She teaches one of the modules I’m planning to take, so maybe I’ll see her again.

Mr Purvis, my English Literature teacher in JC, had this to say to me about Durham – when on the train, your first view of the town is breathtaking. The train sweeps by the city and towering above all the houses is a hill atop of which is the castle and the cathedral. I swear, until you experience it for yourself, you won’t understand what I’m talking about. It really leaves you speechless and I fell in love with the place at once. It was everything I had dreamed of – a country with rich heritage and a strong sense of history and tradition, a total break from the urban built-up environment of Singapore.

I met Sally at the train station and she took me over to Grey where I check in and went to my room. By now, I’d been travelling for 21 straight hours and was pretty much out of it. I think I was pretty rank as well. Hey, you try going 21 hours without a shower! I also met Maz, who’s the international student helper and she was really ultra nice to me, making sure I didn’t feel lonely or left out at meals. Anyway, I found out that since I’d arrived a day early, I wouldn’t get my dinner at the college that night. So Sally was nice enough to bring me into town and show me around briefly before I grabbed a subway sandwich (so sue me, first day in a foreign land, I wanted something familiar…) and headed back to finally sleep off a really long day at around 2030.

How depressing

2006-04-30T20:23:00.000+01:00

How depressing it is to look forward to the end of exams but as exams come close to ending, you realise you've got a million other things to do.

How depressing it is to look at yourself, feel like a complete failure, reason with yourself to realise that you aren't a complete failure, then realise that though it's the truth, there's no way you can convince anyone else of it.

How depressing it is to have everyone look at you like you're a failure without them understanding.

How depressing it is to feel hard done by someone you considered a friend, someone who still is a friend really.

How depressing it is to have your thoughts invaded constantly by something you know is so wrong yet you crave just cause it seems a respite from the depressing state of things.

How depressing it is to realise that it was only you yourself which caused you to be in this state.

silk stalkings waves you away

Are you a folder or a scruncher?

2006-04-28T15:01:00.000+01:00

There's this programme on cable, Discovery Home and Health, called "Dr. Know". It's a rip-off of Discovery Channel's "Mythbusters" - of which you should know, well now anyway if you didn't before, that I absolutely love. This isn't because I'm a myth enthusiast per se, I'm no folklorist... But I just find them very witty. "Dr. Know" in no way meets those high standards, it's rather lame in fact, however, due to the proximity of exams, naturally, I've begun to catch an episode or two here and there. Those of you should know that I love to procrastinate and find other things to do when I'm supposed to be studying (like blogging for instance).

Anyway, this roundabout introduction, which I'm sure is rather convoluted as I am not in full possession of my thinking faculties right now, leads to this - do you prefer to fold or scrunch your toilet paper before the wiping process?

I'll let you think about it....

Ponder it a little more.....

Maybe go to the bathroom if you can't remember.... (I certainty couldn't, this action being so naturalised in me)

Now that you know your own preference, listen to this. According to Dr. Know, men prefer to fold their toilet paper, and women prefer to scrunch. This is leading somewhere. Dr. Know also proved (using bacterial growth algal plates or some similar thingamajig) that if you fold rather that scrunch your toilet paper, more bacteria will get on your hand. Take note that it isn't "bacteria will" but "more bacteria will", thus, I'm not saying that as long as you scrunch, you don't need to wash your hands - yes you. However, for those hygiene freaks like me (well, those who know me well may be smirking right now... But at least I support good hygiene if not pr... well, I'll stop my thought there), either way, as I was saying, in a highly roundabout way, SCRUNCH YOUR TOILET PAPER. especially you MEN out there. It reduces bacteria....

Of course, I'm not endorsing Dr. Know's statistical testing methods, god knows they're really appaling and to be frank, his conclusions are not statistically sound. Trust me, I'm taking a methods module. Which is another story. But either way, better be safe than sorry right?

Well, off you go. Scrunch scrunch scrunch...

silk stalkings scrunches up her paper. The fulscap paper she wrote this draft on you perv! What were you thinking?

Not a good day...

2006-04-26T13:58:00.000+01:00

Somehow I just feel awful today... Sighz... Just been questioning some of my choices in the past year or so... Been questioning my abilities at performing certain tasks which make me question my abilities and attainments of the past as well... Feel lethargic and like shutting myself in my room away from people. Have a heavy head. Maybe I just need more sun.

I FEEL AWFUL....

silk stalkings crawls under the blanket

Invasion!!!

2006-04-25T22:40:00.000+01:00

My goodness... I've just been exploring the world of blog counters and I'm amazed how much people can track of you... I mean, I've always known that the web is horribly open and how you gotta be wary of what you write and say. But even the everyday person can track a huge amount of information about others visiting his/her blog. I'm shocked... I wonder how many people can trace me visiting their blogs... Not that I mind them seeing that someone visited them...But to be able to see what site referred me to yours, I feel violated... Or maybe I'm just thinking too highly of myself and people don't really give a crap...

silk stalkings hides

Lecturers and E-mail

2006-04-24T04:25:00.000+01:00

Have just finished my Making of a Nation paper. It went alright I think... I'm just glad the module is over! One down, 4 to go! Anyway, so I'm taking a break and am at the computer lab in AS7 checking my very old e-mail and deleting stuff.

I ran across this email about an essay writing workshop. Not that I'm interested, I'm just not that kind of person. I read it cause the course was being conducted by Dr Whalen-Bridge, an English Literature lecturer who taught me when I was in year 1. I've always found him amusing. I just laughed at the way this e-mail is phrased. I'm sure he wrote it though a staff member sent it out. Take a look:

This workshop will review expectations regarding important aspects of academic writing, namely the formation of a clear thesis statement, the progressive development of ideas through the paper, the use of skillful transitions to connect parts of an argument into a unified whole in an organised way, the convincing presentation of evidence, as well as problems related to format and style. Then we will then take a break and have tea and cookies. Finally, we will discuss intelligent approaches to the writing process as well as revision strategies.

Haha. I loved how there's all these technical terms in bold (their emphasis) and then in the middle is a phrase "we will then take a break and have tea and cookies". That's really coming from left field!! =)

silk stalkings laughs silently (don't forget, she's in a com lab surrounded by people who do not think she's nuts yet...)

Do all guys snore?

2006-04-22T16:42:00.000+01:00

I came to a realisation today, one to which some will say - "it took you this long?" - and others will say - "huh, isn't that too extreme?". Anyway, my realisation is that I can never EVER be with a guy who snores... I wonder how this will affect my future marriage prospects... I find snoring so extremely irritating. It's like having the apartment next to you permanently under construction, and not the painting the house bit, the noisy hacking up the floor bit. Figured I can stand a maximum of 3 days of snoring before I will either kill the guy by closing his nostrils, thereby suffocating him, or I would kick the guy out of the room, and subsequently my life. And since I currently do not see cohabitation as a personal option, and no way can we go on living in separate rooms forever, divorce becomes imminent.

I foresee 2 problems.

How ever would I know if the guy snores or not? Unless there's sleepovers and stuff =) Which I don't really see happening either... Let's face it, I'm really a conservative frump at heart (even though I may act otherwise at times. Nyah to you too!)
What happens if the guys initially doesn't snore, but begins snoring as he ages? I mean, I'm no scientist, but it seems logical to me that a guy can begin snoring over time. If that happens then what? I may be too invested in the relationship for a divorce, but I certainly can't live like that.

The only solution to the first part is asking the guy directly if he snores.. The guy could of course lie, seeing as how I'm so desirable, but that would lead to trust issues later on. Or maybe that's why people have premarital sex now... Hmmm... The other thing is "how would the guy know?" I mean I don't know if I snore. Wait, a solution is getting him to record himself when he sleeps. Then, of course, the tape may be fabricated. And besides, dream mumbling may reveal things I as yet wish not to know. Recent insights into the male mind has been disturbing, to say the least.

The only solution to the second part is of course to see a fortune teller together. "Do you see him snoring in the future?".

I guess some people may of course say there are medical facilities for snore disorders (there are aren't there? Even though the name may be wrong the concept is there). There are of course products which claim to stop snoring (like that support pillow that I don't whether actually works or not...). There are even those sleeping positions which supposedly clear the airway and prevent snoring. And of course real-time stoppages (such as pinching the bugger till he stops or wakes). But prevention is better than cure right? Besides, if my guy needs to stuff this object into his nose every night to ensure unobstructed nasal air flow, that is just too gross and unsexy... Like how people have to wear retainers at night? It's as disgusting as having to take out your dentures... Really kills the sex life. I guess if these things are old-age problems, that's ok. You know, I'll remove your dentures, you help me find my glasses, activities to do together... But not if you're still un-old...

And what if I snore you say? Well, the guys had jolly well accept it innit!!!

Double standards? Naturally.

silk stalkings waves you away

A Nightmare...

2006-04-21T23:06:00.000+01:00

One - Two Freddie's coming for you
Three - Four Better shut the door
Five - Six Grab a Cruxifix
Seven - Eight Gonna stay up late
Nine - Ten Never sleep again

Yes, as you must have figured out by now, unless you're horribly dense, I'm not talking about the exams... Have been slacking horribly. After spending 3-4 hours (not exaggerating!) on GC stuff daily, I seem to be too listless to do anything else... Sighz... So today, I've watched "50 First Dates" (Don't judge me! Yes, I wouldn't watch it at a chalet when I had alternatives - The Confessions of Nat Turner - but now it's sorta a work avoidance thing...). I've also watched "Nightmare on Elm Street" again. Curses HBO!

Interestingly, I caught "The Gospel According to Judas" which boggled my mind. Admittedly, I'm no Christian, and I know s*it about the bible, but having spent 10 years in a methodist school, I have an inkling of what's going on. The documentary said that this new gospel found, changes the way Judas is portrayed by the New Testament. The gist was that Judas was the disciple who knew Jesus very well, and Jesus pulled him aside for some confidences and stuff.. Anyway, Judas was having disturbing visions of the other Disciples stoning him. Jesus told him it's in his destiny to be the most hated of all disciples and so on so forth. Either way, Judas understood the message was he had to do what he did. The kiss of betrayal was actually a sacrifice on his part too... Not saying that this is the end of the story, it's just another perspective. Either way, it's interesting cause it just makes me rethink all I learnt about the bible. Even the most hated of people, well, there's another perspective as well....

Very interesting... Takes nothing away from the fact that I'm seriously slacking but anyway, at least I managed to refrain from playing Kingdom Hearts 2 today... I must tahan until the exams end!!!

Urgh...

silk stalkings must study though she doesn't know how and probably won't today..

A Short History of Nearly Everything

2006-04-17T16:23:00.000+01:00

You must excuse me. You must understand, this is all that's foremost in my mind though there's a lot else I wish to say... Some interesting bits from readings (yes, again...).

For 3.8 billion years, a period of time older than the Earth's mountains and rivers and oceans, every one of your forebears on both sides has been attractive enough to find a mate, healthy enough to reproduce, and sufficiently blessed by fate and circumstances to live long enough to do so. Not one of you pertinent ancestors was squashed, devoured, drowned, starved, stranded, stuck fast, untimely wounded, or otherwise deflected from its life's quest of delivering atiny charge of genetic material to the right partner at the right moment in order to perpetuate the only possible sequence of hereditary combinations that could result - eventually, astoundingly, and all too briefly - in you. (Bryson, 2003: 3-4)

Feeling special yet? Well don't. Because one lasting message you extract from this wonderful book - A Short History of Nearly Everything - is that life just is. There is no great evolutionary line leading up to you. You were a fortuitious circumstance. That doesn't make humans any less astounding or wonderful, but neither should anyone elevate themselves. But it's still a nice thought. That the only reason I exist is such a chain of events.

Ain't life wonderful...

On a brief sidenote... In my wish for Arsenal to finish fourth for a Champions League playoff place, I was a brief supporter of Man U (who were playing Tottenham, currently in fourth) today... Mixed feelings about it. A very confused girl. One moment I was "oh f*$& Man U's already ahead), the other I was "wait... I mean yay! Man U's ahead"... Either way, Man U won. Good.

Another Gem of a Quote

2006-04-14T15:31:00.000+01:00

Considering it's the time for exam preparations, I wonder if all I'll be doing for the next few days is finding funny quotes in my notes. Was doing Cultural readings today when I ran across this description of the movie Entrapment and it's representations of the Petronas Towers in Malaysia:

"a cat-suited Catherine Zeta-Jones alongside Mahathir's celebrated skyprickers, with Sean Connery looking on" (Bunnell, 2004: 299, emphasis mine)

Tell me that isn't amusing. I know, I know, it's actually a legit term and I'm being hugely childish here... Maybe I'm just cracking up.

silk stalkings waves you away

Listen to this

2006-04-13T18:36:00.000+01:00

In the middle, well, actually, at the start of exam preparation now. Have done 3 readings today... I know... ONLY!!! But don't judge me! Anyway, in the midst of all this reading torture, it's great to run into the little gems of fun, like in this paper for my methods module about "interviews". It reads:

One of the perverse laws of interviewing is that in any research project at least one tape will turn out blank because of a technical mishap and it will always be the tape with the more effective and longest interview on it. (Valentine, quoted in Flowerdew and Martin, 2005: 124)

Haha. I love the bout of paranoia.

Oh, and I have discovered the joys of podcasting! Yipee.

silk stalkings waves you away

It's been awhile

2006-04-10T18:57:00.001+01:00

As my nil readers all know, I've been REALLY busy... Perhaps I'll tell you how GC went another time. So what's up with me now? I'm home alone... No really... Mum and Dad are off in Taiwan on holiday and Shaun, as you all know, is on exchange... This is the first time I've been left home alone. And for a whole week mind you! How am I taking it? Well, it's been fine so far... Feel rather independent taking care of myself and the dog... Sometimes I wonder how I'm gonna make it through the week. Especially when I'm not so caught up in school since all projects are in... But we'll see =)

I went to the art museum on Sunday alone, so I'm feeling really independent. I had fun. I'll detail it another time, but I'm not in a sharing mood. too bad!

silk stalkings waves you away

I know I'm REALLY stressed when ______

2006-03-22T18:11:00.000Z

I remember that I used to tell my mum during those 'A' Level days that I knew I was stressed when, while I was showering, I would be washing my hair (I think), and then I'd blank out and wonder "did I shampoo yet?". My mind was so preoccupied I couldn't even remember the events of a few minutes ago.

So there I was, just in the shower, things were going fine and dandy, everything was on course. I get to the face-washing cycle and lalala, use facial scrub. I move on to squirt tea tree oil facial wash on my hand, "foam" it up and then I blanked out again! A split-second later, I realised that I was using the tea tree oil facial wash on a not very facial place (I'll leave you to ponder where)...

Not good.

silk stalkings doesn't even know you're there

Don't treat me like I'm f*&$ing incompetent

2006-03-21T10:02:00.000Z

I absolutely hate some project meetings. I can't stand it when people don't listen to what I'm saying and assume I'm wrong. I mean, what the F*&$. I KNOW WHAT A C____________ IS, I KNOW OUR INTERVIEWEES AREN'T C____________, I KNOW I'M RAISING A VALID POINT AND I KNOW YOU ARE SCREWED IF YOU DON'T LISTEN TO ME. WELL, WE'LL SEE, YOU DIDN'T LISTEN. Look, my point is that there is a definate bias in our interviews and if you don't want to see or acknowledge that, well, in this respect, I think you're really, REALLY, UNIMAGINABLY idiotic! How can you make generalised statements about t_____________ when our interviews are from specific lines? Huh? The point I was making is that the response we get from one, will definately be different from that we'll get from another, and you'd better watch out! If we're asked who our interviewees are, we're goners, but no, you don't want to listen!!! Don't F$%^ING tell me I don't understand, HECK, I was the one who pointed out earlier and before that our interviewees are not c_____________. So you had a long day, so you wanna crap all over me, IT'S YOUR MISTAKE.

DON'T BE CONDESCEDING TOWARDS ME. SO YOU TOOK A MODULE ON IT. DON'T THINK YOU'RE SMARTER THAN ME. I KNOW I'M NOT WRONG.

Dependants' Protection Scheme (DPS) - Increase in Sum Assured

2006-03-20T14:35:00.000Z

"I am pleased to inform you that the CPF Board will be increasing your sum assured under the DPS. You are not required to pay any additional premium to be entitled to this benefit ... Based on the length of time you have been covered under DPS, you will be entitled to an additional bonus sum assured to $1,500."

Whoopee... So if I die for any reason (choy!) you get $1,500 more!

A long awaited outing

2006-03-17T15:53:00.000Z

Went out with two friends today; a groundbreaking outing, the first of it's kind. It's strange how you spend the majority of your school week with the same people but that's just it - school. It always seemed highly separate to me - school life and social life. And for some people I know, I just see that as 2 separate spheres for them. I don't know whether this general situation caused my impression, or whether my impressions cause this trend in my life, but either way, even when I go out with some uni people - mainly the geog soc people, I don't really regard them as part of my social life... Not that I have much of one...

Anyway, on this day, the three of us decided that we needed a well deserved break from university, having spent a tiring two over weeks having numerous assignments due... I guess this is the benefit of going out with other geog majors taking the modules you are, everyone knows what you're going through.

I had a fun time. Got a lovely pair of blue heels from Charles and Keith (which never fails to make me think of my first ex...). Had a good jap dinner at this place in city link, which I deeply appreciate cause the only other person I ever indulge in such meals with is Soony.

After the dinner, we went to an interesting bar at Tanjong Pagar. It was an intriguing experience, seeing another side to society which I wouldn't experience otherwise. It was a nice place. Very bohemian. And we met someone knew cause this guy came over to talk to us. He was a Singaporean who just came back from living in Australia so that was really intriguing.

It felt good to hang out with them since I've only known them in the Uni setting... =)

Here's to the hope of more outings!

Scrubs Season 2

2006-03-12T18:02:00.000Z

"Nothing sucks more than feeling alone no matter how many people around you there are"

Save Me!

2006-03-10T15:27:00.000Z

I met tut bus stop guy again today. ARGH! Talk about bad timing! I was at the bus stop, bumming around and I caught his eye and ARGH! All that kept running though my mind was "please don't come near me, please don't come near me, please don't come near me"... And of course, off the corner of my eye, I see him approaching... How dense can you get? Can't you tell I saw you and quickly looked away. Can't you see I'm leaning away? Can't you feel the negative vibes? Can't you remember the last time when I said I didn't "care to be friends"? My eyes shoot over to the road and my refrain went "where's my bus? should I just hop on to the next one?..."

He's beside me now, and I think "why should I inconvenience myself over some guy! Heck, I'm not leaving until my bus comes!" Sound empowering? Emancipating? YEAH!

Actually... BIG MISTAKE!!! The conversation was AWFUL. I kept trying to be as curt as possible, but of course, if he couldn't take a hint then, why should he now? I seem to have blocked off that painful experience, but some of the memorable worst lines went:

F*#$K: Do you always come at the same time? (In chinese! Firstly, do I sound chinese? Secondly, why do weird guys always talk to me in chinese? Urgh)
Me: Depends.

F*#$K: Can you take many buses? (At least he saw my desperate glances at the road)
Me: 2. What bus are you taking? (Cause inside I'm like, if my bus isn't coming, make his!)
F*#$K: 93. Why? You think I'm waiting for you?
Me: *Looks away in disgust
F*#$K: Just joking...

F*#$K: You going out tonight, it's Friday..
Me: No. I'm going home.
F*#$K: Really? You so good girl meh?
Me: I've got alot of work...

He wasn't getting my hints, I immediately thought "call someone". I look through my phone book. Someone who can talk crap. Find someone who can keep on the line for 10 mins if I need him to. Aidan pops up, and remembering his long, long monologue with me on whether he should eat mexican or japanese, I call him. The phone's ringing, and I'm like, what am I going to say? I have no real reason for calling...

All too soon, he picks up, the first thing that runs through my mind is "where are you?"... I then moved away and started bitching to him... But it was really desperate cause he was having a FGD with Deborah... Anyway, I think I talked too loudly cause when I turned around, tut F*#$K was heading towards the trains and his bus hadn't come yet... Felt abit bad if he heard... But, what can I say... LEAVE ME ALONE!

Why can't I just find a nice guy... The other day, I was sitting around doing some work when someone walked past... The first thing he said to me "your hair's really messy". What, is that supposed to charm a girl?

On a related note. On flipping through channels, I saw this programme on BBC called "What Men Want" and this week was an expose on break-ups. Some girls were saying how men broke up with them. "I've got too much work", "I've got too many commitments", "I'm busy with school". Sound familar?

silk stalkings walks off

I have this sinking feeling in my stomach...

2006-03-08T13:48:00.000Z

I don't know why...

I think I'm really bad to some people.

Can't talk to new people...

2006-03-08T07:04:00.000Z

Urgh... I'm really really bad at talking to new people on the phone. I just called one of the contacts I got for my population project. He's an expatriate with a really weird sounding surname. So of course, naturally, I had to mispronounce his name... Which, as we always see on the apprentice, is NOT a good idea considering these people are doing you a favour... Anyway, misprounounced name... I talked really really fast. I think I talked to loudly... I'm kicking myself... Urgh.... Haha. GC has thought me to not kick myself over e-mails, but I still regret most phone conversations... AAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHH.. And that's why I can't keep in touch with friends. I can't talk to the phone. Positively dread it actually.

What's with all the weird guys?

2006-03-07T12:29:00.000Z

Ok, I don't know what I've been doing lately, but weird guys keep hitting on me. Take today for a perfect example. I was at the Eunos MRT Bus Stop waiting for number 13 to take me home. I'm listening to my iPod and playing a song that I used to listen to endlessly when I was a kid. A grin appears when memories start flooding in of me jumping on my parent's bed while belting it out at the top of my voice. My fingers start tapping and feet start moving (rather imperceptibly of course, least I mortify any of my friends). I look up and see this guy glancing at me. The first thought that ran through my mind: "Oh God, I hope he doesn't think I'm smiling at him". Due to absolute boredom, I take a glance at this weird guy and urgh... He's in some uniform, white shirt, brown pants. Glasses. On the plump side. The trump card against him? He had a pocket on his shirt sleeve and he kept his stationery in it! HOW TUT IS THAT!!! I mean, I already don't really like it when guys put their pens and such in their shirt pocket, but on your sleeve! PLEASE! There was a bulge, it wasn't muscle, it was stationery!!!

I quickly looked away and ignored him though I could feel him occassionally glancing my way. Horror of horrors when he approached me. He got way too close and into my personal space! And his line - "do you know any buses here that go to queenstown?"... Huh? And he asked where I studied and other stuff... All I wanted to do is go back to listening to my music. Thank God my bus came quick. He seized his fleeting opportunity to ask my name and if I wanted to be friends. His exact phrase was "care to make friends?".. I just said "no, sorry" and rrrraaaaaaaannnnnnnnn up the bus. RELIEF!

On Saturday, me and Xinrong went to the Esplanade underpass to do some Methods fieldwork. We interviewed some skateboarders, breakdancers and such... In that day, 3 guys kept asking for my number. Well, it wasn't so bad. They were quite cool guys (2 skateboarders and 1 breakdancer), but they just weren't my type ya know? The breakdancer kept asking me to sit next to him and said he wanted to interview me! He was 21 too. Xinrong asked me later if I felt harassed. Haha. In this case, not really lah. After, when Joanne and Kailing took over, the skateboarders asked them for my number too and said I was pretty. Haha.

At first, I thought it was quite flattering. An ego boost of sorts. Then, thinking further, since none of them was my type really, I don't really feel anything... I wish the guys I liked would ask me out instead.

Anyway, in recent times, the Saturday before last, at the Esplanade underpass too for the same reason, a magician asked for my number too.

Anyway, feeling guilty, so back to work!

silk stalkings waves you away

Majors Tea

2006-03-03T14:46:00.000Z

Today was the Geography Major's Tea. At first, there was the usual talking and stuff:

Prof Huang giving a welcome speech:

Junfeng about SEP:

Dr Higgit on Honours Year:

and Dr Carl on Field Studies:

so everyone sits around listening:

I was talking with Zheng Yang and this cropped up:

ZY: You think you're what? Supermodel arh?
Me: Well, at least I have a better chance of becoming a model than you!
ZY: What? The "Before" picture?

AAAARRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!! And I told Sharon and Joanne this and they laughed! Hurmph.... So after that we grabbed our food, that's me holding a samosa =)

And moved on to our various groups. I remember how last year, I was so petrified of talking to the lecturers (as always...) so I was hiding around and ran away and refused to join a group. Well, this year, I was obligated to sit in with them, being a "senior" and stuff, so I joined Zheng Yang and Yi Chao. I was with Dr Carl, Dr Noor and Kamal. Here we are!

So it was a little awkward at first but I think it went well overall. I complained about the unreasonable workload of the Geog Dept and how we need to strengthen our Physical Geog Dept. After, I also talked to Dr Carl on our OFT so things are progressing along there too!

Here's just some other random shots:

The spread:

Dr Bunnel and Winston's group:

Prof Chang and Dr Wang's group:

Prof Huang and Dr Higgit's group:

silk stalkings waves you away

I Love Douglas Adams

2006-02-28T14:01:00.000Z

Stratified probability sampling technique: "Research knows for some reason that the universe contains significantly different sub-populations, & samples within each sub-population in order to achieve adequate representation of each"

A textbook wrote this. I'm not kidding. Isn't it so Douglas Adams-y?

silk stalkings waves you away

Bazaar Day

2006-02-27T15:50:00.000Z

Today, Geog Soc had a booth at the arts Bazaar. Rather tired, so, well, a picture says a thousand words =) :

We've finished setting up, now we're trying stuff on! (Kit's on the Bangles, I went crazy with the sunglasses!)

The calvery has arrived! Our two gentlemen, Yi Chao and Kuan Zhong have come to set up our advertisment for Geog month. Joanne's.. Well... She's up to something...

Group shot! Zheng Yang's finally returned. He's been running around busy all day.

With much advise from everyone, I bought a pair of "Chanel" sunglasses. See =) Zheng Yang makes a great salesman. Haha, I could see why he did well at LV.

Busy Busy Saturday

2006-02-25T16:30:00.000Z

So, I got home from Andrea's house at about 1 am in the morning and horror of horrors, I had to get up at 7am for a field trip to the Evolution Gardens at the Botanical Gardens for my Evolution module. Well, actually, we only needed to be in school at 9am, but to get there in time, I had to get up two hours earlier.

The Evolution Gardens was a total bummer, made worst by my exhausted state... Here, take a look:

Here, to show the world before "life", they stuck a hose in muddy water and had air bubbles gurgling up. Bloub, bloub bloub...

A stone pond covered in algae...

Stones covered in moss...

Wow! I would have taken more but my camera ran out of batteries. Bummer. At least I had Sin Yee to grumble along with me. The trip was so pointless, I don't think I learnt anything. The TA assigned to us was so useless. He began the day saying "I dunno what I'm supposed to do". What?!? Next time, do a recce first then! We would walk about 3-5 meters, he would stop, ramble on for awhile, then ask all sorts of questions that no one knew how to answer. There would be silence, tetitive guesses and what a waste of time! SY felt that he was very condescending, when we tried to answer the questions, he would go "ok...". Urgh.

And he was so gross! He had swet patches and a hole in his jeans. Everytime he bent down, his hole gaped! Well, as I told Sin Yee, at least he wore boxers, not briefs... Oh, and one more thing, he kept plucking the leaves and mosses and stuff. Isn't that not allowed?!?

Later on in that day, I had methods fieldwork at the Esplanade with Xinrong. Here's a general picture of the area when empty:

I was glad that I had Xinrong because he wasn't afraid of interviewing them while I was petrified. We interviewed 5 people and some of them were rather interesting. But can't say too much. Confidentiality mah. Haha. Instead, here's a photo of 2 people doing some fighting moves. It's blur cause I couldn't use flash and they were moving...

Anyway, I'm exhausted. Off to bed now! Night!

silk stalkings waves you away

I made cotton candy today!

2006-02-24T18:08:00.000Z

Andrea's off back to Aussie tomorrow. Phooey. So anyway, we all decided to get together for one last shindig before the farewell. It was at Andrea's house which was on top of this hill at upper Bukit Timah. Thank god Tracy went to pick us up. I would have died walking up the hill otherwise. It's hard to imagine that I've known Andrea since I was in Primary 3 and I've never been to her house ever before.

We had seafood barbeque for dinner. Here we are cooking =)

Actually, it was quite traumatic. Yesterday, I went to Bishan with mum to get my hair cut. Well, as we went to the hawker center to buy back dinner, I saw a couple of live crabs in a cage, pincers tied together and crawling around. I couldn't believe anyone would eat those crabs after seeing them alive and crawling and was struck with a huge desire to free them. Well, what do you know, today, we had live crabs to roast. They were flung into the fire straight to cook and were wriggling and stuff... Cooked alive. Look down, what'd you think?

Did you know that crabs have this weird self-defence mechanism whereupon they start shedding their legs?!? It was such a shock to see the crab's legs fall onto the wire mesh and still move... I have a confession to make though - I ate one pincer...

After dinner, we made cotton candy on this machine that Andrea got for christmas. I haven't had cotton candy in such a long time =) It was fun and so addictive! You put in sugar into the center thingee, it heats up, liquifies the sugar and squits it out the sides where it cools in threads.

We were there for 6hrs, and after, Andrea and I realised that if I do go to Durham, we won't see each other for almost 2 years...

Safe trip Andrea!

silk stalkings waves you away

Tyger Tyger Burning Bright

2006-02-23T14:24:00.000Z

Went to Asia Pacifc Brewery today with the Geographical Society. I've been there once before with the American Club and the free booze made it all worth it. It cost $8 per person (for Geog Soc members) so all you need to do is drink 2-3 glasses and it's already worth it!

Here's the group before we go for the tour. Why am I not there? I was the photographer! Duh... Here's Xinrong, Rubin, Sharon, Kit and Valarie.

And the group:

So of course we had to endure the usual brewery tour spiel before they release us to the tavern. Here's us milling around (there's only one place I wanted to go to!).

Here's Zheng Yang messing with some of the equipment. That cap can be lifted! The tour guide glared at us after =)

Finally, we were released into the tavern for a mad half hour of drinking. Here's ZY and I with heinekkens (we'd scoffed down our tigers alread).

Here we are with our Erdingers (Dark). Note that ZY has two glasses though it's a one-for-one exchange. He managed to charm the girl into giving him what I was having even though he was drinking so slowly.

Some of the beers available - Erdinger and Kilkenny

Last Call! I'm drinking Barons now. Flanked by Sharon and Zheng Yang.

One last group shot before we leave. Note how red ZY is.

My final tally? I had a tiger, a hinekken, an erdinger dark and two barrons. Very worth it, don't you think?

So a few things I've learnt:

Tiger treats different clients differently. When I went with the American Club, we had a veritable feast of sandwiches, curry puffs.... With NUS, all we got was muruku.
Zheng Yang's very mean, he ate all the red ones (which were the only ones I liked). He ate from my bowl when he finished his. He also sweet talked the waitresses into giving us top-ups though we didn't finish everything (cause all we really wanted were the red ones).
There have been people who have thrown up in the tavern before (even though we're only in there for half an hour, they down the beer to get their money's worth)
Our tour guide was a year 2 NUS student, FAS, Econs Major. What a great job! She gets to drink the beer in the tavern too =)

silk stalkings waves you away

My Day With Franz

2006-02-16T16:13:00.000Z

Today, I met Soony to go to the Franz Ferdinand concert =) Yay!

It was great to meet her since we haven't had an outing since the Christmas hols sometime ago. Naturally, if you go to watch a Scottish band, you gotta wear a Scottish kilt. So here I am, all decked out and ready to go see franz, Franz, FRANZ!!!

That is after school of course... Bugger... So anyway, population... population... fidget... fidget.... population... culture.... culture... fidget... fidget... fidget... Finally, it was all over (cultural was fun by the way. Bunnell told us more about his own personal life in England and Joanne and I were just so in love with the England countyside).

So I met Soony at 4 p.m. (the concert was at 8 p.m.) and we went off to Dao Paolo in Holland V to get pizza. It was delicious! We had this appetiser of mozarella cheese and tomatos, a pizza with fresh parmesan, veggie and salami and two deserts - profiteroles and tiramisu! Cost $50, which is alright; once in a while... It's only with Soony that I indulged so much in food though. Anyway, 3 hours passed like a breeze and off we went to the indoor stadium.

On the train, Soony's two friends called at 1920 asking where she was, and she said "why are you there so early?". Well, we got to Kallang, and realised that both of us didn't know how to get to the indoor stadium. We checked the map and off we went towards Stadium Link. It got quite dark and dodgy. We passed places like:

Need I say more? Anyway, obviously we got lost following a bunch of people and stuck wondering around the Martial Arts of Singapore Association which caged us in. We totally stuck out like sore thumbs and it was frightening. Both of us agreed that we were glad we weren't alone. We realised why Soony's friends went so early. Haha. So embarassingly enough, we ended up cabbing down there since it was 1952 and the concert was at 2000. The cab diver was so shocked. Actually, I think he was quite pissed since we went so close. It cost us $4.80. Well worth it I felt, considering we paid $70 for our Franz tickets and it would have been worst if we went late. It really was far from the MRT... Haha, note to self: check transport routes next time. First it was with Shuli to Tracy's party, then now...

We got there in one piece. Here I am waiting to go in. And here're some random blurry shots:

In we go, and I pointed out the standing room and how great it looked. Soony agreed that next time, we'll buy standing room tickets. It would be more fun though we gotta go earlier. Concert pictures follow (I know I know, not allowed... Sorry.). Apologies for the poor shots. What can I say, me bopping, people dancing, cameras were actually not allowed (so need to be more wary), lights constantly changing... Best I could do =)

I enjoyed myself. The first half wasn't very good. There were technical problems and some songs, like "The Fallen" were really bad. The chorus was indistinguishable. It felt weird to be at the sitting area. Though we all stood up, somehow, there was less atmosphere. Felt detached from the concert. Like an observer, not a goer. But the second half got better as I cared less what others thought of me. Hand up above head clapping, singing, dancing... Great! My main gripe is that there was no encore!! It was so weird. They were like "we're done, bye!" and left... Stupid concert goers.. No standing people screamed for an encore, thoguh we did. But the ushers chased us out. Phooey. How can a concert not have an encore... Anyway, here's me and Soony after the concert.

During the concert, Franz kept inviting everyone over to the Intercontinental Hotel for a post-concert party... I wonder if there really was one... Soony and her friends made fun of me for even remotely believing them... But... If it was true, I'd kick myself!! We went to sit by the Kallang River for awhile then mum and dad picked me up and home I went.

All in all, a fun day. I don't think the review tomorrow will be very good though... But maybe the standing people had fun. Ang mohs ripped off their shirts and Franz threw their sweaty towels into the crowd.

Wish I was going for the oasis concert now... Ah well, off to bed =)

silk stalkings waves you away

My Midnight Shopping Trip

2006-02-15T19:42:00.000Z

Went with mum to Cold Storage today for grocery shopping. Sounds normal? Well, we went grocery shooping at 2 am! Haha. Thank you Spore with your 24hr supermarkets. It felt so weird. I mean, who ever goes grocery shopping at 2am?!? Well... Us... But that cause I've been having this huge mochi craving for the past few days (and for chips as well, so we got nachos and salsa, yay!). I can see people needing the odd thing or tweo at ungodly hours, but grocery shopping? Hmmm...

Anyway, going to watch Franz with Soony tomorrow. I'll wear my kilt =) Though Aidan advises me not too cause I wore it to population tutorial... But hey, Fraz over-rides whatever Uni people think of me huh =)

silk stalkings waves you away

My Responsibility

2006-02-09T08:47:00.000Z

I was reading through my old postings yesterday and realised how alot of what I wrote sounded so angsty. I actually resolved to try to post more cheerful stuff soon. Afterall, all my life can't be thorns and brambles. But everytime I think of something to write, it's because I'm so unbelievably pissed off at everything. Haha, maybe my inspiration comes from anger.

Yes, after all that pre-ramble, I know you know that I'm gonna start bitching about something or the other.

Well, sometimes, I hate me! Why am I so responsible? Why can't I just blow some people off and go work on what matters to me personally. I'm so afraid of letting others down that I prioritise numerous things over my own personal recreation needs.

Look at it this way, Tag! You're It! programme meeting later, gc, Gc, GC, constantly chasing d****n and A**s. If these people don't have the gall to recognise their own responsibilities, why should I care about them!

And now this!!!

You see, the arrangement today was to meet up with PPT after cultural lecture. That would be 4-5 p.m.. In this, only 4 people could have made it. Then, while Joanne went for her tutorial, the other 5 of us, Jaron and Chang Yi was to join us, would meet up to continue to discuss whatever was said. Good plan right? Basically, the others wanted to go for a "when can most people make it" criterior, which means that the 5 of us, Aidan, Clara, Jaron, Chang Yi and I would meet PPT at 5.00. But I said that it was better if Joanne could make it, since she's the leader. To make sure that the others don't get left out, we'd meet them after at 5. So that was the plan.

Now, Joanne's going for tutorial, Clara's going for a project meeting and Aidan's going for a dinner, leaving me ALONE to meet up with Jaron and Chang Yi. All these last minute changes! I think it's irresopnsible of everyone.

Just because I'm responsible enough to stay...

Anyway, the meeting's started, so I'm off...

silk stalkings waves you away

My Dark Life

2006-02-07T17:11:00.000Z

She say nobody wants to believe
You're the same as everyone
What makes me unique
My dark life

There was a kink in the world
Send that staute tumbling
An invitiation East
So you can watch it all crumbling

She came on like a light
And so softly she spoke
You don't know
You don't know about my dark life

And you think you're a guest
You're a tourist at best
Peering into the corners of
My dark life

Elvis Costello, My Dark Life

Sometimes I feel terribly marginalised, like I'm really out of it and everything, and the more I try to assert myself, the more I feel like I should just slink into a corner and wither away. It's strange, I feel like kicking myself sometimes when I look longingly the two of them and wish I were her...

I don't know, maybe it's just that kinda week, that kinda time.

I had two project meetings today after evolution - Population and Methods. I felt rather out of my league, being a physical geographer, I was exclaiming "give me haze issues anyday!". It seemed so off, trying to justify why this and that were geographical. Seems to me that if you spend so long trying to prove that you have a niche in a place, the fact that you need to justify your existence, implies that everything's so tenuous....

Let's see, tomorrow I'll be working on my making of a nation paper.

Thursday I've got 3 meetings after population and culture lecture - Population with Peggy Teo, Population with the others, then a Tag! You're It! programme meeting...

And I'm ignoring all the GC stuff I've got to do - i.e. sending out circulars, contacting GTA and deciding on a GOH...

Sighz...

Seems like my head's just filled with everything.

LEAVE ME ALONE

Well, you'd rather leave me alone anyway... At least you could live without me.

silk stalkings watches you leave without her

My Addiction

2006-02-05T21:41:00.000Z

It's now monday and I've got to get up to go to school in 4 hours. Yet, I still can't sleep. Why? I'm hooked onto a new RPG!!!

Well, actually, it's rather an old one, but it's my first access to it now that Shaun's gone off to the US. It's "Kingdom Hearts", a squaresoft, disney collaboration. I know Ivan will smile at this, seeing how big a "Lion King" fan he is --- which is freaky in itself. If I recall, Shaun wasn't too crazy about it... Me? Well, I'm rather enjoying myself. I have certain inclination towards certain worlds after all. "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" has always been a favourite with me. And I'm off to the "Nightmare before Christmas" next. Shaun's right though, I don't really like the active time battle, I'm still more old-school I guess.

But that's not really the point, I should never have started playing "Kingdom Hearts", now I'm addicted and can't stop though I've got so many other things to do...

(1) Still behind in my readings!!!

(2) Extra Readings for cultural essay to do because I know s*#t about Israel and Palestine

(3) Making of a Nation Response Paper 2 due on Friday!!!

(4) GC, BBC and misc activities (I didn't check my e-mail for the weekend, now I've got 18 new messages!!!)

(5) Methods webcast to watch

(6) Got to set a cultural project meeting, of which I don't even really get "cultural"

(7) Population tutorial for tmr...

Well... You get the picture... You see, I'm dead. I have no self-restraint. I told myself "Saturday's rest-day, you can play, but work on Sunday!".. But I couldn't work today, all I could think of was:

"kingdom hearts"

"Kingdom Hearts"

"KINGDOM HEARTS"

And now I'm telling myself "play on weekends, work on weekdays"... Well, we'll see if I play tomorrow...

Sighz... Too many commitments, too much work to do... I feel like I'm lifting huge Atlas Stones....

silk stalkings waves you away

My Optical Illusion

2006-02-01T17:13:00.000Z

In a Scrubs inspired move, I've decided that the title of my entries from now on shall read "My ______"...

So, Chinese New Year madness is still haunting me. Today, the plan was to wear the right contact lens I still had, and use one of mum's dailys for my left eye. I had put on the daily, so far so good. But when the time came to put on my regular pair, PAIN BEYOND FU*KING BELIEF!!! I hadn't realised that instead of gentle saline solution in my container, it was OXYSEPT!!! I literally felt my eye being eaten out... After I finally removed the lens (for a desperate minute, my eye was instinctively clenched shut in torment), I emptied the offeding solution into the sink, whereupon it started fizzing about; yet more proof of the torture my eye went through. Anyway, vanity of vanities, I still wanted to wear contacts. My right eye was a shocking red and very noticable. It was much worst than my left eye on CNY visiting rounds. I felt abit dizzy at first, with the wrong prescriptions in each eye, but ah well...

After cultural tutorial (I was lost, lost, lost), I then went to Paris Miki to make my new lenses (by then I had found out that the lens I lost was actually the left one) and Adelyn checked my right eye for me and said that the damage wasn't so bad, it would heal in a day or two. Also discovered that both my degrees had increased significantly so I had to make a whole new set anyway. Which is a story in itself, and not a very interesting one.

The point I was trying to make? On CNY day 1, my left eye was red from my gouging. On back to school day one, my right eye was red from the Oxysept. My poor eyes... Stupid ramifications of drinking... Phooey!

silk stalkings can't see you so slip away quietly

My Conscience Doth Prick Me

2006-01-31T19:46:00.000Z

So here I am doing the thing which I always do when avoiding other forms of work - surfing the internet. The usual of course - first comes the comics, then the blogs. So there I was, reading other people's blogs when I realised how much the style of writing of a blog truely reflects a person. I mean, when I read Ja-Ne's blog, I can so imagine her saying all those things. They're so in line with her personality. As is Shamin's, Michelle's, Sharon's and tons of others. Haha, I wonder how mine would sound like to others... I don't even think they'll get past the first entry...

What's been going on... Well, CNY is over for me, unless I got the last 8th day of New Year to attend... This year was totally torturous. I got drunk on the eve at the reunion dinner (well I'm sorry, but it was so boring there's nothing else to do!) and passed out hammered in the washroom. In brief spats of concsiousness, I attempted to take out my contact lenses, which resulted in me gouging out my eyes and losing one contact (bye bye $200!!! Ouch....)... The worst was waking up the next day with a hangover and being dragged around to visit relatives. I must have looked a monster... One red eye, extremely groggy, gagging intermittentely and refusing to socialise... Phooey... The one time I meet 3/4 of those people, and I gave such an awful impression... But as I told others... Hey, I had fun the night before so no regrets right?

I have also been addicted to those minute oranges which are so deliciously sweet...

Here they are!! Haha, my mum even asked me if I had constipation from eating so much fiber! My dog absolutely adores them too. Pick up an orange to peel and she come running to you. She'll put her head on your lap and look up at you oh so longingly that you can't but help giving her some. That's why she's been getting real fat lately... Or so people have commented. She's still the prettiest dog in the world to me! But yes, cruel to be kind, must not overfeed... I'll take note.

What else... Oh, No one visited my poor grammy in the nursing home on the first day of CNY... Poor Dear... That BAS#$*D eldest son of hers... how disrespectful... especially for the elderly... this meant so much to her... can you imagine, she was almost in tears when we came to fecth her out at 4.00. The people around her were getting so many visitors. When my parents brought her home, my mum took out some red packets and money and made her "pao" her own ang pows. More sincere mah... And no one goes to visit her on the second day besides her church people either... Makes me wanna cry that does. As I told Sheng Zhi, no one deserves to be alone on CNY.

And after the 5 day holiday... I don't feel like working... Argh... Got Cultural tut tmr and I haven't done any readings... Guilt guilt guilt... But not enough to stop me from blogging or watching tv though... I MUST STEP UP! Straight A's here I come... Once I get over my GC woes.. ARGH! What have I gotten myself into....

silk stalkings waves you away from her presence

Lifestyle choices

2006-01-25T20:16:00.000Z

It's days like this that I realise what a loner I really am. Was reading through some of my "friends" blogs and I realise what party people they are. Well, not party people exactly, more like social butterflies... And I realise that hey, I sort of drifted apart from them, well, never really was one of them in the first place.

Sometimes I wonder if I made the right choices... But I didn't really make any conscious choices, I just lived my life as I knew how. I guess people never really factored in very strongly with me since my upbringing primary and secondary school days where I learnt to be an outcast... I mean, I can't spend a long time with people at all. I either (1) get really really bored (and the other party does too) or (2) get all nervous about awkward silences that I'd rather not venture out. And I don't even have the energy to go out, I much rather stay at home and cosy up to a good book.

But I do feel a tinge of regret when I read all thier blogs, their numerous outings and planned events... I feel like I'm missing out on something in life you know... But, sighz... Hermitude's in my nature isn't it? Plus, I'm a really hard person to get along with. My mind just functions way too much.

The other day, I told Z that I found it tiring at times to be around him. Which is true, though through on fault of his own. I guess he's just the total opposite of me. He's so popular and knows so many people that when I'm around him and he's around other people, the social situations he engages in tired me out! That and I always feel like I'm competiting for his attention. "Hey Z! Here I am...". Don't get me wrong, it's not some weird I-want-him-all-to-myself complex (at least I don't think so), it's more like I'm just not a people person, and being around one and seeing his posse just tires me out. I guess I'm more used to one-on-one situations...

Even when some of us went on a chalet, I felt all weird and drained and just wanted to run away. I ended up being a loner and reading my book. Even went to the pool side alone for awhile to read. Confessions of Nat Turner... Good book...

Of course this has cost me dearly in life. Drifting. And relationships. And insecurities. I wonder if everybody's as screwed up and flawed as me... Then again, I remember that I used to need to believe not, because if everyone's really like me, then life really is a crap hole and there's no point in it at all.

God, I wish I were a bimbo.. I wish I were a better person.

Bill Bryson's "A Short History of Nearly Everything"

2006-01-20T20:21:00.000Z

"Even thinking, it turns out, affects the way genes work. How fast a man's beard grows, for instance, is partly a function of how much he thinks about sex (because thinking about sex produces a testosterone surge."

God I love this man!

The usual spate of inactivity

2006-01-18T09:19:00.000Z

It's 1720 now. I can't believe I've spent the past five and a half hours stuck in the geog room whiling away the time trying to do something productive - i.e. my readings. You see, what happened was that I came to school at 1200 in anticipation of a "making of a nation" tutorial. What I didn't know was that tutorials were every odd week, a fact that the lecturer didn't make known to us explicitely. So I guai guai come, though I wanted to skip, seeing as how I worked on my SEP Module mapping till 0600, meaning I got a grand three and a half hours of sleep. And since I got a meeting at 1800, and no other class, I've been hibernating in the Geography room.

Readings are a BORE. I can't believe I'm taking 3 human geog modules, a history module and a science module this sem. Yuck! Ah well, at least with all else on my mind, I managed to get the tutorials I wanted (unlike last semester). Anyway, out of all my modules, I've finished like 1 set of readings only... Phooey.

And I'm having such a tough time mapping my modules. The history guy isn't replying to my e-mails. I wanted to call him, but I figured I shouldn't rush him... Or am I just avoiding the inevitable? Sighz... I can feel my heart palpitating just anticipating calling him... But I guess I must. Let me give it a go.

IT'S DONE! WHOOPEE! Dr Clancey, the history guy, was so great! He just glanced at the modules and said, yah, we can map these!! Thank god =) So 2 UEs down and I'll see De Lee tomorrow to get the Geog ones approved. The only thing standing in my way is my one USP Arts module now. Thanks GOD! I feel great!

I'll relay my whole sob story later =) Gotta go for my GC meeting now. Hopefully that'll go just as well.

It seems so me that some people are just a**holes

2006-01-17T18:29:00.000Z

So there I was, heading towards the Geog Room today. I was just outside the door when this young chappie delayed me to ask "excuse me, is this the Geography Department". I go "yes", but recall shortly after that it was also the econs department. Thus, I qualified my statement, saying "but downstairs is also the Geog Department and the main office is there too". I expect a "thanks" and leave. Is that too much to ask? Instead, this rude, impertinent a**hole goes "but you don't know what we're looking for". Well f**k you! I was just trying to help. Yes, this is the Geog Dept, but if you can't find the lecturer or whoever else you're looking for, I'm just saying, you can check downstairs too you s**thead! What should I care who you're looking for. Are you trying to act cool in front of that b**ch you're with? Don't snub me after as if I'm dirt on your shoe. I can't help but wonder how you were brought up to be the way you are, future gangster. I can't stand people who think everyone else owes them a living. You deserve a punch in the face stinker. Just be glad I was too upset and too nice to give it. But you'll get your come-uppance some day.

Fundue to you too

2005-12-31T17:35:00.000Z

"Why do they call this fondue? They should call it fundue".

And so began my new year's day. We had a fondue dinner at the balcony; possible now that my brother's gone away, as the balcony can only fit 3 people. There was:

Mum and Dad

The dog trying to (a) get us to play, (b) lull us into complacency to get food and (c) get attention by mauling, wait... I mean pawing, us.

And good food (note the blue non-alcoholic cocktail drink)

After dinner, the sparkly was popped open

And we sat on the couch watching soccer. Darn, Arsenal drew Aston Villa O-O. Argh!! We may not even qualify for the Champions League at the rate things are going...

At midnight, the ships shot out their emergency flares and tooted their horns =) Magical. And on television, Fann Wong lip-synced "Eyes on Me" the FF8 song which made me think of someone and the puzzle-poster I had hanging in my room. I love that game. I love that song.

Of course, by the end of the day, we were all pooped out. Night =)

Frustrations abound

2005-12-31T08:49:00.000Z

It should not feel like I'm contending with a hugh bureaucratic behemoth, and I know it's a factor of my own inefficiency, however, it's frustrating to be given generic answers that keeps everything as it is. I mean, I need the information as soon as possible. I'm not saying I need it today, but that it is an urgent matter. I don't need you to tell me to base what I need to know from the requirements you wanted and use last year's amount as a guide as well. The requirements you want makes it 59000 and you gave us 35000 last year, how am I supposed to garner the information I need from such a wide discrepency?

I know I keep saying that I am learning to believe that people would generally think the best of my intentions and not misread me and think I'm rude. But in this case, I really feel belittled. A tiny student against a huge corporation that sees me as someone they can steamroll over. I feel I am being punished on all sides. Normally, it should be some other people who do the liasing with them, but because I neglected to keep PS in the loop, which it was not my intention to shut that person out, now I am abandoned to do all this work... And it's not working, because I simply do not have the power to do anything about it.

Days like this I feel as if I'm taking too many things on my shoulder. I feel like throwing in the towel and saying "forget it, no one deserves this". But I know others have been working hard at the other aspects and I can't disappoint them. One minute I feel like it's all my fault that we are in this situation, at other times, I know I'm doing all I can. How can ou expect me to be a well-oiled machine at something I have never experienced before? And now, it seems like all factions are raring to bite my neck off. Relations outside the committee are strained.

It seems like nothing's going right.

Why.

Just some random pictures since I felt like it

2005-12-30T17:22:00.000Z

Caroline, Tracy, Me, Shamin and Andrea relaxing in MGS's Bamboo Grove

Andrea, Caroline, Shamin, Ja-Ne, Tracy, Me and Shuli again in the Bamboo Grove during the Guides Camp

Christmas at Circket Club. I like the hat =)

Me and Kieren, my nephew. He so cute!!

Roll a stone across my door. Hermitude's the life for me

2005-12-30T17:09:00.000Z

I haven't heard fro Mrs P yet. I asked her to write a referral letter for me for my SEP application. I've got butterflies just waiting. As usual, I'm hit by the usual thoughts of "maybe my e-mail read badly". I'm often very worried that people may interprete my e-mails the wrong way. especially with regards to superiors. I can spend 2-3 hrs just crafting an e-mail, and am plagued with doubts until I receive a reply. I realise that this isn't viable in the long run and have realised that such thoughts are strongly shaped by my views on life. I have to start believing that lecturers and other seniors will think the best of me and realise that even if I come of as rude, that's not my intention. I think I will SMS Mrs P after this... I don't know why she would write a referral for me. I graduated so long ago and I probably did not make that great an impact with her, but still, no harm trying. Worst case senario: I never go back to RJ.

The NUS workshop today went well. I think I conducted the Difficult Conversation exercise a little sloppily but much much better than at Hwa Chong. I'm just glad the module is over! I realised that I probably won't meet any of them in any module anymore. The response was good. I think the course did benefit most people. Just that one person wasn't too happy with it. I guess the interest just wasn't there. But I think she'll do well with the patients too. My biggest fear during the module is never having gone to talk to the patients myself, so I always worried when I said "the patients this\that" that I really did not have any grounds to comment, but ah well, as I said, it went fine.

T sent out an e-mail today. Sound's like he's having quite the adventure. Great =) I do miss him. The thought that we won't be taking a module next sem together. The thought that no matter how glum I am, I can go to his room and laze about. Our drinking sessions at Blooies. And just his presence... But such things happen inevitably so I just need to grow up.

As always, there's tons of work I'm pushing away, but I'm too tired now (got up at 0730 today, it's not 0130) so I'll do it tomorrow. Yes, on New Year's eve...

I'll post some pictures up now though. Just for the heck of it. Look up =)

The Longest Day

2005-12-29T17:25:00.000Z

There are high times and there are low times. Today just felt like an exceptionally long and tiring day. It just feels like there are a million and one things to do and my head's caving in. And today, my pillar of solace and support just went away. T left for the United States LA for his SEP earlier. And now, there's no one I can truely confide in without fear of judgement. I feel so lost. Even trying to plan my modules (I know, I know, how late) was a nightmare. I can't even imagine not taking any modules with him next sem... Sighz... And I so wish he's still here, playing video games... I still wanna hear his movements around the place. I know, it's ony for 6 months and he'll be back before I know it, but still...

I have so many things to do
(1) module planning
(2) course at NUH tomorrow
(3) SEP application
(4) GC

All are big headaches in themselves. Everything's just so uncertain. I can't plan modules without knowing where I'm going for SEP. I can't plan GC without hearing back from our sponsors, and I simply don't want to go for the seminar tomorrow. NO INTEREST AT ALL! I've had to ask for referral letters for my SEP. Just asked Mrs Perry... Sighz.... And it's like I only contact her if and when I need something... I dread her reply.

And it's never ending!! I'm so behind and every single component. The circulars for GC shold have been sent out 2 weeks ago!! They are't even written yet. I need the SEP referral letters by the 10th of Jan. My modules?!? Only started plannign tonight and the bidding started today!! Sighz... I've never been so inefficient in my life.

I'm tired. I just want to sleep. Hopefully tomorrow would be a better day.

Cross my fingers I hear from the sponsors.

My Rest and Recreation Day

2005-12-10T23:01:00.000Z

Today, I slept for 14 hours after my exhausting yesterday!! It sort of peatered out than that I decided to spend the day not doing any work besides replying my e-mail correspondences. What an utterly productive day! I finished Styron's "Confessions of Nat Turner

Oh how bright and fair the morning star...

And Stephen Clarke's "A Year in Merde".

But it's back to work tomorrow...

My Busy Day

2005-12-09T16:44:00.000Z

It was a long long day and I am hugely tired... Let me recapitualate:

9 am: GC Meeting with Professor Savage
1 pm: GC Meeting with the Main Committee
4 pm: Conflict Resolution Meeting
7 pm: Guides Meeting to plan the MG Camp on Monday

Having had only an hour and a half of sleep, imagine how pooped I was by the end of hte night. The meeting with Prof Savage was productive, helping me to decide how to answer the latest reply to our sponsor. As was the one with the main comm. It was great in the sense that it felt like we were bonding and I think no one felt like the meeting I called was a wasted trip - my worst fear.

Of course, my head's still all a muddle over the long road ahead to completion, but well, a step was taken =)The meeting went overtime, the one with Savage ended at 1145 and the one with my comm at like 340 so I was late for my conflict meeting. Whilst I was a tad guilty that I was late, I have to admit, the meeting filled me with trepidation. Too meet the person whom I felt slandered me and accused me of numerous crimes without giving me a chance to defend myself, well, I think my brother put it most aptly by calling her a b****.

So it was with trepidation that I arrived at our meeting venue. I won't go into the details as they bore me, but the gist is that, well, it went well, and I am optimistic of things to come, though dreading it somewhat due to my supremely busy schedule. But no choice, onward I go.

Imagine my horror when turning up at my last meeting, somewhere was there which wasn't supposed to be. Dear ZB, whom I've abhored since my meeting with her 5 years ago. The one who is 29 but has no friends (no wonder) that she insists on clinging on with all her might to the group of us... I'm lucky, she can't stand me too, but the poor others simply can't escape her vicious and highly irritating clutches. Urgh... Haha, Mrs Tham and Tracy decided to come out and wait for me to warn me of her presence before I met her, to avoid any unpleasent shocks. I was touched =) Not that it mattered much since I was so shagged I didn't keep track much of what was going on anyway. It was weird at first, entering the meeting halfway and working on some GC matters to prepare for a call to Savage. But, I finished, ZB left and the fun began. Haha, we chatted and talked. We even heard Mrs Tham's war experience. Get this, she was forced to leave her home and go for a long forced march on her eighth birthday! Her mum carried all the family stuff they could, and all she carried was her little teddy =) We also heard Ja-Ne's Grandma's war stories.

Anyway, I'll meet the others on Monday for camp. Something I have mixed feelings about since I'm so busy with GC, but I have have have to go cause I haven't seen the others in ages.

We'll see... Anyway, off to bed =)

An Old Post I Loved

2005-12-07T18:01:00.000Z

In my boredom, I've dug up an old blog post I wrote when I was still working at SGH. It didn't sit well with the people who it was meant for. Some said it was too cheem, others that I made them dislike reading again, but I really loved it. Inspired by Douglas Adams (I love you Douglas). Here goes:

Day - 3rd July, 0127 hours. It has been almost 20 mins since I flipped open this log and began this chronicle. In a sudden resurgence of self-masochistic tendencies, the windows and doors are locked and the air-condition disabled leaving the chronicaller in a stuffy, dank, ill-ventilated environment. This is in response to previous summons for a contibution to this page and to alleviate the "what to do now" syndrom (rapidly becoming a common cause of insanity in numerous parts of the galaxy, notably the Oulan Centrifix region currently 189 light years from Earth). So just a little shout out to all my presumably more pre-occupied friends and whoever hacks into this lesser known area of the World Wide Web - "hi". If anyone had actually bothered to read this whole message, the chronicaller has one more thing to add (apart from acknowledging that this isn't actually a chronical per se but more of the rant of a really hot and uncomfortable person), as Douglas Adams writes in "So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish" as God's Final Message to His Creation "we apologise for the inconvenience".

Snippets Into My World

2005-12-07T04:22:00.000Z

I'm not really tired. It's just one of those times where one sits around and mooches and there isn't really a desire to do anything. I am often struck by such an affliction; coincidentally, it's also always at the moments whereupon I've got tons of stuff to do. Right now, I've got so many things to see to that my brain leaps disconnectedly from one commitment to another.

SEP mapping. Urgh. It's hard enough to do it, without even knowing if you really want to. Don't get me wrong, I WANT to go overseas. Have wanted to since I was in Secondary 3. But I just don't know if I can afford to go to where I have always wanted to go because it's only for a one-year programme. This will seem like pure folly if it screws up my honours year... Not only that, urgh, there is also the added complication that the University actually doesn't really allow students to go for the whole of their third year... Sighz...

Went for a chalet at Pasir Ris yesterday. Got a chance to meet up with the old committee and catch-up a little. Was really tiring actually. I think it's because my mind's so distracted by everything that I can't really bring myself to sit down and relax. And when I do get to relax, I've got so much recreation-side things to do, like all the backlog of all my books, that I can't relax on that account too!

Yesterday was the first day I met RY since the day my exams ended. I was glad that it was not awkward. Felt exceedingly normal in fact. But sometimes, it's hard to draw that line and that was predominanatly on my mind today.

Apologies to all who suffered my ranting about UR today. I realised that I was way way out of line and blowing things right out of proportion. I blame it on my lack of sleep impeding the ability to think rationally. Appreciate Kelvin convincing me to leave the room and go for a walk on the beach. It was really soothing and helped to put things into perspective. Anyway, things are fine and I don't think UR's mad at me. He said we should keep our fingers crossed and that what i'm doing =) I am hoping to hear from the sponsors tomorrow though, before my meeting on Friday. How much time do you think they will need?

On my way home from Pasir Ris, I sat beside this middle-aged chinese guy in the bus. Imagine my shock when he started gabbing to me in chinese about the henna that Sharon drew on my hand yesterday. Haha, he asked how much I paid for it and telling me about how it was used for weddings and stuff... I just kept saying "I dunno... I dunno..." Told Sheng Zhi about it and he said "maybe you have a special appeal to old folks". Phooey. Reminds of the other time this other old chinese lady told me I have really nice feet (in chinese, naturally) and believed, after hearing my crappy chinese, that I was from some weird province in China... Haha.

I realise that my tempers been ruffled lately. My poor family borne the brunt of my ill-temper and thank goodness they've been very understanding. They know I'm stressed.

At 10 p.m., I watched this programme on Ch5 called TabTV. Today it was about the Sarong Party Girl and my gosh, I was appaled at their style of reporting!! It was so exceedingly biased the way the shoot was filmed. They had their stupid "TabChat" section where they had Daphne Khoo, the Sarong Party Girl, a guy who visited a prostitute, a councillor and the Flying Dutchman. They kept being very condescending towards the SPG and the boy and kept praising Daphne, saying "oh if my daughter grows up to be like you (a virgin) I'd be so proud". And whenever Daphne gave her views, they went "good, good" and refused to really acknowledge the other two's points. I mean, that being said, it doesn't mean that I don't feel against promiscuity and stuff, but I wish that if they want to claim to investigate issues in Singapore, please, do so in an unbiased manner. Your views were SO obvious. A step back for liberalism in Singapore. I could imagine the host just buttoning up her shirt so that it would fasten around her collar... Cough cough.

It's raining outside now. I've opened my curtains. I like the rain when I'm indoors and protected from the wetness...

Beginnings

2005-11-24T21:34:00.000Z

When I first started this blog, it was for no reason other than to pen down memorable quotes. I never really believed in blogs as a proper means of communication. I always felt they were too open. I remember telling Soony about this blog, and pointed out how ironic that I called it Cogito Ergosum, but it's not really..

So anyway, with my brother going overseas for SEP next year, I thought about how he was going to keep in touch with us, and I realised that, as many others have discovered, a blog is the best way to reach out to people. So I then thought, if I went on SEP, would I keep a blog? And I would probably would try, just to write daily about new experiences. Upon further pondering, I realised that there was no reason I should not try starting right now.

Yet, I always thought it rather presumptious of people, advertising their blogs. I mean, what's so great about your life that you'd think others want to hear about it? Till now, I can't answer that question that myself. But who knows, maybe one day, I'll bring myself to make this blog public too =) Probably for all the advertising money I'll get $_$. Anyway, onward to my maiden attempt at blogging.

But i find after all my proclamations and rambling, I really have nothing I want to share right now. So, till another time then.

Playing By Heart

2005-11-22T14:35:00.000Z

Talking about like is like dancing about architecture.