Didnt get my sis anything for her birthday. not even a cake. was in school the whole day and reached home close to 11 at night. rummage thru a particular drawer coz i was in the mood and found a birthday card i gave her in year 1998.

it's weird how things happened. i touch that drawer like once a year. the card was inside an envelope and it was the first thing i took out. amazing huh..

6 years, just like that.

will be doing the 7,7 thing on monday. he's gone for more than a month, just like that. no major changes in my life, no difficult adjustment period. life's just like that.

mid-autumn festival will soon be here. next friday to be exact. i've been looking forward to mooncakes since like April. but since i'm not allowed to celebrate, i cant really indulge in mooncakes. can even purchase any.. Grr... have to wait for pple to give mooncake as gift before i can eat. it's another of the many traditions and culture thing again. if we can't celebrate, cant buy, why shld we even eat? they say not allowed to celebrate this festival coz it symbolises 'tuan yuan'. and cant buy coz mooncakes are round, and it reinforces the 'tuan yuan' spirit. if that's the case, easy. get a mooncake that's square!!

sad~ mid-autumn has always been one of my fav festivals. i miss da bing!!!! my grandpa used to love it too. used to eat it before dinner and he would always nag, then maybe take a piece or two. we had that together a couple of weeks before he passed away. took the last piece and threw the box away. how i wished i left the last piece for him. he wouldnt mind i think. by then he cant even remember me.

when a fellow trainee told me her grandpa had a stroke and became kind of senile thereafter, she chatted with him for over 2 hours but he turned to ask her why his granddaughter haven come to visit him, i was thinking 'oh poor thing!' now i know how she felt then. from an outsider's POV, the only word i can think of is 'pity.'

the term break is over. hafta move on to more difficult things. but that is, after a good dinner to substitute the bdae celebration for my sis. can always leave the troublesome time to tomorrow.

kinda glad tuesday is over. proj meetings all the way from 10 till 4.30. i'm so unproductive after such long meetings that i didnt really contribute much for the last hr or so. wanted to go to the canteen for a break till training starts but received orders from my grpmates to upload all my stuff BY yesterday night. that means i have to do it before training and start drawing graphs and all, just because they dunno how to do it in MSword. okay, i admit i'm irritated coz i had a long day and have more tiring stuff to look forward to, and with the lines and curves on the screen, i kinda lose focus and uploaded graphs that are not perfect. okay. good. cant u change it if u realised what's wrong. must ask me to change then upload again. these pple are crazy. they like to do double work.

felt that i wasnt up to attend training, especially another proj grp wanna meet on SUNDAY MORNING in school. was wondering if this is my deserved 1 week break. and i have 3 more projs i haven even started. gosh~ time is running out. really felt like taking a cab home and sleeping thr the journey. THEN, that wasnt my choice in the end.

my saviour song came on air.. it's easy to miss out on the simple good in life when u are on a smooth track. the valley times seemed so far away.

the tourism sociology lecture on fri is the best one of yet. the video on Nepal is inspiring. or maybe i've been sleeping thru the other lectures to even be bothered. anyway, this tourist mentioned that the rich going to poorer countries to have a different experience and the poor longing to go to nice foreign countries for a holiday.

sometimes we go away so that we'll be better able to appreciate what we have now. it's not so much that we are unhappy with what we have.. just that we can better know how fortunate we are after a trip away from home. if u feel the same during a trip and at home, then it defeats the purpose of going away. might also be that problems are seemingly easier to handle after a break.. till you're ready to face whatever that has to come..

felt so guilty after the video. i know that if i work hard for half a year, i'll save enough money to go overseas for maybe a week or so. then continue slogging till the next trip. this is a guaranteed incentive in this part of the world that i'm living in. i am sure that i can decide and choose whatever route i think i want to choose and do whatever i feel like doing, so long it's within the law.. i can continue studying and get a degree after 3 years, i ca drop out right now and find a job that i want, apply for any job i want to/feel like doing. or even just slack at home for a couple of weeks to rest. It's like knowing i have the power, ability and freedom to be myself. luxurious life. opportunities aplenty. unlimited choices.

i'm kinda glad that in this lifetime, i'm here. I'M HERE. not in Nepal, not in Antigua, not in new guinea. not anywhere else but Singapore. the land of opportunities amidst restricted freedom. just how lucky can i get? so i ask myself. what did i do my past life to deserve this good life? how much good i did then to enjoy all that i have now.

back to my saviour song. was that coz it accompanied me through rough times. then again, how bad can this journey get? yeah.. making mountain out of molehill again? maybe. so maybe i've been living in comfort for too long that every little bump has a great impact. listened to how some schoolmates got into jail, released. some married, with kids. then a friend said "i'm glad u all never change for the worse" and "you're still the same as i last saw you".

stay the same... is that good or bad?

~TGIF~

planned to have an OFF day today. that's why i rescheduled my subject pool to tomorrow and my marketing lec on monday. ended up having to go to sch for cca. it isnt half as bad as i imagine it to be. had a good workout, and the seniors are quite nice to teach us one-on-one. it's so much nicer to have someone to train with than poking the grey mat alone. the face guard stinks. then again, i like the feeling after i wore that thing. can confirm i dun hav claustrophobia.

a tad disappointed that i am unable to do what i've initially planned to do this week. but after that post on the forum, and finally completing my IT tut, finally going thru the econs assignment qns and answers bfore the meeting tml.. gosh~ i'm dead beat. especially after training.. thought of having a good sleep. but gotta wake up early tml for the subject pool. it kinda sux. but thank god recess week is here. NO LESSONS. only proj meetings!!!

Remember the forgotten.

Seem as though i'm still at square one after so long, unable to make any improvement.
Then again, interacting with pple within the memory reach showed me how much i've changed since then. The old me is like a thing of the past. Kinda hard to imagine- made it look as though many things didnt happen at all.

it's like wanting to put all my memories in a bag so that they'll be with me wherever i go, then realising after the journey that there's a hole at the bottom of my bag.
So it's as such. somethings are just meant to be left behind.
somethings we just cant seem to let go, dun want to forget.

Losing control...

The last time i did that was in Sec 2, when i raised my voice at some senior before sports day, in the stadium.

The same thing happened today. intended to use a polite, courteous and nice manner to reason. Ended up being affected by the body language and tone of the service staff. Didn't resort to using the insulting words -'i want to speak to your manager'. that i'm giving her enough face.

I dun want to repeat the story so dun ask. Guess the reason why i'm so pissed off is coz having been in the hospi industry and service sector so so long, it's kinda irritating to meet such front line staff. they kinda spoil the whole image of service-orientated pple. and haven they heard about GEMS? apparently, the manager and his staff dont know a thing about service recovery. maybe they ought to send their staff for more training, or hire some professional from shaltec to give them inspirational talks. the girl must be cursing and swearing behind my back. which i think is normal. guess i'm most probably blacklisted. who cares- i'm boycotting that place.

what a way to end my week.

Been thinking up a lot of wants recently.
Things that I know I can do without but can be a source of self-assurance that I'm living & behaving normally based on the assumption that in any case, I will want more of a commodity than less of it. anyway, 'wants' is a subset of 'needs'.

Soon I'll leave my teenage self behind and advance into adulthood (hey, I'm trying to be serious here!). Still thinking how I'll say goodbye to the old-self-gonna-be and move closer to who-i-wanna-be.. Most prob get myself sth that I think I want.

Blog has been up for 2 years. URL and skins changed a couple of times. the number of entries come to to more than 500. Frankly speaking, I have no idea how I managed to come up with things to say 500 times. Serious. Put the archives back into my blog recently. Love the feeling of being able to just browse thru the entries as and when I like without signing in to blogger and previewing the posts one by one. Sometimes, I amaze myself. I ACTUALLY make sense in some of my entries. lolx. am now a little proud of myself so I start to wonder if others who happened to come across this blog, start nodding away as their eyes follow the lines on screen, tried retrieving my previous entries (esp my previous bloggie, condition- if my archives is up) and even taking note of certain things I've said or certain beliefs I stand by. that would be so lovely. but it's just a thought.

yeap. pple have been asking my abt school. the pple there are crazy. they can do a half an hr presentation with complete scripts and videos for an assignment that is not graded. IT IS NOT GRADED. back in TP, most of the groups would just send a representative up and give a 5 mins brief presentation. that's the difference. Maybe they have no idea abt the marks allocation for the subject. or maybe they're just plain hardworking (is there even such a word?).

one of my subject's grpmates actually bother to perfect a group assignment that consists of 9 members. 9 mbrs! someone even created a community in the sch website so that we are able to upload stuff and use the forum for discussion. Need they be so enthu? spending 4 hrs on 8 simple qns, finding all possibilities with the qns, thinking WAY OUTTA the box.

recalled what we did in poly if we are not progressing-
there's always tml.
silence means consent.
Majority wins.
'let's move on' sounds much more practical and sensible than repeating 'i think we should do this, or that, or maybe that. or maybe not. what u said make sense. what he brought up sounds okay too. what do you think?' again and again at 8pm on a raining FRIDAY night and some pple are having dinner buffet just 50 metres away frm the table we're discussing. i'm cold, hungry and dead beat after a long week. and all they do is to repeat 'go back to the previous slide will you?

3 sentences kept running thru my head then:
1) u can think all you want over the weekend, then we discuss again.
2) Let me go will ya. u all continue.
3) SOMEONE PLS SAVE ME!!!!!!!!

what makes it worse is that they dun like to break down into smaller grps to start on diff things. they ant ALL to participate in the discussion. that i find it SOOOO unproductive. we have the outline so some start on the slides, others on the handout. we'll take less than half the time needed. missed the time when we'll just divide the workload and everyone is perfectly comfortable with the arrangement, trusting ur grpmates completely. THAT, i call teamwork.
THIS, speechless.

I've been a cross between a duck and a frog for the past 2 days.

Went past the NUS archery peeps preparing for training and was thinking how much i missed trainings though i'm always the lazy one. i've decided not to cause trouble for the archery pple in uni coz i've done enough for those in poly. uni pple are more stressed. so shall let them have a break. what TJ said make sense too. i shldnt juz get in based on LUCK again.. then maybe mess up their team or what...

badly wanted to try Kendo initially but then their 'hoho haha' loud shoutings (actually i have no idea what commands they're screaming but it sounded sth close to that) kinda gave me a very clear indication of the weekly rantings that i shld expect if i join their club. (just imagine a PJ even more insane than now) what a nightmare! but then again, releasing frustrations and anger directly thru sports communication is an awesome outlet. *raise eyebrows

anyway, i joined fencing. or u can say i'll be joining fencing (coz i haven pay the term fund!)
it's a funny sport really. u're supposed to look confidence in that weird stance. it's tiring. no joke.
they dun incorporate team spirit in that sport. finish training u can just leave. no cool down. just take ur barang and siam. most of them are staying in hall anyway. so they can take their own sweet time. but imagine having to travel an hour to get home after a tiring day. it kinda sux. but sch w/o cca doesnt really seem like an educaiton TO ME. have been leading a kinda lax lifestyle for so long. it's time to bring my life back in order (or shld i say back to the usual messy state so that it looks like it's normal)..

oh my.. haven mention the coach. imagine instructions and all in CHINESE! and the team has a caucasian member. lolx.. the coach is even slacker than i am. he's around for an hr or so, then he told us to practise somemore and he went home. like DUH~! so weird. it's as good as not having him around. told us that the more we practise, the more at ease we'll feel. yah. as if i dunno.
maybe he should be an instructor instead of a coach.
to make the matter worse, the kendo club mbrs are having training in the same sports hall. yeah. even better. i really cant hear a word the china man is saying. so i assume. anticipate instructions. lolx.. cant help it. am trying my best. hope i dun cause any trouble now that it's a new beginning.

then again, my beginnings never turn out the way i expected them to be, so far.

Not free to start on assignments,
no time for relaxation.
No mood for exercise,
no excuse. not enough anyway.

losing track of time. i dunno what i did the past week to make it go so fast. it's like pressing the fast-forward button on the remote control while the screen is still programmed on 'play'. i cant seem to link things up and this disconnected thoughts irritate me. seriously.

the weather aint too good. i'm so looking forward to the rainy season. come Oct come.

next up, me.

Moved on, somehow. entered another phase in life, at least.

liminality.

so here i am, back to where i think i belong, where i ought to belong.

school life is as such. meet friends, try to do the best that u can be and whatever the pple at sch told/advise u to, try to meet your own expectations, then we move on. scale 'greater' heights. pple only want to see u better off than the last time they saw u. no one cares about the transition in between. maybe except me.

well, that's life. we have to move on. not because we want to, but coz if we dont, we'll get left behind. and it's kinda unbearable if u're the only person u see for miles. it's not so bad being alone, if the negativities dun start enveloping you with darkness.

whatever it is, i've only 3 years to a degree, then maybe 37 more years of work, then maybe 10 years of enjoyment after retirement. maybe 5. that's what i want to start to plan, for what i can do when i'm old and waiting for the right time to pass on. like what dreams may come, i'm seeking for the life after, which may or may not be available when i'm ready.

guess the virus got into my head recently, or the lectures are starting to hypnotise me. either way, i'm kinda glad it's Friday, odd week. cheers to even week.