less larger than life

28 June 2008

10:21 PM

Today was surety signing; my uncle tried booking breakfast at Rochester (he says it's really decent) but they don't open saturday breakfasts, so my mum happily suggested borders bistro! Second time in a month and I'm not bored yet, because there's Paperchase right outside (:

Because it was shopping day (which is practically every day), I grabbed adorable leather-bound lined journals in pink, because I could. Well, more because I don't own anything exorbitantly pink, and according to Vogue, one must keep up with colours of spring. It left a little hole in the wallet (or the card), so I hope I don't regret it when I wake up tomorrow.

For the lesser-informed (myself included), Zara finally has their sale. I went to 2 outlets, in the flaming sun and with minimal sun protection, just to find the S for the brown leather jacket I desired. Unfortunately, others were quicker than me, and all that was left were the Ms, which technically saved me $229. But at an extremely high opp cost, because retail price before was $400++, so that's a half-price bargain I missed out. I intensely dislike missing out good sales to save good money.

I was going to lie to myself and just buy the M, which my sis could pull off, but I just looked sad, because of the height. People not tall have specific needs, which include tailored clothing. This is also why when leisure pools are 'drown-safe', where the deepest end is about 1.6m, I will still drown even while standing straight. Or maybe they just didn't measure the depth well enough.

Sis and myself just went forever21 crazy, where I met rachel e with her mum, and my ex-students valerie and cheryl. Small world, this.

The above mental (a trivial) excursion has a purpose, and I've actually reached the point.

While tripping around I had a phone call. And although I talked for only about 10 minutes while walking aimlessly around, I realised that they were thinking of offering me a US education, when they usually limited people to the UK. This came as a shock because I had just signed the agreement to a UK destination, and so had promptly withdrew my pending Columbia application 2 weeks back, even though I apparently was "getting there". Also, they don't encourage US degrees for certain reasons, so I did give up a little dream I had about the fantastic Core Curriculum that only Columbia offers. I was a little dismayed after the call, not because I wasn't / am not happy with where I'm going, but because columbia was my secret wish, and you know how people are. The secret wish is something that doesn't have to come true to make you happy, but if / when it does, it goes far beyond the boundary of a mere pipe dream. Fantasy does become reality.

So here I am, just thinking and thinking about things, and I guess I want to wrap up the thought and move on now. Literature is to London, like adventure is to columbia. One is a dream, the other a crazy chimera that is now over.

27 June 2008

3:59 PM

Happy Nineteenth Su-Mae (:

I'm going to type the whole weekend down, just so I don't forget anything. I anticipate it sounding slightly stilted though, because I've never really done a breakdown of a happy time before, only boring things like my thoughts and introspections. But this is important(:

Needless to say, tanneh and myself enjoyed ourselves looking for smoot's presents, shopping at sales and planning the surprises. All that plus enjoying the sleepover and dinner with good-quality cuisine really made a great weekend. While it'll still be some time before school starts, and we'll have more meet-ups, it's safe to say that plumping up the cushion of friendship during birthdays will always be the highlight. I love birthdays (:

We got smoot a work-bag that she couldn't find herself while scanning through robinsons. It took tanneh's keen eye and general perseverance before we finally dumped the idea of a Guess miniature handbag (thank goodness not) and a clean but boring black faux leather wallet. We dumped lots of school stuff inside, made a bag charm with a fiery heart (which I love x100), and sneaked in a makeup and glamour shoot near clarke quay!

But my favouritestest of all was baking nigella lawson's hazelnut nutella cake, because I've never baked a whole cake before, and never with tanneh. The egg whites gave us both quite a scare initially, but once we got to piling on the nutella, it was a breeze. Then there was the incident of the burning smoking hershey's chocolate in the microwave (tanneh's fault haha), and the even stupider mistake of pouring hot water out of the pot with the melted choc still in the bowl in that pot (my brilliant idea); but in the grand scheme of things, such mistakes can be forgiven(: After all, tanneh was smart to try the whole hazelnuts first before we gleefully peppered the cake with them as topping. The hazelnuts didn't taste like hazelnuts.

The cake didn't taste half-bad, and I will definitely try the recipe again because there's NO flour. I'm afraid of flour. Smoot liked it, which is the important thing (although you better not be bluffing us, smoot (: )

Sleepover at smoot's

I reaffirm my dislike for vodka. I remember drinking the first gulp of the thing at the crime reporters' get-to-know-you party (yes, drinking on the job). It was a mix of pepsi and vodka that my supe shoved in my hand. I didn't feel anything for the taste, and because I'm quite picky about what I drink (usually just water), I skipped it for diluted sprite.

But watching the jap dvd with smoot watching over tanneh and I like a hawk (are you asleep?! don't fall asleep!) was an experience in itself. I didn't know jap women could be so tall. I must be missing something ):

Morning after... To breakfast-ing we go.

two peas in a pod

I loved sitting outside Gelare with the rain on the ground and the creaking seats, and the Wonder Waffles with soy chocolate obsession that made me feel like crying because it made me so incredibly happy. That is my number one food, and I will never forget the happiness in every bite.

Left out the pictures from our "angles angles!" photo shoot, because. Looking forward to the next top model time though. (:

Big hugg all round!

23 June 2008

10:50 PM

More will come...

But as for now:

The most wonderful time since a while! (:

- -

[edit] 1131pm

it's getting close to midnight but I just thought that if I don't get this down I'll forget the feeling.

Having been asked to give the RG sec4s a short talk about surviving JC life made me think, and hard.

I did survive it, we survived it, some with more battle scars than others, but it's over and gone, and now the monikers I once used in my handphone have been removed, so I need to "insert word" to refresh the memory of my handphone.

Or is it more that I need to refresh my own?

I found this from smoot's blog about 2 years ago.

School has been good! Generally, cher and I spend a lot of time doing stupid things, saying stupid things and laughing over stupid things.

The geog lecture was HELL. Everything was making us so frustrated. If the timing hadn't been so impeccably BAD, I'm sure Cher and I would have LOVED the breathtaking videos of million year old volcanoes and other landforms. Instead we were stressed frustrated and spent a lot of the time laughing at the ridiculously dramatic music that accompanied the video depicting Mount Kilimanjaro.

You see, I remember the Geog Lecture from Hell. We were squirming in the lecture hall and I was begging smoot to skip this one lecture on thursday and run to the canteen to eat pandan cake with me, but smoot had too much good sense and I had too much fear of the consequences, so we stayed put in mute (or not so mute) misery. I thought it couldn't get any worse than that day, which was strange because I liked school a lot, and never fell asleep during tutorials / lectures, and was generally an excited kid when it came to learning.

But that day just blew me away. Every minute in that hall was a minute wasted, a portion of life I wished I were not living, an hour of youth gone.

Sometimes I whined about how stressed out I was with hyperbolic statements that bordered on painful angst, and maybe it was true and I did have too much on the plate, but now it's all a distant memory of the Past. The commitments and the assignments and deadlines.

The past is always eating up the present.

So maybe I'll tell them something like this:

-Laugh harder and louder than you should

-Forget about the 'closet muggers'. They don't matter in the LR

-Keep looking out for your friends, because it's over in 2 years, and even if you wanted to, you couldn't really protect them anymore

-Make friends with everyone, but keep the good ones close

-Join anything you want. Your CV will make you proud but it won't necessarily make you happy

-Study for promos. Don't let irresponsible seniors / peers tell you otherwise

-It ain't over till it's over: keep going until The Day. (then it's really over)

Be ridiculously happy; be irresponsibly happy and grateful because every day is a new day to make mistakes that won't stick.

and chin up, because then one will be able to see clear cloud-less sun at the quadrangle every morning, and never wonder why.

School's out;

[/edit]

22 June 2008

1:00 PM

you're on the other side of the world

to me.

"ms. tham, why does he have that scar?"

"He was kissed by a dragon, but don't tell him I told."

"ms. tham, will you be getting married?"

"But these things take time."

"But you do love him, don't you?"

"Should we only marry when we're in love?

Then yes, I do."

"But, then..

how do you know?"

20 June 2008

10:13 PM

My heart is beating quickly.

It has a lot to do with the department tutor's introductory letter to the Year 1s, as well as little specimens of some of my new course-mates' strenuous intellect.

I have also received some instructions to have "read Milton's Paradise Lost" before term starts. Or having been assigned a tutor for fortnightly tutorials, who will then "discuss" my essays, or else dissect them, and my work to be "set and commented on", or else criticised and destroyed (me, not the essay). I am given 3000 words to salvage my mind at each try. And as of yet, I can't even begin to string a proper, much less meaningful, sentence. The number of sentences beginning with "and" is an explicit enough confirmation.

Not that I'm worrying myself unduly. But it would have helped if the reading list included more of the things I've actually read before. Even if I can try to quote Woolf's Room of One's Own (part of reading list), I know next to nothing about Nietzche's Genealogy of Morals or Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy for that matter. (I hope not to sound vacuous, but who is Boethius?!)

I can sort of get the General theory of Relativity and maybe even fourth dimension of space-time, but that is just, well, challenging in a worrying way. Maybe I should have taken physics all along.

It doesn't help that one's tutor, a tutor of a tres chic portion of the syllabi, is exactly the kind of brooding, sophistical hero one expects of a man who carelessly holds Subjectivity in the palm of his hand, and modernism in the jugular of his mind.

I am allowed to shrug now. And go back to reading a painful Why I Write by George Orwell, when all I want to do is finish off the less-simulating but wonderfully-engaging world of TIME magazine.

Does anyone have the latest news about who is wearing what. I should go to Fashion school instead, if only I knew how to sew.

18 June 2008

2:07 PM

14 June 2008

1:49 PM

By street artist Nemo on Rue Pirandello

I don't know why, but I loved this street art the moment I saw it featured in Time. The red umbrella, the trenched shadow and the cats fleeing down the stairs; radical.

-

I have a problem: to Mac or not to Mac. Well, that isn't really a problem considering I've already decided eons ago I was Mac-ing. Then my uncle tried to talk me out of it for almost an hour on thursday. And for a moment I had another problem: to MacAir or not to MacAir. It doesn't help that every Apple guy I've spoken to are majorly against the Air. And that I only want it because its aesthetically pleasing. And I can carry it around in an envelope just for kicks.

Anyway.

Friday was the best day of this week.

Although as a result of yesterday's gymming, 4-hour shopping and ice-cream intense mayhem, I'm a lot more sick (smoot probably is too lol). I've always thought I had a normal immune system until I realised I fall sick every dec / jan and every june. Which is a little scary because I don't think it's for lack of vitamin C.

But yesterday was extremely satisfying, and such good fun. I am really really looking forward to saturday!

On Thursday, I just decided on impulse to check out the PC Show, since Chinghee said the bundles deals at Apple were sweet. Pet was free to so we just hopped down happily, and got crushed in the crowd. But it was really nice catching up!

I have people to meet and places to go the next 2 weeks, so I have an ultimatum for my germs. In the meantime, I shall dream of doing nothing, only to wake up 2 hours later to actually doing nothing while trying to get well.

My secret wish amidst this R&R is for some sort of intellectual fury to descend upon my watchful self and stir up a maelstrom, just so I feel like time is passing more eventfully. They say this period is the time to be silent and still, grow up real nice, and then charge into Academia head-on, until issues of Bread and Butter become a reality.

So I am not complaining per se about the lack of mind movement; merely wondering when and whether I will be able to recharge the mind, come September.

I have become so still that I hear the thoughts ticking in my mind; weird jumbling mumbling things that only make sense for the 10 minutes I take to scribble it down on a scrap of paper. After promptly freeing the monster from my mind, forgetting where its source originated from, I then discard the piece of paper into the Memory Hole.

Otherwise I could just as well exuberantly hibernate in warm windy air that should be aircon (saving gaia, you see), and read Orwell's Why I Write. Or Einstein and Godel's classic time-bending journey. Or start a cooking collection of recipes that I will try soon.

Apple Muffins sound easy enough.

12 June 2008

11:15 AM

The psyche of the mob is a terrifying thing.

When I saw the candle vigils on the news, I wondered what horrific feat the government committed to induce such herd-like discontent among people who actually have better things to do.

The last time it was protests on military rule, something relatively noble and powerful.

This time, its about beef. Look how far we've come. Unhappy with the govt's decision to resume beef imports from USA? Let's hold candles in the wind.

It says a lot about the basic rationality of people. A PM with high poll ratings a mere 4 months ago now faces calls for his resignation. I mean, sociologists can start pointing fingers at a deeper malaise in the country; it doesn't hide the fact that it took so little to change so much for the Everyman.

I don't question the reason our leaders rely on 'consultations' with the people. If we really start thinking about it, we don't know much about anything at all, or anything that really matters. The economy, tariffs, oil subsidies and nationalisation. We know the micro picture of it, the little workings and the Best Case Scenarios we can project for the future. But on the grand stage of internationalism, we are no where near knowing anything about anything.

And because we can't be trusted at the stern, consultations should suffice. Never mind the nanny label; who really needs labels, but the man in the street, without other means for defining himself.

It's such a peculiar thing - our idea of mankind in general.

We all have a sort of vague, glowing picture when we say that,
something solemn, big and important. But actually all we know of "mankind" is the people we meet in our lifetime.

Look at them.
Do you know any you'd feel big and solemn about? There's nothing but housewives haggling at pushcarts, drooling brats who write dirty words on the sidewalks, and drunken debutantes.

That's your mankind in general. I don't want to touch it.

Ayn Rand 'The Fountainhead'

10 June 2008

4:03 PM

The Pump Room

Clarke Quay

I decided to give my people a treat of aussie brunch at clarke quay; the place was recommended by a food journalist / colleague, so it had to be good. And they had a buffet spread, which was worthy of the price of admission by itself, as well as a choice of a main dish.

Cheese spread: the usuals

Farmer's loaf with dips

The dips were really good. My favs were the herbed yoghurt and cannelini bean dip.

tomato remoulade, scallop with cured cucumber

From the buffet spread:

duck confit quiche // cured foie gras on merlot terrain // barley risotto with black sesame.

There is quite a lot of hype around foie gras, which isn't to my taste. Probably because the merlot packed too strong a punch in the mornings. It is said that foie gras is merely the western version of sharks fin; the inhumane methods of cultivation. So it's good I don't like it then.