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Friday, December 30, 2011
Mummy and I went for a girly day out to get her hair cut, and then manis and pedis all around :) For a few days after that I couldn't stop admiring the sparkly purple polish on my nails. Hey, it's more classy than it sounds- it's dark purple with LOADS of gold shimmer so that if you look at it from a certain angle it looks golden. So like two colours for the price of one, and my inner cheapo Singaporean is rubbing her hands with glee for that awesome deal. But after a few days of staring lovingly at my nails I kinda got used to seeing them perfectly manicured.
Well, until this morning, when I was sitting in Raja block waiting to meet my mentor.
To pass the time I was whatsapping James and as I looked at the screen while typing out a reply, I realised that my thumbnails were sparkly purple. And that I was going to meet a teacher, in school, wearing school uniform, with luridly coloured nails. FML.
Obviously I panicked like mad and hyperventilated about my nails to James, who summed up my situation very succintly: "gg."
But then he replied:
"Ask Tomo to go to my room, get acetone from my desk, decolourise your nails."
I was too stunned by the fact that a GUY had nail polish remover in his room (he says it's to remove super glue stains, but hmm.) to react, and besides I only had 5 minutes before the meeting, so I just decided to risk a white slip ._.
But HOORAY Lady Luck, who I believe understands the importance of perfectly manicured nails, smiled upon my sparkly purple nails and I didn't get whiteslipped! In fact I am mildly tempted to leave them on all the way till school reopens again, because they are really damn pretty hahaha. I walked past Yuhui in the canteen after my meeting, and on a high from being illegal the whole day I flashed my nails at him. He recoiled in horror and disgust, and that's how I know they're pretty HAHAHA.
Ok nevermind I'm still quite high so I'm not exactly talking sense. Plus rawrrrr cannot breathe damn this humidity!
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10:02 PM
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Saturday, December 24, 2011
A particular lift in Tan Tock Seng Hospital has no button for the 3rd floor. The first time I saw it, this curiousity caught at me and refused to let go- as a child with a hyperactive imagination, I came up with some pretty ridiculous possibilities. They ranged from the obvious (someone just forgot to put the button there) to the outlandish (they didn't build the third floor- the rest of the building was just hovering in mid-air) to the downright frightening- well, for a seven-year-old kid that is- (the third floor is haunted by a malevolent spirit hence no one ventures there)
Today, by sheer coincidence, I stepped into the lifts at the other side and behold- the Mystery of the Third Floor was solved: What lurks on the third floor is neither a malevolent spirit nor state-of-the-art hover technology, but merely operating theatres, which presumably you do not want the public roaming all over.
The moral of the story isn't a censor on imagination; it's how the unknown presents great terror. As a kid, convinced that some wronged soul had died a most painful and tragic death, the very thought of the third floor existing JUST BELOW MY FEET (well, on the fourth floor) and the implied proximity to the angry ghost gave me physical chills right down to the bone. I'd grab my mum's hand and stay extremely close to her, and till this day she still believes that this stems from a fear of hospitals. Hospitals scare me to a certain extent, but if necessary I can take them rather stoically. A possibly haunted floor, which everyone refused to address appropriately at that time (admittedly, anything short of an extended discussion which resulted in a satisfactory conclusion I deemed inappropriate), on the other hand, was Scary.
For the past few nights I've been waking up, eyes wide, heart pounding, breathing shallow. It's like I woke up from a nightmare, but I cannot, no matter how hard I try, remember what scared me awake. My memory isn't below average, but I think the source of my nightly terrors lie in my very own Third Floor- some level of me which I cannot access by normal means.
Like the physical Third Floor, this mental Third Floor (perhaps the subconscious?) scares me. It is an unknown; yet it is a variable that is so close that I can't help but need to know.
Will I ever find out someday?
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7:04 PM
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Yesterday, went to LKCRL to research for IS with Yuhui. Research papers are very tedious- so much to research on just to define a well-scoped question! For preliminary research I had about 6 or 7 books which I randomly plucked off the shelves. Yuhui was whining about how heavy his books were even though he only had about 4, haha.
Research was not very productive though LOL we kept showing each other cool things from our respective research (Yuhui had something about helper T cells being used as a psychometric determinant! Gasp!) and it was raining so heavily that all I wanted to do was sleep. Didn't help that I was poring over a dictionary which looked like it would make a good pillow.
Oh in the B1 library, however, we found a great treasure- a book detailing the history of the world, from the Singularity to Osama's death, all in the style of a Facebook newsfeed! Amazing stuff really. Ended up sitting at a cafe across the road eating expensive cakes/muffins and okayish wedges while reading the book and squealing at the references when we got them.
Then we walked to Raffles City and did the Rafblood cheer while walking past Raffles Hotel. HAHAHA. Ahh good times. Too bad my IS is still messed up LOL.
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10:13 AM
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Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Wicked was so good OMG wheeeee.
Does anyone want to watch Wicked again with me? I don't mind cheapo seats haha I just want to go immerse myself in that wonderful atmosphere again! The sets were beautiful, the singing was amazing (even better than Chorale LOL) and the songs were so cool.
The plot was quite emo though (think songs like Not that Girl- which actually strikes more of a chord than I'd like it to :/) but of course there were super uplifting songs like Defying Gravity. I've been listening to it on repeat to cheer me up, but it's not as awesome without the accompanying special effects.
MBS is also awesomely pretty! Went up to the Sky Garden and had my hair blown all over the place by the wind. Incidentally it also made the pool water freezing cold- couldn't tank it for more than 20 mins ):
Sadly everything there is like super expensive so only rich Chinese or rich Indons can afford to shop there. I was much amused by the single bank in the diamond arcade that led from the hotel to the rest of the Shoppes (yes, with an e, because anything with an e looks atas)- not DBS nor POSB, but Bank of China. And we saw some of their citizens putting their country's national bank to good use by withdrawing money to feed Singapore's economy.
Also I decided to get ice cream from Cold Rock Creamery after Wicked for supper, and because I was cheap I only got a kiddy cup (which was still $5 D:) The guy behind me also got a kiddy cup, and I quietly felt a little bit more cheered at the sight of a fellow cheapo, until he pulled out a THICK STACK of $100 bills and $50 bills to pay ._.
Ahh well that was a good rest but now it's back to work!
(I hope you're happy/ now that you're choosing this/ I really you hope you get it/ and you don't live to regret it/ I hope you're happy in the end/ I hope you're happy, my friend)
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3:16 PM
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Monday, December 19, 2011
MPS today was a little bit annoying. Got bitched at by some woman who refused to give me any information regarding her case (um well SORRY but if you "don't know" what's going on, and I don't know what's going on, neither of us is going to be much help to the other, right?) and insisted on seeing a more senior person.
That I can accept, but when she kept insisting that some number that started with 6 (i.e. a landline) sent her an SMS, and I took out my phone to show her that handphone numbers start with 9/8 and can be found at the top of a message, she just turned away in a rather rude fashion and this sentence is long and incoherent but sdjfdksjgksajdfaskdal arghhhhh.
Sigh sometimes it is very difficult to help people because people piss you off ._. I need to have a lot more inner peace.
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11:34 PM
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Saturday, December 17, 2011
For the first time in a very long while I was a complete asshole to someone. It was more draining that I remembered; I must be losing my touch. I also seem to have lost all appetite whatsoever. Surprisingly even BEING an asshole- as opposed to being on the receiving end of assholism- feels like a sucker punch to the stomach.
If I were the heroine in a literary piece of work, I would do something dramatic and symbolically significant, like walking to the bedroom, retrieving the scissors from my mum's sewing box, and then cutting off my hair- the curls that have recently appeared would fall in jagged chunks to parallel the rain that seems to be falling and not-falling at the same time outside.
But because I am not naturally literary (possibly because I love my hair far too much to ever be a deep enough character) I just walked to the bedroom, and tied my hair up in the ugliest but most functional way possible to keep it out of my eyes, and off my neck, and then I went to tackle Differential Equations.
Is that equally significant? In a world where we do not have convenient subtitling for our actions, what conveys the motivation behind them when they are shut up tight inside our brains?
I fear being alone with my thoughts. Quietness and solitary bring them to the forefront, and that is a most terrifying prospect.
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1:57 PM
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Friday, December 16, 2011
I have been getting careless lately- been letting my guard down a little too much and revealing a little more than I should. If I am not extremely careful from now on this might explode into something I do not want it to. Tread carefully, young one.
In addition I need to constantly remind myself that stolen time with you is merely just that- stolen time; there are things that I cannot compete with, and you can never violate the first law of living organisms or whatever that nothing can come from nothing.
(Nada y pues nada, nothing is with thee.)
--
Chorale concert today was good! Some singers have really smooth voices that remind me of flowing milk chocolate. Sigh yes I am hungry haha.
But apart from hopelessly fangirling I was pretty useless as a backstage person. No one needs 3 people to do backstage, because everyone ends up doing very little work and staring at each other rather often. In fact the closest I got to being useful was being a human mic stand for my Jie when he was playing the piano for lounge music in return for a thank-you hug. Sadly I was not a very good human mic stand either, because I am not a statuesque blonde like the one of Wheel of Fortune. But yay my Jie is awesome at piano :) Even though we are not related by blood I hope to inherit some of his talent someday.
Gah I am exhausted, physically and mentally. I should really sleep earlier. In any case I plan to sleep half the day away tomorrow. Don't wake me up kthx
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10:59 PM
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Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Vic's First Law of Blogging: The amount of things one has to blog about varies inversely with the time one has to blog.
So either life is so amusing and so hapz that you have no time whatsoever to blog about it, or you can sit around in front of the com twiddling your thumbs, blogging stuff like "Soo... 'sup?"
Sadly life nowadays has fallen into the first category and while it's exciting, I am barely gasping for breath and trying to stay afloat. I will update properly again once I have time, or when the muses move me, but in the meantime here is a link to a .gif of a deer removing its hooves and wriggling its fingers.
No matter how many times I watch this I can't get over the mildly grotesque fascination I have with it. IT HAS FINGERSSSS.
(Note to self: SF- braids, the 3-step seduction method, CalebandJoshua, Jo's waterbottle, Suchenchristinelim's lecture, nonsailor, emo button)
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10:25 PM
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Sunday, December 11, 2011
I initially wanted to let loose some residual anger and angst on the targets during archery this morning (I find that I shoot superbly well whenever I'm angry; same with piano too-- this is somewhat disturbing) but I forgot that today is Archery World Cup and the range wasn't open.
I thought of going over to PPCC to meet the guys there shooting, but apparently the range there was in use too and everyone'd gone over to Cedar Primary. And it looked like rain so I decided to just forget it and go home to work.
But this post bears witness to the fact that I'm not actually working. Instead I'm trying to figure out how to work the new Blogger interface which looks like a boring document ._.
In any case, tee hee the lunar eclipse last night resulted in this conversation:
Ahh it's fun making obscure references. Ok well 1Q84 is hardly obscure but its door-stopper-ish size does deter some would-be readers I suppose. Ehehehe I want to buy the Jap versions to cross reference, but sigh they cost a lot ):
Bah someday I will be rich enough to walk into a bookstore and buy everything I want to read. As of now trotting around bookstores is just a sad endeavour because everytime I flip to the pricetag of a book (yes, vulgar, but not having unlimited cash flow it is a must...) something stabs at my heart. After all, as much as I'd like to, I shouldn't be spending all my scholarship grants on books.
...Well, at least not until next year's grants come in. Heh.
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10:43 AM
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Friday, December 09, 2011
Today during Archery training I looked up at the sky (don't know why, probably to howl about how badly I shot) and I saw an EAGLE.
It was so close that I could actually see its brown and white feathers, and the finger-like projections on the ends of its wings. Darn I need to mug less Bio. The first thing that came into my mind when searching for an appropriate phrase to describe its wings was "finger-like projections", and everyone knows that just code for villi or microvilli.
Eagles have very, very wide wingspans.
Now if I were a better writer, I would work some inspirational story into this eagle sighting and end on a cheerful uplifting and motivational note, but because I am no Hemingway and this is not a stellar piece of postmodernist literature, I will just say that the eagle was very pretty and I'm so happy I saw it.
BTW Yuhui made a meme today which I shall quote here because I found it hilarious: "You probably thought this was a seed coat. Nope. Chuck Testa." Oh yes Yuhui, you are the nerdling. Who else would make a meme out of testas ._. Sadly there are few bio nerds who know memes and few people who know memes who are bio nerds.
I also went to Tomo's service centre for Comm Service! Watched the elderly play some mahjong-like game called Rummy-O, which bears some similarity to the Gin Rummy I always play during family events, but is quite a lot easier haha. Picked it up after watching 2 rounds, and then took over when one lady said she didn't want to play anymore. Wheee I love having gamblers' blood- it makes picking up these sort of games so.... dare I say it? INTUITIVE. If only mugging stuff was like that ahahaha. The old people all started giving me this sturgeon face halfway through the game, saying that I knew how to play, which is a Big Compliment HAHAHAHA.
Yeah life is good. :)
Also Tomo was explaining the terms in the game after we left (I learnt the rules, but not the terms), and he said: "Well, you know you can put down straights, like 1-2-3, 4-5-6, right? Or you can put down gays, like 5-5-5..." In fact he said it with such a straight face I just stood there stunned for a moment while trying to decide if he was kidding.
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6:50 PM
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Wednesday, December 07, 2011
Bio O today was quite ridiculous: after hearing Russell and Chentian bitch about having to remove the 3rd maxilliped from prawns, I decided to forget about prawns, because what are the ODDS of prawns coming out twice?
Well apparently since they don't change questions, pretty high o.O We were asked to remove the 3rd maxilliped again and I was cursing inside because I'd completely thrown prawns out the window. Luckily I guessed which one it was correctly, but when we had to name the parts of the 3rd maxilliped (yeah, apart from knowing the names of all 19 prawn appendages, we also have to know the names of the parts of each of the prawn appendages) I messed up hahaha.
Biochem was madness oh dear. Two UV specs in an hour- first time I couldn't finish a Bio practical ever! :X But oh well, got all the way to the last question, which sounds pretty good except that the last question was worth 30 marks -.- Bio O has strange mark weightages.
Plants was quite typical la, sectioning. Except we had to section a moss and jdfsaghasjfksad how do you even section a moss!!! I now have cuts all over my thumb thanks to the razor blade rawr. Fear meeeee.
Ecology was exactly the same as last year's; bean counting to simulate Mark and Recapture. They were pretty nice and even gave us the formulas, so yay! Systematics was stranger; we had to classify crabs and some of them were the stuff nightmares were made of! There was a round white crab with horribly long chelipeds and I wanted to die looking at it. NIGHTMARESSSSS.
After that we wanted to go out, but somehow everyone started drifting away and in the end there was no one left to go out so I decided to go Raffles City to eat the awesome fries. Since Yuhui was in the vicinity I decided to jio him, but amigawsh I have retarded friends hahahahaaha.
Yuhui: "Hellooo where are you?" Me: "I'm at Raffles City already! Where are you!" Yuhui: "I'm at Raffles City also. I'm at the MRT area. Where are you?" Me: "I'm at B1 already la slowwwww." Yuhui: "Ok stay there I'm going to find you and then I will kill you!" Me: "WTF? No you aren't even going to find me!" Yuhui: "What! Why wouldn't I find you? Challenge accepted!" Me: "You won't find me because I'm walking BEHIND YOU."
We had a pretty interesting (if nerdy) discussion on progression of species, based on something he'd read in a book about the Philosophy of Bio. The book's pretty good; it talks about the difference between Bio and other sciences in terms of teleological explanations- Bio seeks to explain why something exists, while other sciences posit objects to explain phenomena. For example, in the context of evolution, we'd ask WHY the giraffe has a long neck, and explain it in term of an observed phenomena (giraffes have long necks because it confers an evolutionary advantage in eating leaves), but no one asks "Why electrons?"
Teehee that's why Bio is a beautiful science :P
But gosh haha we are Bio geeks indeed- Yuhui met a couple of his friends and started explaining to them why St. John's and Red Cross never exist: "We fill the same ecological niche!"
Ahhh oh man I really hope there will still be time for random nerding around next year. After one year of Bio RA I can't imagine what life will be like without random nerdy Bio references and people who actually GET said Bio references. That being said, nerdlings can be quite disturbing too- observe the following conversations (which actually happened)
Me: "Heh yesterday I accidentally made an earthworm poop!"
Normal person's response: "EW EW EW EW EW EW EW" Mean person's response: "See your face then poop la." (Yes, OUCH) Nerdling's response: "Earthworm shit? COOL!"
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8:37 PM
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Monday, December 05, 2011
Today in the shower I caught myself singing "Top of the World". It's been a while since I last identified with the cynical, hard-boiled person I used to be, but still, singing "Top of the World" is a tad out of character, even for warm and fuzzy Vic. I couldn't think of any major thing that would result in such happiness today, but I racked my brains and managed to come up with a number of small things that made me feel a little burst of warmth- 1. Seniors telling me about Bio O Prac 2. The camaraderie felt through a teammate's pat on the shoulder 3. A hilarious discussion with the gym instructor: "Girls, you should do bench press with the bar over your boobs. Yknow why? Cos if you lose strength and the bar falls, at least it will bounce off and not crush your windpipe! :D" 4. A pretty ponytail (Hey shut up I'm not a bimbo- My ponytail today really looked good ok) 5. Wendy trying to dissect a snail. "Look- a ganglion. Wait, no, I'm not sure if this is even the head. ...Maybe it's the snail's dick." Perhaps happiness is just about learning how to appreciate tiny things in life like these, and not seeking for earth-shattering pieces of good news. Ah sigh it seems that only discussions of sex can generate any activity on my tagboard o.O Xinyuan I don't get your latest tag, but even as a cynical Bio student I sure hope there is more to life than reproduction, because if so, I have just wasted about 6 years of reproductive potential!! D: Plus girls still have to invest more in reproduction so they ought to be more choosy about their mates! This is why I still don't have a bf ok. Don't need to pressure me already haha.
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10:13 PM
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Sunday, December 04, 2011
I was listening to DJ Earworm's 2010 United States of Pop remix while loading a video of a squid dissection. The lyrics were pretty catchy until I realised that they went something like "Now let's prepare to cut the squid open." I hadn't realised the squid dissection video had finished loading and had started playing.
Oh my god, I just rocked out to a squid dissection.
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9:29 PM
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Saturday, December 03, 2011
Also, just a random snippet of conversation I was reminded of today:
Me: "I don't get why everyone thinks I'm a bimbo!" Tomo: "I don't think you're a bimbo." Me: "Oh! Really? Yay that's nice of you to say-" Tomo: "- Yeah, of course not. Bimbos are pretty." Me: "...Ouch."
Yeah see such fantastic friends I have.
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11:12 PM
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After SAT today I went to Din Tai Fung to lunch with Shrub, Tomo, and James. Sigh having rich friends is burning a giant hole in my pocket, but I guess that's just an occupational hazard from hanging around with two billionaires and a lord. Plus Tomo keeps throwing out places that he wants to go for lunch next, and they're all like "Oh I know this really nice place; it's called The Line!" (Shangri-La; lunch on a weekday costs upwards of $50, and the last time I even ate there was when my mum treated me for getting PMBP or something. BIG STUFF.) But yes The Line is really good and I am actually discovering awesome places to eat around Singapore. /failSingaporean
Shrub was telling me about the people in his SAT room who were openly cheating-- flipping back to work on other sections or write the essay when they were supposed to be working on other sections-- and apart from making me quite pissed off it made me go into a bout of internal angst.
What, exactly, are we living for? People have (sometimes much to my chagrin) called me a mugger, and I definitely do take my grades very seriously, but I don't think I'd be the sort to give up everything for grades. This sounds so holier-than-thou, but at least I would not give up my morals-- where is the satisfaction in getting good grades if you know that they aren't a true reflection of your abilities and merely a product of cheating?
Is life really just a rat race towards the top? When I am feeling like more of a humans person, I think that there really must be something higher than all these very pedestrian worries- something like the beauty Lit seeks to express, or the truth it seeks to find- some sort of uniquely human gem that separates us from the chimps, I think?... beyond the not-very-rare talent of having evolved to fit our ecological niche.
If this sounds like a very British sentiment, kind of like how World War I shocked the collective Victorian/Edwardian psyche, it probably is. But then again I learnt my childhood tales of morality not from gentlemen and gentlewomen bundled up in vests and petticoats, but from the somewhat morbid tales of Chinese history- who could forget the quintessential tale of Yue Fei's loyalty? (Though to make the story more palatable to a P2 audience, the editors of the Chinese textbook conveniently changed the part where his mum carved the words into his back with a knife to her writing said words on his back with ink.)
When I watched San Guo last year (watched, not read, because I am almost Chinese-illiterate) I was struck by the fierce loyalty of the soldiers in battle, the way they treasure their own kinsmen over practically anything else. Perhaps I am a hard-boiled cynic, but I have yet to see such touching tales of devotion in my own day. What do we protect? What do we treasure? Are the kinsmen of the olden days now reduced to a one-man show where all you care about is yourself? It's not the first time I'm thinking this, but there are times I wish I could just forsake the modern world and all its improvements to go back to some alley in the 80s where people actually cared about less materialistic (?) things.
Sigh I think I am just tired out, because my schedule for the past few (and next few) weeks has been/will be crazy. I wonder if there will ever be a time to properly rest and not worry about the tasks yet to come! And yes I know it is ironic that I am typing this when I should be researching cockroach innards, but if I don't say this I think I will explode.
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7:26 PM
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