Mum: "Eh I'm going to the office tomorrow."
Me: "Oh. Can I go with you?"
Mum: "What? WHY?"
Me: "Nothing to do at home also."
Mum: "What are you going to do in my office????"
Me: "Maybe I'll dig up some past year papers to do... y'know, relive the good old days with you?"
Mum: "Omg can you like get a life and go out with your boyfriend or something..."

So while we're on the topic of polls, you guys can help me answer this as well:

Admit season is over and now it's time to hunker down to decisions.

Lol I wanted to post this a really long time ago, but I kept forgetting. But NS really teaches guys a lot of useful stuff- cleaning the house (or bunk), and also dealing with rhetorical questions! Jie told me that this was an actual "conversation" between his officer and his platoon, which was being pumped:

Officer: "Guys! Is your Platoon Sergeant sexy?"
Guys: "YES VERY SEXY!"
Officer: "DOWN! Am I sexy?"
Guys: "YES VERY SEXY!"
Officer: "F- YOU LA! DOWN!"
Guys: "Down!"
Officer: "AM I SEXY?"
Guys: "NO SIR NOT SEXY!"
Officer: "F- YOU LA! DOWN!"

This is basically a rehash of the standard question "Does this dress make me look fat?" For some reason, I found this pretty amusing heh.

My birthday this year happens to coincide with the 15th or 16th day of the lunar moon, and when I looked up at the sky today after a very awesome dinner at Genki Sushi, I saw a gorgeous yellow moon.

It reminded me of a video I used to watch when I was a little baby, called "Happy Birthday Moon". Bear, the protagonist, sees a beautiful moon in the sky, and goes to talk to it. Bear's voice echoes off the mountain and he discovers that the moon, coincidentally, has the same birthday and birthday wish as he does!

So Bear buys the moon a hat (the moon's, and also, Bear's birthday wish), and puts in a tree. The moon rises, and seems to be putting on the hat (as seen through a Bear's eye view through the branches in the tree). Bear is delighted. At night, the wind blows the hat off the tree and onto Bear's doorstep. He wakes up and finds that the moon has given him a hat, too!

I watched it on my birthday when I was 6 years old- I remember waking up early that day, all excited because it was my birthday, and mum let me watch the video to keep me quiet while she made breakfast.

So it's been a long time since I watched Happy Birthday Moon, but when I saw that gorgeous moon today I was reminded of it. Is anyone else looking at it now?

Anyway, thank you everyone who wished me happy birthday! It is touching to hear that all of you remembered and cared enough :) I'll try to reply all of you tomorrow, sorry if I am slow.

My cousin Matthew has this board game called "The Game of Life" with all these cute 3D bridges and buildings and stuff, and you basically spin the wheel and you go through a board of life events and eventually retire. When I was young I thought it was the coolest thing ever, and everytime I went to his house I wanted to play it, except no one would play with me because I'm an only child and Matthew wouldn't play with someone 10 years younger than him. So I'd just set up the board and spin the spinner over and over. Yup. For real.

Anyway yesterday at Jie's housewarming I FINALLY finished playing the Game of Life and made it all the way through to retirement. I hope the game is not portentous, because although I went to college (and took a $40k bank loan; please lah where got college so cheap one) I didn't land on the Dean's List box, and instead landed on like EVERY SINGLE KID BOX. Like, those boxes where they say that you had a kid, and then you take a little peg and add it to your car.

Each car has holes for up to 6 pegs, and after getting a "husband" peg, I promptly had 5 kids. The poor kid that didn't have a hole had to ride in between two of his siblings. Someone remarked that it reminded them of that photo of a lorry in Bangladesh/India, with all the workers hanging off the sides.

Anyway if that is truly portentous of my life, I will end up freaking rich (retired with $2.5 million thanks to all the LIFE cards accumulated from popping out so many babies) and I will have to buy a bus to transport my kids around. Mmhmm.

Also small things to be thankful for: I chose to become a teacher in the game (you get to choose a career, and it was more fun than "athlete" or "entertainer"), which was the BEST INVESTMENT EVER. Not only do you get to teach your kids how to read Campbell backwards and say "piperidine" instead of "papa" (lol I'm just kidding that's not the GAME of life; it's real life), you save a bunch on college because there's a square that says you have to pay $50k per kid to the Teacher for college. And thankfully because I was the Teacher I didn't have to pay a total of 5 x $50k = $250k for education. Yay for homeschooling!

Following my mum to work every morning has resulted in a substantial amount of mother-daughter bonding time, especially on the days where I start work later and we sit around to have breakfast because my mum is so badass she goes in and leaves as and when she likes (especially on Friday, where she's not actually supposed to be at work lol)

Crystal and I had a picnic for Rachel's birthday; we went to Botanic Gardens and got all of her favorite high class foods like pink moscato (with disposable champagne flutes also ok! No run-of-the-mill plastic cups for our Rachel) and feta cheese and Arnott's crackers.

Being very aunty, we headed to NTUCxtra and had this little discussion in the cheese aisle about what cheese to get her, leading to many of those tsk/lizard sounds from nearby bona fide aunties. We event stalked her blog to find a really old blogpost where she listed her most loved and most hated cheeses. But then we were faced with a dilemma: normal feta cheese, reduced fat feta cheese, or Greek feta cheese?

In the end we chose Greek feta cheese cos it sounded the most atas.

We got to Botanic Gardens and Crystal had this genius idea to make us walk all the way to Symphony Lake and the Shaw Foundation Floating Platform, and we did so (albeit with a lot of whining from me and Rachel) only to find out that we couldn't have a picnic on the floating platform because we weren't legitimate performers. :( we sat by the lake for awhile, and then moved up to higher ground so we wouldn't block the pathway.

An angmoh guy walking his golden retriever stopped near our picnic blanket (actually a disposable tablecloth from NTUC) and said sheepishly: "I don't know how to say this, but you're sitting on where he [the golden retriever] usually pees." We all laughed and laughed and were immensely thankful that we'd brought a tablecloth. The grass around our area apparently gets a lot of interesting fluids- dog pee, and also pink moscato! The surface was super uneven so Rachel and Crystal kept spilling their moscato.

Anyway cheese on crackers is okay and first, but we'd gotten a huge block (it looked small but really wasn't) and by the time we'd finished it we were SO THIRSTY and I was so sick of it. I will never eat feta cheese again.

In fact, as we were walking back to the MRT, we had to go up a slope and I don't know if it was the cheese or the wine or what but I got really lightheaded, had to squat down, and promptly threw up. ): What a waste urgh I should have fainted into some buff jogger's arms HAHAHA.

Since we were all so thirsty, we headed to Island Creamery for a float, and I saw Amanda!!! :) So happy to see her again it seems like forever since we last saw each other! And we have big plans for Bicester, hee.

Floats are really awesome, and the only thing more awesome than floats is having a friend who works at Island Creamery :D :D

My direct supervisor is on leave tomorrow, and the boss has left me in charge of all the interns by dint of my (1 month's worth) superiority.

But rest assured I will not abuse this power vested in me by the powers that be, and I will be fair and just and...

HA JUST KIDDING EVERYONE DROP 20 NOW!!!! MOVE, MOVE, MOVE BLOODY MAGGOTS!!! Muahahaha my days of reading TypicalEncik shall not be in vain!!!

Lol I wish.

People on leave = more work for me, and the honorable task of making tea for the boss will fall upon me. Ha ha ha ha.

Yup okay i'm at Pasir Ris to see Jie off before hell week starts.

Is it normal that I am more worried about hell week than he is??? He's just like "meh. It's okay. I've probably been through worse."

This is bad because it ignites in me two conflicting emotions- the desire to be right and wag my finger at him "HA, I TOLD YOU SO" when he comes out of hell week sobbing for civvy life, and the hope that his sergeants don't tekan him badly and that he actually does come out feeling like it wasn't so bad.

But it's 3:07pm now, and I'm at Pasir Ris. He books in at 1615.

If I were in the gf army I would be the most on solider. Or the wayang queen. I can't decide which.

Sighpie. I wish I were less of an emotional idiot- I never thought I'd want to not screw this up this badly but now I don't, and I'm quite at a loss as to what to do. It seems that the more I try, the worse I mess up. I'm sorry about that. You really deserve better. Perhaps it is time for me to leave.

So I was watching Ah Boys to Men with mum...

Mum: "Walau! Why war like that one? Why is everything so disorganized! SO DUSTY!"

(please note at this point in time a missile had just crashed into a HDB flat and it wasn't much of anything except rubble)

Mum: "Eh war very noisy leh. So annoying."

(On a side note why do soldiers have to put on face camo in urban warfare? Excuse me not like green will help you blend in with the grays of our buildings)

And during the scene where some random cyclists give Ken a poncho,

Mum: "THEIR JACKETS SAY KPMG??? STUPID KPMG!! BOO! BOOOOO!!!"

KPMG is a rival accounting firm of my mother's lol.

I just wish that I could make people proud of me. I'm sorry I can't be the high-flying med student on scholarship that you wanted me to be, but I'm just not good enough for it. I'm sorry that I let you down. I'm sorry that in all my 18 years, I have never had occasion to make you proud. I'm sorry that I'm just a burden to you.

Everyone deserves better. And I can't be the one to give them what they want. I'm so sorry for letting you all down. I'm so sorry that I'm so useless.

No matter what I do, I'm always a burden.

I don't deserve you.

Days like these, I feel like a humongous burden- what is the point of accolades when without them, I am nothing?

I am so sorry.

To all those I love, I apologize for wasting your time. I shouldn't have been so selfish, and I wish I could have been a better person more worthy of all of you. I hope next time, you will all find someone who is less of a disappointment to you.

I am really so, so sorry.

Wow okay so I guess most people here will have heard about it already; Hubert texted me like half an hour after the results and I was all "wtf? How did word spread so fast?" and he replied with a very illuminating "this is rj. Lol."

I'm still in the midst of writing touchy-feely thank you letters to teachers. I feel like I owe them so much, and it makes me sad to think that I will no longer be able to sit in class and banter and ask stupid questions.

But after results, I sat on a bench outside the ISH and looked at the grounds, and in the afternoon warmth I thought to myself, "there will be no need to return here anymore."

I can't say I'm happy- I loved my time in RJ and I would absolutely do it again right now if I had the chance. But I guess it's all part of life, leaving and moving on and trying not to look back. I was talking to my classmates over dinner, and I realized that I still have no concrete idea what I want to do with my life- as much as you choose your job, your job also chooses you. Yiwye was trying to dissuade me from a particular job I had in mind, saying that people in that field never get married. And that may be true. So the long and short of it is that I still don't know what's going to happen in the future, and I still can't manage uncertainty that well, but is it okay not to know where you're going as long as you go?

Slight emo moment aside, there will be no need to return because I'll always have the most important part of RJ with me. Yes, all the friends who put up with my nervous panic that morning, this is for you.

Thank you, Crystal, for your reiterations that "no matter what happens, we'll meet [outside the hall]". And for sitting with me during the briefing rather than with your class. And for being a great friend these past 10 years- my teacher mentioned you in my testimonial, haha.

Thank you, Deenie, for always being there to take my mind off things and for teasing me about being the "biggests bimbo evaaa" (ok fine I am the biggests bimbo ever you win) and for camwhoring with me and for never judging me (well, not judging me too much at any rate) and for all the times we sat in the back row being stupid and talking nonsense instead of doing our families proud and listening like model students!

Thank you, Jie, for being so calm and stoic the entire morning when I was worrying and wondering which subject I'd screwed up, and for distracting me with NS stories, and for sitting with me during the briefing too and repeatedly telling me it was going to be alright when I was bawling like a baby before the briefing. Sigh honestly I really don't know what I'd do without you; you have spoilt me far too much :,)

Thank you, Subhankar, for likewise being as jolly as ever, and for giving me a huge hug after results and telling me that you were so proud. It means a lot to me, really. It was so nice seeing you again after what feels like months (and probably is, actually), and I really love your glasses!!

Thank you, Yuhui, for asking how I was discreetly in the morning, and then for being so epicly dismissive after results. Strangely I've grown to miss your (slightly brash) dismissiveness; it keeps me grounded and really reminds me to stop worrying so much.

Thank you Yiwye, for holding my arm all the time while we were dragging ourselves to get results. It's been a fantastic 2 years with you, and I still remember screaming at each other happily and hoping so hard we'd be in the same class, and well, look how wonderful that turned out :) Thank you for always being so supportive of all my nonsense, and for the long talks that we always have even after not talking to each other for months!

And thank you to all those who I have met or interacted with, not just today, but over these 2 years; there are far too many of you to name, and I think you know who you all are already. Thank you for being part of RJ, and I will remember you till my memory fades.

And there will be no need to return here anymore.