home is...

morning comes around and i cant wait to see my sunny island
in its glorious greenery whether rain or shine its still beautiful

bright lights shine on the streets at night guiding me closer to home
to a place where i know i'll be safe and warm where i belong

friends and family by my side seeing me through as i grow and learn
everyday's experience bitter sweet or sour its still wonderful



home is not feeling second class, home is not feeling intrusion

home is listening to familar accents, home is being around familiar people

home is friends and family

home is chicken rice, bah chor mee, roti prata, wonton mee

home is melting under the sun

home is Yishun Ave * Blk 6** #1*-***

home is SINGAPORE!


i love you singapore! see you in 12 hours time :)

H1N1

allow me to say housework is really the most physically demanding job around the house goodness my entire body is like aching all over.

just spent the entire night cleaning up the kitchen, toilet and a pile of laundry before heading home tmr. seriously, its a job i will only want to do once per semester. im willing to live with the dirtiness as long as i dun have to do cleaning again haha.

and i also just did my packing tonight, everything so last minute lah. wonder why but i still dun really have the i-am-going-home-tmr feel now. and wasnt really as excited as last semester about going home, probably because of swine flu i guess. sigh was really quite annoyed with the fact that the people are so laid back and un-alert here while singapore is being so overly alert and a tad-bit paranoid. they should seriously switch roles lah.

now everybody is so scared of people returning from melbourne like we are all infectious walking viruses. thanks to the constant media publicity yea. "must quarantine for 7 days hor" yea i know where this is coming from and understand the reason behind this, but it makes me feel like im not really welcomed home in a way. so should we all just stay back in melbourne then.

swine flu is not like sars, where when you come to close contact with a sars patient you'll get infected. its like a flu where you'll get it only when your immune system happen to be not that strong during the period of time. like how you'll get a flu from time to time. it may only lead to death if the patient has other illnesses and complications. for a normal person, you can recover from swine even without medication.

im not saying swine is not a big deal because it actually can be if nobody does anything about it (like melbourne! pissed off) and it continues to spread on eventually reaching people who have other illnesses leading to complications. but i feel it shouldnt be treated like SARS where its seen as a deadly and super contagious virus where everybody will die from getting infected.

maybe the media should inform people more about the virus and stop scaring everyone off leading them to think of H1N1 as being another SARS virus. of course im impressed with the singapore authorities for being once again so efficient, probably without those measures the figures could have escalated by so much more. but the attention we are getting is too much. i dont like it at all.

whatever it is i am still happy to be able to go home, i'll wear a mask, okay 2 masks on the way back yea. and will self quarantine for 2 days to be safe. 7 days is really abit too over.

when the hibernation ends

woooo la la la~~~ woooo la la la~~~ (no dont stop me from dancing with the music) woooo la la la~~~ woooo la la la~~~

omg omg omg can you believe that its over!!!! wooo la la la~~~ wooo la la la~~~ teleport me to hawaii now and let me dance with the coconut trees!

phew the last four weeks really really really felt like four thousand years not exaggerating at all. im like ticking the days off everyday this month, wondering how time could pass this slow, and yet this fast.

and as always i did not finish the paper today it was crazy lah how could anyone finish that paper in 2 hours not possible. haven met someone who finished the entire paper yet. din do like 6+8 marks? out of all my four papers i only finished jap, and only feel confident for jap, which ironically i dedicated the least time to preparing for it. overall the papers are relatively okay, like i wasnt stunned by any questions in any of the papers, just tedious, and super time-and-hand-muscles-consuming. i think my left arm and hand muscles grew by almost one time, further strengthening my image of a muscle woman yea. :)

oh wells but nothing could dampen my spirits today! i was sooooo happy that everything is finally over and behind me, that i wouldnt need to gobble textbooks every day and night day and night day and night day and night. i am a freeeeeeeeee little chirpy bird nowwww!

blabbered like i haven talked in one thousand years tonight i think its true yea, that women need to talk alot (cant remember the figures from the email) haha or is it just me. okay fine nvm i dun care i just want to talk and talk, blabber and blabber and be a freeeeeeeee little chirpy bird! heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees.

im loving every second of the after exams period! no pain no gain yea. without hibernating you wouldn't know how to appreciate the goodness of being back under the sun or back to the world where everyone lives. im lovin it! (nope not providing free advertising for the big M)

and i really love melbourne! love the fact that its home to sucha wide variety of cuisines. :) i've been craving korean for a really long time, to the extent the first thing i feel like doing when i reach singapore is to have korean food. and then tonight we had korean for dinner! but the main point is that it was good! omg duno if it was authentic korean but i should think so? had barbeque meat, kind of like seoul garden? where you have to barbeque pieces of meat on a stove-like thing. it was so awesome lah! ten thumbs up (wait do i have ten thumbs? no only two okay two thumbs up) or maybe because i was craving for korean?! haha. and those free flow of side dishes like kimchi, baked potato, beansprouts and this seaweed thing that tasted like coleslaw but crunchier, omg heavenly. it didnt help to satisfy my cravings though, kind of increased my craves for more korean! :D

as if dinner wasnt good enough, dessert at Greco's was out of the world! we had a fruit tart and banana cake and didnt know simple pastries like a fruit tart and banana cake could taste so good. it's like the best fruit tart and banana cake we've ever eaten (no exaggeration here, quality assured by all of us)! the fruits were really fresh and crunchy, there're like grape, strawberry, peach and kiwi on it. everything from the tart crust to the cream (do you call it cream im not sure) to the fruits are absolutely delicious. you could just dig into the cream and eat it on its own and dont feel disgusted by it. as for banana cake, well the cake was really thick with flavour and there were chunky bite-sized bananas in between the cake layers, and the cream was flavoured with a light tinge of hazelnut i think, perfect combi for a banana cake! at least the whole thing won't taste too banana-ish.
gosh i realise i can be a food critic already lah haha. anyone wants me to try out their dishes? ;)

so what is the best therapy for overworking? i would say food and retail therapy worked best for me. haha! excuses to over indulge excessively and buy things only lah.

continuing tonight's good food journey we'll be having HK dim sum tomorrow! haha! now you know why i say i love melbourne being the home to so many different kinds of cuisine. :) i think im having more dim sum here than i've had in singapore lah. but really really want to have it, especially after watching masterchef australia on sunday night, they went hong kong to learn how to make dim sum! haha! how cool is that.

lucky me i saved quite abit this month by cooking in most of the time, saving quite a bit to allow for the food and retail therapy which is going to start soon yea. haha!

to harry potter, well i would be glad to do anything other than staying around with my texts! i think i need to start cleaning up my apartment? which is in a much worse state than you've seen last sem haha! oppps. and hmmm, maybe go jogging and feel healthy? read a book? watch some shows? i duno! so much on the list i duno which to start. anything other than studying! heees.

ohhhhhh another thing before i end off, so you think you can, dance dance dance dance US is backkkkkkkkkk! gosh i totally loved last season's one lah, and looking forward to seeing more routines this season. and finally, i can watch with a peace of mind, without feeling guilty, unproductive and bad about spending time watching tv. well im gonna spend all my free nights watching random tv shows all i want i dont care and make it all up for the guilty-ness of watching tv last few weeks!

i like this idea of having lotsa free time to rot away and feeling good about it. ;)

almost there

I AM ALMOST THERE!!! HAHA! :)))))))))))))

this moment, been looking forward to for so long, its here!!! haha! woohoo~ i finished three papers yea, almost there, almost! :)

so much's going on in the brain, so much's going on in heart, so much's going on in the body, so much so i just felt like stoning till the world turn stone!

goodness how can anyone survive marketing and management majors there's so much to read so much to disintegrate so much to memorise so much write!

i thought marketing was bad enough yesterday, until today's management paper, poof! its terrible! like media channel has maximum capacity, my hand has a maximum writing capacity too yea! i can only write this much within a minute! haven written as much since A's economics paper and the sourness in the hand! my goodness cant get that degree of sourness even by pouring lemon juice on it! my handwriting was barely legible, especially marketing. i din even had time to phrase my sentences and points properly. all i remembered was start writing since they said start and only stopped when they said stop. i had so many points in my head bursting to jump onto the paper but my hands cant cope with the speed of thought! if only we could type our answers! 2H totally felt like 2 minutes (okay maybe im being a little exaggerating but the idea is there) arhhh sucks. both the marketing and management papers werent hard for me, pretty sure if i managed to write everything i had in mind i would do quite well. :SSSSS there goes my H1 :(

and yea preparation for marketing is daunting because its everywhere! like i cant even watch a program in peace without linking the advertisements to advertising theories they're based on. and operations management, its a constant refresh of memory for points even when im not studying. all in all both subjects are so physically and emotionally draining! and now im so so so so so so so (cant stress enough) glad that its over!

japanese was okay :) had sucha a long day today i was turning stony at the end of jap paper. oh yea i had marketing paper yesterday afternoon, management this morning and jap in the afternoon. that explains why im so stressed out before and so happy and relieved now yea. hooo what kind of exam time table is this. can die man. of course now im feeling damn shiok but before that~~~~~

had to stock up large amount of coffee and set 3 alarms haha oh and i have a friend who has exam clash as well, so we had to stay in the exam venue for the entire day, since 9am till 4.15pm when our second paper end. and i was telling her how i had to drink coffee and set 3 alarms to survive these 2 days and to our amuse she did the same thing too! haha! lotsa caffeine, 1 handphone alarm, 1 bedside alarm clock, 1 alarm clock at the dining table (so we had to get up walk over to switch off) set at different intervals. she had one more human alarm though, she asked her mum to call her haha damn bad that would only be 5am in sing! i was so scared i couldnt wake up i even scrolled up the curtain before i slept yesterday night for sunlight to shine in so i wouldnt continue sleeping like a dead log when the alarms go off.

:))

last econs paper next monday to being a free little chirpy bird! heeees.

changes in life

this is definitely a very wrong time to be here now but my mind is bursting with thoughts i just had to come do this post.

as i was studying marketing, here's one definition of one of the concepts. Learning: learning refers to changes in our thought processes and behaviour caused by information and experience.

changes occur within us so subtly we may not even notice or realise the change when it happened, but somehow bit by bit, through the different exposures and experiences in life, we are changing.

looking at the album done up by xiuhui, 'the times we shared, the times we missed' and thinking back, the changes that took place within me in the last one and a half years suddenly just became obvious to me. cant quite really come up with something concrete about how and in what way i've changed, in a way, i just know i had changed.

then we were in high school, so young, so energised, so ambitious. dreaming about making something big happen. dreaming about leaving a legend when we leave. even though we had so much on our list everyday, even though it means we only will have a few hours of sleep everyday, we were still so passionate about doing what we were determined to do, and along the way supporting each other as some tripped and fall.

thinking back i kinda envied those days. even though i felt like a walking zombie walking into the school gate every morning (it really felt like i was floating instead of walking then!), at least i had a fire burning inside my heart to keep me going. at least i knew someone will be supporting me if i really fall. at least i knew at the end of the day everything will be worth it when we can finally say we lived our dream. we are not 'all talk no actions!" we created a memory which can last us a life time. a memory of a group of us during high school, trying to be the best we can be instead of simply wasting our youth and energy fooling around, sitting around in the cafe, letting precious moments pass by and not doing anything.

you know sometimes when people look back into their past they would say, "if only i had done this..", "if only i could be...", "if only i can turn the clock around...", now looking back at mine i wouldnt say any of those things. because i knew if i were to go back to that period of time again, i would do just the same thing as i had done. ahh, feeling nostalgic.

where is the fire that was burning inside me just 2 years ago? where is the passion about living life to the fullest now?

coming to melbourne exposed me to a wide variety of people, and they are so different from the group i knew back home. to put it in a nice way, the people i met here are individuals, to put it in a not-so-nice way, they are cold and self-conscious. cold doesnt mean unfriendly you know. we will still ask how each other are, we can still talk when we see each other, but you can feel that the relationship is not concrete, its not something you can build on. you know the relationship will end as you leave the class/school. its kinda, plastic. plastic convo, plastic reactions, plastic face. is this part of growing up? is this part of adult life? that people closes up and are not as simple to get along with as they ages? or is it just here?

so sometimes during moments before i fall asleep, i'll think back to our odac days, with a smile of course, about how simple we were then, working towards a common goal. and the friendships, relationships forged, they were so real.

and i also recalled the feeling of adrenaline rush whenever we're implementing our major activites, not forgetting the biggest adrenaline rush i've experienced when i was the ic for SS teambuilding. in a way thinking back, it felt quite shiok. not the being ic part of course, its the adrenaline rush. haha. and after recalling everything, i'll wonder if anybody thinks back about odac like i do now. if people still remember this part of the journey we went through together while they create new ones with their uni friends. and also thinking if the reason i kept thinking about the past is because im not creating new memories now. and these thoughts kept floating in my mind until i fall asleep.

and then here comes xiuhui's emo post about odac. writing just about the exact same thoughts i've had in my mind all this while. quoting her, "maybe to some of you.odac was nv that impt to u.or maybe some of you have forgotten.maybe momentarily distracted.or maybe.just maybe IM the one who has not moved on."

you know in the past, it was minqi whose thoughts i always coincide with. like when i go read her blog, i will find that she's thinking about the same thing as i am. and will be so, i cant seem to find an appropriate word to describe this feeling, the feeling that someone is with you, someone is thinking about something you've been thinking of, some sort of assurance, some sort of happiness, and some sort of excitement. a combination of all these i guess. and i thought this kind of coincidence would too fade off as we have less in common. until xiuhui's post on this, it brought back this kind of feeling once again. the combination of happiness, assurance and excitement.

"please don't let us die off.I miss you guys."

thank you xiuhui, for the post, for the album, for not forgetting us, while in the midst of making new friends and creating new memories with your uni friends. leng leng ah! :)

are we monkeys?

arhhhhhhhhhhhhhh to hell the exam stress. exams should be scrapped!!!! :SSSS

was having a quick dinner (of leftover pasta from yesterday) just now and watched a half hour show called 'the zoo'. it basically films what the zoo keepers are doing at the zoo and shows the daily operations of a wildlife hospital. part of the show today showed the keepers taking care of a baby monkey being deserted by its mother.

wonder why but the more i looked at monkeys, the more i think we humans look like them! i was thinking, probably we could just be a different species of monkeys, and over the years evolved to become what we are today.

i know there's this model and theory on this by some scientist already but you cant confirm yea.

so are we monkeys?

hmmm...

p.s it has been raining every day and night for this past week, adding on to the bleakness of this gloomy winter. i haven seen sunshine in awhile...

*wrap myself with blanket*

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