Allegro Tempestoso

2010-10-01T23:26:00.002+09:00

Went back to my old HDB today at night. It was a very strange bittersweet feeling. Most of the residents had moved out and only a few (we only spotted about three in 13 levels) were left. It was like reliving a dream of the past - we'd moved out when I was 3 or 4 years old.

It was strange walking down 13 levels, seeing locked doors and black windows. The place seemed to be swarming with old memories of children playing along the corridors, with housewives chatting to each other while they watered their plants, with old people wasting away - cooped up in their homes watching the same programs over and over again. But there was nothing left, no one left. Only shadows of the past, empty shells of the people who once lived there infested the place. Seeing all the doors being of different styles only served to remind of the type of people who once lived there, but were now gone. The empty lifts remained open, waiting for people who would never come.

I got the strangest feeling from walking past a door saying "恭喜发财，万事如意"...

We went to the playground where I used to play as a child after kindergarten ended each day. The pelican and the tortoise and the hare were still there, but my favourite swings were gone. The deserted atmosphere of the whole place, with the empty stand for the swings, made me feel like there was a huge gaping hole in my heart. There was a brown cat which came over and started rubbing herself on my legs and I was feeling flattered before it went over to a short wall and started rubbing itself briefly on it and my mum pointed out it probably had bugs. Only then did we realise it was pregnant. But when we were leaving, the cat simply looked at us (without rubbing itself on the wall), so maybe the disappearance of the residents, the growing up of the children who used to pat the cats so lovingly, made her lonely and whenever a human came she'd go up to them it would rub itself on them, yearning for their touch. It was yet another strange thing to look back at the deserted playground with the (pregnant) cat staring back at us, and with the knowledge that life was about to be born in such a lifeless place filled with ghosts of the past and none of the living.

Saw a staircase which brought back an old, lovingly-cared-for memory of stroking a cat lying on the steps.

All these will probably be gone the next time I come back, replaced by shining, industrialized, cosmopolitan condominiums.

Such is the way of society.

2010-08-14T21:26:00.002+09:00

为什么当你终于拥有了世界最美丽的玫瑰的时候，当你把它紧紧抱在心胸时，你得到的只是无底的刺痛，永无止境但实现不了的梦想？为什么当你终于看到了亮光，你发现出口是那么的高，永远是达不到的？

Even now I have absolutely no idea what I'm struggling about. If I'm not interested in medicine at all, or am unwilling to try for medicine, why don't I just forget about medicine and become a musician? Even as I lament about how others can be free to do whatever they want and become musicians and I can't, I suddenly realise that I can. But why am I not doing it? Why am I still struggling inside? I love music more than my life, so why am I torturing myself with the thought that in future I may end up pursuing medicine instead of music? Why don't I just ignore everything and go for music?

2010-06-15T18:52:00.002+09:00

I've finally managed to face my failure after seven months. Yes I've been harping on my failure to get through the first round of the national piano and violin competition =.= I know I played badly, but I only know it was in terms of notes. I'd been wishing all along in my heart that they eliminated me only because of my technique and not because I didn't have enough emotions, because I don't have anymore to give, and I really don't want people to be unable to feel my love for music (because that would mean I don't love music). It's harder to learn how to play emotionally than how to play technically - it's either you have emotions or you don't.

Recently (but before the Europe trip) went to find Julie Tan. My mum told her about my not being able to get through quarter finals for the competition =.= at that point in time Julie Tan seemed to feel it was because I didn't go into details enough. She said I had the '材料' to get into YST. But still came out miserable because I was reminded by my failure to get through the first (damn) round of the competition and of my severe inability to strike conversation - and partially because I doubted details made such a difference so that they would be the only factor not letting me through the quarter finals.

More recently I went to find Mr Loh. He accepted me. I suppose this was what made me look up from my failure. I know he probably accepted me because he couldn't find the straightforwardness to turn me away. Anyway thank God though :) I don't know where I would've gone to find a teacher after that. Anyway the first two lessons I've had with him has been Hell in a nutshell. He was very nice and all, but I came out of each lesson feeling like crap :( He seems to be the opposite of wang laoshi. Wang laoshi either shouts at you or turns red in the face, but Mr Loh goes freaking cold and sarcastic. Perhaps not as sarcastic as Wang laoshi but... it's just freezing :( Well I'm sorry but my two stupid hands just don't coordinate and don't coordinate with the stupid metronome! :( AND I CAN'T PLAY WITH THE FREAKING COLD ATMOSPHERE. Okay excuses :( Truth is he made a mistake in taking me in. I'm like sandstone among the gemstones. But I really don't want to be fired. On the other hand I don't want to keep on giving him heart attacks/high blood pressure (even though I probably gave wang laoshi more high blood pressure, judging from his face - but wang laoshi's younger). And the worst thing is that I made Mr Loh wait for me last lesson =.= >.< I was in Europe and I think I didn't bring it across clearly enough... Omg. Anyway he "let it go this time". Omg omg omg it sounded so intimidating :x He smsed me at like 12 midnight to ask me why I didn't turn up for lesson - shock sia :( I was still watching movies on SIA during lesson time. AND my stupid timing meant that I smsed him back at like 01:28 am - probably when he was asleep. Omg I must remind myself never to sms in early mornings no matter how shocked I am.

And sadly, I'm SICK of my mozart and my chopin etude :( They're getting NOWHERE. My mozart is still as haphazard and sloppy as ever (and I'm genuinely losing interest in it as a bonus), and my Chopin's notes are still tripping over one another and slipping like Peiwei in concerts (stupid pun here - slipping->sleeping). And I'm starting to feel mechanical when I play the etude. ARGH. For Mr Loh's blood pressure and health, I must GANBATTE faster. AHHH.

无声的对话

2010-06-15T17:00:00.006+09:00

好久没写了。最近去了奥地利，维也纳，萨尔茨堡，莱比锡和布拉格。到了那儿真的不想再回来到这个充满限制，郁闷得令人窒息的国家。遗憾的是我们并没有机会吃那儿的美食。我认为在欧洲旅游的时候，最精彩的是在莱比锡的一个演奏会。哇靠他们弹得太精美，太刺激了！！！为什么新加坡没有这么好的乐团，没有这么好的音响效果的礼堂？！我在那的时候决定会死的时候一定要在一场令人一辈子都不会忘的演奏会的尾声死去。

最近多了一些时间，人便开始多想一些过去的事情。尤其在布拉格的时候，虽然酒店破烂了一点，那边的宁静真的共人思考。那时候christina冲凉冲得超久，然后到了宋洋的房间练琴，房里没人，周围静得像只有自己生存在这世界里，总算有了点属于自己的时间。听着柳叶在微风中对彼此说悄悄话，看着孤独的小鸟在停车场里独自一个徘徊，脑海中不禁浮起了他的笑容。不知道他现在过得怎样；不知道他那具有传染力，幼稚的笑容是否还在那张脸上；不知道...他是否曾经想过我。应该是没有吧 - 这时候我忍不住笑了自己 - 多么傻（这时听到他的声音在说：“傻孩子”）。微风又吹了起来；不知来自何处的音乐随风飘起，微弱得像蜘蛛网的丝，旋律迷糊得像回忆，像童年的梦想随着长年的打击和批评变成了的阴影。这时候心中的思念和渴望又像潮水涌了上来，心里好像有了一个装不满的酒杯 - 这是第一次周围无人来分散我对他的思念，更没有钢琴来以它柔美的音律和无语的甜蜜包囊我和解去心中的难受与悲痛。泪就像逃犯，在没人在的时候，没人知道的时候钻出来。一个人的悲痛，没有人来回答。连上帝也默默无语。

只有那苦中带甜的音律。

I went to a concert where a woman's foot was as big as Dang Thai Son (a very famous pianist) part 2

2010-01-31T00:38:00.002+09:00

O-KAY now the moment you have all been waiting for - a flurry of complaints and the unleashing of rage and disdain from Claire!

Let's get serious. Singapore's art culture totally sucks.

In the Chopin concerto, people started coughing right from the very beginning. AND there was someone using a laptop - Don't think you're safe down there in Circle 1 dude! I saw you with both my eyes, freaking idiot! D< It's like, the main reason I couldn't enjoy the concerto truly was because people kept coughing. It's just so hard to enjoy music when people keep coughing and dragging you unceremoniously out of the paradise of music. It's like the shock you get when you fall asleep in class and the teacher suddenly walks up to you and says your name in your ear. Throughout the whole performance I was like just wishing (and praying briefly to God at some point in time during the second movement) that people would stop coughing. I was getting super damn angry (pardon the language) and I was like just managing to keep my anger in check. So it's quite obvious it's hard to enjoy the music like that. Screwed lah! I was very angry. Really. AND someone near to me farted like two times. WALAO DAMN SMELLY LAH. He farted once during the second movement and once during the encore - the two pieces which were the most beautiful. Dang Thai Son played Chopin Nocturne in E-flat major - the one that everyone knows. That changed my perception of him quite drastically because I thought he was just another pianist who played well and used piano to gain fame. However him playing this song garnered some respect and admiration from me. I don't like pianists who try to impress and wow their audience with formidable techniques and mind-spinning leaping of hands. Those pianists are like chasing the ideals of the world instead of their own. So I prefer pianists who love a song because of the emotionality of the song or the harmony in the song to pianists who love a song because it showcases technique and bravura.

Anyway. YES this is the highlight of the concert! Luckily I wasn't the one to receive this misery (haha sorry Peiwei! :D) because I would almost certainly have been furious to the point of demanding that person to stop doing whatever she was doing. Peiwei was sitting next to a woman wearing a flowery ah-ma t-shirt. As if that wasn't bad enough, that aunty took off her shoes and crossed her legs and put her bare foot on the barricade in front of us (we were the first row of circle 2). I was quite bothered by it even from two seats away and you can imagine the torture poor Peiwei had to go through. The conversation during the intermission is as follows:

Me: (talking all the way from Dang Thai Son finished playing his encore and getting up from my seat in the circle) Singapore's arts culture is seriously damn suck lah! All the people kept coughing! Why can't they eat mints or lozenges or something? Then got people... (blah blah blah)
PW: Ya lor. Just now want to do standing ovation also don't dare. You see just now all those who did standing ovation were Caucasians. (and only 3 of them in total, and stood up for less then 10 seconds) I wanted to do standing ovation also don't dare!!! Then had to resort to cheering...
Me: You never tell me you want to do standing ovation! Then we can do together!!!! AHHHH
PW: You know hor, you saw this person next to me who put her foot up right?
Me: *burst out into voracious laughter and earned a few stares* Ya. HAHAHAHAHA...
PW: I realized that humans can see almost 180 degrees.
Me: ...Hahaha ...Really meh? About... 170 degrees only ma. Hahaha...
PW: Aiya around there lah. Anyway, that woman's foot was like 156 degrees in my view so I realised it was impossible not to see it. *getting very agitated* And hor, you know Dang Thai Son looks very small from up here right? So in the end the woman's foot was as big as Dang Thai Son!!!!!!
Both of us started laughing like maniacs. We couldn't speak properly for like 5 minutes.
PW: *some random crap about the woman's foot (which i cannot remember)*... And if she was wearing like a black gown or something still can forgive. But she was wearing...
Me: Flowery ah-ma t-shirt
PW: Precisely!!!!!!! You know when I remember something I will associate something with it. Like last time I watched a drama with my cousin who had stinky feet! Then whenever i think of that drama will think of the smell! So when i think of Dang Thai Son now I will think of her feet! ><
Me: *drinking mango Snapple* *trying desperately not to laugh*
Laugh laugh laugh blah blah blah

Anyway I was like SUPER sad that we couldn't get to see Dang Thai Son close up. I was prepared to sacrifice the rest of the concert to meet him during the autograph session during the intermission but Peiwei wasn't -.- so we didn't meet him. AHHHHH ><>< >< >< >
And I TELL YOU I WANT TO MIGRATE TO GERMANY. THE ARTS CULTURE THERE IS 1,000,000% BETTER THAN SINGAPORE. YOU KNOW WHAT THE AUDIENCE ACTUALLY CLAPPED BETWEEN THE CHOPIN MOVEMENTS. WALAO. IT'S LIKE BASIC CONCERT-GOING ETIQUETTE NOT TO CLAP DURING MOVEMENTS. EVEN A 6-YEAR-OLD CHILD CAN TELL YOU THAT. And after the concert we came out and Peiwei pointed out the difference in dressing between Singaporeans and Caucasians. The Caucasians wore concert-going attire or formal dinner attire (like MEEE HAHAHA). You know what the Singaporeans wore? Spaghetti stripe. Shorts. Polo t-shirt. Round-neck t-shirt. Jeans. Flowery ah-ma t-shirt. WALLAO CANNOT STAND IT SIA (haha picked it up from minqhee).

I asked my mother later "Why do these people go to concerts if they can't even appreciate the music? Don't go and waste space or ruin other people's enjoyment can or not!" My mother then told me some people go concert just for face. To seem high-class. To tell people that they've been to so-and-so's concert. Then I cried out, "Then what's the point of telling people you've been to somebody's concert if you can't critique it???" She said "Just to impress people ma. To seem rich lor." WALAO i DESPISE these people can. Sorry for despising them but I can't help it. USING music as a TOOL to gain fame or money (on the part of concert pianists) or as a tool to impress people is like an absolute appetite-upset for me. How DARE these people use music as a tool? Music is the pure and uncorrupted desire of the composer and pianist's synchronization to reach out to the audience, to bridge the gap between different souls and to touch the deepest chasms of one's soul and bring light to the darkest areas of a person's mind. It is the purest expression of a human's soul. How DARE these people do such superficial things? How can there even BE people like that? How can anyone not like music?

On that note, I kind of regret not taking up violin. Not that my parents would have allowed me to take it anyway. It's such a passionate and sexy instrument. Haha :) Piano is more elegant and reserved. On the other hand, it is also a psychotic and cold instrument. Violin's passion suits me, I think. But piano's coldness also suits me. The two extremes of my character. Anyway. I really regret not taking up violin, but I guess if God wanted me to take up violin He would have made a way. An embarrassing reason for wanting to take up violin is because i think guy pianists generally don't go for women who play piano (whether they're good or not) but rather female violinists. Or flutists for that matter. Haha ^^ Sigh.

Stupid wang laoshi =.=

I went to a concert where a woman's foot was as big as Dang Thai Son (a very famous pianist) part 1

2010-01-30T23:32:00.002+09:00

Yes I'm fully aware that I haven't updated this dead blog for ages. Nothing really worth blogging about these few days, except that irresponsible toddler of a piano teacher has taken flight and Peiwei and I are left stranded without a piano teacher. Some stupid hypocrite he is -.- how dare he condemn Li Yundi for 'playing like shit' and 'not having any good areas. At all.' while he can't even meet the basics of being a piano teacher, which is to manage his students' pianistic education with duty and responsibility? Fine he has financial problems but he should at least tell us when he's going off and where to - even if he doesn't want to teach us anymore. Or rather, tell us if he doesn't want to teach us anymore before disappearing off to God knows where.

Anyway this is a rather old topic. The main topic is as stated above -.-

Peiwei and I went to watch Dang Thai Son's concert today!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WHEE. For those of you who don't know (which is sadly a majority), Dang Thai Son is a first-prize winner of the International Chopin Competition held in Warsaw - one of the most prestigious competitions in the world (of all time). It's like - OH MY GOSH MANNNNNN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WAHAHAHAHAHA. WE GOT HIS TICKETS HEH!

Started with Singapore Symphony Orchestra playing Schumann's Manfred Overture. Quite a refreshing rendition. However there was some disparity among the volumes of the instruments and insufficient balance between the tones. I have frankly never been able to tell much between the interpretations of different conductors and orchestras and if they are good or not. But this much I know. ANYWAY. The ugly problem reared its head around here. For some reason, there seems to be a LOT of people whose throats simply have to express opinions and kept coughing. CONSPICUOUSLY.

The worst was when Dang Thai Son played. No I mean that Dang Thai Son played wonderfully. He played Chopin's Piano Concerto no. 1 in E Minor op. 11. It was a very personal interpretation and it is very much intriguing to see how interpretations can vary from individual to individual. Actually I've only heard Li Yundi's interpretation properly - Lang Lang simply puts me off somehow. It's like, he's using his facial expressions to pull up his music instead of allowing music to be the factor behind his expressions. It's like a totally wrong reversal of roles. His facial expressions make me... want to slap him. -.- Sorry no other words can express what I want to say. Except wringing his neck, probably. I have a certain fondness for wringing people's necks. Li Yundi's one was more beautiful, with intricate expression and meticulously-crafted tone - with some of the heroism of Beethoven and the idealistic fantastical personality of Mozart. Sounds too Classical O.o but no other composers can truly represent such extremes (Prokofiev is too extreme), except Chopin himself of course. Oh ya my sister bought 4 pieces of clothing at Takashimaya today for CNY. Anyway,

Dang Thai Son's interpretation was more passionate and majestic. And more traditional, if I may add. He didn't dare to take much rubato, perhaps in order to adhere to Chopin's direction of "Allegro Maestoso" for the first movement (meaning "fast and majestic"). This was apparent straight away from the beginning from the cadenza-like solo piano passage. After playing the first E-minor-tonality arpeggios, he didn't pause much to allow the audience time to react to the passage before proceeding to the descending passage. And after the descending passage again, he didn't pause much before going on to the A-minor-tonality arpeggios. I think that if he paused more it would be more impactful and adhere more to the performance direction of "allegro maestoso". Anyway, in the more lyrical moments of the first movement, Dang Thai Son proceeded to execute them with considerable passion and heroism, a notable contrast from Li Yundi's execution of delicacy and refinement. By the way, I have a feeling that Dang Thai Son didn't really put his heart into today's concert. He played some very lame wrong notes which even I could have played correctly -.- and when the orchestra was playing, he appeared rather distracted at parts. Still better than Wang Laoshi, definitely. That guy was obviously totally sian-ed to the max when the orchestra was playing long tutti sections -.- Dang Thai Son's playing seemed slightly mechanical at parts (not that I could have played it better of course), perhaps due to his strict abiding of tempo. I always feel that the pianists who play this concerto don't use rubato at parts where they should (personal opinion of course - I like to use rubato a lot. To make myself seem less hypocritical, wang laoshi said I have a gift in performing rubato). The chair I'm sitting on seems like it has only three legs out of the four -.- Somehow I feel that Dang Thai Son's playing didn't touch me as deeply as Li Yundi's does - probably because he played more manly-ly. Hahaha. I feel that the more 'man' you are, the easier you are to predict. Seriously men are such simple creatures. Anyway Dang Thai Son's first movement didn't impress me particularly much. I mean, it was nice, definitely. But it could have been more personal. But on the other hand, he probably isn't a very personal person so to make the music personal to him it has to be not personal. No sense. Never mind.

His second movement gave me some mixed feelings about him. He is able to produce a tone equal to Li Yundi's if he wants to, but why doesn't he do it all the time? The second movement was passionate and beautiful at the same time. But somehow I feel that his passion is a bit... forced. Not very genuine. Perhaps because I've been rather tired today, so I find it a little harder to put myself into the music with my heart and soul totally. However, the part where the piano does a solo (beguiling notes in the high registers flitting capriciously here and there) was served with elegance, poise and heavenly innocence. And probably because we're a little far from the stage, SSO overpowered Dang Thai Son at times and the flute was drowned out and it sounded almost like it was drowning - when it managed to penetrate through the orchestra there was a strange gurgling quality to it (some curious vibrato and nasal tone) and sounded like a drowning person clamouring for help, compared to the sweet refined tone I'm used to. But it was pulled off relatively well on the whole. Somehow SSO didn't complement Dang Thai Son very well.

Third movement was along the same line so I shan't talk much about it.

2009-12-30T22:10:00.002+09:00

I don't want to post :(

2009-10-30T20:46:00.002+09:00

Two more weeks to Shandong trip =X No piano over there!!!! I'm really going to miss piano. I'm missing it already! >< I don't know what to do about the competition anymore... I keep looking back and thinking maybe I should have gone with my own feelings and stayed in Singapore to practise for the competition after all instead of listening to God (I'm not even sure it's what He told me). The maddening thing is, there's something wrong with my computer and it kept rejecting my post, so I'm super bored of typing this post over and over again and what's present here now is just a refined version. Maybe God is trying to rebuke me -.- Sorry, but please God... I really want to just get through the first round. I know the odds are against me but...

Anyway, on a lighter note, I was going home on a double-decker 174 today. I got bored after Susanna alighted and I realised that there was this Nanyang girl sleeping ^^ I was like super amused, because she kept nodding and falling-all-over-the-place-then-jerking-back-up-again. I decided to count how many times she nodded or swayed off to the right or left for fun haha. I love observing people ^^ In about 10 minutes she nodded/jerked 81 times =.= The super amusing thing was that even after jerking about so much she never woke up or opened her eyes even once to notice me staring at her. And she kept falling like 45 degrees from the normal (haha physics) before jerking back up. I was seriously super surprised. Like, you can tilt so much and still not wake up??? Wheehee ^^ Dinner time!

2009-08-31T02:15:00.003+09:00

Reading my blog from its earliest posts and my personal diary from primary two til now I realise that, as Pei Wei said, I have changed a lot. For one thing, I think I fart many more times a day now. Okay that's stupid, but true.

I guess you could say my story is a little like a Cinderella story? I remember crying out to God desperately not too long ago (okay maybe one or two years ago - time passes so fast), asking Him why He did not let me be born into a musical family like all those geniuses - Mozart, Beethoven or even contemporary pianists - so that I could become a pianist. A few people told me before that to become a professional pianist you need to have a musical family background - you need to have musical genes in you as well. And I looked at profiles of all the famous pianists and competition winners... All of them either were blessed with parents of great musical talent or came under the wing of greatly distinguished piano teachers since a very young age. And my parents... my mother's greatest achievement in music was becoming a leader in a harmonica band in JC and my father's greatest musical achievement is learning how to sing in tune. And I would keep asking God why He put me into this family.

But now... I'm glad God made me who I am. Really. I cannot stand to think about what if I were someone else around me. God probably let me be born into this family because then I wouldn't tell myself that all these are my works. And I know they aren't. Thank you God for bestowing this gifts on me out of all people... But I don't know how to continue on...

I really don't know how anymore, God. Will You please give me an answer? I am dying from all these expectations... Please teach me, God, to have eyes only for You.

2009-08-31T01:16:00.003+09:00

I really enjoyed the moments we spent together... I don't know how long more this friendship will last... but I know for sure that I will carry these memories with me to the end of time.

I just want you to know -

2009-08-29T02:41:00.003+09:00

God heard my prayers, even though they weren't exactly directed towards Him... I scored a relatively high distinction for piano exam. And an A1 for Chinese -.- And well, it seems that Wang laoshi doesn't totally feel I can't make it into the finals now, that's some consolation ^^ Thank you God! :) But honestly I am still a very jealous person... I know its selfish of me to want to be better than everybody else, and it's impossible. But... sometimes I feel my jealousy helps me to play better. It lends me more emotions when playing Chopin hahaha. Jocelyn is going to learn from wang laoshi as well. I should stop hoping that I'm better than her because I am obviously not better than her -.- I really don't want to care about what wang laoshi thinks anymore.

Anyway, went with Pei Wei to YST yesterday! It's been a very long time since we last went out together... Felt quite sad, really. The guy's Chopin and Schubert was super nice! O.O His encore piece - Schumann's song transcribed by Liszt - was super nice too! His Appassionata was sort of disappointing though but ending with the Chopin and Schubert totally made up for it ^^ Left the concert hall still in the dream that music gives you. I think I'm dying for piano. I have only two months left. My pieces are a dreadful mess. I really want to get into finals (not for fame or whatever portfolio -.- but because if I get into finals, my parents will more likely allow me to pursue music as a career). But so many people out there are competing for one place. What are the chances of me even getting through semi-finals? Or I probably won't even get through quarter finals -.- Sigh.. I think I should be glad Jocelyn and Lixian are participating in intermediate, otherwise I highly doubt I can get through quarter finals. But seniors are supposed to be pro-er... AIYA I DUNO. >.< GOD PLEASE HELP ME. I REALLY CANNOT DO IT ANYMORE.

2009-07-30T00:37:00.000+09:00

Went downstairs yesterday night/morning at 12 am to attempt to stroke the cat which was making a load of noise. It was a teenage cat i think. White with a black stubby tail. I waited patiently for forty minutes and got a stupid rectangular mosquito bite and did not manage to stroke the cat. And two people saw me and two cars saw me, squatting by the road -.- ultimate embarrassment i tell you.

Another weird dream. This time about my two cousins. I dreamt that they jumped off the kitchen balcony in the night and I saw the newspaper article with their dead pallid faces. They died not because of being squashed after falling, but because they were strangled by the bedsheets which were hanging out on the balcony as they fell. And the word "ghostly" kept appearing with the word "bedsheet" for don't know what reason. It was quite horrible because i really believed it somehow. Because i remembered thinking "I only just smsed her yesterday night!" which i did actually. As in it was a real memory in a dream. And i was feeling quite horrible and devastated ... but not sad. Maybe i was too shocked haha.

And i found out my friend dreamt of bees. Haha don't know what she was doing with them. She was probably trying to steal honey or used a volleyball to knock the beehive out of the tree.

And i think i've finally come to terms with the unchangeable fact that I was never, have never been, am not and will never be good at piano. As Peiwei's piano teacher said - I have to be more realistic. He obviously thinks i will not be able to make it to the competition finals any more. Not that i can of course. But when your self-doubts are confirmed by your teacher... I think he has given up on me... Wow I'm so frank! Oh and i just saw the nailclipper that i was trying to find for months. -.- Anyway somehow... I'm kind of glad that he didn't fire me. But i cannot live up to anybody's expectations anymore. I can't even live up to my own. And I really don't want to lose my life to studies. Life is more than just about books, algebra, ancient chinese literature, molecules and particles. Life... is the deepest desires of man's soul, the loftiest towers of man's ambitions and dreams, the widebare space - the white silence - that loneliness brings, the beautiful desolation of the pure, radiant moonlight falling like silk onto the sleeping murderous sea... I want to travel around the world, see all the wonders the world has to offer, throw myself into the lost paradise of music, forget about all the responsibilities and limitations, shake off all the rusty chains of restrictions and old familiar hauntings of long-lost emotions, wipe out all the hurt, erase all my memories of failures and of all the things I could never have...

But I should be more realistic.

More realistic.

Damn it all.

Why, God?

WHY

2009-07-26T09:46:00.000+09:00

We had class contact time on monday. Somehow my group always gets picked for roleplay -.- anyway this time we were supposed to do a bad interview. *evil grin* They wanted me to do the random pai kia thing again like last roleplay but my hair not long enough =( so meizhen did the pai kia instead haha. I wanted to be a flower vase but they said that was irrelevant so i cannot be flower vase =( they wanted me to be an interviewee. So i decided to be a flirt *evil grin* anyway won't go into details. What happened was that Amanda got totally freaked out (she and Joy were interviewers and Joy requesed beforehand that i flirt with amanda not her). and the class laughed. and everybody thought i was a pervert/flirt after that. and julie asked me with all manner of seriousness whether i was a prostitute =.= Life without some perverseness is not life at all. Especially in Nanyang. You need some humour or perverseness or something related to get you through. Sigh.

I feel a little sad. Why has Li Yundi fallen so far? If what my piano teacher said was true (and I doubt he'd lie about things like this). It sounds like he's just using piano/music as a tool to get fame. People like that are utterly disgusting. (sounds wrong dang! i dunno what word to describe. i just feel disgusted, angry and disappointed with people like that). I don't know. I really don't know. I don't know if he loves music like i thought he did or he's just fooled the entire world (except my piano teacher, who would probably protest at the thought of people thinking he believed it too -.-) Although my piano teacher is supposedly realistic (as Peiwei says), i think he's a bit immature somehow. I don't know why. Haha! Deviation! (Just A Minute BBC) Okay back on track. Liyundi... sigh i dont know larh. I never hated anyone before, but this is the closest i will ever get to hating someone i guess. Haha i know i can't even compare to him (maddening isn't it?), and i shouldnt be saying all this, but really. i don't want to change my mind about him. like michael jackson i suppose hahaha!

I was going home from piano today and i passed by an old lady selling tissue paper. I was feeling particularly good (because i was listening to some music and the sky was blue and i was wearing something a little different haha), so i decided to buy some tissue paper from her. She was selling six packs at a time.
Me: 多少?
Old lady: 六包一两块而以！你要买吗？
Me: (confused. Take out earphones.?: 对不起多少?
Old lady: 六包一两块而以！你要买吗？
Me: [still confused.(one or two dollars?)] oh okay. [take out two dollar note because lazy to take out one dollar]
Old lady: 谢谢！小姐你很漂亮！
Me: 不会啦! *laugh* (hand her the money)
Old lady: 你工作了吗？
...

Well. Then i became more depressed. She thought she was complimenting me, but her saying that i was pretty only served to remind me that i could never be pretty. Haha. I almost cried there and then. How stupid. I don't know anything anymore. I know being ugly helps to bring us closer to God, but I really -!!! I don't have anything at all! People all around me are either pretty, intelligent or good in music or everything! i know this is just materialistic and superficial, but that's what people care about. I really don't want to become that kind of person who has nothing but 'inner beauty'. and i don't even have inner beauty. Best. i think i'll just become a surgeon next time. No need for looks, no need to have good character or anything. Just need to be clever... ARGH! Then surgeon also cannot! Aiya heck! Yeah i find that as i grow older i become more air-headed and childish. Never mind. I was still rather sad/angry that the people were walking by without looking at the old lady at all. I really am. Those people definitely have more than $8 in their pockets and they still couldn't find the heart to just spare $2 to make someone's day, to make someone smile, to make someone feel that she wasn't all alone in the world, to help water the flower of someone's hopes! (okay doesn't sound logical) It's just $2 seriously! And the old lady was so nice as to decide to give me the six packs of tissue which were still in the wrapping so that it would be easier for me to carry. It seems almost like I was the first person in the day to buy tissue from her. Unless it was. There were so many people there. What, was the old lady invisible? She didn't reflect light into their eyes so they couldn't see her or something? It's just two dollars, just two hundred cents. Or even maybe just $1. It was outside bukit batok mrt station so the place was crowded like an ant's colony. Never mind. Someone else must have bought some tissue from her earlier as well. Haha i'm acting like i'm the only one who would have bought tissue from her. Never mind. And I have $6 to last me the rest of this month. Out of $100 at the beginning of this month. OMG! Where did all my money go?! *frown* Class treasury, guzheng treasury, guzheng syf photos... Oh and dinner with peiwei when we went for a concert after last last piano lesson. Sigh. I don't want to grow old (especially if I was alone). Haha. I feel rather jealous of Peiwei occasionally. She has it all. Friends, looks, grades, 口才, suitors (haha), character etc etc. Well they say opposites attract. So i suppose peiwei is like yang and i'm like yin? and yang makes yin look darker while yin makes yang look brighter. Twisted. But she is still my best friend :) even though i'm not hers. Wa siao if my guzheng junior or someone comes across this blog then i will die a horrible death. Argh.

2009-05-25T22:23:00.002+09:00

I saw two dead birds this week. The first one was when I was walking home by another route after missing my bus stop. It was a bird I had never seen before. It was a grey bird with spots on its chest. Its beak was open and its wings were outstretched, twisted in an awkward position. Its eyes were lifeless and glassy. It looked strangely out of place on the ground. It was the first unmarred dead bird I had ever seen (the rest were squashed). I got a reasonably unpleasant shock when I first saw it because I wasn't quite looking at where I was going. But when I got back home I had a strange horrid longing to look upon the bird once again, to examine its intricate features and stillness. And I never got to see that bird again.
The other was squashed. But it was dried up by the sun. It was quite inrecognisable. Judging by its size it was probably a sparrow.
Well. I have quite officially come quite close to the life cycle of birds. I stroked a baby sparrow (I think) for ten minutes by the road and have seen dead birds. Ah. I just hope the baby bird I stroked wasn't the one I saw lying dead.

2009-05-25T20:06:00.002+09:00

I had a violent dream. Apparently I was at a murder scene. I saw myself standing outside, watching from a large window which stretched from the ceiling to the floor. And yet two of me were in the room as well - an onlooker as well as the murderer (erm. male, mind you). I was wearing a tuxedo, shaking hands with another man wearing another tuxedo (white), smiling in the ^^ way. He was also smiling. Without releasing his hand or changing the smile on my face, I rammed a knife into his.. ahem. Burgundy blood blossomed on his white pants. I smiled wider as he fell away with the utmost expression of shock, the expression you have when you finally realize that the person you were closest to betrayed you. Red liquid splattered like blood onto the murderer's face, onto the (twenty) angels (or demons) who were watching from the room next door (which was full of white bunk beds). The angels' (they were dressed in white) night gowns were blood-splattered and white feathers floated around them as though they were suspended in water. Their faces had no features and they simply stood there.

Well. What troubled me the most is that I didn't feel anything at all when I watched that man die slowly, excruciatingly. Nothing at all.

Only a smile.

2009-02-20T21:57:00.005+09:00

Haha. I'm finally updating ^^ It's mostly because I haven't had much to say actually. Uh yeah. About two things happened today.

1. We had to perform a short skit for PCCG regarding manners haha. And I am, of course, the uncouth, ruthless, brazen, inconsiderate, rough ah beng as usual. Oh man! The Brahm's piano quartet in g minor is really super nice!!!!! Nicer than me. XD sorry haha. Okay yes. I was the ah beng. ^^ Haha Cherie was the desperate whiny girlfriend (who happens to be super short ;)). Er yes. My classmates said I looked "damn 帅" and "超帅" when I walked into the classroom and "really look like ah beng" <- Haha -.- Oh man i feel so weird talking about this. But I'm going to talk anyway. I have the rights to speak up on my blog XP. The music is making me too high XD. It's SUPER NICE!!!!!!!!! Nicer than me. XD sorry haha. Dear Chermain tried to 撒娇 with me by calling me 帅哥. -.- Julie asked me if I wanted to be her boyfriend =.= Dear Peizhen already started calling me "boyfriend". -.- =.= Yes I know I am very ego to be putting this up publicly but hey, it's okay to be ego sometimes right? XD I think I may be finally starting to belong a little to my class haha... God answered my prayers (okay i didn't quite pray). :P The more I listen to the Brahm's piano quartet the nicer it seems lorh!!!!!!! OH MAN!!!! Oh yes. Haha. Cherie, my dear girlfriend, really can act desperate very well (or maybe she is desperate haha). Like her face was like so ... I don't know. Almost qian bian. :P jkjk! HAHA okay don't hit me :x Yes. On to my next piece of breaking news.

2. On the bus. Going home. With Adelle. ^^ I suddenly got the urge to count my 5-cent coins (cuz last time i counted i had 15). So I took them out of my wallet and entrusted them to dear Adelle. And of course she had to drop two of them :x One of them rolled between the mess of legs of some people -.- Oh and the bus air con was leaking some weird oily stuff. Gross larh! My hands got super oily >.< Anyway. I squatted down to pick up the 5-cent coin haha. If that's not unglam enough, the bus accelerated and I fell backwards and sat plop on the floor =.= with my school bag and everything. SO PAI SEH OK! Then Adelle was laughing like crazy and I was laughing like crazy. Er yes. And I couldn't get up -.- Haha.

You should really listen to Brahms' Piano Quartet in G minor, No. 1.

Oh and I have 10 5-cent coins now, excluding the one that ran pervertedly into the legs of some nanyang girls and I didn't quite manage to rescue those poor girls from being molested by the 5-cent coin.

You know you really ought to listen to Brahms' Piano Quartet in G minor No. 1.

2009-02-01T21:13:00.002+09:00

I don't know what is real and what is not. Haha. So fun. -.- I don't know what to update about lah!!! -.-

2009-02-01T20:23:00.002+09:00

Maybe I should have joined some neighbourhood school haha, then no stress. Or not so much. Yes I never like to face my problems. I don't care if its cowardly. I don't care if people hate me because I run away from my problems. (well actually I care but what the heck) I DON'T KNOW!!!!!!!!!! Yes I want to run away. So what? And maybe that's why I play piano... to get away from all this... (oops my secret is out XD) Yes I like challenges, but only in areas where I like that field. For example maybe math or music. Not in terms of friends. Not that i don't like friends of course haha.

Argh I really wish I can run away. But if you can't run (like me) then I suppose the only way is to face the enemy and battle to the end. The only survivor is the winner. Or maybe I should just die haha. This is so random!!! -.- Anyway I will go where God takes me haha. Whether I like it or not. I am a sheep that is tied to His hand!!! haha so weird. Anyway here's a shoutout to God: THAAAAANK YOOOOOU FOOOOOOR LIIIIISTEEEEEEEENIIIIIIIING TOOOO MYYYYY PRAAAAAAAAAYEEEEEEERSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Looks unreadable haha. The asses (or "s"s. whatever lah haha) at the back make me think of Gollum in LOTR.

YEES I HAVE REGAINED MY ENTHUSIASM!!!! I will CHIONG towards the finishing line!!!!!! I will live out my life the best I can! Even if my life is miserable, I will face it will an attitude such that I will always be happy. I will be happy all the time!!!! I will put my joy in the Lord!!!!!!!! Haha this is so weird. I don't even pray before my meals -.- Okayy enough about Christianity haha.

I am going to eat dinner ^^ will come back and update!!!

2009-01-30T18:22:00.002+09:00

I think it's time to face the truth ...

Happy endings only exist in fairytales.

Random Ravings I

2009-01-30T17:54:00.002+09:00

Oh. About that Bella's Lullaby score. I didn't quite follow it in the end -.- because I realized what the guy heard out was more or less the same as what I heard so I just became too lazy to try learning it properly. Haha. I have better things to do than redo stuff I already know. Wow I sound so arrogant ^^ *yawn* Hm I went home today and realized it was quite lucky I didn't buy the red file today because I already bought it -.- and for a crazy moment I wanted to do Adelle's spastic thing (the sha la la one) haha. Then in the bathroom I realised that I had lost one thing very close to my heart, but in turn losing that one thing made me see how much more the world had to offer (to me). Mwahahahaha :) and I wanted to shout suddenly for don't know what reason haha. Yes it has been a hectic, chaotic day. MSN is not working again. It's stucked! :( what is life without instant messaging? Haha must read in the Chinese poetic way: WHAT, is LIFE, without INSTANT, messaging...? Oh ya speaking of Chinese poems! I havent memorised the seven chinese poems for CLC lecture! Die :( I want to sleep and sleep and sleep and sleep and sleep...... and I just remembered I haven't do my weekend homework. Shoot! X( the world has many things to offer to me indeed. Okay enough crapping. Time to get back to reality ^^ is my blogskin niceeee?

2009-01-17T12:54:00.003+09:00

I am not joining choir anymore. Haha. Sigh. I think I am too temperamental. Okay never mind. I think its partly because God seems to be spoiling me heh XD. But He has given me many opportunities I would never have dreamt of. Haha. I am too lazy to try and hear out Bella's Lullaby so I am going to print out a piece of sheet music. I am going to try it. Bye bye! And no more piano for like one month... wow. I don't know what to think. Haha. Ok bye bye.

I said bye bye le why you still here?

Bye bye ^^

2009-01-15T14:27:00.002+09:00

Peiwei has been bugging me to blog haha. Even though she seems to have given up now ^^ I do not know what to write about. It's called peer pressure haha.
I suppose i will write about what is bugging me the most first. I don't know if I should try to join choir as a pianist cum singer(?). Peiwei got really agitated about me joining choir. As in she was really against it. Sigh. I don't know. The only two things that I have persevered from Primary One until now are my studies (which my parents force on me and shouldn't really be counted) and piano. I just really feel ... i dont know either. I've never really liked sticking to something for too long - except when its like changing class. Maybe Peiwei is just jealous that i can at least try to go into singing XP HAHA jkjk. Sigh. After Peiwei's vigorous argument and outright disapproval, I really do not know what to do anymore. She says she does not want a person who gives up so easily like me to be her friend. Haha. I have to leave the comp lab 3 now. I will update later... someday. XD

2008-11-18T19:14:00.002+09:00

Haha. I'm updating about music. Yes I'm quite happy with the way life is now, even though my
《寒鸭戏水》 play until the 鸭子 want to 溺死 like that, my 《战台风》 play until everybody all die gruesome grisly deaths and my Beethoven pathetique sonata is so unbelieveably pathetique that it is like travelling back to Singapore from Malaysia then bursting the car radiator and having to tow the car all the way back to Singapore from the Malaysia highway. At night. Anyway im being quite lame. I am quite happy today ^^ For one thing the guzheng teacher didn't really correct me much on expressions, only on techniques :P Oh, and Joelle improved a lot, if I am in any position to say. :) And she has greatly increased my motivation to practise some more! But still, there's no point because that's still not enough motivation for me to practise guzheng at home.

And this is so cute:

2008-11-07T14:46:00.000+09:00

I don't want to care anymore.

random rubbishy ravings

2008-11-04T10:20:00.005+09:00

Argh Peiwei messed up my tagboard. I am really not gay because I'm not even a boy. Argh it still sounds like I'm gay. Aiya whatever larh.
I've been having a lot of dreams of late. I just had two dreams of betrayal in one sitting (or sleeping). And I woke up crying. Is it strange to cry when you wake up? Storybook characters always seem to cry themselves to sleep. I find it quite near impossible to be crying all the way to sleep. Anyway whatever. This is getting too emo and self-centred.
Haha Peiwei is having band now. Gosh I feel so happy man. But then again next week there is monday, tuesday, wednesday, thursday of 9 am - 5 pm guzheng. Then the next week there is monday, wednesday, thursday, friday of 9 am - 5pm guzheng. I think. Anyway I know for sure that guzheng will take up four whole days of each week. Dang! Ah well anyway need to practise for guzheng exam. DIE! Coming liao and i still have no motivation to practise properly after i finished learning the songs. But I scared my fingers become stiff - Amanda says her piano teacher's student learn guzheng and his fingers couldn't play the piano properly.
Speaking of piano teachers, I don't want to let anyone down anymore. I don't know what he saw or heard in me but I think he'll send me off to playing Czerny. He says I use my technique wrongly. How can you use your technique in wrong places? It's either you have technique or you don't. I think. Anyway I am dying on my Stravinsky tango. It doesn't sound like a tango!
Enough of that. I feel quite guilty for leaving my first piano teacher before reaching the ATCL exams. She did bring me up from Grade 1 until now and all I am is probably due to her. But God seems to have quite clearly directed us to this path, since he made everything so smooth.
I don't know anymore. I feel tired after writing such a lengthy pointless thing.

Beliefs (peiwei suggested the title)

2008-10-29T22:30:00.002+09:00

Beliefs? I don't know what I believe in anymore. I know for sure that God is real, if you are asking about Christianity and religious beliefs. But on a more selfish and "me" level, i do not know what i am supposed to do. I suppose God will guide me down the path He thinks is best for me somehow, and that is a great comfort, to know that my life is still in control somehow. Ok fine i will zoom in on Christianity. At the Singapore Biennale, we saw this art exhibit - a video, a world without light. Everything was dark, a restless, hungry, bottomless sea. There was no colour. And I really felt... despair.. from that. Is that what life will be like without God? Is that what life will be like without light? Is that what life might have been without God's kindness, love and care? There was a scene, where the black, dismal coast stretched away into a black dismal darkness, never ending, not knowing where it is going.
I am like so thankful for God.

~* broken dreams and practicalities*~

2008-10-29T21:06:00.003+09:00

I think even if I can become a musician (which is like so totally impossible), I may not choose to become one, even if it breaks my heart. The thing is I think I am falling too much in love with music. I am losing track of my duty, responsibility and obligation to God. I think He is hinting that to me too - he only let me take a further step in my musical aspect of life when I told myself I would become a doctor whether I can or cannot become a pianist. Honestly, when I play music, it is for myself. I think. I don't play it for God or anyone else. And that's just the point. Music is meant to be shared. Beethoven composed in order to share his music with other people. Another smaller reason would be a little bit of competitiveness. Or competition. Or whatever. In any case I feel I may just have to give up this childish dream. It is blinding me and becoming an obstacle. As a sort of non-serious activity music may help to bring me closer to God, but if it becomes my career...
Why must we have our own dreams which can never be fulfilled? Why must we be so self-centred? Why? Why...?

Is it the hardest to give up a dream when you know you can fulfil it but you musn't?

2008-10-23T22:31:00.002+09:00

It's really very strange. I don't know what to update my blog about, even though we just got back all our exam results and had volleyball competition and watched School of Rock. In the case of exam results, perhaps its because I know it isn't really my achievement, so there is nothing worth boasting about. Yes, I am so selfish that I won't even praise God properly if I receive something from Him. :( But I am very surprised that God would have given all these to me. It is not only about the exam results. I am also very blessed to have a very loyal, thoughtful, faithful and kind friend, or 'lao po' ;) haha - 'old grandmother'. So unglam. With my short-sightedness (left eye 75 degrees and right eye 500 degrees ya i got lazy eye so lazy!), I actually doubted her intentions and misunderstood her. :x So here's a shoutout: PEIWEI WO YONGYUAN AI NI!!!!!! >.< Okay I feel weird now. If there is any sort of difference, I will take the pleasure to add that this is my first time actually really praising someone. Yes because I love only myself. ^^
Okay moving on. That stuff was so 肉麻. Sorry I'm not used to expressing verbally. I'm listening to Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 the orchestral version. Basically its the music used for Bugs Bunny and Tom and Jerry. Actually it's very nice but after listening to it a few times will get sick. Oh speaking of which, my sister is sick. Literally. She got stomach flu. So horrible right? And tomorrow her exams leh! So stress. Heh heh. Ok I moved on to the second part of the Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody so it isn't so boring anymore. Liszt is a genius - at piano, composing and womanising.
I wonder what Heaven is like and whether I will get into it. Will I see the people around me again in the afterlife? I wonder what is it really like to really feel God's presence really there all the time.
Mixed feelings... :) :X :( :

2008-06-30T20:08:00.002+09:00

In any case I'm too bored to continue with Koh Samui. Basically we went snorkelling the second day and went to see the Na Muang Waterfall and the Big Buddha and eat roast chicken and eat durians on the third day. We saw Hin Ta Hin Yai too. This thing is just to end off Koh Samui.

Koh Samui part I

2008-06-17T09:53:00.021+09:00

Yes it's what you all have been waiting for! *drumroll* ok there's no need to be so dramatic you saw the title. YES it's KOH SAMUI!!! I wish i could stay there forever :( Sad right. No it was NOT a question.

Day 1 (wednesday)

Woke up at like 03:40 am. Depressing - it was only a short nap. Reached the airport around 04:30 am. Check in. Oh let me add - because of my unmatched brilliant genius-ness(?), I found out that a direct flight to Koh Samui from Singapore is more expensive than if you take Tiger Airways to Bangkok and then Bangkok Airways to Koh Samui :) Round flight. Anyway this is checking into Tiger Airways. We had breakfast (YES BREAKFAST!!!!!!! I ATE CABONARA CHIPOLATA!!!!) <-- Chipolatas are big fat sausages. OK OK! I thought you didn't know. Well, I knew before I went there -- *whistles false-cheerfully*. Enough of this crappy small talk. Let's reach the BIG talk.

Yes we're up on flight and should I comment on the excellent view? Champagne?

My sister likes watching the Yang Sisters. She likes that sort of lame stuff.

Yes we were one of the earliest so we got the wing seats :)

You can kind of see the sun there...

And yes these were all taken by me. I got overly caught up. There are some more pictures but for some reason I can't upload 'em.

Here we are at the Bangkok Airport (BKK -- Burger King Kong. Wallau so stupid. I can't believe I said that)!

And check in again...

We had bittersweet feelings (no not about Singapore, idiot! :)) The booking thing obviously said we were going to take a Boeing 717 for the flight to Koh Samui

(courtesy of the internet)

but instead we got this

P.S. It wasn't so big - my father didn't take a camera photo of it. There were like only 18 rows, two seats on each side and it was rather squeezy and basic. The cockpit was directly in front, one toilet squeezed into the side at the back, and there didn't seem to be a kitchen or anything - the thingy told us there would be a meal. Yes there were propellers! Quite cool larh. So its quite bittersweet :) In the end there was food! My sister got the kids' meal because I chose it for her. (There was vegetarian meal, some lactose meal thing, chicken meal, standard meal...) I wanted chicken meal but my parents were like: no, you don't take the chicken meal you take the standard meal. Here's my sister's meal

And my sister mealing.

And us mealing.
We had cold potato, cold bread, cold butter, cold pickles for the cold pork, cold ham, cold orange juice and cold lettuce. But if you're as hungry as I was you don't really mind :) It was quite nice.

And here's Koh Samui's airport! Well it's more of the scenery outside Koh Samui's airport. Anyway, the airport is non-air-conditioned!!! *gaSP* So cool right? I was like, "Where's the airport?" We had to take a tram from where we landed to the airport.

Then it was quite depressing because the hotel we booked and arranged for airport transfer came only when we called them. Like we were looking around the whole meeting place and then all the hotel representatives were standing around calling for people except ours. Then we waited until everybody had already left. Still nobody came for us. Then we called and THEN the hotel said oh, 10 minutes. :((( My first booking of a hotel was quite a flop. Honestly, we reached there and was quite dismayed. Because the reception was like this old shophouse with no air con, and then the entrance to the houses/hotel rooms was like just this small sign, not like those usual hotels that you can see everything right on the doorstep. We were quite next to this resort called Amari Palm Resort that was like WOW! and then we were like so small, like this yes its so small that you can't see it. Well. At least the inside, when you walk in, was quite okay. I'm too lazy to upload the pictures from the internet so you can go search it yourself. www.ag.co.th/th/hotel/samui/corto/ Here's a link that shows quite a good inside of our house. No it's not the one on top - it's the pandora and esmeralda rooms underneath. The thing is our house looked more or less like that except that the connecting doorway did not lead to another bungalow but a little isolated room that was my room. YES it is MY room! And my mother and sister just went and trampled all over it :'((((( Oh and we had exactly the same painting on the wall. It looks exactly the same (to the internet ones) except for the connecting bungalow. Here are some pictures

Our parents had gone to settle transport around the island as well as tours to Koh Tao and Koh Nangyuan. When they came back we were sleeping like pigs. It seems they were locked out until I finally woke up after their five minutes worth of knocking on the glass and pressing the doorbell. Yes and that pig over there could continue sleeping! So troublesome. At least I wasn't the one who was caught on film.

Yes it was about night time already.
We went to walk on Chaweng beach, which is the best beach on the island. O.O I am so disappointed in Singapore. Chaweng beach sand was REALLY like walking on bedsheets! REALLY!!!!! I know you only hear it in stories. But it really is. Oh and that night, or this night, was low tide and there was no wind and totally no wave at all in the sea so that it was rather like a dead town. The debris was lying on the beach and the wave made you think you were standing at the poolside, as well as the clarity of the water! The water was like SO CLEAR you can see the corals and stones out there. It was night so we didn't really see the blueness of the ocean or anything. But this serves more or less to show you how gentle the waves are. I suppose that's how the sand there is so fine. It felt quite impossible.
And anyway halfway down the beach my dear little sister started whining that she's hungry, she's tired and so on. So we settled at a place where somebody on the net had recommended. Chomtalay restaurant. It basically was a buffet. I loved the salmon sashimi and the roasted lamb leg a lot!!!!! *squeal* I want to eat again!!!!! :( I must mind my bodyweight! DANG. Anyway there were a lot of mosquitoes. I had like four mosquito bites on one knee! I had a total of about 7 mosquito bites. So it was quite a relief when the wet towels that came had a faint smell of citronella which scares away mosquitoes. So we were like wiping and wiping everywhere. Well, my sister and I that is. Don't think sick please. Only our arms and legs. And then we walked back to our hotel and slept after bathing.
Oh p.s. if you look at the internet pictures of the resort you can see a window above the bed. That's the window to the bathroom. And there is no lock.

That's it for the first day.

To Do With Guppies

2008-06-15T12:00:00.004+09:00

News Flash: The guppy died.

Well that was on Tuesday after I dedicated a whole post to it. It was like, the FIRST day I give you medicine, you DIE. Yes you can imagine my shock. It looked quite sick when it died. And another news flash: Two of the remaining three baby guppies also died.

In other words we only have one baby fish left. And two greedy prawns of course. The two guppies (we don't even know if they were female or male :((( ) died because we went to Koh Samui. Yes. Let's hold a minute's silence in remembrance of the starvation and famine victims.

One minute

Anyway that was the sadness of the past, and I find I get over that very easily. Too easily. Today I was the first one to wake up! GOLD AWARD!!! With honours. I went to feed the fish. Yes as obvious as daylight there is only one fish. One fish. As depressing as that is I got over it anyway and fed the fish. AND CAN I TELL YOU THOSE TWO PRAWNS ARE DAMN GREEDY!!! Yes both the prawns are still alive and kicking with their eight legs. Like I fed some food for the poor guppy (who had looked... quite full ... yesterday night. Like, he/she pecked a small piece of food and travelled quite absent-mindedly around the entire tank and pecked at it and just went to sleep. Hmm *suspiscious* ), and then the prawns came over like two big aunties from the market and swiped all the food (Dora the Explorer: "Swipers no swiping!"). Then the fish was like, so shocked. He/she just stood there opening and closing its mouth and wagging its fins. Then it panicked and then started grabbing all the food it could find out of reach of the two prawns' prickly antennaes (is it spelt like that). Shows you even animals (well technically we are animals) only treasure what they have when its gone. Sad.

2008-06-10T20:31:00.002+09:00

It's been quite a long time since I've last updated, considering the fact that it is the school holidays ^^ (or rather going to be "was the school holidays"). :( Anyway. I'm going away to Thailand tomorrow! Koh Samui. But I don't think I'm actually very excited because the whole of Koh Samui is practically just beaches. Still I can't complain :) .
I've been watching tangos recently because of a piano song I'm playing and it's like so obscene. And I wanted to put Lord of the Beans on this blog but then I couldn't find it anywhere :( And LATEST NEWS: My fish are dying! Apparently my father bought this BIG packet of guppies (live ones, I must add, or soon-to-be-dead) at $1.50. Yes my father is nuts for money and he's very gullible - one guppy usually costs $1.50. And just about 40+ guppies were reduced to only about ... 7? ONE adult male guppy and the rest are just babies and teenagers. YES IT'S THAT SUSPISCIOUS MALE GUPPY!!!! He's the world's biggest baddy! :'( Yes yes, he's the bully that started it off in the first place, or maybe all of them already had it ever since they were put in that $1.50 bag. Anyway it's just fun to pin the blame on somebody :) Let's pretend it WAS his fault. DANG it's like I caught him in the act of chasing all the BABY and TEEN guppies around! SO MEAN, right? Just like our parents eh? Like the stupid guy probably caused all of the other guppies to die of it and he himself also gets diseased! I CANNOT believe I went to so much trouble to save him! I had to like use $8.40 to buy the fin rot medicine okay? And it doesn't matter unless it was my money (which it was). And YOU, my dear dad, complain about me spending the money to save the fish (I can think of alliteration for fish but let's not get vulgar^^)! It's all his fault for being money-minded! If he'd, like, bought proper fish that had a DECENT cost we wouldn't need to buy medicine right?
*haiix* Well... of course you can't keep blaming other people all the time. Like, I knew the guppies were dying from fin rot (or at least I had a rough idea) but then I didn't take any action to buy the medicine. Perhaps I thought not all of them have it. And I wasted like 4 japanese curry rice and 4/5 of an Oheyo! for that fish! Okay it wasn't exactly wasted. -.-
I realized that guppy fins seem to drop from rot very fast. Yesterday afternoon I was looking at a big bully with a big red fin with a big chunk fallen out (but the big fin is still big). Then at night when I put the medicine and looked around for it I couldn't find it but found an adult fish that had this pale orange TINY tail fin that would have shamed any fancy male guppy. Like, it looks like he turned homosexual. And I felt quite sorry for him lol. After all fishes don't have consciences and IQ and they seem to think brains are shit and brawns are ice creams. Sigh. *feeling very sorry for the hapless things* But then again i think they like to eat shit too so what I mean is probably the fish equivalent of our particular dislike for shit.

And this holiday is making me feel more energetic by 0.00000000000000000000001%. Oh, and the bullying fish making me visit the fish shop also brought another surprise ^^ There was this damn cute little dog, like white and black and then i should say its like about 30cm from head to tail, and it kept sniffing me XD And then its like I realised after sometime that it was biting my big toe with utmost enthusiasm. Okay gtg eat dinner :)

2008-05-25T01:06:00.002+09:00

We got back our result book today. And I am like damn disappointed in myself cuz I got like so many below averages. My mother went to see Hu Laoshi about my chinese grades. According to her, Hu Laoshi kept stressing for her to tell me that she could see my effort. That's when I really got quite ... I don't know. Just yesterday the english tuition teacher was telling me "However I will have to name Claire as one of the better speakers because of her effort". Then last year the dance teacher gave me an A solely for my effort. What is the use for effort if there are like no results except compassion marks? Effort does not prove our talent or anything. It's just some random thing. But now that I look back, so what? There are so many people suffering out there now that I must be quite stupid and petty to be talking about my grades and "effort". In Ethiopia people are probably dying every second or minute. In Sichuan or China there are many people mourning, as well as many people fighting desperately for their lives and others' lives. In Myanmar the people are hurting too. Plus there was a tornado in America and 14 people were killed. How many millions are part of this horrible pain right now? Many children are probably crying themselves to sleep right now. Actually I thought of going for a missionary to either Myanmar or China, but it's just too late... People have been training since last year. All I can do now is pray for the people who are so willing to risk their lives to save others, as well as the victims themselves. And donate, of course.

Yes, and now down to my lame and small life. I just truly realised that on Wednesday, I TOUCHED A WILD BIRD!! Yeah! A wild bird? YES! Erm well I believe it was a baby one. It was , I think, a sparrow. Anyway it was just sitting in between the holes of the wire-mesh fence and I could not resist the temptation to stroke it. It was so cute, but I think I just ruined its life. I just recalled - mother cats recognize their babies by smell, so if humans touch the kitten, the mother will shun the kitten due to the smell... I shall give excuses like "I don't think the mother is still looking after it - it was all alone and it was quite big already." but I think it is just me trying to excuse my horrible mistakes... Conclusion: I must never touch any wild babies again.

Argh this post is so me-centred. Yes Project De-Selfishfy is currently underway! I am trying to make myself less self-centred haha. Even Miss Lim stated that the argumentative essay was too me-centred. Argh this is a total flop. Even this little paragraph is talking about me.

To Myanmar, China and America: God will make a better day for everybody... someday...

2008-05-18T00:56:00.002+09:00

I suppose people really change a lot in a short period of time... I once was a person who didn't really cherish my friends and skipped happily from one to another (I think I may still be)... Now it's my friends who are skipping happily. I feel like an old woman who has seen too much of the world. I feel like an old woman who is sitting in a rocking chair knitting, watching the autumn leaves fall on her porch, painting it burgundy. Yes isn't autumn a beautiful season?

2008-05-01T15:26:00.002+09:00

Another one of my plants died. This is the second and last plant that I got from Cameron. It's so sickening. Not one of the plants that have come under my 'care' and 'concern' has survived. Except the extra hardy flamingo flower from Ikea. My red bean plant died of a skin disease by fungus infection, my second red bean plant seems to have inherited it too, and it's already grown leaves! That's the worst thing... just when you thought it was going to finally work and be all rght again, you're disappointed... again. Anyway. My first weird lumpy frosty plant from Cameron died of parasites and leeches (that suck sap?) and now my cactus plant is dying and I can't do anything to help it. Have you ever felt the feeling where you have to watch someone die and you can't do anything about it? I've felt it about nine times. My guppies, my fighting fish, all my plants (oops, not all my plants... choy! Touch wood :)) and my great-greandmother (even though I wasn't particularly close to her). It's all my fault. I either watered too much, watered too little, fed too much, fed too little, cared too much or cared too little. And I realised something.

I care too much.

I used to never get disappointed. At least not really. But now.. And I know why. Yes, it's because I care too much. I cared too much about losing what I have that I become so easily disappointed, because losing what I have is probably what I'm best at. I admire the cactus, I suppose.

For one thing, they can stand all kinds of weather. No matter what life throws at them, they will stand upright, a solitary soldier, proudly lifting their head, determined never to go down, or at least not until the very end. Even then, they do not go gently into that good night (reference: Dylan Thomas, "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night"). They do not go down without a good fight. They are resolute, strong, unwavering.

For another, cactus grow thorns. They grow thorns, I suppose, because they are afraid to let people too close to them. They know that if someone likes them too much, that someone will definitely be let down someday. Thus they grow thorns. Nobody can guess the cactus' feelings. Is it angry? Is it lonely? Is it happy? No one knows (except God, but that's not the point). When nobody can guess the cactus' feelings, they do not like it. They cannot learn to endear the cactus. Although the cactus will then be very lonely, but it knows that at least it will not let others down. I suppose a cactus is like Jesus. Not in the thorny part of course, but in the sense that He was willing to lay down His happiness for mere rags. I want to become a cactus... for Jesus, for God, for myself, for the people around me... or maybe only for myself. I do not know.

My last point is that the cactus gives life. In the desert where hope has long fled and perseverence, determination is scarce, the cactus is a storage place for that hope and will that was assumed long gone. It holds the hope of the desert wanderers in its thorns. It holds water. Because of the cactus' sacrifice (its life) it gives yet another life. I suppose that would be a physics principle of energy conservation - energy is never lost or gained. Only when a life is lost then is a life gained. It must be something like that for God too.

I don't know how exactly to end this, because it never had a beginning in the first place. But I shall give it a temporary ending by putting the poem "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" by Dylan Thomas.

~*Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light. *~

2008-04-30T13:47:00.002+09:00

I finally went back to pei hwa today! Yes, by myself. I AM SO BRAVE!!! Yes I am brave, thank you. I wanted to see Mrs Han - I just saw her last december holidays. But when I got there, she was as gone as a SARS patient. Not sick - as in she already RETIRED. It's like OMG! SO FAST. I just saw her some months ago ok. Then suddenly poof! Anyway I went on to see Ms Moh. And yes she's still single haha. Any guys reading this blog want to contact her? Lame. Anyway yes she's quite nice. She fell and scraped her elbow while trying to roller-blade. LOL! Erm. She said she still missed Faith 4'2004 the most *regarded her with considerable suspicion* Anyway she had to go for her next class so *byebye*. Oh and she remembered my face and my name (even though I changed my hairstyle quite a lot).

Then I went to find Mr Chua. He seemed to have a little more white hair haha. I mean of course - 4 years have passed after all (so fast). He remembered my face and that I played the piano but couldn't remember my name. SO SAD! :'( It seems quite strange. I felt he was different somehow. Not as in older. I don't know. Maybe it's because my perceptions have changed... it has been 4 years after all (about 1/18 of my lifetime?). Maybe he felt I was different from last time and therefore treated me differently... Anyway he said he didn't expect me to come back - it was usually the ones who were more outspoken who came back. Anyway our conversation was shorter than Ms Moh's, and I left.
They both said the same thing to me: I've become more outspoken and that I should keep trying my best.

Then I made my way down to the piano. Or rather the pianos. There used to be only one when I was studying in Pei Hwa. Another newer one arrived. It was quite obviously more played on than the old one because it was extremely, EXTREMELY out of tune and the G of the left-hand octave was stuck down and made no sound and I have quite a reason to believe that the hammers of the piano were not working properly anymore. They did not seem to stop the sound sufficiently and everything ended up echoing everywhere. The older one was quite tattered. It was in a rather worse condition than when I saw it in Primary 6. It's been only 1.5 years. The brand of the piano was totally stripped off along with the outer covering of wood (I believe the brand started with a "s" but definitely not a Steinway). The previously rich, mellow brown of the piano had faded to a dusty brown and the slight varnish it had had totally gone. I played on the older one first, which I have quite some memories of, and when I realised it was quite totally off-tune and the keys were not even, I went on to the newer piano, and found it worse. There was totally no clarity at all. So I went back to the older piano. I played some pieces and left.
It was quite sad to see the piano like that. It reminded me of humans. Hey I just thought of something. If humans were the piano, God would be the pianist (im NOT trying to imply anything okay). Life, like the piano, would be wasted if there was no pianist to play it. Only with a pianist, a piano can make beautiful music and bring joy to the lives of other people, delighting, entertaining, inspiring. What is the use of the piano if music was taken away from it? What is the use of the piano if there was no pianist to play it? The piano would never gain the ability to sing. The piano would never find true happiness. The piano would never learn to share and inspire. As pianos, our duty is to make ourselves as in-tune and even-keyed as possible for the Creator to make beautiful music.
Only then will our lives not be in vain.

2008-04-28T16:15:00.002+09:00

And... God fulfilled three of my prayers (or wishes) in two days! Two consecutive days, that is. Yesterday, I finally managed to get enough courage to stand up, which is what I have been sort of praying every church service. But now other problems arise of course - am I being too religious? As in trying to show off to people that I'm a 'good' and 'true' and 'faithful' Christian.
Anyway, the other two wishes were fulfilled today. But I cannot remember what is it. Weird. I was telling myself on the bus to blog about it but I cant remember it now. Dang lol. Honestly (we shouldn't lie) I always thought Christian songs were quite boring lol, but actually I just found out some of them are quite nice lol.

2008-04-24T13:39:00.004+09:00

A Letter to God

We went for a PE test today. We all did volleyball until our arms were
mottled with blood clots. We tried our best. I tried my best. You were
watching from above, weren't you? Were you proud?
I scored 21 marks. I know You know. You were watching from above,
weren't you?
We went for Innovation Program today too. Filled with pride, filled
with senseless pride. We charged like psychopaths at each other. Pride
puts us against each other. Pride makes friends fight. Pride makes
people kill each other. When those proud people killed each other, you
were watching from above, weren't you?
What do you feel when you watch your children killing each other? Does
your heart break? Do you turn and look away and pretend to be indifferent
while your heart is actually crying? What or who were you thinking of when
you created this universe? Were you lonely? Or am I being to bold? Am I
asking to many questions? Did you create us because you wanted someone
to share your heart with? But why am I assuming that you will love us dog
shit? You are God, and I am a dog shit. What right does the dog shit have to
love a God (not a God mind you, the one and only God actually)? Even less
right do we have to not love you. But perhaps all my words are simply empty
promises. I am becoming more and more like the Pharisees. Why why why
why? Longing to get closer, yet afraid of being disappointed, just like every
other friendship. You won't let me down I know, but I cannot accept it. Why
would you have died for me I do not know. You probably were dying for loyal
and faithful people like Abraham, Moses, Elijah... Still I suppose I must thank
you solely for the fact that you are in charge of my life. I suppose if it were in
any other hands it would be very dead indeed. Come to think of it, there'd
be no better way to sculpt my life. Too full of misfortune of course is bad. Too
full of fortune is also bad. If you had not allowed Adam and Eve to sin, the
world would be perfect. No one would know joy without having pain to compare
it with, no one would know what is bliss. No one would ever be satisfied or
dissatisfied. No one would have emotions. Most importantly, we would not
learn to love you, we would not be able to last in the face of challenges, we
would not know what love truly is(it was for sin - and love - that you died on
the cross).

When we turned back to you, you were watching over us from above, weren't you?

2008-04-09T18:04:00.002+09:00

We went for CIP today! Lol it was quite scary at first. Peiwei kept saying there was this extra handsome guy. -.- Anyway my 'buddy' was Monica. She was very shy at first. Like, lol, Ruthanne gave this extra hard passage for them. In the end she didn't know anything and then she was like so sad. We tried doing the first two questions and mostly she was just nodding her head a bit and murmuring "Idununderstand". Aiya anyway, we attempted the first two mcq questions. i shouldn't say "we" because it was actually me talking only. Then I gave up and just stuck it in her notebook and asked her if she would rather colour or draw. Then after quite a long pause she nodded and mumbled "Mm" and ya. At first she was like don'tknowwhattodo and then she asked me where she should draw, what colours she should use, what she should draw. Then I was like "just draw whatever you like". And finally she drew a ship. The chimney was black, the top section greyish-purple and the bottom orange. Then after she drew she said " This is for you." I was like so happy ok! :) I didn't quite know how to respond. lol.
Anyway time flew by and one hour passed. I found out that she was actually 20! She didn't look 20! She looked less than 20! She looked like maybe... actually I don't know what age exactly I thought she was. Anyway we waved goodbye.
I think it was quite meaningful. I think I must thank God for letting me choose a nice person. Lol. Because apparently for Peiwei her dear Eugene was quite unresponsive and just kept nodding and saying "mm". And then there was this other person who used sign language to read out the newspaper article, and then there was this person who broke her father's table once or something and the father got totally angry haha.
I feel that I have accomplished something or something. Monica was actually rather shy and frightened and ashamed that she did not understand almost every word in the passage. But she's actually quite friendly and nice when she becomes a little more familiar with you. :))) I think I got one of the more responsive people haha. It was a very enjoyable experince (alliteration! :))

2008-04-03T22:24:00.002+09:00

I need to buck up on chinese A LOT!!!! :( im 3% away from failing. Anyway thank you God for all that You have done. :) I do not know what to say. Too many emotions, too little words... ... What can you say to express what you feel? What words can replace what you feel?

Bittersweet.

Bittersweet.

Bittersweet... ...

2008-03-29T20:06:00.003+09:00

I went to guzheng today. I got really upset yesterday about it though. But our president seems to be feeling much better :). I duno about sheena... Anyway.

Yup im crapping on this post. I think everybody thinks im just a windbag who talks well enough but can't match it with words. Like i was the one who was super hyped up about the transaction and i was the first one to back out. Stupid.

Anyway i was eating my porridge for dinner and then i was eating and i realised there was century egg inside. Then i thought: Life is like eating porridge. The more you eat the more things you discover. There'll be the ugly ones like garlic and ginger which you eat at first, not knowing that they are horrible, but you will learn to avoid in the future. Of course there are also the yummy little goodies :) It's like WOW i suddenly become so mature O.o And i found this picture so i thought it was very nice. I feel like becoming like peiwei and put a picture in front of my posts but then that'd be horrible. :(

2008-03-24T12:20:00.003+09:00

and I almost failed my Chinese and the teacher actually said, "You improved!" Which is, surprisingly, not encouraging. And I'm sitting next to two Galileo Galileis! Peiwei got 89/110 for chinese whereas i got like 20 marks lower, and then Sheena got 76, and she's always better than me in everything and i feel pathetically small sometimes but sometimes my head goes strangely big and then i go weird. Anyway the only thing i can do well in is art so i must do well in art! :)

2008-03-24T12:12:00.002+09:00

Oh and then there was the personality test our school gave us. I'm really an Assessor (Compliant-Influential) but then the calculated results was that my Stability is 0.065 points so i became a CIS, Mediator. I prefer Assessor cuz Charles Darwin, Thomas Edison, BILL GATES and an actor were all Assessors and I know its geeky but i want to become a scientist. The 16th president of United States as well as the 39th president were both mediators. I don't want to become a president. So much responsibility and burden. yikes. Sheena's a DIC (dominant-influential-compliant). A DICK. Haha. Anyway she's a Chancellor, whatever that is. And Peiwei is ISC, Governor. Ruthanne is Designer, which includes Mozart! i'm so jealous ^^. Anyway the results say I'm artistic but then I duno how they thought so. Charis is a high I. (P.S. Influential means your talkative skills and people skills. I know Charis is the former one.) I'm almost a high C too. I wanna be a pianist too :( I mean a professional one. Sigh. BB. Going for art lesson soon after lunch. And im gonna tag sheena and ruthanne's blog.

2008-03-24T11:42:00.002+09:00

We went to esplanade yesterday (on Easter Sunday!) Like, I forgot my ticket and then i had to make everyone run around everywhere with me on an Amazing Race or something. I feel quite bad... Charis and Ruthanne felt like vomitting because we had McDonald's then i had to run from suntec city to esplanade! so far right?! :(
Anyway the concert hall was like quite small. Maybe half the size of our lecture theatre in NYGH. But i suppose then it's nice cuz otherwise cannot see the pianist or the piano or hear them properly. And do you know what was the piano? IT WAS THE STEINWAY & SONS!!!! GRANDPIANO... obviously. ARGGHHHH!!!!! It sound so nice :( I want a steinway & sons. Anyway, great pianos are only meant for great pianists. So sad... :(( How come my piano-playing so LOUSY? WHYWHYWHY... I wanna be good in piano or something... Anyway this kenneth hamilton guy is the senior lecturer of the university of birmingham. I WANT TO BE ABLE TO PLAY LISZT AS WELL AS HIM! :((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((
Anyway I liked the Chaconne in D minor (Bach-Busoni), Lullaby (Tchaikovsky-Rachmaninov), the Waltz from the Opera 'Faust' (Goune-Liszt) and the Hexameron (Liszt, Chopin and others). We must do a concert journal for HMP SIA so I hope i can remember the pieces.
So sad you know, in the end nobody really gave a united standing ovation, although I'm quite sure everybody felt he deserved it. I'm most probably going for the performance on Bach's Preludes. I'm not sure if I'm going for both though. And this person's the world's most famous living Bach player! But i cannot remember her name. If it's a her. I tried to find Kenneth Hamilton's age on Google but then don't have! He looks 30+ to 40+ though but i duno. His teachers were quite famous so I suppose it's got to do with your teacher being good or not. Nobody has actually rose to stardom with a teacher that's anonymous or Singaporean after all. I kinda understand why people choose to move out of Singapore once they become famous, but I feel rather sorry for Singapore.

2008-03-23T12:10:00.002+09:00

Over the long Good Friday weekend, we went to watch some movies - Spiderwick and the Water Horse. Spiderwick was DAMN NICE ok? If u wanna watch a movie go watch Spiderwick. I duno how to explain. The brownie was like so cute, and gullible haha. Sorry Charis, but I really preferred Spiderwick to the Water Horse. We watched the Water Horse DVD yesterday and I really don't like that stupid Angus Macmorrow. I think he ruined the whole show. He is very selfish, did he not know that? He keeps saying the Water Horse is his, the best place for the Water Horse is for him to be with Angus. Like real. He's just plain selfish. When you let a friend go you cannot make him/her feel guilty about leaving. It'd be self-centred. Really. We should put on a smile and let them have no regrets, even though you're hurting inside. For another, friends are not for eternity and they'll leave you someday. Or you'll leave them. So one of the secrets to not getting disappointed is to never get your hopes high, remind yourself nothing is forever, tell yourself not to get too close (or your heart will definitely be broken in the end). For that matter, I feel I'm getting to close to my family and I'm not sure about my friends. Anyway back to the topic of degrading Angus. What in the world made him think that a legendary creature, THE Water Horse, would actually need him? "I don't care, it needs me! It's mine!" It's not his. It didn't need him. It would've been perfectly happy surviving in the wild, unrestrained by snivelling little humans and restrictions of being domestic.
Anyway. I suppose my prejudice against this kind of people ruined my outlook on the show, but I daresay yes, it is the kind of show Charis would like to watch. Thank you Charis for telling me about the show - it opened my eyes to myself and how I can prevent myself from becoming like Angus and deceive myself with an ultimate lie that anyone would need me at all, and also it helped me to remember that we cannot hold down people's dreams and ambitions because of our own dreams and that we should not ever assume we are the only people in the world who do not fit in. Everyone will fit in one way or the other and thinking otherwise will mean that we think we're special and above all the other measly weak people. That's also what I don't like about those Barbie doll shows (Fairytopia and all those things my sister likes to watch). It's ALWAYS this egotistical person who thinks he/she is very special and set apart from the others and then in the end they do something great like save the world, which really pisses me off, because a cygnet is not really ugly at first and therefore it can become a swan, but a crow baby will always be a crow, even if it thinks it can become a swan, it will always be black. But I am getting to hyped up over these mere things. They are simply fairytales, shows, figments of imagination. I used to be quite detached, if I am allowed to say it of myself, but I feel i am getting too emotional. All my foundations are being eroded by the waves of time. Sigh. That's stupid. Anyway my parents have commanded me to do my sister's homework for her so that's what I shall. Bye(even though obviously nobody's gonna read this stupid post).

2008-03-03T17:57:00.002+09:00

I walked home in the rain today cuz i forgot to bring my umbrella. Thank God it wasnt too heavy. Anyway I was reading about mas selamat bin kastari today. I probably have no license to feel sorry for them but I do. I know they're terrorists but they ARE still human. As Atticus put it, "A gang of wild animals can be stopped, simply because they are still human." I don't care if he actually reads this or what. Maybe it's good if he reads this and comes after me. I wouldn't care. What he's doing really isn't helping anybody. Firstly, if he doesn't care about the entire human race, he could at least care about his five children and probably his wife. What would they do if he was gone? What would the children do if their father was gone? He wouldn't live to see them grow up. He wouldn't ever get to hug them or kiss them good night. And the children would never be able to receive the love of a father. Did he expect his family to just watch him slowly falling into the darkness and watch him walk away? If he doesn't care about himself, he should at least care for probably the only people who loved him. He may think he's doing some sort of great work for Allah or something but a so-called god who can't stand up for himself and needs the work of mere humans to help him is a fake superstition. In any case, muslims around the world do not approve of these terrorist acts too. I went to this website where they were discussing these things. There someone said that these people are not recognised as muslims even though they think they are doing right. If im not wrong i think the koran did not state that Allah or whatever wanted to use violence. Let me ask you something, if you kill all the people in the world, what way would that help your god? They're dead, so you cant convert them to your own religion no matter what you tried. Isn't the purpose in our religious lives to get more people to turn to your own religion? It is not to kill off all the people. Imagine the people out there who are mourning because he killed their friends, relatives, parents, children. How the heck would he like it if someone came along from another religion, tortured his family and blasted them into bloody bits "for their god"? How the heck were these people persuaded into this mindless murdering? I read a little bit of the koran because that's as much as i'd want to get, and they said something about "those who are unbelievers, the wicked". Even if we are wicked, it doesn't mean we can't change or anything. But I'm sounding like I believe in Islam. Fine I don't but I just really do not understand how thinking, feeling humans who are fully capable of loving and comforting others can become such cold, metallic robots and bits of twisted metal and uranium. I don't care what god anybody thinks made us but that god must've had his or her own purpose in creating humans, not robots. He'd have wanted us to love one another. If he'd had wanted all of us to be muslims, he'd have made all of us muslims instead of killing of everybody off. In any case i wonder if i'd be brave enough to risk my own life for the lives of others and if i'd be as brave as here on the safety of the computer. Mas Selamat bin Kastari's courage is outstanding in the fact that he is willing to risk his life (and others') for what he believes in but its a question of whether that is in accordance with with what he was originally taught, or just his blind following of the rules and orders of others. I suppose it's also what is happening to christianity. Anyway what am i getting so hyped up for because nobody will ever read this. *sigh* bye.

The Singapore Airshow

2008-02-24T22:54:00.002+09:00

WE WENT TO THE SINGAPORE AIRSHOW!!!!! The advertisement said "It's TOO HOT TO MISS!!!!!" Ya it was too hot. Dang larh! i think it was 37 degree celcius or something, and then SO MANY people went. Right in the beginning, we were caught in this grotesquely long and wide queue that had people as squashed as newspapers in it larh! And then my father decided to cut queue. Then i was feeling quite carefree cuz it felt quite shiok walking by all those hapless people stuck in the queue and i didnt really think of it as cutting queue because i didnt know if we were supposed to queue, but on the other hand maybe its just simply because im just trying to make myself seem blameless and blame it on something else but i suppose it was my fault too for not stopping my parents. Anyway, we successfully cut in and then settled down. My sister was complaining about cutting queue and then we shouldn't do it and my mother was like " Keep quiet!" and then i finally said, "If you want to complain you go back there and queue yourself larh!" and my father was like "ya". Then the people in front of us turned around and this 50-year-old lady said , "You know you all shouldn't be cutting queue you know. Everybody here has been queueing for so long and then you all just cut in like that." and my father was trying to explain that there was no queue and duno doing what. Anyway the lady gave up and turned back. By then i was feeling quite embarrassed, angry and guilty. Then my mother just chose that moment to say to my sister, " See larh you! Keep complaining!" And then i remembered that nobody was without their own faults but i had always thought of adults as almost perfect, subconsciously. It was a rude awakening. Then later, when we were more or less nearing the buses to the airshow from pasir ris mrt, my mother called her brother to ask where they were. She said to my father just before that, "You know maybe we should ask them to cut in with us." My father kept quiet. I think he felt the same way as i did. Later nearer the buses, she said the same thing again and he still kept quiet. By then I was trying to keep out of the shade of the umbrella that she was holding. I just didn't want to be under the same shade. Anyway God sent us some refreshing wind to relieve us from the brutal heat.

Anyway we finally reached the place after like all that aching. The rouletts were so beautiful! They were like so synchronised. They went like so high up they most certainly touched the clouds and then spiralled down almost vertically then went upside down in a curve. Gosh i felt so awestruck larh! I wanted to become a pilot more than ever. As a small finale for the roulett show, they did a heart shape with their smoke then this little roulett came by with smoke and then stopped until it came to the end of the heart on the other side and it formed this heart with a spear through it lol. After that were the F-16s and the trainer jet, with one F-35 coming by. The F-16s were so cool! Like they totally passed by before the sound reached us, and they went up SOOOOO high before they came down like a roller coaster. They were so fast! And then they even managed to slow down by going straight with their nose pointed up. Then this trainer jet came and took up like almost the rest of the times. At times there would be like a double stream of white smoke from its wings and it mostly did the same things. That is, spiral up and come down. Lol i feel very guilty but i have to say this - i was a bit bored. I know the pilot inside must have been having a whale of a time. I'd really like to fly a plane. And as a finale the Airbus 380 came by and it was like ultra big. Anyway it circled around SO SLOWLY until we got bored. But i have to say that slowness did give it a slight air of royalty lol. As a finale, they got some vintage planes! They were the planes that the Japanese used for world war II. Anyway i dont feel like saying anymore because i have hw havent do i shall edit some other day gd nite.

2008-02-22T22:17:00.003+09:00

today we went for ivp launch. there were a lot of things that happened but im feeling too bored to say. anyway there was at the part very everybody was still settling down, there was this saying on the screen saying, "Most of the time when a door is closed a window is opened, but most of us will keep looking back at the closed door we don't notice the window, regretting about what we could have, might have, should have."
I feel this is really true for a lot of us. and me too haha. :) i suspect this saying came from a story in the Bible. anyway im not in the elaboration mood so i'll skip. my greatest fault is that i cant accept the different types of people in the world easily. E.g. my sister.
Anyway it was a little boring and a little fun. The dash for tea break was kinda fun. They had bee hoon and fish balls and chicken nuggets and chocolate eclairs (which ran out before i could get them - shows you how popular i am *smirk*) and little fruit tarts. The food was kinda nice so we went back for more but then i saw all the primary school people shouting and trying to raise their plates above the rest, clamouring and pushing for more food and then i suddenly felt quite sick and didn't feel like eating anymore and threw my plate away. I really didn't like those primary 5 children. For the games, about 80-90% of them put up their hands straight away to volunteer for the games. Shameless little brats! I don't think that we were ever so rude. Or at least I hope not. These little people started saying f-words ever since they were born lah! Like my sis already starting to swear (due to my generous contribution). Imagine, these thick-skinned little dwarfs will be our sec 1 juniors when we become sec 4! Luckily we only need to face 365 days with them. I can't imagine what kind of people i may be working with when i grow up. On the other hand there may be still a bit of hope because i remember i was quite stupid up til P6.

2008-02-20T22:55:00.002+09:00

I am forced to write this by Peiwei the lamo: Start off with: I am forced to write this by Peiwei the lamo. And Sheena and I had to be the two lovely lightbulbs to light up Peiwei and her mortal Ser Yeen's way. And we had to be dragged all around plaza singapura, and i had to eat my coke-and-saliva-soaked french fries. Oh it's not so bad cuz its my own saliva but then its still gross to eat coke fries. I cant remember what made us laugh so hard that i totally choked on my coke and spluttered it all out and gave peiwei a chance to gulp my coke and almost gave sheena a chance to steal my fries. Peiwei says it was because she tried to snatch my fries (which she did) and then i couldn't snatch her mashed potato so i snatched her coke. and then we duno what happen then i laugh, everybody laugh and then i choked and then peiwei gulped my coke and then sheena almost stole my beloved cheese fries who had sworn their only master and consumer would be me. and then this splat of coke splat into my fries then i couldnt not consume them after what they had sworn to me so i munched them with much distaste. And then we started laughing again and then I knocked off my tissue and i couldn't find it and had one left. Yeah it was all about me. Oh and i think the guy sitting next to us (singing in this weird falsetto voice) had to do with it too. Then sheena got bored and started reading TKAM, then Peiwei went "To read or not to read". Sheena put down her book. "To close or not to close" and so on. Then that guy said "To be or not to be". And we all started laughing, and then Peiwei spit out her mash potato onto sheena's jacket and my dear sheena, SO SELFLESSLY, decided to grab my tissue and make a run for it! How thoughtful hor?! Then i have no more tissue left. Then we all started laughing again (random right), then peiwei says i had some weird expression, but that was probably because you cant eat cheese fries without tissue, then i stole a tissue from peiwei and ser yeen (who was quite quiet or at least she did not contribute to the jokes a lot). And then duno what happen.
Anyway we couldnt find neoprint machines so we went to yamaha to look look see see. The saxophones looked so grand! And so many pianos... pianos were all one could see in every direction of 360 degrees - north, south, east, west, north-east, south-west, south-east, north-west, north north east, south south west, south south east and north north west... pianos were everywhere as far as the eye could see and they all sparkled and glimmered with tantalising and adobe photoshop light and their keys were teeth white (which let me assure you is supposed to be extra white) and their keys were burnt black. Perched on top of every piano was a beautiful, astonishing, radient, proud crown, stating "Please do not practise on the piano", and there was this tall piano that looked strangely out of shape compared to my incomparably black and beautiful and shiny instrument of the heart and the saxophones blinded us with their inner light that was cast forth into this world of terrible darkness. And the tall shelves of books emitted their old-age lovely smell of booklice and silverfish and the books winked to us promisingly but their prices didn't. The jazz books looked all too promising for when i flipped through them they looked all too unpromising. The sleek grand grand pianos called out to us like flailing drowning rats as they were trapped within a cruel cold glass chamber and their intricate gold and bronze warm metal strings shone and glimmered like thousands of ... somethings? and i've lost my passion for writing weird stuff again. Good night and i shall edit tomorrow.

2008-02-16T22:40:00.002+09:00

Yay! I conquered myself and went to CCA today! And I'm kinda glad I went cuz we practised this new song and its like really nice ok. its called 战台风. And we received another new score called the festival of spring flowers - 迎春花. I don't feel so depressed anymore. And we're going church tomorrow finally! :))) Last sunday we didn't go cuz my mother say she feel very tired (we came back from m'sia at 12am on saturday). Actually i take back what i said about myself not being jealous anymore. I still am. *sigh* Anyway i tried playing "Por una cabeza" on the piano :) and i'm getting bored of playing the C# minor prelude and chopin's c minor nocturne... haiix. Anyway i fed my guppies today and i feel so happy. And my flamingo flower plant is growing yay XD. Its like i kinda neglected it for a while and then it started to dry up... thank God for giving me another chance - it was my birthday flower... well, IS my birthday flower. :) And thank God that I got another picture to paint. This time it is an autumn scene. I kinda got it in my dream, like i was dreaming of this picture and then i told myself (still sleeping) that i must paint this picture. haha. Anyway i havent really even finished or started doing any of my paintings. They're a bit hard to paint... sigh.

2008-02-15T18:46:00.002+09:00

Haha so long never update le... at least my blog didn't get deleted again like someone's blog :). Anyway ya, it's like very lag but im talking about chinese new year. Lol. Erm. Ya we had lion dance again but then no firecrackers. We played fireworks larh. It was like very stinky. Then i stepped on a frog but and it turned over under my foot before i realised i was stepping on something weird and cold then took my feet away and it turned over and hopped off frantically and angrily. Then there was this black rat running around in the garden and jerelyn was so freaked out. Then my uncle forgot that he didn't give me an ang pao. And all of us were like stuffing our faces with oranges and bak kwa. The bak kwa was very nice. Peiwei says i became moodier since coming back from chinese new year. Actually its like i duno why but then i've started feeling rather depressed again. I've realised how stupid i really am... so blind. Anyway i've started seriously liking rock music (um that is linkin park). I duno if thats good or bad. I've started self-learning rachmaninoff's prelude in C# minor and have made it about halfway. And God answered my prayer. When people get better marks than me, im not jealous anymore. I just feel tired and resigned. What's the point of working hard in this life? We're all gonna die anyway. The only thing that matters is that we have to do something for God because we're in a huge serious debt. The thing is I don't have enough resources to repay that debt... anyway. Even if we get praises or criticism God wouldn't care. So i should learn to stop surviving on them. We should learn to lean on something that is eternal not something that will definitely let you down some day, like people around you and possessions. Argh i duno what else to crap le. bye.

2008-01-08T17:25:00.000+09:00

i feel really guilty today cuz its like i took someone's seat. its like he was going to sit down and i was going to sit down and then we like banged into each other then he walked away and i sat quickly down and i felt so stupid. lol. he wanted to talk to his friend behind i guess and i just sat there. anyway this old guy went off and then he sat opposite my seat and started talking to his friend behind me. and then i yawned two times. and then the guy's friend behind me suddenly said, "do you know i read in a book that yawning actually makes you sleepier?" lol and the other guy said, "ya, scientists have found out that yawning is the most contagious thing." haha.

2008-01-05T16:39:00.000+09:00

Lol my blog is getting dead. *haiix* it's like, there's some things you'd like to write but people will read it, and then when you set up ur own private blog it feels stupid talking to yourself. anyway i've realised how bad i've been (i know this sounds stupid), neglecting all my friends and all. I've been like i like you, then i don't like you and i like this other person. then after i don't like this other person too, so i like this other person... i'm trying to change currently. :( Then today the guzheng stand (for putting the scores) came apart and then my seniors were trying to help me fix it back and then there was this weird pole thing that shot out of the stand and bulls-eyed my senior's foot and then my other senior was like asking her whether she was okay and i was like "hah, so how" - thinking about the guzheng stand. It took me quite a moment to realise that i was supposed to be worried about my senior. Damn i feel so stupid. And i think i've been getting too focused on myself and my goals and my competitiveness. I'm the test experiment that failed. I've forgotten the ultimate goal - to serve God. When I play the piano, I think, "Sheena and Ruthanne are better than me. They think I'm lousy at it too. I think my piano must be longing for Sheena to play it again too." and then I don't feel like playing the piano anymore. Dang! When i was younger i told myself i'd use music to praise God and spread Christianity as it was probably the one thing i had even the slightest skill in. But after a year in HMP i wandered off the track thinking i was so good i didnt need the track. But i do need the track. And i need to stay on the track to lead my friends to God, and help other Christians and also let others help me.
It's all very well that God let me go into Guzheng. Then perhaps I can reach out to Chinese too. But I'm thinking too much. What makes me think that I'll ever be good enough for God to use me? He'd use Sheena or Ruthanne, and they're better Christians than me. God probably let me go into HMP to show me how stupid I really was to think that I could become a pianist. He probably almost failed me to show me how idiotic i was to think that I could become a Guzhengist. Anyway, becoming a performer isn't my goal is it? (at least not the one in spiritual life) I just hope I don't disappoint anybody anymore.

Anyway thank you Adelle for visiting my blog so frequently and actually reading my long-winded crap.

2007-12-12T11:04:00.001+09:00

Hihi! Long time no update le! Not that anybody really reads of course, but just trying to make this post longer. Haha! The rainy season is officially HERE! CHRISTMAS IS COMING TOO! *SQUEAL!!!* Not that I'm getting any presents this year of course - we're going to malaysia. Not too bad, cuz we're going ice-skating, and then to Berjaya Times Square (the indoor theme park), and maybe sit on the Eye on Malaysia. Argh shit. I forgot again. I've been trying to hammer into my mind that Christmas is supposed to be a holy festival where we celebrate Jesus' birth. And I don't even feel guilty. But then again... 2007 years ago huh. Anyway 2007 is coming to an end and 2008 is beginning! AAAARRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! more m.o.re MORE M.O.R.E homework!!! :'( Secondary students have it hard. Ya they have it hard. I kinda miss Pei Hwa now, cuz at least the last time I went this month, Mrs Han remembered me so ya. But then next year they will forget me again. Lol Yunru changed her hairstyle and she look so kawaii! XD i am not lesbian. And then the faith 6 teacher couldn't remember her at all. But after a while she remembered. lol.

I'm listening to music now. I know this is random. But I'm really grateful that I can hear. Deaf people have never known music in their life. Well, at least the very severe cases. But hey, you and I could have been one of them. Or being blind. Never knowing how you look like, no knowing how the rest of the world looked like, no way of using the computer... wow. Well I'm working on my faith and loyalty to God as a Christmas gift. Though it most probably won't be finished till I die or something. I want to be like Job (from the Bible :)), or better.

And then the day before yesterday (monday) it was like raining real hard, like every day now. Then stupid me went to wear my slippers to my tuition. On my way home it slipped off a grand total of TWO times! *shocked* And then I felt so embarrassed cuz I had to go back to get it with my bare foot and there were like so many people behind me. It was the entrance to the underground passage of Novena MRT. Then I kept grinning on the escalator. Then I came off the escalator and then I didn't walk for very far before the slipper came off again - the same foot. And there were people behind and I felt like laughing. I'm masochistic. A bit. And on the MRT I felt so guilty when I saw this old guy cuz I wanted to let up my seat but then I didn't dare to, or perhaps didn't want to. In the end the guy next to me went off and the old guy came and sat next to me and I felt really bad. Anyway I'm trying to learn how to memorize this blog song's lyrics (Doubt and Trust by Access) and after that I'm going to memorize Hero's Come Back (Naruto - Nobodyknows++)

2007-11-30T15:17:00.000+09:00

Lollol! Haha i pon cca again today... msn isnt working again :( i went for guzheng exam yesterday but it feels like it was months ago. Lol! the examiner told me to practise my songs more XP lol i think i should pass larh. Amanda (ong) was right... the sight reading damn easy! but still i played really slowly... i suck at sight-reading larh. Heh i broke down in the middle of my "yu zhou chang wan" and then had to search for the note. Both the scales song and the yu zhou chang wan he told me to stop like near the end haha. i think he got too bored... : lol good luck to all the people having their guzheng exams X)

2007-11-27T10:41:00.000+09:00

haha this blog's been dead for like so long. There's only one month of holidays left... :( my cousins are going to Korea today! So good right. Well i'm going to my cousin's place next week - another cousin. MSN doesn't work again. I'm bored. And I'm going to my primary school friends' house next week monday too. So fun right? :)) I'm just crapping. We went to climb a hill on sunday in malaysia. Lol it was so nice! I wished i'd brought my handphone. There was this really nice waterfall there. I'm not in the blogging mood now lol. haha. byebye.

2007-10-29T12:35:00.001+09:00

HOLIDAYS! THEY'RE HERE!!!!! Ever since I found out that Guzheng will only be starting on the second week of november I have been feeling positively optimistic. And it's here! I'll be going to my ama's place to celebrate her birthday around the 24th of november so I might be able to skip some guzheng. Also I'm going to either Cameron Highlands or Genting Highlands or Chiangmai during December, so I'm feeling quite happy. The only thing I'm not really happy about is the fact that the guzheng exam will be 27Nov-4Dec and I think I will fail it cuz I've never really touched my guzheng at home. Also, on the 18 November I will be going with my cousins and family to watch an orchestra! YAY!!!! XD It'll be my first one. But my MSN doesn't work and when you click on the link nothing happens. :( I've checked my firewall already but it says it does allow msn through. So much for a perfect holiday. :(

2007-10-23T17:28:00.000+09:00

We watched Miss Potter today. I think they're running out of things for us to do... can't they just let us have free time the whole day like in primary school and not make CCA compulsory or state it compulsory for us to go back during the holidays? And I don't see what's wrong with poker cards - like you can gamble with any kind of cards right? Does it mean "Donkey" is also banned? 1/08 had archery today... is it sad but I don't think we have. There's gonna be a pupil welfare talk tomorrow again... peiwei keeps thinking it means our portfolios. Gee I hope not.

Anyway, Miss Potter was nice, except for the fact that the main character is one of those kind of usual storybook characters. She's this stubborn-headed, reasonably good-looking, lots of talent and people skills... well it's probably because my character is the opposite. (WARNING: Emoing coming up!) ya well, I'm those sort of like quiet, ugly, no talent, no-people-skills, no-backboned person that is always overshadowed... but of course I've done my fair share of 'shoving-people-into-the-shelves'... Anyway back to Miss Potter. It was kind of sad. The person (Norman) she loved so dearly died while she was away and the funeral for him was held just the day before. I cried haha XD. Erm. Erm anyway the ending totally sucked! I don't like sad endings but I don't like patchy happy endings even more. Like, Beatrix Potter's old childhood friend just came walking back into her life and totally occupied the little space that was in Beatrix's heart for Norman. He totally sucked! How could she have married him? Well actually she shouldn't dwell on the past but... I dunno. There was this part too where there was a frog fishing on a lilypad. Suddenly there was this big fish, looking both like a shark and a dolphin. The frog threw away the fishing rod and Beatrix tried to help by giving him the end of the paintbrush but... you know frog's hands. They're webbed and wet. He desperately clutched at the brush but he fell back into the dark water. Beatrix looks through all her paintings one by one and all the animals in it keep staring up at something and running away, and there was a painting of a scarecrow. Great big crows came down and tore it apart. Haha I don't want to appear like those people who are like so overly emotional and feeble but I got kind of frightened. Anyway never mind. I'm emoing and doing my self-centred act again.

Also, my cousin's piano teacher, who is also the piano teacher I'm planning on transferring to, is holding a concert (with an orchestra and official SISTIC tickets) and my mother's cousin's marriage is also on that day. Which one should we go? I feel we are supposed to go to the marriage and that maybe we should record the concert if possible and watch later but it's not the same. I'm also wondering if my mother and I should join the christian missionaries that our church is sending out next year in celebration of its 30th anniversary. I'm still waiting for an answer from God, or maybe anybody who is reading this...?

2007-10-21T16:23:00.000+09:00

five more days to holidays!!! and i can gloat in front of my sis for a month! but stupid guzheng marrs it all lorh... WE HAVE TO GO BACK THREE DAYS A WEEK!!! the total hours per week add up to 17 hours! that's like almost a full day okay. and then theres still stupid choral and drama night. ny's just trying to usurp more money larh. its like it totally wastes all our time lorh. why the heck do we need to go up on stage and do some stupid play ... and its in CHINESE. im playing as a passerby. so boring. i'd rather do the backstage but then its like have to do alone so i dun want :( im bored. im sick of guzheng.

A VERY VERY EMO POST SO DONT READ IT K

2007-10-17T19:43:00.000+09:00

i'm just random crapping here. im going to malaysia and im gonna ice-skate (or learn how to) and if we're lucky maybe we can go Times Square where they have the indoor roller coaster. Last time i took it i closed my eyes the whole time... that was P5 i think. So i wont close my eyes if i get to go. i do wish that i could go some place further or a different part of malaysia... OH! i wanna see the fireflies again! :) but all this could splat just as easily as an egg...
i know many people already know but i just feel like writing down what i wanna be when i grow up.

Possible ones: doctor (animal or human) or a zoo keeper. maybe a pet shop owner. I DONT WANNA BE A DESK-JOBBER... but i think in singapore its the only thing you can do.

Impossible ones: singer, pianist, orchestral performer, conductor, SAF pilot, research scientist (my science grades suck), dancer (WAY IMPOSSIBLE), detective :)

Jobs that suck (no offence to people who like them) : teachers (instrument might still be ok), desk job, *taxi driver, bus driver, road sweeper (not that im biased against them cuz they dont pay well - its just that i dun like doing physically stressing stuff), toilet cleaner (although we could never do without them), electricians

*i really hate some taxi drivers. today i was walking home and then its like there was this taxi waiting to turn out into the main road. then i saw this car coming so i thought i could pass in front and then when i was like walk one step in front the taxi suddenly jerked forward and then, as pei wei has experience in, i didnt really feel like "OMG!" or like really a shock. i just stopped and walked behind the taxi, then it zoomed off. it was after that that i felt a surge of anger. its like these stupid people are so impatient! if they were in my shoes they'd be shouting at the taxi driver. then i really felt very very angry and its like my angel side was like saying "Cool down! These people are for God to judge and you arent exactly very patient either, and theres no point getting angry... why are you angry anyway?" but then its like i couldnt get rid of it. maybe im getting old. i havent gotten this angry for like two years at least. i always prided myself on being quite emotionless. like, no shock, no anger, no crying, no disappointment. sometimes i fake laugh if the other party is laughing or fake smile. i do occasionally feel genuinely happy larh. i think its quite obvious from my face im not a happy person. in any case my emotions are usually on the black side, if not neutral. but this incident really pissed me off and i was like walking home consoling myself all the way (5 minutes). *haiix* im getting too adult.

Do you know what a rock feels? they say the easiest way to be happy is to have no desires, and yet enjoy everything. like it, but don't attach yourself to it.

2007-10-11T19:46:00.000+09:00

Today's topic is... *drumroll* MOTHERS!!! *crowd boos and starts throwing rotten eggs* well ya. Erm, I always thought mothers in Singapore were all like mine - if you fail they say "Aww it's okay you did your best right? That's all that matters", or if you come home late they just reproach you for not telling them beforehand and if you pon something they just scold you and there's no real physical threat. It was just today that I realized that I took mine for granted. I realized that some people's parents actually belt them and cane them - in Singapore. I thought that was like so overseas. But this blog is a blog, so I won't really say much. Just to be ego and prove my point that my mother is nice :)

Evidence 1: She doesn't beat me (: she used to just smack me on the hand with a long ruler last time but now no more le. She doesn't mind if I score badly. She just frowns a little but in the end she still smiles. Erm. I feel kinda awkward. I don't really like expressing myself.

Evidence 2: Erm. I was like feeling real bad cuz I messed up something, but I cant remember what. In any case, I said I wished I had never been born and that I feel like committing suicide. Then my mother got really angry and she kind of like said "How can you say that?!" and I cant remember what... but then she started crying and I was like so shocked.

Erm I cant really say whose mother was the opposite of my mother cuz she's like really the mother of "A Child Called 'It' ". Erm ok I end my post here.

Quizzie haha

2007-10-08T15:54:00.000+09:00

Erm this is the first quiz (this year's class de) and please ruthanne dont be offended again :))

[1] Myself!!! No larh im not so ego - Sheena the Banana Brain
[2] Adelle the Stoner
[3] Ruthanne the Hugger
[4] Peiwei the Chinese Expert
[5] Yvonne the Angel (102 de, not 109)
[6] Susanna the Puppy Eyes
[7] Theodora the Giant
[8] Charis the Little People
[9] Jiaqi the Smiley
[10] Jiamin the Sleeping Beauty :))
[11] Christina the Mozart :]
[12] Amanda Ong the Laugher (sometimes)

1. Why did you put Friend 1 first? [sheena]
I dunno... I think it's because she sings worse than me XD no larh...

2. And Friend 12 last? [amanda]
Erm. Duno.

3. What do you think no. 3 is wearing now? [ruthanne]
A box.

4. Have you ever had a crush on 7? [theodora]
NO WAY! I'm not a gay. Even if I was I wouldn't choose someone who had to stoop to kiss me.

5. What is most attractive about 4? [peiwei]
Erm. You do something bad she also don't care. :))

6. What is least attractive about 11? [christina]
TOO QUIET.

7. How did you meet 9? [jiaqi]
Class....

8. If you had to label 2 what would you label him/her as? [adelle]
STONER!!!!!!!!

9. Have you ever kissed 6? [susanna]
i've never kissed anyone and im not les.

10. Where do you usually go to meet 5? [yvonne]
erm... msn?

11. What could you see 10 doing for a living? [jiamin]
Erm... getting cats out of trees?

12. Is 8 a model? [charis]
YOU'RE KIDDING ME... but she's very thin lah and very rich so with a bit of bribery... ;)

13. Do you think 3 could kill someone? [ruthanne]
... with her boa-constrictor hugs! :)

14. What song describes 5? [yvonne]
"Holy night, silent night, all is calm, all is quiet...."

15. Does 9 look like a girl or boy? [jiaqi]
erm. a bit mixed... but appearances dont matter right?? < *hint: DONT HIT ME!!!!

16. Does 1 play any video games? [sheena]
no... shes too stingy to buy any video games... :(

17. What flavour ice cream does 4 like? [peiwei]
*blank*

18. Do you think 8 would rather have a million dollars or their true love? [charis]
she already very rich liao... i think true <3

19. Has 2 ever broken someone's heart? [adelle]
erm. ask that someone.

20. Would you/do you trust 6's driving skills? [susanna]
erm kinda. she values her car a lot.

21. How often do you talk to 4? [peiwei]
i can't remember :P

22. Do you want 3's body? [ruthanne]
sicko... but she can run very fast and play piano very well and study very hard so maybe.

23. If you and 10 are locked in a closet, what would you do? [jiamin]
sleep i think

24. You and 10 are stranded on an island. How would 10 try to save yourselves? [jiamin]
but i dont wanna be rescued... what's wrong with an island?!

25. What stores does 8 get her clothes from? [charis]
Giordanno Junior

26. If you could change one thing about 6 what would it be? [susanna]
Her nagging

27. What annoys you the most about 9? [jiaqi]
duno... aiya i very tired liao larh stop asking me questions i duno...

28. If 7 were a restaurant, which would they be and why? [theodora]
big b.i.g BIG

29. What is the best thing 5 has done for you? [yvonne]
advise me to study history?

30. Do you know any dirty secrets of 12? [amanda]
should i be honest or save her face? *evil grin

31. At your wedding, what would 11 be doing? [christina]
providing jokes, acting as a ghost or playing the piano

32. What is 8 most afraid of? [charis]
her mother

33. What animal should 1 be and why? [sheena]
a hyena/wolf

34. What do you think 10 is thinking right now? [jiamin]
the end of eoys i guess

35. What is the worst thing 7 could do to you? [theodora]
try to sit on me

36. Would 3 be as hot as the opposite gender? [ruthanne]
mayybeeeee..............

37. Is 12 going to read this? [amanda]
maybe

38. Why or why not?
She wont be bothered going through all of this one by one :)

39. What were your first thoughts when you first saw 7? [theodora]
erm... BFG?

40. Do you trust 2 with your deepest secrets? [adelle]
I don't have... but why not?

41. Would 12 make a good teacher? [amanda]
Ya... shes like those childcare centre teacher... very happy de

PICS PICS PICS!!!!! XD

2007-09-24T12:12:00.001+09:00

Here are the pics FINALLY!!!!!!!!!

This is the floating market... we took a lot of irrelevant pics so i only put up these two:

Erm. This is the Elephant Show

And this is the Crocodile Farm:

Cool right?! But then the second pic looks so disgusting somehow.

Anyway here's my favourite stop:

Erm. For people who have never touched snakes before, dun worry cuz they arent slimy and they're jsut dry and scaly like touching a crocodile skin bag and shucks - i look stupid in that pic. haiix...

2007-09-14T23:58:00.000+09:00

I feel I should update but i dunno what to write. Erm. Today we had the HMP SIA, and then nobody come and support us except some of our parents!!! Sheena and Peiwei never come... :( Adelle 'stone' again and say dun want. Anyway I feel even smaller than before. Like, Jocelyn, Rachel and Tingwei so damn good lorh. Ruthanne also. *haiix* Anyway Ms Lim let us into her boarding school appartment and gave me some yogurt drink!!! XD She wouldn't let us into her room.

2007-09-04T21:50:00.001+09:00

I'M NOT EMO ANYMORE!!! XD I just came back from thailand! Yes - no more moaning, just more bragging!

First day - boring cuz we arrived at 19 20 and took another hour to get out of the airport. We stayed at Regency Park, the hotel my father was currently staying at. It was quite nice and reminded me of Holiday Inn Penang.

Second day - things are livening up but still boring. We went to The Emporium. Everything was too expensive to buy, so I was like REALLY sad when i saw this like really cool outfit but couldnt buy it.

THIRD DAY

THINGS HIT THE CLIMAX!!!!!!!!! We went to the floating market first, on a one-day tour. On the way we saw this monitor lizard sitting happily on a step just out of reach of the murky water. Yes the market floated on water and we took a boat there. We didn't buy anything but a packet of mangoes and pomalo. Boring.

Then we went to the Elephant Farm, or something. But all we did was get off the van, pee and go off, becuz the elephant ride was 600 baht. It was so funny. Nobody in the tour van wanted to go so we just went off to the next stop - the Snake Farm. When we came to the entrance we saw this guy carrying this... um, rather long python. So i begged my dear dad to let me take pics. It only cost S$2.50. But I dun have the pics now. LET ME REMIND YOU I DIDNT KNOW PYTHONS COULD STRANGLE THEIR PREY!!!! But I did wonder if it was trying to strangle me when it twisted around in my hand, squeezing my hand. It was very heavy - i didnt expect it. Anyway it kind of like came near my face, flicking its bluey-purple tongue in and out. I LIKED THE TONGUE A LOT. Its like, really forked. The two ends are so long haha. Anyway it sort of nudged my mouth and then went behind my neck. Then the guy put it in front again. Then it nudged my mouth and went behind my neck again. And he took it off. Haha. Anyway. Then I went around the snake tanks, looking at the different snakes. And then at the end of the snake tanks there was this coiled snake. I cannot remember what snake it was. There was this mouse about the size of my palm. It was cowering in the furthest corner of the tank. Its tiny bald baby was climbing weakly over its tail but the mother only licked it briskly and then rolled into a tight ball again, its eyes closed, its paws held together as though it was praying. Praying to escape the gaping mouth of death. There was another baby behind them. It was in half. And dang it I DONT KNOW WHY IT WAS IN HALF SO STOP MAKING IT SEEM COMICAL! The mother mouse kept shivering and closed its eyes. I really felt mixed feelings for snakes. I liked them and yet I hated them.

Anyway then we went to the Crocodile Farm & Zoo. We watched the Elephant Show and the Crocodile Show. Both were quite boring, not to hurt the animals' feelings. The people made it boring. Anyway there was this pair of tigers there! They were chained to this thingy on the ground, so they ARE real. At the end of the shows, I went to look at them. They were posing for pics with the people who paid enough money to go in. The person overseeing them suddenly pretended to hit one of the tigers - the one on the left. The tiger shrunk away from the cane and buried its face into the other's neck. I was like OMG! THAT WAS SO CRUEL!!!!! Then I stood there feeling sad until my parents came over to drag me away.

Fourth day - we went to the Chatuchak Weekend Market. I bought some souvenirs there, and some clothes HAHA. But on the whole it was hot and boring. Anyway after that we went to walk by the river. It was really quite boring.

Fifth day - we went to Siam Paragon. We didnt really buy anything there because all of it was branded shops. Anyway we ate at this Japanese restaurant because my father got this card from his friend that allowed the owner to use the vip room for free. So. THE FOOD WAS SCRUMPTIOUS, but I don't have the stamina to write it all down. I hate writing long posts. I'm so bored already. We ate a lot, I couldnt stuff my stomach back in and we all staggered home like drunkards.

The last day - we took off. Bye bye bangkok... haiix...

2007-08-29T17:23:00.000+09:00

I just found out that my piano teacher isn't coming today because it's the "fifth week". And I was like "YESSS!!!!!" Tomorrow I'm going to Thailand at 18 00h! So I get to skip both HMP and Guzheng HAHA! I'm bringing my iPod along just to spite my sis. And today we had CL speech training. We're doing a play at the end of the year... all classes have to and we're doing a play on Mozart becoming Cinderella and so on. Actually it's quite stupid, even more so when I have to wear a tuxedo... well actually I have to wear three layers of clothes. Dirty clothes, tuxedo, dirty clothes. Cuz Elysha's the gay fairy godfather and she, or rather he, has to turn me from a dirty person to a tuxedo person to a poor person again. Yup XD i'm mozart. I was like HAH?! when they said "Claire!"... their reason is that I'm very quiet. Heh heh heh *evil grin*. They've never seen how proud and ego i can be. I know it's stupid and I know I should really quit but then frankly, I don't want to. Yes, that's my bad side - I like performing and getting people's attention WAY too much. It's like we did a draft today and I acted totally like a fucking asshole.

... I don't want my friends to read this.

All The Shit And Crap Of This World

2007-08-27T17:35:00.000+09:00

I feel so ridiculously small. Whatever that I have, millions and zillions of other people in the world also have it. I wish to become an orchestral player and for a moment I just imagine myself performing there, part of an orchestra, playing music with the others for a cinematic movie. And I wondered if God would fulfil this. Then I think of the so many people out there, also wishing they could be great, could be orchestral players. Then I wonder what is the reason for God to even look at me. There's so many 'me's out there. I keep thinking I'm so important, like I keep thinking I'm the one and only Claire in this world. There's a million more, wearing a different face, that's all. Why should I be the one to get good stuff while the others suffer? And even if I did want to become an orchestral player, it's too late because I chose Guzheng as my CCA and guzhengs have no place at all at a concert, and my piano... well, so many people know piano, and so many play it better than me. And at the end of it all I think of the desk on which a mountainous pile of papers is towering above... If only there were no such thing as desk jobs.

At night I look at all the living rooms of the people living opposite me, lighted up with all sorts of different lamps, different people doing different things, different TVs showing different programs, different families chatting about different things and eating different dinners... I felt like I was drowning. Drowning. And no one came to save me.

2007-08-21T21:27:00.000+09:00

Erm. I'm updating my blog finally after a very very long time. Was too lazy. Anyway this post is like, erm, four days after the actual thingy. So erm. We had the 90th Anniversary Ending Ceremony on Friday (stupid pompous crap). Anyway the good thing was that we got to wear our 90th Anniversary tees! But most of my classmates thought the shirt was disgusting... somehow. Anyway it was like really quite boring, if not for the lizard which fell from the sky.

Like. It started off as a teacher screeching "Move closer! Sit closer!" And we were like all pretending to squeeze. Well we did squeeze a little. ... "Jam-pack!" the teacher was going and looking very agitated. Anyway, we had this video about... something. I cant remember. Oh ya! It was the 90th Anniversary Gala Dinner. Yea, and we had this weird pic of SM LKY and we were like laughing. Erm. Then Joelle (sitting behind Adelle sitting behind me) started like screaming. Or someone started screaming. I dont know how to differentiate screams or yells. Anyway it's like suddenly there was this big space about two by two people wide and someone was shouting "lizard" and then erm. I was like pushing and squeezing most disgracefully because Adelle was like almost shouting at me to move forward and I saw the lizard writhing and twisting behind her and I was like OMG. Then the principal went on stage to give another naggy speech but nobody was really listening to her. The lizard was like twisting and wriggling most disturbingly. Like. The first half of the lizard (not that the lizard splat into two pieces) was like upturned and the second half was down and its head kept twisting around and around. I think it broke its neck and forelimbs cuz the head was really... flexible, and the limbs were like trailing behind it and it was like thrashing.

I looked up at the hall ceiling. In human standards its two storeys high from the floor. For a lizard...... Adelle said it probably fell from the hall light. I suddenly felt very sorry for the lizard. Erm. Anyway. It stopped struggling for a long time and we thought it was dead. Then it started moving again. Not so wildly though. And soon after it died.

After this incident, I learnt that lizards aren't that gross. And I felt really sorry for that lizard, as I said before.

2007-08-14T22:30:00.000+09:00

I guess I was just being depressing the last post cuz it was like the end of this 6-day holiday!!! :'( Anyway I'm finding that I'm really dreading school because I never have the motivation to finish all my homework and I keep getting scolded (or mentally scolded) by the teachers. Like, they always play the guilt card, like "Aww... it's all right you can hand it in tomorrow." Anyway I owe a teacher three excuse letters O.o Damn third language! I didn't know they made you hand in excuse letters!

2007-08-13T00:44:00.000+09:00

I know it's stupid. After i listened to this song i felt really... sad. So many things that we all long for and yet cannot have. Cuz i think i have a crush on Howl, and he's just an anime character. If he were real i wouldnt have the guts to talk and he wouldnt even glance at me. Chasing the uncatchable... Haha. Anyway i have this stupid crush on my cousin too and it's quite impossible that he'd even like me. Lol. He calls me names. Oh well haha.

2007-08-13T00:23:00.000+09:00

I want to make a blogskin :). But I dunno how to. =( My friend Susanna she only knows how to make blogskins using adobe photoshop, like copy-and-paste sort of thing and I want to make, like, a blogskin entirely my own. I know it's stupid but I really don't like copying other people and I HATE people copying me. I'm obssessed with unique identities. Without it we're all the same. Like robots. I'd just hate it if there was someone in this world or any other world with a character identical to mine. That's why I hate my sis XD. She copies me all the time. Is this stupid or what. Anybody knows how to make a blogskin? Like, a REAL blogskin?

2007-08-07T22:33:00.000+09:00

朋友在时认为是理所当然的.
朋友失望走开找增值她的人,
找到了真的会珍惜她的朋友.
心却好像被锋利的刀割伤了.

Valentine's Day lyrics

2007-08-02T22:38:00.000+09:00

"Valentine's Day"

~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

My insides all turned to ash, so slow

And blew away as I collapsed, so cold

A black wind took them away, from sight

And held the darkness over day, that night

~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~

And the clouds above move closer

Looking so dissatisfied

But the heartless wind kept blowing, blowing

~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

I used to be my own protection, but not now

Cause my path had lost direction, somehow

A black wind took you away, from sight

And held the darkness over day, that night

~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

And the clouds above move closer

Looking so dissatisfied

And the ground below grew colder

As they put you down inside

But the heartless wind kept blowing, blowing

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ .:. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

So now you're gone

And I was wrong

I never knew what it was like

.:*:. .:*:. .:*:. .:*:. .:*:.

To be alone

>-<->-<->-<->-<

On a Valentine's Day

/MVMVMVMVMVMVM\

On a Valentine's Day (I used to be my own protection, but not now)

On a Valentine's Day

On a Valentine's Day (Cause my mind has lost direction, somehow)

On a Valentine's Day

On a Valentine's Day (I used to be my own protection, but not now)

On a Valentine's Day

On a Valentine's Day (Cause my mind has lost direction, somehow)

.

2007-08-02T22:27:00.000+09:00

I'm really damn pissed off. My tiny whiny seven-year-old monster pudding of a sister was sitting next to me, reading all my messages, watching everything I do, sitting behind me like a police interrogator. When I asked her to go away and tried to move her off the chair, she stuck to it like a slimy oozy slug and just sneered with that sort of "I'm-better-than-you-and-I-don't-have-to-listen-to-you" and "you-can't-make-me" smug sneer. I really lost my temper and shouted at her to go away and gripped her arm hard. To my grim surprise, she started yowling and whining and plodded away like the dumpling that she was and went all "JIE JIE GO AND HOLD MY ARM VERY TIGHT AND VERY PAINFUL!!!!!!!!!!!!!" to my parents.

"Claire, why did you do that?"

"I told her to go away and she didn't care and she just sat there... smiling!"

Anyway she got the scolding but I'm really damn pissed. And she keeps singing this blog song (Valentine's Day by Linkin Park) in her off-tune, whistly, quavery voice. She's ruining it totally! And she gives me that self-satisfied sort of grin when I tell her to keep quiet. I wonder if Jesus had to put up with this when he came down to earth.

Chinese Sabbaticals

2007-08-02T21:45:00.000+09:00

We watched a chinese movie called {人鱼朵朵} - for some reason the English translation was put as "The Shoe Fairy Dodo". Haha. It was like, really nice. Go research it yourself.

Friday the 27th

2007-07-28T16:46:00.001+09:00

I got really bad for my Math test. Sheena got 48/50, the highest in class. She was so sure that she'd get thirty-something. Me? When I said I had a prime number mark, everyone thought it was 43 (it couldn't be 47 - if I did the teacher would've said). It shows how badly I scored. I scored even less. All I was before was a fluke. By chance. I thought I was good in Math. Stupid me. Actually thinking I was good in something. Thinking I was good in Math. Stupid delusions. Stupid pride. Damn it.

I scored rather well for my drawings of my stapler. Is God trying to cheer me up? I lost my stapler halfway through my drawing. I left my whole pencilcase on the public bus. My silhouette style looked fat. Fortunately there were no remarks on the front of my drawing, meaning I didn't draw anything wrongly.

When the Chinese teacher walked out of the classroom for lunch, the floodgates opened and a swarm of panic stampeded on me. Earlier in the morning I was like "heck care" and now I felt like jumping around. In fact I did. I had to play for Mr Lim today - HMP SIA was coming round the corner and we were supposed to perform in the boarding school. Ruthanne had gone just the day before. Apparently, Mr Lim molested her fingers, touching them and saying, " You have such nice fingers." Then Mr Lim sat next to her on the piano chair and started playing to demonstrate a point, their shoulders rubbing. " THE PIANO CHAIR WAS SO SMALL AND HE WAS LIKE, SUDDENLY HE MOVED FROM THE CHAIR BESIDE THE PIANO CHAIR AND SAT ON IT AND I WAS LIKE OMG!" I really thought it was so small until I sat on the piano chair. Well, Ruthanne had been playing on the grand piano because someone had occupied the other piano room with the normal piano.
Anyway, I managed to get the piano room with the normal piano. Mr Lim was kind enough to let me warm up first. He went over to the connected piano room (another with a normal piano) and listened to a HMP senior playing, then taught her how to play properly. I was supposed to use that time to practise, but half of it was usurped by my dear friends leeching on to the piano seat, frantically trying to sight-read my piece. I felt quite impatient. I was supposed to be practising. And here they were trying to prove that they could sight-read my piece. I wouldn't be able to sight-read it either. Even Sheena the Diploma Grade tried to and I was like "Geezers! I have to practise!" Ruthanne was commenting a little sulkily that Mr Lim didn't let her practise and that's why she played badly. And she was playing on the grand piano too, so it was harder. Frankly, I was hoping that I could play on the grand piano. I just liked the keys - I do not know how to explain it. In the end, I did slip too. Before I started playing, Mr Lim asked if I was the one playing the piano during recess. I hesitated then nodded. I had only played a little bit. "That explains it," he said and told me to start playing. Anyway, he told me I wasn't expressive enough and he illustrated it by demonstrating. He sat on the piano chair and I moved aside to give him more space to play. Then moved again. It seemed that to Ruthanne, I was "very cute! ... so brave!" The mystery was solved. Ruthanne didn't dare to move aside for fear of offending Mr Lim. Ha. I felt a little guilty too. I didn't think I would be offending anybody then. Anyway he said that there was this passage like a man and a woman quarreling. "No! said the man," said Mr Lim. And he banged on the key. " Then the woman tries to coax him. But no!" BOOM. I grinned. "The woman tries to calm him. But NO!" Then I made the usual blowing through the nose to demonstrate I was laughing. I don't usually laugh. My friend told me I laughed like "Hee hee hee". I can't make that sort of laugh unless I really mean it - which is for seriously funny stuff. Usually I... snort? But not so vehemently. Ruthanne was honestly laughing. She was the only one left in the room by now. Theodora and Adelle had went up to do donno what, Sheena had gone to photocopy Math. Yes, I was accompanied by quite a procession. Anyway, I was quite glad when he told me the third and fourth pages were all right. He stood up and said "Very good," sounding like a passing comment. Ruthanne took it quite seriously and told me, "He only told me 'good'!" haiix. This kind of thing is only something casual and something where one's heart is not really in it. Mr Lim opened the door on this side and opened the inner door leading to the other connected piano room a fraction. Ruthanne said, "Say thank you!" Mr Lim turned around as though he had already meant to without Ruthanne saying and, to my amusement, did say thank you. Ruthanne went, "No, I meant YOU (referring to me)!" I muttered a hurried thanks and the door closed behind Mr Lim. I thought he was going to go out by the other door at the end of that piano room but he was only switching off the air con and the lights, it seemed. Because the door on the other side did not have a handle and could only be opened by a person coming in by this side (it was a push-door), Mr Lim banged on the door and I saw his face dimly in the glass pane. I pulled open the door then pushed the other door and Mr Lim came out smiling but looking a little irritated. "This stupid door!" he muttered. "Why didn't they put a handle?" Anyway we all went out and ya. Bye bye!

CCA CIP

2007-07-28T16:07:00.000+09:00

Bah! I know it's kind of lag, but this post is really for last Saturday (21st July). Erm. Ya. Erm. Did CIP for Guzheng. Haha. We did flagday for Lionsbefrienders. Oh dammit! My mouth was like so dry! And there the Caucasians were, staring at me as though I were mental when I asked, "Would you like to donate?" , brushing past me with such a hurry that for a moment I believed, too, that I had gotten the plague of black death.

Of course there was a very kind Caucasian girl (black hair - looked half chinese) who informed me rather enthusiastically that they were giving out free Harry Potter somethings as well as donated about a two dollar note. Then there was a Chinese woman who asked me, "Is it a Christian organization?" I was rather hesitant because I thought she was an atheist. I answered "It's just an old folks' home." sounding rather dopey. Oh and anyway, I did CIP with my sec4 senior and sec2 senior (I donno if they want me to post their names :P). They were like really nice! :( One of them's leaving soon. haiix :'(( Anyway, someone handed her a whole envelope and asked her to open it later and put the coins into the donation can.

We sat in Starbucks about 1 3/4 h later, having run out of stickers, my seniors drinking coffee while I pushed my nose into a book again. What?! I had nothing else to do! My hi-card was running out of money. Nobody SMSed me anyway. Then the envelope of coins was opened and the coins put into the donation can one by one. As the coins plonked steadily into the can, the long chain of "chinka-chinka-chink" drew me out of the book and I stared, quite dumbfoundedly, at the torrent of coins. There had to be at least twenty coins. And they weren't just small coins either. They were either 20-cent coins or bigger. My Sec2 senior was staring too, quite awestruck. I realised Singaporeans weren't really as selfish as other countries made us out to be. Anyway I'm quite sure that we were the first group to finish.

We went into the shopping centre just outside City Hall MRT (I THINK it was a plaza that started with an 's'). Anyway, we went to buy cookies, or rather my Sec2 senior bought cookies - from Subway. She let us have a pinch of both cookies (Chocolate and Double-Chocolate). It was really nice. And so was my senior :P. We sat at the edge of this really cool fountain. There were six holes where the fountains came out of. The fountains bounced high up in the air, 'a competition', as my slightly bonkers seniors said. Then when the fountains stopped, my Sec4 senior who was really the cause of all this absurdity remarked that they were having a discussion as to who jumped the highest. Water gushed out of holes underneath the platform and varying the strength of which they came out, the water surrounding the platform were pushed back and forth like a screaming, wild public. We sat at the edge and watched as the fountains leaped as joyously as captive dolphins set free, sparkling like little diamonds in the air, performing graceful arcs like swallows. Then my Sec4 senior remarked, "We shouldn't be praising the competing water so much or the water surrounding will get angry." I laughed and both my Sec2 senior and I said that the water took turns to compete. Just then someone dipped her hand inside the water to clean her hands - she had been eating ice cream. My Sec4 senior commented that it was water abuse. Then my two seniors started into a deep discussion about how we actually abuse water in our everyday lives. I looked at the arcs of water which showed joy in every movement, splashing like killer whales, listening to them chatter on. This was the first time I really felt I belonged in Guzheng.

We looked around at meaningless stuff. My bimboistic Sec2 senior looked at necklaces and pink bags. We saw this really cute store with springy toys.

I stood on the MRT looking at the scenery whizzing past. It was a meaningful day.

.

2007-07-15T17:59:00.000+09:00

My hairstyle is like totally old-fashioned! Dammit! The hair salon wasn't open, so we went to my mother's old one, and they cut my fringe like totally STRAIGHT. Like ________. Isn't it like totally ugly? It looks like a cup! But my back hair is nice! :)

;;friends;;

2007-07-11T19:10:00.000+09:00

What would you do if you found out your friend no longer considered you a friend?

NYGH funfair!

2007-07-06T16:39:00.000+09:00

I didn't get to quit French. Anyway, today was NYGH funfair! It was like the coolest day of my life in Nanyang! Every class got to do a booth at the funfair! We did nachos 'n' cheese! And cookies. I dunno how well we did cuz I was mostly out playing XP. Anyway, we went to a haunted house.

Well, I think it was set up by Class 3/2. Anyway. It's like this classroom, then they paste up boards and mostly newspapers to cover the windows and prevent anybody from peeking in. When it was our turn, we stood outside the open classroom door, pushing and pushing, fighting to be the second, third, fourth or last to go in. Finally Adelle's friend went in first and then everybody squeezed and jostled after her because the seniors had warned us not to be the last because the people grabbed your foot from the back. Anyway in the jostle, I managed to get second last. My dear friends in front pushed and pushed back desperately until I hit the classroom door where the door and the wall met. Then I was, like, "Wall?" And when I turned around I found out I was last! I panicked and squeezed and elbowed to try and squeeze into the second or third lot and they squeezed together and I couldn't squeeze in at all. They laughed as they squeezed so that I couldn't sneak in and because the first person didn't want to step very far, I was pushed against the classroom door and it opened slightly. The people in front pushed again and I knocked against the classroom door, opening it wider. Then I saw Adelle and Yangjie standing outside. "Come back in!" I shouted. And the others shouted too so finally they came in. But. I was still last. Geez. Anyway the strange fortuneteller person who was sitting by the door started speaking something about "destiny" and handed us a parcel. Ruthanne took it and we set off hesitatingly. We had hardly moved two steps when everybody in front started screaming and I didn't know why because I wasn't next to the desks yet. Then as I walked past scanning the ground nervously as well as the desks which had been wrapped up with garbage bag paper. I looked just in time to see a hand reaching out from under the tables and touch my ankle. Well. It just felt like a touch. It wasn't scary, maybe because I had expected something already. We carried on walking. Suddenly someone wearing a ridiculous Mexican hat jumped out in front of the queue and started screaming and shouting. Adelle screamed at her. Then she screamed back. Then Adelle screamed at her again.
The guide got bored and told us to move on and she stayed behind. There was this tunnel thingy. Everyone started to crouch down and they crept in so SO slowly. Three people occupied the tunnel at one time, and there was five of us, but I crouched down anyway, just in case there was someone hiding under the desks to touch us again. And I saw feet. Barefooted dirty feet. And a white dress. With only a desk separating. She was pacing up and down. I prodded Adelle and pointed. Adelle looked at her, then me. Then she grinned in a sort of silly way and told the people in front but they were too noisy to listen. Suddenly the person in the front screamed. Anyway, just then, the 'ghost' lay down on the floor, quickly, not like sitting down slowly then lying back. She did it quickly. Anyway, then she turned her head and looked at me, her eyes staring. I did a sort of weird grin and scrambled halfway into the tunnel. The person wearing the mexican hat was looking at us, or rather me because I was last, and I squeezed in as much as possible, leaving only my shoes outside. I didn't like to think of people staring at me when I wasn't looking. Anyway, I was kind of expecting someone to grab me in the tunnel or something, but there was nothing.
Then when I came out of the tunnel (after a VERY LONG TIME), for some reason I looked up and saw a hand. It touched me as I went out. There seemed to be a traffic jam in front as my friends clogged up the passageway, shouting and screaming and scrabbling around at the desks. And I was stuck there with the 'ghostie' stroking my back. LOL! And my neck I think. I looked at her properly. She had her hair covering her face and one hand was dangling over the edge - the hand which was stroking me now? Anyway everyone was sitting on the table and they edged off and I moved forwards. I saw why. There was a person lying down under the back table and it seemed that she was grabbing their legs. Anyway I dunno why I did it but I squatted down and told the person, "Can you don't touch my leg?" Yes yes - it's not proper english. I went past kind of expecting her to but she didn't, thankfully. Anyway there was a next space and I kind of sat on the table because there was a ghost with a torchlight shining red light clipped on her shirt and she chased the four unlucky people in front and I just watched them. She didn't realise that I was there. My friends disappeared around the corner and I followed them, squeezing past the 'ghost'. It appeared there were some boxes and we climbed over them. I was kind of dreading what I would see next, because I knew that barefooted ghost was there. She was still lying down. As we walked over her legs, relieved that she didn't like suddenly stand up, When Adelle was crossing over, she suddenly sat up, before I had crossed. She stood up and held out her hands stiffly in front of her, walking after the four unlucky people in front. I was like standing behind her and for the fun of it I held out my hands too. It seemed that (as Adelle told me later) I had appeared from behind the ghost. I donno. Anyway they rushed over this side and the 'ghost' went after them. I felt kinda left out. Because I didn't see why they were so scared and why I wasn't included inside, being pursued by the ghost. Anyway a person with a long long fringe appeared behind her wearing red, holding... a mirror I think, and she just stood there. Then Sheena poked the white ghost at the waist. I think she wasn't afraid of tickles, because she didn't laugh or jerk and she just went straight after Sheena. Sheena screamed and someone tripped over something and there was a human domino. In the front Adelle's friend fell on to the ghost and the ghost fell down too. Only the red ghost and I stood and somehow when we were scrambling to the door, Sheena tripped over again and sprawled on the floor and with my sadistic nature appearing, I suddenly found the whole haunted house thingy extremely funny and I started laughing. My stomach hurt and I couldn't breathe properly. Everyone emerged with silly and relieved grins and I emerged last as a laughing maniac. Anyway. We went to dye our hair. Nono! Only some sort of hair spray and it was only a pink streak. It'd wash off after I washed my hair. It's still on now. Yes I haven't bathed. O.o Anyway I hadn't really wanted to at first. i was just looking and wondering how much it cost. And then my Guzheng senior (Li Ting, also my piano teacher's student) came over and said, "Claire! Must come and dye your hair! It's very nice! You see that girl over there? She can do French braids very skilfully. French braids are very pretty. Come and do larh!" And I was like "Erm. Um. Eh." And I decided to put a pink streak. Li Ting's classmate came over and helped me do it. She told me to take off my rubberband, then when I had, she hurriedly said that there was no need, but she let me take it off. It seemed that she sprayed a lot, because when I put on my rubberband again they said my hair looked barbie doll pink..

beehee

2007-07-04T18:23:00.001+09:00

I'm going to ask my parents if I can quit french. It's like totally useless okay. I don't have interest in it and it doesn't work to force me to do something I don't like because I won't do it properly and it's a waste of time. Besides lots of people have quitted already. This is the third time I'm ponning French. If they make me stay, I'm probably going to pon every lesson after that. I can pay them back for their fees and everything... I think. If I don't eat lunch for about 15 weeks, I think I can larh. Anyway it's a great chance to motivate myself to eat less XD. They already owe me $100 so the bus fees are settled already. Only the books. Actually I'm still wondering ... if... Dammit. I have to stop thinking about what a waste it is. Anyway I think my father will force me to stay on. Do you think it would help or not to tell them I've ponned three times already?

2007-06-23T14:22:00.000+09:00

FIREFLIES ROCK! I went to Kota Tinggi last week - two days only. :( We reached Kota Tinggi Waterfalls Resort. And I tell you - it wasn't a resort at all. The bathroom door was totally like rotting away, and the floor was tiled, and the bathroom was those sort of totally flat so when you bathe water covers every inch of the floor, and the television sizzled on every channel. Kids Central kept becoming black-and-white.

Anyway I suppose we WERE lucky to have been able to find a place so near Kota Tinggi Waterfall. It was just a few minutes' walk away. And we hadn't been able to book any hotel online. This resort had some sort of branch nearby, but we thought it was some sort of rainforest walk from its sign. It had this path sort of road leading inside. We felt really sad later, cuz that resort was WAY nicer - it had like all sorts of funny birds, monkeys and stuff, really living up to its name Kota Tinggi Rainforest Resort. The place was really like some rainforest thingy. There even was a rickety bridge over a river! The sort that Shrek in Shrek1 had crossed across the lava. Anyway it was a tad far from the waterfall, so maybe it wasn't so interesting.

Anyway Kota Tinggi Waterfalls was BEAUTIFUL!

There was this sort of path for interested people to see how the waterfall looked like from the top and where it came from. It was rather boring really. Just this peaceful small river. We walked to the end of the path. And we saw like this really pretty waterfall. It's like the traditional waterfall - very tall and very steep and very little stones to break the fall of the water, so naturally the pool was VERY deep. No one was allowed to like swim in it. My mum mentioned that she had been here before - as in this part, not the lower Kota Tinggi Falls. She explained she had been rather disappointed when she saw the lower ones cause she thought they had altered it and it wasn't really a part of nature after all, then we saw the upper ones.

Isn't it like so pretty? But the pool was a deep jade sort of colour, proving that the pool was very deep. Over the years, a tall tree had given way to wind and mudslides and had fallen into the pool. It lay floating, rotting, its branches stretching out like fingers, mouthing with its silent mouth a scream. A net was set up in front of the pool, to prevent oblivious swimmers from swimming there. A decrepit notice was stuck on the net, warning swimmers. It was fading and the ink was smudging and blotching. They had drawn a crude picture of a drowning stickman there. The net fluttered and swayed in the current of the water, the person on the notice seemed to be alive. My mother commented, "Last time, there wasn't a net and many people swam in the shallower pools there."

2007-06-23T14:16:00.000+09:00

I'm writing a belated birthday to Sheena. Happy belated birthday! ^^

church camp

2007-06-19T11:24:00.000+09:00

I won a bottle and a mini torchlight for church camp lol. This year the theme was "Hiking the Heights", and the teams were Rugged Rams, Brave Bears and Mighty Moose. On the first day of church camp, the Rams were leading in their points. We were about 20 points behind them, followed by Moose, lagging way behind. We played games - using a toilet brush to steer a football around four cones and throw it in a basketball net as well as running backwards around the cones and throwing your shoe into the net. My shoe was too big so it bounced out. =(. We learnt about rams that day. They could run up mountain slopes at 25 km/h and run on flat ground at 50 km/h! They could use a foothold about 5 cm wide! We learnt about Amy Carmichael. Bleh. She's like one of those perfect storybook characters. I read her biography before. She's like those usual 'strong-headed, stubborn and wilful' girl who always get what they want. Perhaps the reason why I'm prejudiced against them is because my sister is like that and I'm those sort of very 'guai', very quiet, don't think properly sort of people that are suited for maids and are always overshadowed by others. Damn!

The second day we were leading by 5 points. We had 260, Rams had 255 and Moose had 210. Haha. Haha. We had to shoot an arrow through a hole (those sort that are like with suckers) and string some dunno-what beads on to a thread (everyone cheated and put in two at a time, or three for the experts). We learnt about Amy Carmichael again. And this time she was the sort that has a very big heart. She saved this infamous Red Tigar (the teacher made it sound like Red Tigger) and made him into a good soul and God saved her from many dangers. *haiix* I want to become a missionary but I have no money, no job and no parents' permission. We learnt about the moose today. It seems that the average moose from hoof to shoulder is 1.8m! Isn't that cool! They go without food during the breeding season because they are so involved in the fighting for the females. Stupid moose! And that's why we, the grizzly bears, attack them during this season. We are clever! Hooray! We can fight! Hooray! We can take down large prey! Hooray! Anyway we were shown a video of a moose and a bear fighting. We had a vote. Like who thought the moose would win and who thought the bear would win. ALL the mooses raised their hands. Part of us bears raised our hands. No hands from rams. Then as for the bear winning, all the rams raised their hands and part of us raised our hands. I thought the moose would win. It was sort of half-half. And we watched the female grizzly bear prowling around the moose. Stupid moose! He didn't attack, just kept watching the bear. He acted like a coward behind the shield of his big horns. What a disgrace! Anyway the moose's horns were very large and long, expanding sideways. The bear took advantage of this and attacked in the middle, biting the moose's neck. In a few minutes the fight was over. I say again, stupid moose.

The third day. The most fun part was the Dressing-up Competition. The teacher hinted that smaller-sized people would be better. But we chose this P4 guy I think, that was like kinda round and fat, and he had a face like a teddy. So he had to go up. Well anyway, ours was the most dressed at the end of about a minute. The bear's face wasn't coloured brown but he had that underbelly sort of teddy thing and he was fully dressed, not like the rams, whose model really looked like a model with a sort of tube dress and a plain white face. The moose was a bit mixed up. They used a rubber band to tie the mask around the head. The face was like stripy with lots of spaces in between and there was a pair of orange glasses on it. The brown crepe paper he 'wore' was like shredded tissue... in some areas only. I was rather expecting the moose to win. It was original after all. But hey! we won. Lol. I said sort of a "Good job!" to that P4 guy with a sort of XD smile... I think. He looked surprised and nodded, saying thanks. My sister (in Rams) laughed at me, saying that I started talking to boys. And I retorted that at least our model didn't look like some underdressed model. Anyway we learnt about us today! The fact that we were left to the last meant we were the best and most interesting animal. It's always like that. You must have a splendid grand finale after all. Anyway we learnt about pandas, blacks, grizzlies and polars. Pandas were boring. We didn't talk much about them. Black bears ate honey, fish. Yada yada. You can REALLY lie down and pretend to be dead and they will really go away! In a way, they're cute in a stupid, gullible way. Grizzlies were the second fiercest of all bears. It was a grizzly who attacked that moose. No wonder that moose didn't stand a chance. They ate small and large mammals. A P2 boy asked if we could just lie down and pretend to be dead and the bear would just go away. !!!!!!! That lamo guy. Anyway the teacher replied that if we tried to play dead the grizzly would just eat us up. It would be saving the grizzly time to actually - no need to run after their prey. The fiercest were the polar bears. :[ They eat seals, walruses, penguins and the sort. They are 3m tall when they stand up!!! Taller than our church ceiling. They showed us how the polar bears hunted - dig a hole in the ice, wait for a seal to surface (need to breathe), and Tag! You're It! and the polar bear has a nice big meal. Anyway we had extra lot food that day and I got to skip most of dinner.

imeem

2007-06-09T13:49:00.000+09:00

Apparently I'm still logged on to this guy "harry ng" 's account. If any of you guys ever dare to help me say thanks to him. Am I being bitchy? Quite seemingly, my cousin got really mad some years ago when I sort of stole his neopets account. I returned it anyway. I really find neopets boring now. I haven't been there in months... perhaps years I think. It's probably dead now. Anyway this thing really made my day - the holidays are getting just a tad boring. Have to thank God.

imeem

2007-06-08T17:00:00.000+09:00

There's something like seriously wrong with imeem, cuz i think just about anyone can hack into anybody's account without even meaning to.
Well, I was like in imeem, going to look for music. Then they stopped me cuz I wasnt logged in (I didnt receive any verification email to verify) then I accidentally click on "Forgot password", and I didnt need to stay there cuz I did not forget my password. I clicked on "back" to the music page, then all of a sudden, I was logged in into this "harryng" guy's account. And I swear I wasn't meaning to hack or anything. Anyway I borrowed his account to put this music and logged off XD. I really did not change any password or anything okay. IMEEM IS NOT RELIABLE!!!!!!

lala

2007-06-01T20:45:00.000+09:00

The first day of June! Lol. Heard the siren thingy this noon while waiting for the bus to come and fetch me to school. Bleurgh! School during holidays! What's their definition of "holidays"?! Well, the online dictionary says
1.
a day fixed by law or custom on which ordinary business is suspended in commemoration of some event or in honor of some person.
2.
any day of exemption from work.
3.
a time or period of exemption from any requirement, duty, assessment, etc.: New businesses may be granted a one-year tax holiday.

Geez! Give us a BREAK.

Anyway, today we had to go for Guzheng from 1 - 5pm. Isn't that like so sad. We totally wasted time there! Except for the fact that 郑老师 (yes, the same surname as moi!) gave us Cornetto to eat! XD Our dear secondary one group leader ( sort of... ) kept wanting her to listen to us, and we had to like play the same song twice (cuz she came in about two times). *haiix*. 郑老师 clapped quickly three times and said , " 好！你们进步了！加油！" But her face betrayed it all. It was like

It was like totally stony and bored. Well anyway, when she heard the song for the second time, at the end of the song, she walked up to me and asked, "你是sec几啊？" My dear secondary one group leader piped up again, "Sec 1." "Eh? 我不知道为什么以为你是sec 2 的." She smiled and said, "你们继续练吧!" And walked off. Lol. It meant a lot to me. My day had been like down in the dumps, so that was probably the best thing.

Anyway, I'm layering my hair tomorrow! I hope I don't look weird. Tata.

2007-05-23T16:43:00.000+09:00

I duno what's so good about playing truant. You don't feel any excitement. You don't feel like you're dancing on the edge of a sword. You don't feel like you're cool. You don't feel anything.

First off, is skipping third language considered playing truant? It isn't, right? I couldn't take it any longer. Faking that I liked French didn't help it. I couldn't take it any longer.

On Monday, I practically slept through the entire lesson. So what's the point of going?

Today, I thought, "Nobody knows. Nobody cares." Besides, I can look up today's lesson on the website, can't I?

It seems strange. Having nothing to do on one extra day. I wonder if I may get used to it.

I'd been daring myself for a long time. I didn't have the damn guts to do it.

I did it today. 22/5/2007

But I'm acting like this is a whole big deal.

Signing off now.

mother's day flowers

2007-05-16T19:58:00.000+09:00

The tulips I bought for my mother for mother's day are dying. In fact they already are dead. They were so pretty at first.

They looked just like this. Just that they had redder petals. The colour of Carbenet Sauvignon-based Bordeaux. Anyway what's the point. They both died in the end. They stayed only for one day. Then they started wilting and shriveling. What I would give to see them bloom fully! And as usual I thought of something again. You know the saying "Beauty is only skin-deep." Once you get old, your external beauty will all fade away. The only beauty that won't fade away is your inner beauty. The thing is, knowing something is one thing, but accepting it is another. I know this "Beauty is skin-deep" thing is true, but it ain't true. But it's just comforting to know it. :)

one of the best days of my life

2007-05-16T18:29:00.000+09:00

Well, it wasn't pretty at first. I found out I had left my French file back in the MOELC. Anyway who'd want to take another person's file? At most it would be with the teacher. K. Anyway, I was sitting in the SBS bus. Then I was just outside Clementi MRT bus stop. Then I saw it!

Well it was just so sad that my phone just had to be a Sony Ericsson phone that can't zoom and can't take focused pictures! So this is really an internet picture. Well yeah. The scene I saw was nicer. The sky was full of clouds - light grey ones. Then there was this hole in the middle of it all, and a fluffy cloud with blue sky was behind it, and sun rays were simply like streaming through the hole! It was SOO SOO PRETTY!!! "What's so pretty about a cloud?" you ask? I duno. I just like 'em.

Then the bus turned left. Then I saw this one lone streak of sun ray streaking across the sky. Haha. I can't find anything like it on the web. Perhaps one sunbeam wasn't good enough to be put on the web.

Then I saw...

This is yet another Internet picture. But it was more or less the same, if you take away the sea, the island and the dark clouds and replace it with pale ... pinky-orangey clouds? Yea. Nice right? :)

~~~

2007-05-14T18:41:00.000+09:00

Some say love it is a river
That drowns the tender reed;
Some say love it is a razor
that leaves your soul to bleed;
Some say love it is a hunger
an endless aching need.

I say love it is a flower
and you its only seed.
It's the heart afraid of breaking
that never learns to dance.
It's the dream afraid of waking
that never takes the chance.

It's the one who won't be taken
who cannot seem to give;
and the soul afraid of dying
that never learns to live.

When the night has been too lonely
and the road has been too long;
and you think that love is only for the lucky and the strong.
Just remember in the winter
far beneath the bitter snows
lies the seed that with the sun's love
in the spring becomes the rose.

- The Rose, Bette Midler

Lionsbefrienders - the so-called old folks home

2007-05-13T12:08:00.000+09:00

Firstly, it wasn't even an old folks home. The old people stayed in their own flats and came down if they felt like it to chat. More of a senior citizens' corner. But they were really poor. They stayed in one-room flats - shared a bathroom with a bedroom. If I heard correctly. I really think I'm kind of deaf. Anyway. So it wasn't really what we expected. We had expected to be, like, inside some sort of house. But it turned out everyone was sitting in a circle - in this 亭子. It looked scary. Somehow. Duno why. Anyway we were all huddling outside the circle. I mean - what'll you do in the circle anyway. It'll be really paiseh. We finally started giving out little goodies to everyone. Or rather we took some of Peiwei's little cakes and gave them out to everyone :) I only had this small pathetic packet of chrysanthemum tea to give out. I thought the old uncles looked rather lonely so I gave it to one of them.
Then a confused babble of voices broke out behind us. We turned around and saw this really old lady being helped up by two elderly women. I went over to help her too, cuz I felt really paiseh to be standing by and watching like that. Her arm was really thin. That was all I noticed at that time. I looked at her later and found out her skin was really white and wrinkly, like paper, like it would tear apart any minute. The horrors of old age. Everyone crowded around her, asking if she was okay. The two aged women told us kindly to go off and that she would be okay. So everyone (including me) left. I didn't really give much thought to it as she looked all right, like she wasn't bleeding anyway or anything.
We had to find out as many old people's names as possible in 5 minutes. The commentator commented, "Uncle, Aunty, 不可以给她们假的名字哦! 她们要赢比赛的!" Haha. I found out only one in the end. Chen Hui Bin. But who cares, 'cause they didn't call me anyway. After that we had to perform for them. Haiix. We did Nanzhong Quan (wushu) for them. Very lame, ya? Then we sang The Prayer. We were horribly out of tune but at least we remembered the lyrics. And we managed to sing two parts. The old folks got bored towards the end anyway. *haiix* they really were like little children. But ones who knew how to talk.
Anyway, Adelle called me and pointed somewhere. I looked in that direction and I saw the old lady who had fallen down just now. Sheena did too. And we saw that she was bleeding from her left arm. "It looks like the blood cannot stop flowing leh," Adelle said, disturbed. It did. It looked really weird. It was like gel. We stared for a while. Then I recalled that I had grasped her bleeding arm just now when I was helping her up. I did not recall any blood then. Had I been the one who caused her wound instead? Thinking I was helping when I wasn't? I looked down on my hand. For some reason Adelle and Sheena did too. There was blood on my hand. Nono, don't misunderstand me. It was really quite a small splash of blood at the part where the skin joins the thumb to the side of the hand - the one that looks a bit like the flap of a chicken wing. But somehow it freaked us, or maybe only me out. Like the idiot I was I didn't quite dare to go over to the toilet and wash it off. Instead I tried to run away from the problem by simply clenching my hand, pretending it wasn't there. Damn! I act like the world's most idiotic idiot when it comes to all sorts of strange situations. Like I had nose discharge on my Math paper once last year (presumably from my Math teacher) and I just stuffed it inside my bag. It's really little wonder I keep getting dreams of getting chased, by assassins, weird gooey octopus monsters with spotty skin and sharks and skeleton fish and whatever.
Anyway, she was bandaged up quite nicely and I didn't look at my hand again in that place. So I forgot all about it and simply had a nice game of Poison Ball. It was about the most fun game that day. The old folk had to throw four balls at us, from different directions. It was very fun. Jumping around, dodging it, skipping away, barely missing. I was really quite glad that I was one of the last half of the class remaining on the 'battlefield'. But a tennis ball sneaked up and prodded my shoe. Anyway, the last person remaining was Steffi. She was looking in the other direction when a miniature basketball rolled amiably towards her and nudged her on the ankle. So I do not know if the old folks really won or did some of us pretend to lose. Anyway we had this lottery thing and it was the end of the trip. I bought some roses that were made by the old folk. They were priced at $1 each. Since Mother's Day was just two days away, I thought it would make a pretty present for her and also give some money to the SCC. We said a merry good bye and left on a pink school bus... lame.
Conclusion: I do not want to get old even more than ever!

2007-05-10T21:47:00.000+09:00

Going to an old folks' home tomorrow!!! So excited. :) But it seems they can't really speak English or Chinese - only dialects, as everyone says. And I dunno anything except some really basic Hokkien words like paiseh, cheh, cheem, lao -, bi -, and pang-sai. *Haiix* And my CCA days will be increasing from just one day (Thursday) to two days (Thursday AND Saturday!!!)
:'((((((( So sad! Saturday also need to wake up so early! Then what's the point of having Saturday as a weekend? School is slowly but surely eating away at our precious free time - the only time where we get to draw into a corner and sort out the confused thoughts that are running and whirling around inside our head like millions of vortexes. In shorter words, it's the only time where we can prevent ourselves from going mad. AND THEY TAKE IT AWAY!!! That's why more and more students are jumping into arms of Grim Reaper. They call it co-curricular activities - it sounds so fun. Fakers. The guzheng is so heavy and the nails take about 10 minutes to stick 'em on. And I have like NO strength in my fingers to play hard. The seniors keep telling me to "sit up straight and play harder!" I try. But the nails keep scratching against my hand as I finish plucking the string. Cuz we're supposed to, like, draw the finger towards the palm of the hand to pluck the string. And it keeps poking my hand. Geez. Piano is so much easier. :((((( It's also tiring to sit up straight. I suppose it's really all worth it though... In the end I'll still be benefitting. :) I can't wait til I am able to play Guzheng fully! The same goes for French. I can't wait to see the looks on their faces.

Penang - found the photos!

2007-05-04T16:51:00.000+09:00

This is the hotel we stayed in - Holiday Inn Resort... very nice right? But the pillows kinda stank. Some of the pillows.

It was a grey day on the first day. But we were happy enough that the room was so nice so the only thing we did that day was unpack eat dinner at Gurney Drive.

This is the night view from our hotel. Oh ya - I forgot to tell you we got a 20th level premium room. We had only payed for a Standard, but all the Standards were rented out... Yay! :) Anyway, there's a ship there if you look closely. You can see it's masts poking out. It's a restaurant. Sad - we didn't go there.

This is a train coming up Penang Hill going through a tunnel at a snail's pace. Yes we went to Penang Hill on the second day.

new bloggie! ... again

2007-05-01T19:36:00.000+09:00

Lots of blogs I've made died. Shows my perseverence and rate of success in life eh? Yes I'm fickle-minded. Anyway hope this blog doesn't go dead! 25 more days til the June holidays! Yep XD I'm counting down. I hope I can go overseas this June - to the kelongs haha. I want to try fishing again. I had terrifying luck last time I tried. Got two funny horned fish, a few yellow fish, a blue butterfly fish (which is unfortunately poisonous so we let it go back into the sea) and one or two baidu. I want to play chess again against my father's friend's son, who is in Secondary Two. I beat him last year. But one year does not make a lot of difference I suppose. :(

Allegro Tempestoso

无声的对话

I went to a concert where a woman's foot was as big as Dang Thai Son (a very famous pianist) part 2

I went to a concert where a woman's foot was as big as Dang Thai Son (a very famous pianist) part 1

Random Ravings I

random rubbishy ravings

Beliefs (peiwei suggested the title)

~* broken dreams and practicalities*~

Koh Samui part I

To Do With Guppies

The Singapore Airshow

A VERY VERY EMO POST SO DONT READ IT K

Quizzie haha

PICS PICS PICS!!!!! XD

All The Shit And Crap Of This World

Valentine's Day lyrics

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Chinese Sabbaticals

Friday the 27th

CCA CIP

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;;friends;;

NYGH funfair!

beehee

church camp

imeem

imeem

lala

mother's day flowers

one of the best days of my life

~*~*~

Lionsbefrienders - the so-called old folks home

Penang - found the photos!

new bloggie! ... again

~~~