-- dear-god.net

the clock nears midnight, numbers jumping, hands ticking. we leave the warm confines of the homey coffee joint where we've been nursing our katy-perry-hot-and-cold-esque tea lattes for the better part of an hour or two, perusing glossy magazine pages filled with frivolity and laughing with incredulity at the foibles of man.

we leave, and we head for the car i've yet to name, although in the days to come inklings of nomenclature will visit my mind-- something that starts with 'm' and has three syllables that is not 'mikaela' because that is already a name i have bestowed on another object. we drive on roads that should not be harrowing but are because of my suspect driving skills, darting from one pool of sprawling, lazily-lambent lamplight to another until we reach your place.

the night is very quiet. i threaten, half-laughingly, to climb over the gates; you glower at me and tap us in. i exclaim in delight when i see the darkened pool, an oasis in the midst of concrete blocks towering everywhere. the area is deserted, we are alone-- all the better, for there is no one to see when i begin capering about.

we commandeer the two lone deck chairs for moonbathing, eyeing the variously lit and bedimmed units stacked in isolated pods. i comment that the occupants of the unit right next to the pool could leap right into the water from their balcony-- that's one impossible thing before breakfast accomplished on days such notions of escape and frolic seize them. the night sky is velveteen-- not deep and dark, but a dusky-red-tinged purple that gives it an opaque, almost tangible quality, as though it were a cloth the sky has drawn to hide her face, shy and retiring. your dad waves at us from your balcony; i spy your brother and glimpse helen through flashes of a furry, tawny head and a wildly wagging tail.

no hot springs exist, but the glimmering water has its own temptations. we sit at the edge and dip our feet in the pool, marvelling at how the water rolls off our skin, how absorbent and/or dry our epidermis (epidermi?) are. we demand a swing over the water, suspended from-- a wire? we ponder the secrets of the universe, including how swimming pools work-- where does the water go? i mock-propose skinny dipping; ever solicitous, you ask if i want a towel or a swimsuit, which you can bring down from your house. i decline and wade into the water until i am opposite you, and hoist myself onto the parapet in the middle of the water. you speak, and ask, after a time, what in the world i am doing. i am falling back, i am lying down on a stone block far too small for even my short body, reclining till i am flat and level with the ground, lifting my hair up with one hand so it doesn't fall into the water. still then it is not enough, i feel tendrils of hair falling into the water and drifting outwards with the current. i imagine i am surrounded by a nimbus of hair, a hair halo, a hair-lo.

it is cold. but it is warm too. i get up and wade back to where you are, knowing the night is drawing to a close. we plan our next meeting, your housewarming, grouse about people who don't show up, settling back into the mundanity of things. you have to go-- it is late, you are unwell, and you need to sleep. it is just as well. i ought to drive back before i fall asleep at the wheel; it's been a long, long day, starting with 9am dance practices and ending with this late night early morning pool sojourn.

you see me to your gate. i drive home to the strains of old-gold songs, singing along with the radio to words i know and words i do not know.

But only love can say - try again or walk away
But I believe for you and me
The sun will shine one day
So I'll just play my part
And pray you'll have a change of heart
But I can't make you see it through
That's something only love can do

somehow that song just seemed so perfect for that lone journey home.
Posted at 8:13 PM

but so true. heeee





ARGH OK WORK.



oh wait oh wait.

HAHAHAHA. who said this????! montesquieu?? locke?? no no ACTON. hahahaha. LORD ACTON YOU HAVE BEEN IMMORTALISED. HAHA omg what a way to learn constitutional law hahaha i'm never going to forget this now
Posted at 4:46 PM

just came back from dinner not long ago, and frankly i was in so much pain i could barely stand up straight.

TOO. DAMN. FULL.

BAH. i hate buffets. i keep saying i'll regulate what i eat and i'l neve rput myself throguh the agony of overeating again but then someone will press something else on me and i'll eat it. it doesn't help that most of the vegetarian things at shangri-la happen to be DESSERTS.

ok. hitlist:

- vegetable lasagna x 2 (delish!)
- roasted potatoes x 2 (omg yummy yummy)
- pumpkin soup (soup spoon has NOTHING on this, man)
- saffron rice with yogurt and another thingy-- plum-ish sauce?
- aloo gobi
- inari and tamago gunkan (eee. not great)
- salad (sundried tomatoes are the blitz!)
- chocolate brownie crepe (wheeeeeee)
- bread and butter pudding
- cheeeeeeeesecake
- creme brulee (i think xf would have fainted at this, it was SO GOOD)
- tiramisu (didn't like!)
- meringue tart (YUM. but tooth-achingly sweet)
- green tea teppanyaki ice cream with choco balls
- orange juice

that isn't just sin ok, that is eternal damnation in the 18th level of hell. mwahahaha. but i felt slightly better seeing everyone else (with the exception of my sister) demolishing oysters and lobsters and other sundry items that i cannot touch.

bleh. cny is horrrrible. horribilus. i still feel bloated. haha luckily my black flapper dress (which i nearly wore for danz war haha but decided against on the grounds that it looked too 1940s) helped to disguise my about-to-explode tummy a litle. and i think my boots with the furrrr helped to take the attention away hahaha.

oh!!
the whole point of this was that haha as we went down the escalator my mum suddenly said "nathan, nathan!". thinking that she was playing some sort of warped marco polo game i ignored her, and then realised that she meant nathan as in S R NATHAN. as in the holder of the keys to the reserve. as in the one with the right to the presidential veto (not like he exercises it without reference and "due consultation" with the prime minister anyway). as in the figurehead of the republic of singapore.

hahaha. he was sitting at this little alcove/bar thing where we'd had our chu er dinner last year. in fact, he was sitting at the table where I'D sat last year. whee! hahahaha.

we ended up making multiple trips to the washroom just to let my dunderhead siblings get a peek at him. my sister-- food, not joey-- threatened to stand outside the gent's because she figured he'd have to go to the toilet sooner or later and she was going to stalk him. hahahaha.

no pictures of him. we didn't want his bodyguards to spring up and smash our phones (according to my cousin, they wer eprobably in hiding. she'd served his table at a banquet last year so she could attest to how they would scatter themselves everywhere hoho. maybe this one was hiding behind the lobster. or dressed as the crepe maker. who knows?)

piccccs. didn't take many tho-- didn't bring camera :( relevant captions UNDER pics.



wth i look damn young can. but omg my pretty pretty cousins!! :):):) i have another pic of myself with inex hahaha



see see compared with last year i just look WEIRD. bangs make a humondongus difference.



and haha this is a weird shot i just had to post it hahahaha.




green tea teppanyaki. looks GROSS here but tasted great although i was like 125% full i still went for it!





whee haha my utter failure of a bingo ticket (people win like 320 bucks' worth and i get nada zilch bleh) and my lucky draw coupon. yes, i won yakult, while my dad got 38 bucks in exchange for an imitation of a cow bellow. hahhahaha. thank god it was the year of the cow if it were the year of the monkey...!!!

speaking of bangs i stepped into my aunt's house and the first thing my seven-year old cousin said when she saw me was "HAHAHAHAHA". 2nd thing was "YOUR HAIR is so UGLY". third thing was "MONSTER AUNTIE. YOU ARE MONSTER AUNTIE".

:(:(:(:(!!!!

hahaha. but she is DAMN funny can she tested my chinese and made me write well wishes for cny out. stuff like "xin nian kuai le"... then "wan shi ru yi"... then "xin xiang shi cheng"... then "en jiang chou bao".

haha but the kicker was this-- when she went to visit relatives in china over the hols someone got married, so she told the couple "bai tou xie lao, zao sheng gui zi". just as everyone was praising her she added chirpily "gou pi bu tong".

she is DAMN CUTE. hahaha. i have pics of her also but they'r ein my sister's phone! so shall post another time.

failed to catch the solar eclipse!! bleh. but ruined my eyes cos i stared straight at the sun before making a pinhole camera out of a leaf and my earring. hahahah.

alright. shall go do some work which i've never managed to do at all this "extended" break. BLEH. but i guess cny was good...! madcap sushi making and cheese crackers and plum sauce dip (kudos to aunt cecilia for all her dining tips!) and angbao and all. :)

you took everything
while i was staring at the sun

p.s. please do not shriek when you see my disastrous nails. i gave myself a manicure at 4am on chu yi-- i swear it was an ill-advised sprousean spur. i was thinking jackson pollock but it came out more like yvonne bollocks. and really, at 4am did you think i could last through waiting for base coat two-coats-of-white funny streaks and top coat to dry out completely before i fell sound asleep? so of course now i look like i have macrame on my nails. macrame, or sugar rice disaster. some random kid in a house i visited tried to eat my nails.
Posted at 12:11 AM

for chrissake the most annoying song on mtv is NOT in the ayer, which is a PERFECTLY wonderful song to wind your windows up and sing along at the top of your lungs to when you're driving. it is DIVA. what's with beyonce and the weird specs anyway. is she trying to do a soulja boy/kanye? cos it's not working.

it's not working, BAD.

dear ms fierce: just because it's in black-and-white don't make it classy, honey.









i am busy trying to think of what to do with my forest green plaid tights. eurgh. buying funky coloured tights was all very well, but WHAT shoes to wear them with? the only thing that matches them now are like my shrek specs.

will post pictures of my attempts in a while. in the meantime i shall go watch my brother play left 4 dead and laugh at the boomer.

for jinglin! cos she makes rotten apples out of apples. hahaha kidding kidding :P





johnny rotter had no fun
an apple snack he would become
grown strong and sweet under the sun
to fill and cozen someone's tum.

his purposed-life-- he had but one
to tantalise your tastebuds some
his hobbies many, he had a ton
and still from food he could not run

but lo, behold, what ruin has come!
he wasn't eaten, no one said 'yum'
forgive me, love, for being blunt
but johnny rotter's life is done
Posted at 1:33 PM

sigh. yes, yes, superficial, but it IS retail therapy.

and killer heels always do wonders for confidence.

althought they're not always the smartest things to have on. today i stopped in the underpass to offer to carry a double-babyu-carriage down a flight of steps. only to ralsie rather belatedly that i'd forgotten i was wearing my 3-inch crimsons. i hobbled down the steps praying that i wouldn't trip and kill the kid.

but still. for confidence...!

tomorrow i buy a pair of heels; bu mai bu gui!


no one in the corner can swagga like us
Posted at 11:20 PM

please.
Posted at 1:22 PM

musings on the first week of school, in whatever order catches my fancy...

watched funka 2009 prelims yesterday. the host was like KER-RAP, and the incessant "woohoo we're giving away tickets for city alive 2009! whee whee whee!" got on all our nerves so incessantly that it was all i could do not to throw my shoes at him (hur hur hur. nah, he wasn't as incoherent as bush, but ehhhh for the record it's "premiseS" not "premise"). but the groups...!!!!

worth being late for reunion dinner for (although technically i wans't, i just waited around outside for my siblings and mum to arrive. HA. i reached like half an hour earlier than them despite coming down from clementi. clementi-bedok faster than tanah-merah-to-bedok? yeah, where my siblings are concerned.

i think hamzah's pink dollar group was see-rye-ously HAWT HAWT HAWT. yesterday was the first time in my entire life that i finally understood why my sister finds gay guys such a turn on. i mean like WOAH. when that girl (carrie?) in take the lead said that morgan's dancing was "like sex on hardwood" she obviously meant it to apply HERE. they HIT everything that they had to hit and diva-ed everything they were meant to. and they weren't afraid to laugh at themselves either-- i ADORE people who can take the whole homosexuality thing with a huge pinch of salt even where it's themselves they're so liberally salting (as opposed to, say, certain straw-sucking-commentators in parliament). wahahaha the -riding- omg.

seriously one of the best groups that day. the others were impressive too-- i liked raz's group (i think it was the seven-sins one-- really lots of energy) and of course the dismas-qitang-zhiwen one haha. SO CUTE!! omg haha. people said the popping group was good, but i've never been much of a pop-fanatic so although i could see that it was technically difficult and advanced, the act didn't really intrigue me or anything.

fashion, and all that jazz
on wednesday realising that i had like one miserable lousy lecture before dance and an impending eye infection (you can feel the damn itch starting) i decided for the sake of efficiency to just go in more or less my dance outfit. later that day, one of my friends (A-- haha, as much as i hate using initials and acronyms and whatever) ran into me and asked what was with the bball shorts-- if i was playing bball or it was just for fun or something. apparently someone'd made a comment-- disparaging, of course, what did you expect?-- about my sartorial sense, or lack thereof.

i am damn grateful to A for sticking up for me, although she really didn't need to. and concomitantly damn pissed off-- or maybe just roll-eyed impatient-- at how superficial we can be (i nearly wrote law school, but remembering what xf or jia ni said abt how ning's faculty has the same sartorial stigma it's probably more widespread than i think).

seriously, get over the damn fashion already. does wearing a pair of guess heels and holding a miu miu clutch make me a better person? if the person next to me has on louboutins instead of guess, does that rank her better than me? pretty much all my life i've been so incredibly hung up on fashion-- some of my clearest memories of primary 5 and 6 are what outfits i wore. do you know how pathetic that is? no? how about how ridiculous it is to almost miss the 21st birthday party of your favourite cousin because you declare, practically in tears of pique and rage, that you have "nothing to wear", or to have friends wait for you, the perpetually late one, because you change an average of seven times before venturing out of the house?

ha. that last one i'm sure any of you who have known me long enough can DEFINITELY attest to (and unfortunately haha it still persists and has spread-- xf!).

there are wayy more important things in life. they say clothes maketh the man-- well sure, if you want to be that kind of man. i am FEMALE, and PROUD to say that i refuse to let fashion DEFINE me. precisely one of the reasons i never wanted to pin myself down to a particular genre of clothing-- punk, goth, prep, flowery-country-girl-- because how different is "obsessing over cltohes" different from "eating and sleeping" as hobbies (which, as i have said before, i absolutely detest)?

i accept the argument that one has to look presentable, but eh it's school, not prom night or an interview. and it's not like i'm forcing you into a pair of spanx or something right, or even asking you to wear reversible fbts. plus i'm sure (too) many people force-fed the alternative contents of my wardrobe may be quite inclined to agree that fbts and a tee are wayyy preferable to some of the skankier items i've got. eurgh.

come on people, loosen up. wear what you like, ape what you want, admire and all that, but don't act like a dress-down day is apocalyptic in a world where us's in a freezing cold snap, australia is plagued by out of control forest fires and india's got flood damage. talk about outta whack. fashion's all very well on its own, but frankly we'd probably all be a lot happier if we all ran around naked or in tents.

i'd vote for the tents.

inspiration
long enough spent on inconsequentials. wednesday after alvan's item prac we went off just in time to fail to catch weina and karen's funka prac and headed for home instead. joo teng and i took bus 10 for a ways, till harbourfront, and we had a pretty edifying talk. he'll be teaching fulltime dance for a while and-- i don't know, i guess sometimes you realise that merely having "passion" isn'tenough. there's responsibility, and sheer doggedness, and maybe that can take you where passion doesn't. because passion may be satisfied, but a compelling sense of duty takes you to the brink and beyond and then some. i think he made a very incisive- as in cogent, and sharp, and also cutting-- comment: too many people in blast are complacent. that is one short nose-tilt away from stuck-up, and frankly it's true-- we've always felt ourselves to be superior to, ah, certain other groups that i shall refrain from naming.

but it is this same complacency-- this same satisfaction with where we are, how much we've ahcieved, how perfectly excellent we're dancing- that will be the death of us all. we're not that good. at all. and being happy little clams-- dancing utterly within our comfort zones-- is like cycling breezily along with a wicker basket and a straw hat along a winding countryside path with very pretty scenery while everyone else is zooming past on a high speed expressway. sure it's pretty-- for now. wait till you bite and choke on their dust.

seeing how hard and how much groups like d'hoppers are practising scares me. btu at the same time-- coupled with joo teng's words-- i can only hope it's going to spur me on as well. :)

short-takes:

i want a new era cap. :( for those days when my hair sticks up at a ninety-degree angle to my forehead.

on a random note-- to everyone typing "seeking for" and "craving for"-- i think the for is superfluous. you look for, but you seek. you hunger for, but you crave. yes?

i have no clue what is going on in equity.

i am pissed. the tee i ordered as a belated bday present apparently didn't get ordered because the spree-er wasn't sure of the cutting. ARGH. freak. :(:(:(:(:(

GUYS ARE LOUSY DRIVERS. ok, some guys. but seriously the people who make me curse under (and not so under) my breath on the roads are almost infallibly MALE DRIVERS. what's with cruising along at 40km/h along the expressway to the clementi turn-off during rush hour? when there are NO cars in front of you?! so that i have to drive on the freaking road shoulder just to get past your sorry ass??


blehhhhh. shall pay attention in equity now.
Posted at 2:32 PM

time is freaking flying. never mind blogging, i don't even have enough time to simply DEAL with stuff at all. ahhhhhhh

finally finished messing with my tights for alvan's item. frankly after i was done i just thought "oh my god. chomby and the fungus balls" because for some reaosn the tulle bunches up and out in little balls from the tights instead of lying flat against my skin. DAMNIT. i really ought to read the book my sister borrowed-- home economics for the domestically challenged. hur hur. my leg hurts cos i accidentally sewed the tulle to the tights to my skin. yes. freaking RETARDED itwas only after i pulled the thread straight that i went "... ow. ow. OW. omg!"

went back to dhs today with kazua and pink panther hoho. we have concluded that the food there is damn cheap. wrote notes to mr kiw since we completely did not manage to peng4 mian4 and i was horrified by how much chinese i'd forgotten. thank goodness for chinese dictionaries in phones heh.

of course tt deserves greater mention, but since time, time, time....


oh and of all things haha guess who we ran into there? justis! very obviously he didn't have a clue who the heck i was but oh wells only goes to show how small th world is. i'm glad i said hi even if i felt quite like an idiot after he looked so quizzically at me hoho but see see see this is part of my initiative (my white paper, hur hur) to be less antisocial and more friendly. it's not like it's working marvellously, though.

so many things keep cropping up. AHH time! at my back i always hear time's winged chariot hurrying near. in the middle of sewing my costume my mum came upstairs and told us "eh you'd better go and check to see what's wrong with that dog of yours there's blood all over the place". turns out he'd managed somehow to slice his paw open and bleed everywhere. left to our own devices we tried to fix it a little, but nearly got bitten for our efforts. bleh. ther eis now gentian violet all over the floor. and the silly black lump kicked off the first bandage i tied to his foot and gave me an especially scary glower as i was trying to dab away all the blood from the cut. HUMPHS.

my sis is still the only one who can handle him properly. hoho. she really ought to take vet sci she'd be a natural.

1.26am, dance at 9am, and i need to go practise now. NO MORE BLOGGING.

i've still got sand in my shoes
and i can't shake the thought of you
Posted at 1:20 AM

i am in the midst of trying to rip my leggings and sew orange patches of poly tulle to them for alvan's item and succeeding only in making a polka-dotted fishnet disaster out of what once were my favourite pair of leggings.

SIGH.

i HATE costumes, sometimes.
Posted at 2:06 AM

funniest moment of today:

"it was so damn obvious that he was in love with my stupid beautiful asian eyes or something"

when i read that on msn i really burst out laughing and had to duck under the lecture table before tla could catch me dissolving into giggles. hahaha.

DAMN FREAKING FUNNY.
Posted at 11:35 AM

i suck i'm skipping class to go shopping for costumes for emcc. omg i really really really suck.

ARGHHHHHHHH.
Posted at 11:52 AM

ah haha the above is for jinglin and her hungarian friend. hohoho

school starts tmr boohoo. ok no must take heart from jinglin's post and be merry and positive and treasure our time, not bemoan and gripe!

soooo. went cycling with nette on friday instead of tattoo convening :(:(-- mum vetoed the idea with all the vehemence of a staunch vegan faced with the anathema of an aromatic oozing cheesy sausage-- and nearly got my first parking ticket! eeps. iw as seriously seconds away hahaha but thank the gods otherwise i think my dad would have SERIOUSLY killed me. i mean, bad enough that i drove like 20km with the damn handbrake engaged already (a fact he definitely does not need to know. well. not yet. i told my mum anyhow and she reamed me out)-- for which, apart from blaming myself, i also indict jj. he totally distracted me ok. along with my sis. HUMPHS. drove nette to eastpoint to meet krys and then i went back home, beset with calls from both sisters on the way-- one demanding to know where i was and the other clamouring for a lift. dropped one off at tampines and then inched my way to bugis with my dad giving me vague directions as he nattered away happily on the phone beside me. at least he no longer has screaming fits when i drive.

hee *crosses fingers*.

bugis! waha ok this is the uh defining moment. right. sitting in the hairdresser's chair and looking at what my aunt had trimmed of my hair so far i was almost resigned to yet another similar-looking boring mess upon my head. that was when my sister, eyeing my reflection thoughtfully, sidled up to me and said-- "why don't you cut bangs?"

bang head here

yeah, i got bangs. only my aunt cut them super short so they'd grow out just in time for cny. and i swear i look 5 years younger; ning and xf have, however, come to the happy and apparently incredibly amusing conclusion that i look like some zhongguo mei.

their respective reactions when i met them on saturday:
ning: "yvonne! i totally walked past you and saw your hair and thought 'that's not yvonne' and walked on!"; cue nonstop laughter
xf: "YVONNE POON! WHAT DID YOU DO TO YOUR HAIR?"

hahaha. oooh saturday was damn fun haha despite my managing to fall back asleep for 35 mins after my alarm rang. i hightailed it to sch and managed to arrive just a scrap before alvan's practice started. quotable quotes:

thomas: "do you look down on sex?"
weina: "we are NOT having this conversation"
tracy: "(in response to thomas' question) No!"
weina aka dj nana: "so honest!"
(it's not what it sounds like. really. blame it on the lyrics of sterling simms' nasty girl)

liren: "wah. DAMN gangster!"-- although really it was the expression and the action that took the cake hahaha

and i have to say that alvan's choreo for the opening song is really -genius-. it's DAMN nice :D:D


and xuzi's choreo for the last song is damn happifying can. i was dying by the last time we did the whole song from top to bottom-- i REALLY have no stamina left, damn-- but i was grinning from ear to ear after we finished, even though i'd messed up more than a few steps. i think it's what happens when there's that all elusive flow-- then you really get to feel the song :D

i'm not really expressing myself very well, but sigh isn't that always the case when it comes to dance or anything physical. there's only so much you can do to translate action and reaction into static words, and i haven't even tried that in a long long time.

it amazes me, also, how sometimes the completely intangible-- a way of thinking, a way of living, a spirit and positivism-- can be transmuted into music or dance.

it's a lie it's a lie
don't you believe it
if you're fine then you're fine
it's all how you see it
no there never will be no conspiracy of happiness

that song is inspiring; there really is meaning in the words. it was my fave song from the mix from the first time i heard it, and let's just say that in the past week it's saved my sanity in a rather big way. i'm GLAD that song exists, for the strength sometimes to get through another day.


on a random note?: argh costume headache.

saturday continued happily with tea (?) at clementi's botak jones and a crash course in pronunciation-nazism. nazism? bleh ok i'm being a lexophile-nazi. night brought the happy advent of a session with my home girls but as it is now 2am and i -THINK- i have a ecture tmr at 10 i shall desist and continue another day.

what if i fall
what if i don't
what if i never make it home
Posted at 12:47 AM

OH. and sara bareilles and one republic did a song together! i just saw it in fred's bounty issue 6. WHOOTS. aural pleasure here i come!



i need another player. and new speakers. GARGH. 8 gb was NEVER going to be enough :(:(
Posted at 5:21 PM

thursday.

so much it can mean to so many people.

i woke from an entire slough of insane dreams almost fever-like in their headiness; dreams of squirt guns and running and seaside shanties peopled by faces i almost recognised and almost recalled, but didn't. (i know exactly who to blame for the water-gunning motif-- lionel shriver-- but who or what inspired the beach-house game of tag? i don't know, i can't-- or perhaps my subconscious won't-- answer that). the wind sighed through every window in the house, tossing curtains in fits of pique and fruitless protests ranging in intensity from half-hearted to all-out fury.

the watchpost of the four winds

this wind continues, and i feel restless. i consider going out for my haircut, or some shopping, but settle for a cup of balmily-citrusy lemon vinegar instead (appropriately diluted, of course). i have shreds of choreography running through my head, but nothing is coherent; i have half-made plans and half-born dreams that seem destined to list in apathy for the rest of today. in a word, i am slacking, the typical grunge almost-still-teen unwilling to get up and move.

the wind crescendoes to a wail in the back of my house, while its companion singer in the front rustles the leaves of the rose of india outside my window a tad more forcefully. the sky is a nondescript gray (gray so much more poetic than the bleaker grey, somehow), blending somewhat non-committally into the grey (yes, this is grey) tiles of my neighbours' houses.

the streets are quiet. i hear nothing of the screaming that emitted from one house or another yesterday. yesterday, which was strange, rather. i pulled a muscle in my neck, found a monitor lizard lurking about buona vista (which i reported to the station control, but failed to see what became of it since i was running late for dance), sat at eunos mrt waiting for the bus after liren gave michelle and i a lift to the east and realised all over again how much i prefer taking late, late, late buses. i'm okay with reaching home at one-ish no matter how tired i am, so long as i don't have to deal with an entire squash of humanity. bus 10 AFTER 10 ftw :) perhaps if i drove it wouldn't be so bad, but i suspect not-- there's a reason i only like to drive at night, despite how very lost i get.

the same way i get lost in my words, your thoughts--


enough dithering. things i want to say:
i) krystle chiang i am JEALOUS. i want to see stars too! omg. but i had no money in any case (yes i just updated my bankbook and i feel like killing something. WHAT. HAPPENED. SOME ATM GREMLIN IS SIPHONING OFF MY DIGITS). but they sang the night starts here!! although they didn't do personal. hmms. did they sing elevator love letter?

ii) tatt convention starts tmr!! dude can you imagine how cool it would be to get tattooed by chris garver? i'm just saying-- i don't think he's tattooing in sg, but like i mean WOW. although i would really prefer kat von d haha her black and white tatts are so classic, and somehow as beautiful as colour is, perhaps on skin-- there's just smething about black and white, its stark simplicity even when it embodies every possible shade in between.

iii) looking forward to quasi-creature dinner on sat! PLEASE don't let me down haha.

iv) things worth fighting for, and growing up, and all that-- just a thought. because (i forget whose blog i read-- chu's?) there was something about making new year resolutions somewhere, and another about how you SHOULDN'T make new year resolutions because it's the cause of major depression when you fail.

i didn't make new year resolutions this year, but i think that was more out of sheer jadedness than anything else. since when have the resolutions i made ever been actualised? my patience is as quick-fire implosive as ever, my temper as impossible as ever-- in fact, i rather think it's gotten ruddy worse, and not in the sense of "i'm angry so hell yeah i'm gonna do this right"-- something that i could/can use for strength and will.

but in the failure of even a token effort to form some sort of intention for self-improvement i realised something even worse-- this is part of growing, not up, but old. you no longer believe-- santa is a commercialised figure of roly-poly unhealthiness used to trick youngsters or to fan the flames of christmas spending, disney tales are politically-incorrect feminism-dampening anecdotes designated to make us all unhappy and dissatisfied for life, wishing on the first star of every evening is, well, wishful thinking. this cynicism eats into my--our-- very being. it's a sign that we're no longer able to-- i don';t know-- dream?-- beyond the next audi or aston martin, the next waterfront condo, the newest rihanna-helmed tattoo heart collection.

i DON'T want to be reduced to this.

making resolutions is a sign that there's something out there worth fighting for. i've given up on so much else-- sometimes raging in bitter, bitter fury, sometimes simply in sheer resignation and quiet heartache. i no longer think of actually becoming a journalist or a writer-- although i still wish i could write like janet fitch or lionel shriver. i no longer dream of-- i don't know, probably fairly stupid things like, uh, marrying jj lin or misaki or something (i;m not saying i ACTUALLY did dream of such things, you understand. ok, maybe the former, maybe a little. OI. stop sniggering. i was a teenager i can blame it all on raging hormones. and anyway i think the whole lucify thing is so over haha without the crazy hair and the makeup they're just not my cup of tea). i no longer rage, rage, against the dying of the light (or the night, in my nocturnal case). i don't think of becoming a full time actress, theatre or tv or otherwise-- i've grown to accept that some dreams can only take you so far on a wing and a prayer before even the last motor cranks out.

do i still think of being a counsellor, or of volunteering for sos? yes, in a way, but i have to wonder how much good i would do, with my weltanschauung as bleak as it is. i definitely no longer fight to maintain or establish the whole friendship-is-paramount or the whole feminine-equivalent of bros before hos, because i think-- or rather i know-- that it bloody well isn't going to happen, and there is no point tying someone else down when they want to leave. i think my sister has come to the same conclusion, which is kind of sad-- at least i held on to the illusion for a few years more than her.

ha. we would all be a lot happier if we spent more time with our cat(s) and less time with our fake friends, to quote phin wong. sometimes i'm tempted to amend that-- take away the fake and you probably have it just about right, as well.

i don't know where this is going, but i think-- maybe some things are worth fighting for. more things than a spree or a sale or whoo yummy food, which seems to be all my life is about these days. i disgust myself.

maybe i really ought to make some resolutions after all.



v) this is cause for celebration-- no, not that tights and leopard prints are back (although i;m quite happy about that, frivolous as it is)-- but that THERE ARE NO LECTURES ON WEDNESDAYS CONFLICTING WITH BLAST CLASS THIS SEM. yay!!!! MEANS I DO NOT HAVE TO SKIP LECTURES LIKE I DID FOR SEM 1! (yes, although i didn't show it, i really did feel awfully guilty for attending 1.5lectures for that module)

for chrissake PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do NOT put any tutorials or anything else on wednesdays. PLEASE.

and so far my friday is free. but i don't think that's going to last they'll probably put in some public law tut or something. blehhhhh

what a schizophrenic post. but oh well off i go to read shriver's we need to talk about kevin over another mug of vinegary goodness. more about dance the next time, i've spent long enough here.


the walls they close in
the air it runs out
we're left with nothing but a shadow of doubt
Posted at 4:32 PM

i cannot believe i am still up at this hour when i'm leaving for kl at 8.30am.

screams.

oh well. finally uploaded my pics on both my comp and facebook, but it took forever to get them sorted-- way too many pics and i didn't want to split albums so i crammed sentosa and taiwan in one. decided, too, to finally talk about taiwan before my memories of it fade completely.

when i think of taiwan now i already draw a blank-- it takes effort, effort and more than a little head-scratching, to recall anything of it apart from rather insipid memories of di gua qiu. haha. it's like this article in today about what defines a global citizen-- written by a singaporean who moved to new york. basically the common idea of a global citizen is someone who is in one place for no longer than 48 hours, rushing about for meetings and business deals and trying to cram something in to remind oneself that one is in a different place than yesterday. my taiwan trip was certainly more than 48 hours long, but after a while each day just blurred into the next and by the tail-end of the trip i was just so heartily sick of the place i was dreaming about the warmth and heat of singapore.

i think one of the first things i said when i arrived in t3 was "oh my god. humidity!!"

so i've blogged about danshui, abt yehliu, abt jiufen. maybe it comes time to talk about another hot spring experience-- not the horrific omg-i'm-fainting-i-cannot-see-or-breathe one, but this awesome expedition my family took out to wu lai. we'd been wandering about the outskirts of taiwan that entire day, from traipsing up and down some really old roads in bi tan (emerald waters!-- the water was REALLY emerald) and visiting a temple (on coming down from the temple my dad paused to read some inscriptions and my mum promptly chivvied us to hide behind a car. omg my parents. NOBODY beats them for childishness). food bought a bottle of water that had the brand supau or supah or something like that and we ended up laughing our stomachs sore by threatening to "supauuuu!!" each other for the rest of that morning, regaining shreds of sobriety only when we entered the temple.

thereafter we took a horribly long ride to wu lai-- almost an hour long!-- and the driver drove like a maniac! but it was all worth it. after trudging through streets where cold rain dripped icy drops down the backs of our necks (i really don't understand how the rain manages to find its way into such inaccessible nooks and crannies that just wind up being the MOST uncomfortable spots) my mum espied people paddling about in a river and clouds of steam rising off the water. we eschewed all the sundry spas offering piped-in springwater and opted for au naturel, and i am GLAD we did! it was such an adventure haha.

having dressed completely inappropriately (my clever sister wore footless tights which she could roll up, and everyone else was in jeans) i took forever to hop around and remove my spangled tights. but when i finally did enter the water it was great-- i've never had so much fun playing. water can be such a miracle-- i was reminded of haikou's impossible confluence of calm river-water and wild surging waves, but wu lai's transliteration of it was heat-- icy cold waters on one side of the rock boundaries and burning 80deg water on the other. i watched in disbelief as this man on what had to be the advanced side of 50, dressed in nothing but tights, briskly hopped into the icy water and started swimming against the current. water-based treadmill hahaha. RESPECT.

my family had to drag me out of the water. i refused to leave even after two hours of tripping over rocks and burning my feet because it just felt so good. i'm afirad my dad has about seventy completely unglam pictures of me making various ugly faces at him everytime he tried to take a picture. and, to once again support my theory that my parents are going through their second childhood, my mum bet my sister that she could throw a rock across the river and swung her arm. a rock hit the other side of the river alright-- but my dad threw it. my siblings all just rolled their eyes-- i think we stopped falling for that trick about, i don't know, TEN years ago?? hoho.

with my feet nice and warm and toasty and faced with the impossibility of trying to put on my tights again i hopped barefoot up the mountain to catch a glimpse of the waterfall feeding the river. it was a forty-minute walk/run, delayed by stops to taste rice wine and lemon vinegar (stop making sour faces. it was very very good for my throat k!). since everyone else thought we were crazy my dad and i jogged up the slopes on our own, both agreeing that it would have been a wonderful place to run. both mum and dad tried to badger me into buying a caftan once we reached the top but i steadfastly held my ground. whee! one for the sensible yvonne who knows that her wardrobe cannot fit another item without something drastic occurring!

all in all a lovely place with even better vinegar. hoho. i bought that lemon vinegar in the end-- cost 15 bucks per bottle k! more than the rice wine :( but it's goooood. yummy yummy in my tummy as nette would say.

apart from such cool memories there was also this really horrific one. my parents took us to huayi jie- supposedly a street of delicacies. as we walked down the street we suddenly saw this tray outside a restaurant piled high with bloodied carcasses. a closer look revealed that they were turtles. they had been deshelled; the pearlescence of their violated insides glistened sickly in the weak fluorescent lights. as we watched in a kind of horrified fascination one turtle opened its mouth and extended a black tongue, trying in vain to lick some of the blood off.

it was that action that really got to me-- its complete inability to comprehend what was happening to it, why this was happening to it. that utter wronged innocence... oh but that wasn't the end of it man. a few shops down the street i just stopped dead in my tracks; it was a shop selling snake soup and snake meat. there was this beautiful python locked in a cage far too small for it. behind that cage there were demonstrations of how the snakes were "prepared" for eating-- they were skinned ALIVE. a small ring would be cut in their skin and then the man would just rip it off like a tube, a warped sort of sock, as the snake twisted in convulsions in his hands. halfway down he would insert a knife and cut a hole so that he could extract the bile.

my entire stomach lurched and i grabbed my sister and stormed away. if i had stayed any longer i would have done something illegal-- like skin the goddamn man. i couldn't stop choking on my tears, it was so so freaking horrible i just wanted to throw up and stab out his eyeballs and release the snake. sick, sick, sick and depraved-- we are worse than beasts, we humans. i think my parents both saw how badly it affected us because they caught up with my sister nad i after we'd just stormed off like that and i got away with only a mild rebuke even after i started cursing the snake-butcher.


i still shudder at the memory. that incident ruined half the trip because all i could think about was how depraved these people were...

but i forgave taiwan, in the end. not that there was much to forgive, but for all the horror of that there was beauty in so much else! for the wild surging crashing of the seas, and for another incident that brought tears to my eyes YET again (i think my biology was trying to make up for the lack of moisture in the air or something).

christmas eve and we went off to the area about taipei 101. as we walked along and my mum did her best to donate half the contents of her purse to any and every street performer (eh we spent like NT600 on donations i think i have a right to be horrified!!) we encountered this group of people holding white and pink balloons in their hands. thinking that they were handing them out for xmas we hovered around hopefully trying to induce them into giving us one or two. when that failed my mum asked us to sit down-- she'd spotted some people setting up amps and speakers and expected another street performance.

as we sat and rested and i poked at my miserable insensible shoes, i started noticing something rather peculiar about the balloon people. pink and white heart-shaped balloons was one thing, but-- wasn't that girl holding a rather big bouquet of flowers?

and the balloon group looked like they were affiliated with the singing group. i stared at them, then nudged my sister and motioned to my mum excitedly. i started miming putting a ring on my finger.

yups-- marriage proposal!! how cool is that can. the singer was the dude proposing; his girlfriend was guided to the spot by two girl pals after a while. he sang to her-- some amended version of a classic-- and then asked her to marry him. after she repeated her answer in a shout-- the first had been inauidble-- everyone in the square broke out into cheers and applause. his friends let go of the balloons, and i watched as they sailed up and away into the dark velveteen of the night sky.

my sister turned to me. she asked, "are you crying??"

i couldn't help it whaaaaat. it was really so romantic. damnit la for all the lissimore-v-downing-esque expressions of boys-are-stupid i'm still a complete sucker for this nonsense.

ok that's it it's damn late i haven't packed i shall go sleep.

or rather, pack. because i don't HAVE time to sleep.

MUST stop skyping.
Posted at 1:35 AM

it's like entering those hallowed gates world-wearier and worn
it's like looking at an old-new world with ideals shaved and shorn



and it's like knowing all the exact words to a song you've never heard
it's like wearing brand-new canvas shoes with history paint'd and smeared
it's like seeing every surface change that renders us estranged
and then feeling like we've just come home and nothing's really changed

how our words return to haunt us.

how our tropes recur.

images, images. drummer boys tossing their drumsticks-- a sight that brought on laughter even amid my sudden unlooked for tears; fancy drill; words in dust, like a mispelled name so long and long ago.

this used to be 2daredevils

oh, my heart aches. but i have nothing left to feel with, nothing left to give, and a whole world of jaded soul-weariness to suffocate in.

turn out the light, give me my darkness, my blessed oblivion
Posted at 2:27 AM