keron - says (10:57 PM):
i felt sick
i think i'm getting sick
i even drank the linyang thing mummy and daddy gave me
it didn't HELP
at all
mich says (11:01 PM):
it's YANGSHENGSHU haha
mummy asks how much did you use to boil?
add some salt she says
keron - says (11:01 PM):
how i know what it is!!!
eh i have no salt
oh wait
i just bought 1 kg of salt
good
mich says (11:02 PM):
eh she says some not 1 kg
Posted at 11:02 PM

losing your mind for the sake of your heart.

this wasn't such a depressed-sounding post, but my javascript malfunctioned and then my entire computer hung. and the entry didn't get saved.

it's tiring and trying, attempting to reformulate everything that's already been written once before.


it wasn't really the quality of the dance class that's affecting me, because all the classes i went for today (sunday) were admirably challenging.

there's just no dancer's high that i'm so used to getting after every session. it's something i've taken for granted, completely.

i shouldn't be so negative. all it takes is a mindset change. all it takes.
__________________________________________________________

headed for 5 classes today-- 4 reggae and 1 commercial hip hop-- as part of a DansCenter open house (ends today as well! sadness-- goodness knows how much i missed). it would have been 1 breaking, 3 reggae, 1 commercial hiphop and 1 modern jazz class, but i reluctantly accepted the fact that i couldn't fly the distance between the two studios and settled for 5 anyway (which was my physical limit, as it turned out). Reggae hates me, I swear-- i have no groove and i look (and feel), to quote my sister, like an elephant who should "live out the rest of my time in nus with a paper bag over my head."

complete with picture, taken from her blog.

by the way i am damn proud of her for auditioning for blast, even if i DID send her a paper bag (i was going to draw a face on it but i couldn't find a marker). getting out there is half the battle. and she asked me who was the girl teaching them the steps cos her voice totally didn't match her sweetly demure face. i laughed for five minutes i think-- i've never heard it put quite that way before.

AND i'm supposed to tell all my nus friends this: "please tell them when you come back that i'm not usually such a failure haha. or better yet, please tell me in advance when you need to give them lifts home or anything and if i'm going to be in the car i'll wear a paper bag and i'll be your romanian cousin who is sensitive to light."

why can't i be as funny as my sister.

ANYWAY yes reggae hates me. the teacher-- carmel-- reminded me of trinity in a way, except she doesn't have insane lower back isolation, she has instead unbelievable... chest groove? whatever it is, it allows her to bodywave up and down and all around effortlessly. i couldn't catch it and looked like a broken record :( i got thoroughly sick of the reggae songs though because she used the same three or four songs for EVERY class, and after a while every sean paul song sounds the same. HOW MANY TIMES DO YOU HAVE TO SAY "SEAN DE PAUL"??? and beenie man's king of the dancehall argh i think i can chant the lyrics to you now.

commercial hip hop was VERY mazlan and extremely enjoyable-- and yes, the same teacher took the class. she's pretty good--
i) versatile
ii) took 5 classes without breaking much of a sweat-- i hit the wall, i simply have no stamina left anymore. not enough to take 5 hours of dance at one go anyway-- i blanked during the last reggae class and went off to doze sit in a corner for 15minutes until the next class. her stamina and memory are insane.
iii) taught in ENGLISH. seriously a BIG plus point-- the first three classes (2 LA street-style and one krumping) i took on friday were taught ENTIRELY IN SWEDISH. the only words i understood were "chris brown, usher, ne-yo" -____- i nearly choked when the instructor rattled away at me in swedish after the classes, but after i admitted rather sheepishly that i didn't speak swedish he talked to me in english.

i think i'm going to take carmel's course, i just can't decide between reggae (painful, but <3 the groove) and commercial HH (closest to high i got). No point telling me to take both either, because they're painfully expensive-- works out to slightly under sgd 25 per class. i will never complain that danzpeople is expensive again. never never never. so much for trying other styles while i'm here :(

it's been some 11-- 12?-- days since i've left the sunny shores of singapore. i'd like to think that the rain is a sign of how much the country is missing me HAHA. tribute to my blog lah! ok, maybe not. in any case i haven't really updated much about how the life here's been, but i think maybe that's another entry altogether.

i'm not just dance-starved, i'm poetry-starved, too. should have brought edna st. vincent millay with me, or the complete works of shakespeare, or even just my tarot cards :(. kicking myself very hard now.
Posted at 3:14 AM

this is a place i already want to love-- a place i WOULD love, if you were here.

if my heart wasn't split up in pieces all over singapore; if a piece wasn't hidden in the folds of the cfa studio curtains; if another wasn't spinning about the high ceilings of ucc; if a shard wasn't in as7, or a fragment in rh studio, or scattered piecemeal over the entire cityhall-dhobyghaut area-- a shred in studio wu, another in danzpeople, et cetera.

pretty much the only reason i feel down nowadays is because of dance, or because i'm missing it. and that is so ironic, because dance used to be-- IS-- my greatest joy, my raison d'etre.

but oh my god i miss properly dancing so, so much. jinglin was right-- i always thought that any sort of dance school at all SHOULD have something for anyone to learn, and i'd be able to get my dance fix anyway. and it is true, i HAVE things i can learn. but now i understand what the random one meant by "not good", or "not the same". there's just no satisfaction; after three classes today i found myself walking outside in the rain completely depressed.

starved, my hunger swallows me whole, whole, whole.


i really wish the swedish shops or radios or whatever would stop playing songs that i've learnt choreography to. it just makes me feel even worse.



but other than that everything is fine. my parents flew back today-- they should still be on the plane now. my room already looks like a tornado hit it. time to clean up.
Posted at 4:23 AM

Posted at 4:47 AM

i am turning into eva khatchadourian, with far less reason than she had to feel this way.

if i sound excited on msn or fb it's because i'm excited to see YOU. not because i am excited.

there are many things i'd like to say to you but i don't know how
Posted at 5:42 PM

please don't think less of me if i shed a tear (or two, or twenty) on wednesday.


Oh, monstrous parting, oh, perfidious deed,
How shall I leave your side, how shall I go?...-- edna st. vincent millay
Posted at 3:30 AM

wickedd.

hiccups:

dinners which don't manifest, boyfriends who get angry because they can't find my house, extreme sleepiness, the star of the show falling asleep watching nightmare before xmas and not skyping us (POK XF POK), misinterpretation of the "cotton on requirement", flat-out-refusals to take pictures despite my emotional blackmail whines of "i'm going to be away for SIX MONTHS", complaints of too-tight shirts ("omg von can you lend me another shirt" "yeah if you wear that one i think you will cut off blood flow") and CERTAIN people showing up at like 12.20am.

pluses, stars, honours: everything. else. actually even the things above. :)

my dog tried to eat everyone except for abigail; despite the death threats everyone seemed to agree that he looked less-- well-- hangdog, and rather more well-fed if not yet obese. somnabulism reared its inexorable head as early as eleven and ning insisted on reading harry potter and the deathly hallows instead of talking to us. we hunkered down in front of stardust, which is apparently ni's favourite show although in ning's words "she only likes it because the star glows"; i fell asleep in the middle of it, a fact rendered rather painfully obvious because up to that point i'd been answering random questions about what was going on ("yeah we figured out that you fell asleep because i was hoping you'd answer my questions since you seemed to be the only one who knew what was happening"). it's true that claire danes' acting was almost painfully wooden in that movie, but michelle pfeiffer was gorgeous. the movie's happy ending was incongruous; i found the book's bittersweet loneliness far more to my taste, but then that explains why i've never stayed awake through the movie and why i've read the book thrice.

strangely once the lights went off, all notions of sleep fled out the window as well. i have no idea what time we slept, but my sister said she woke at 3am and heard us giggling (giggling?!) through 2 closed doors eeeps. darkness triggers the WEIRDEST things, ranging from the discovery that apparently despite not looking it (...) i am "shockingly conservative", abby has ceased to be merely a "joke" and is now an encyclopedia of jokes, ning is damn scared of the dark, ni should not drink alcohol without xf's genes and a whole host of other matters: shoes and ships and sealing wax and cabbages and kings. oh and that a certain physics teacher SHOULD NOT quit her day job for poetry, because she came up with this rhyme:
electricity we say hi
don't you ever ever sigh
R is V over I
V equals to R times I
are you ready to shock your mind?

that might have been the source of the 3am laughter, although if my mind serves me correctly we were laughing too hard to make a sound.

<3<3<3

i am going to have to squeeze six months' worth of memories in 1.5 weeks-- now 8 days, actually-- to tide me over, with a warmth i'll not forget, for the coldest of the winter months. and people, please remember me too-- for six months there won't be this crazy girl around you asking what you think of her black specs (ning: "mmms... it's got the same feel as your old ones") only to flip them over to show you that yes, she painted the front of the frames black because the old lime-green clashed with her red hair extensions.

p.s. hope everyone had a good national day! apparently douglas was on sg idol. did not see lily lee or eisen on tv though :(
too much pizza to sleep, shall read elizabeth hand instead/play with new toy that cannot shoot people and which is subject to painfully fatal e18 lens errors (whatever the heck that is darn it maybe i should just stick with my since-sec4-and-has-taken-3000-pics canon instead). note to self however that vows of fealty to sarpinos are made for a reason-- sheer yumminess. sarpinos>>>>>>> pizza hut please!
Posted at 12:24 AM

bitchiness and snarkiness is all very well when you're doing it to protect your friends/family, but i think i overdo it.

i KNOW i overdo it. and sometimes-- a lot of the time, lately-- there's simply no excuse. being so-and-so doesn't give you the right to walk all over someone, but being in the right doesn't give you the right to be even more in the right either. eye for an eye leaves everyone blind.

and although i didn't show it i felt absolutely awful and guilty beyond words. i didn't feel like i had a right to be happy when i bring such mean-ness and smallmindedness into the world.

heck, i didn't even feel like i had a right to enjoy class. but today's classes were wonderful and i am so so so glad that soozey and jinglin dragged us all to danzpeople after kate's :)

dance brings out a side of me i don't think i've ever known. and i'm loving it (count the number of times i say i "love" something in my blog entries and you might understand how much this means to me), for that and for so much more.

"It wasn't so in my young days. THEN a girl did not say she LOVED turnips, in just the same tone as she might have said she loved her mother or her Savior."-- l m montgomery, anne of the island
Posted at 1:46 AM

like jin i've been scrambling to catch up on posts so when i forget what date exactly i started writing them i kind of insert them in a convenient spot (also so i won't have like four entries in a day). guys this is why KEEP A DIARY. bleh.

just another manic monday
ran errands in orchard before going back to btc; paid a visit to the slr room where i found a congregation of madness (hee). i'd seriously forgotten how nuts these people get, or how much law students swear. as usual, aidil was offering to rape anyone within sight or vocal mention, kenneth kept spying on the law ones wandering around and commenting "hot or not" (i think aidil offered to grab one of them and strip them so i could have a set of black and whites to prance around in). emily's sporadic presence helped to keep the atmosphere on the borderline of sane-- i think she's inured to aidil's offers of physical favours. ben barged in midway through the afternoon screaming and swearing because he'd gotten comfort taxi blue on his champagne coloured car-- to be exact, his DAD'S champagne coloured car. i sympathised entirely and said my dad didn't speak to me properly for two days after the latest mishap with the bmw. kenneth said, "yeah, but that's because you're a GIRL." aidil's response to kenneth: "yeah next time if you crash your dad's car then maybe you should castrate yourself." whatever rocks their boat, man.

it WAS kind of tragicomic since they'd been calling ben all day; the first call from kenneth had been answered with a scream of wordless rage, aidil's had been rejected, emily's had been answered with a "i'm busy!!!!" we speculated about what had happened and i think i came the closest: that he'd been captured by the ISD and was having his toes pinched off, or was otherwise "unavoidably detained". useful phrase. in any case the taxi driver whom ben had a close encounter spoke nothing but hokkien and the only hokkien ben knows is "knn". HELPS, YES.

barged off to kentridge to hand up my lazyass sister's forms since she's too busy playing patapon (wth kind of game is that) to leave the house; failed to meet up with abby and then went to suntec in a bid to find a backpack with expert phone-in advice from my kinabalu-scaling darling. walked over to bugis to look for a decent travel guidebook; failed but found poetry and lewis carroll instead (does my subconscious perhaps think i'm going down a rabbithole to sweden?). headed to bugis street to find clothes for busking to match hair; failed to find decent clothes or decent-coloured hair extensions and decided at nine pm to go back to orchard for blindingly blood-red extensions. sadly they look kind of sparse and lost amidst my frizzy head.

dashed back to siglap in time to be slightly early for supper with jin, who has been a rather sadly neglected love-of-my-life. jin if you're reading this i give you free rein to flirt while i'm away hoho. gifted with blessed threads, a miniature prayer wheel and incredible tales of tibetans who are incredibly inefficient because they tell their beads in one hand and shake the prayer wheel with the other, as well as an admonition to NOT wear my shrek specs because they make me look like a china girl. *facepalm*

the evil non-stepsister
busking practice on tuesday afternoon where i tried out my sister's jacket for the first time-- that thing is HOT, in a bad way. i've christened it the library outfit and in revenge for my conferring on it eternal geekdom it has decided to bleed red all over my white tank top. thanks. i'm still messing up-- when i concentrate on my steps i forget my blocking, when i remember blocking i forget transition, when i remember transition i fail to do expression, when i remember expression i forget that there are people around me and that the stage is limited and i fall off. FAIL. i still cannot do ellen's hit-bounce-pull-- how to balance not-hitting with not-lepaking?? ARGHHH *prays hard for tomorrow*

thank you krystal and michelle rose and fred and tracy for your comments and words of encouragement-- i'll keep them in mind although i really don't think i deserve them (this especially to krystal!!), not when there's so much more to improve on and BUSKING IS IN 9 HOURS. must not mess up must not mess up must not mess up. (ok crap i have to go pack tracy's scarf and cheryl's jacket and michelle's accessories if i can find any)

ran headlong with ellen and weiting for ahmad's class after busking prac, certain that we wouldn't make it; we arrived just after warmups ended. v nice grungy ghetto choreo; i really liked the first half (last week's). thereafter went for dinner instead of meeting my mum and sis because my other sister had managed to sprain her ankle going down the stairs and had been forced to skip aikido. see this is what comes of dreaming of teukie at all hours. michelle's been laughing at her all day--

mum: "she's super bad to joey! just now coming out of the house to buy supper she shouted "oi, paika! want anything to eat???""
michelle: *snigger*
me: *whacks mich* "THAT'S FOR BEING A CRAP SISTER."
michelle: "OUCH THAT HURTS. but i don't imagine it hurts as much as when i poke her swollen ankle. HEEE."

that girl is mad. she glared at her supper of snow ice and complained that she could only taste expired chinese new year goodies. and she made me watch bleach today omg-- not the washing liquid you doofus, the anime. but STILL.

whatever. sleeeeeeep.

in a wonderland they lie,
dreaming as the days go by,
dreaming as the summers die.
Posted at 12:08 AM

what is WRONG with half the world???






thank god for creatures that keep me sane. :|
Posted at 10:51 AM

the difference between a, and the, and one.

and of course the saved-as-drafts.

I know that joy will come
as a voice in a fugue returns
to enter and alter the texture
of accumulating seasons.
...
What’s grief but the after-blindness
of the spirit’s dazzle of love?-- gwen harwood, past and present
Posted at 1:53 AM

isn't it always easier to share good news than bad?

so here's the good, sort of.

dad flew off to abu dhabi on saturday 1st aug and mum insisted-- ok, hinted subtly (subtlety is to my mother what underwear is to traditional kilt wearers)-- that i could jolly well skip one session of dance to send him off. i'm afraid i did it with very bad grace, but expecting me to smile and be merry in a week with only three days of dance while you're squabbling on the way to the airport is asking a tad too much, no? last-minute detours for dad's passport (which he had left in mum's handbag which she had left on the table, for which she blamed him and he blamed her ARGH parents!!) aside, it was okay. i should say "worth it" but the unfilial brat that i am complains at the missed saturday sharing session, very plaintively.

OKOKOK it was alright la. and i cheered up a lot after listening to my siblings who started mouthing off (probably in a bid to distract from my not-so-muffled curses). choice bits:

brother: "oh, wow. the hands on that clock just moved. creepy *shudders*".
brother: "*very solemnly* it is illegal to throw a baby at a policeman."

and then my dad hugged us all before he left and did PSL (as opposed to ASL; no prizes for guessing what P stands for) through the airport glass doors: *steering wheel action* *forefinger and thumb held close together* *points at heart*= 驾车小心.

mum wanted to say 小心飞, with fei as some sort of flapping of the forearms; i told her instead to spread out her arms and run in circles alternating the angle of the plane of her arms. she did. joey hid behind a board so as not to be associated with us.
___________________________________________
that was saturday. last week WAS kind of crazy-- crazy fun. wed's busking vetting and practice was a self-berating session for messing up during vetting (oh gosh the VIDEO i forgot yuko's choreo and murdered ellen's steps, and not in a good way) and not being able to catch choreo, with a long walk to catch the bus later that left me aghast at wilkson's vision of a toast cafe that sold, inter alia, chilli crab kaya. on thursday i acceded to my mum's requests for social responsibility for the afternoon and declined my colleagues' invitations for coffee but bargained to watch a la salle musical "happiness" that night (ran into lily lee dressed in slinky black and ready to partay at the station!).

the musical was a misnomer-- we'd expected singing and dancing, i think, but it was more of a musical mime: not a word was spoken. watching i found myself incredibly wistful for drama-- in particular when i saw the complete lack of inhibition the actors displayed. i don't think even my most prolific years produced that fearless headlong plunge into character, and admittedly i got typecast after a while-- first as the bratty diva, then almost always as the brooding schemer with some sort of dark conflicted plot or past (why i ask you why). thursday's sojourn was like revisiting an old friend who had become utterly unfamiliar, whom i'd perhaps never really known anyway. the performance started out with a bang, heartfelt and funny, but we both felt that nearing the end the director and actors, perhaps spent by the creative process (which was apparently going into studio and asking the actors to come up with images of violence, or charity, etc), might have settled for the paths (or mimes) of least resistance. trite, indeed *wince*.

oh well luckily the "little boy" promised in the programme booklet didn't turn out to be an annoying little kid, eh. and overall it wasn't too bad, although it COULD have done without the balloons (or clearer balloons at any rate). happy thursday!
_________________________________________________
last day of work dawned on friday and i woke up at about 8.19am when i was supposed to be at work at 9. mad rush to complete assignments before running off for kate's class/ cate's klass -.-, where jingaling became the latest fangirl of the indomitable kate. scrambled off (remind me NOT to wear unsensible shoes like crazy mphosis platforms [soozey: "why are you so tall??"] that i cannot run in, when i NEED TO RUN) after class to sushi tei to meet my creatures. i'm not going to continue that post until i have pictures IF i ever get them, but if there is one thing i am thankful for in this lifetime it is that i have friends like these and love like this, no strings attached. and rarer still, they accept even if they cannot understand my insane too-much-dance-is-still-not-enough mentality and don't berate me (not to my face anyway) for showing up late for a 21st bday dinner, no less. HEARTS.

j'adore congenere!
Posted at 3:26 AM

when the lifehouse song started i just melted. it's one of my favouritest lifehouse songs of all time (and definitely my favourite from that 4th album). i have to watch this! oh my gosh but it's only released in sg on 17 sept. i think i'm going to have to watch it dubbed in swedish :( on 9th october, no less :(:(
Posted at 11:46 PM