Copy cars

Did I mention how much I hate copycats?

This is the Honda Crossroad. Released by Honda in early 2007, it looks... suspiciously like some other automobile.

This is the Hummer H3, the baby of the Hummer family of military vehicles released by Hummer Motors in 2006. While it underwent a major weight loss programme to trim it for the layman, it still packs a punch in its 2-plus ton frame, and guzzles fuel like nobody's business.

And some people couldn't tell these 2 cars apart?! Like, DUH?! Did someone poke you in the eye?

And so, thanks to our friendly local car site http://www.sgcarmart.com/, who very kindly did a comparison of the above two cars, the sheer difference of the two cars are illustrated here:

Sorry, I'm just feeling very sore over the fact that I didn't have the chance to snap a photo of the only H3 I spotted opposite RGS. Argh.

Enslaved by time and tide

I wonder if my immune system's playing a trick on me; I hopped onto the bus this morning feeling alright, and then began to feel feverish in 3224 lecture. My fingers turned numb, the blood wasn't reaching my arms and legs, my head was throbbing, and I basically felt like I was going to freeze to death. Thank god Mr. Gui extended the 3224 essay deadline, which gave my body time to recover. 3219 presentation tomorrow, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that 4 Biogesics and 2 Panadol Extras later, I will be able to ramble non-stop tomorrow.

Yes, we spent our 19th month apart, probably the first time in memory. When school work loads up, spending time with each other is a luxury I never want to take for granted. As we took turns to fall sick, get pissed off with assignments and projects, curse lecturers, it's comforting to know that at the end of the day, there's still you and me, and us, unseparated by time and space.

I miss you.

Denial. DENIAL!!!

It's the weekend before the Great Showdown. By that I didn't mean the F1 race; I'm simply counting down to Doomsday when it arrives on Monday, and continues to drag until the end of the semester, or until I run out of motivation and collapse in a puddle of self-despair.

I don't know why I gave myself the reason to waste Thursday away; maybe it's because I'm dying to cut myself some slack and then coming back to kick myself in the back. Or maybe meeting up with the group of people I call friends in my Uni life. Yeah, I pretty much have no social life within my course or faculty, and I have no close buddies who will chope seats for me every lecture, help me print lecture notes or let me copy the lectures that I have missed. And strangely, I don't feel like I needed that all, because majority the friends I make, despite being from the other side of Kent Ridge Drive, have exactly what I seek in a friend. Those whom you enjoy and toil through time with, those who will never see eye to eye with me and yet make such great friends, and those who make you wonder if you're in the wrong faculty. Haha ok I'm out of point. And despite the fact that most of them will be more than just several thousand miles away from here next semester, the friendship we have will bound us together.

And yes, I'm feeling sore about not being able to hear the eardrum-quashing zips of those fast and furious monsters around Marina, and not being able to feel the feet rumble beneath my feet as they come in and out of sight faster than you could say 'Hamilton!'. And I'm in complete self-denial.

No, I don't have a 2,500 essay due this Wednesday which I haven't started on.
No, I don't know what the Backstreet Boys will be singing at the F1, which I'm far too underprivileged monetarily to attend.
No, I don't have mid-terms on Monday, which I haven't finished studying.
No, I don't have an assignment due on Monday, which I'm not completely satisfied with.
No, I don't have a formal presentation on Toyota on Wednesday, which I have no idea what I have to say.
No, I don' have tutorial readings for Wednesday, which I have happily postponed to Tuesday night.
No, I'm not feeling sore over the beautiful cars that I'm going to miss when all the dirt-rich fellas come out to play this weekend.
No, I'm not missing you so much it hurts like mad.
No, I'm not addicted to The Time Traveler's Wife.
No, I'm not running out of runway.

Just to watch you, and just watch you doing whatever you're doing. Bliss. And yes, I'm still looking forward, anticipating, to the day we'll go home to our home, eat, watch TV, and never have to say goodbye.

Argh.

To listen to sappy love ballads croon on and on about growing old together, and then hear you talk about the end of the world in 3 years' time, is the greatest irony in the world.

Sometimes I wonder why I even bother crying over that nonsense. Screw those bastards.

Mozzie!

I'm a total convert of Mozilla Firefox. I used to harbor the idea that Firefox had an all-too-round interface which didn't look like something I would use. The bookmark feature's also a little inconvenient when it comes to accessing them quickly. And then IE7 decided to tune out of my net connection, such that I couldn't load any page even with my Internet connection up. And yay! Firefox saved the day!

I spent half my Tuesday bombarding Meimin with noobie emails regarding my essay choice, and I ol' so thank her for kicking me back up the right track, or else I'd be ambling on about Apple technology and committed academic suicide. I've always heard positive things about her teaching style, and to experience it justified everything people said.

3219 group meeting today, and we managed to beat the heat by holing up in our CNM nest. We have the nicest professors and lecturers (ignore the black sheep) who would never say no as long as we behaved ourselves, and gave us feedback for our questions almost instantaneously. Now where do you find professors who hook onto their smart phones and laptops 24/7, and always ready to dish out solutions for your issues? Where do you find courses that get you up on Twitter, get you to track issues on huge companies via Factiva and Google Alerts, and assign you projects that you love and hate at the same time?

This sounds like an advertorial.

Oh well. Back to mugging my last chapter for today, so that I could return the 48 hours I owed Jack tomorrow.

birthdays

I like celebrating birthdays. :) Even more so when it's Jack's birthday. You know how much emphasis the older generations place on lunar birthdays. So Jack's lunar birthday (which falls on Hari Raya Puasa this year) was a huge event at his side. Happy 24th Lunar birthday. :)

The hospitality I received from his parents and relatives was overwhelming, and I'm just secretly hoping that none of them would be forming any bad impressions of me in their minds. I'm such a klutz at times. And to double the reason for celebration, his extended family will be expecting a new addition to the family soon! I like happy occassions. :)

Plus I managed to tame that little monster of a tuition kid by sharing information about dinosaurs and sharks. Can someone tell me if it's a guy thing to like man-eaters? What irony.

I kind of dropped out of it all. And I don't really regret it, like how I used to lament that I'm always uninvolved. It isn't so much of losing the passion, but more of losing the time and the bonds. Yes, it scares me to have to feel this way but, no, there're no pangs to return.

Killer cramps attack on Thursday, and didn't die until Friday morning. I took just 2 Panadol Extras this time round to curb the pain, instead of the 4-hourly dosage for most of the previous months. Die cramps DIE!!!

And just as I was running out of ideas for 3rd Sis' birthday present, Jack came up with the perfect foodie's gift; Swensen's ice-cream mooncake vouchers. He sure knows how to curry favour. :P Dad took us all out for dinner (yes, future son-in-law included) at 甘家莊 at Ang Mo Kio Ave 3. I had expected the rush-hour jams on Lornie Road, the dinner crowd and the license paper-burning for the last day of the lunar 7th month, but what I hadn't expect was the 15-minute wait for the lady to come and take our order, and the 40-minute wait for our food.

And when the Lee family dines out, Mr Lee has no qualms about spending excessively and eating sinfully.

All the way from Jurong to Ang Mo Kio plus a long wait, just for those meat-junkies to try this fat slab of stewed pork belly. My meat-less diet is fully justified.

And I loved the way everyone interacted; Mum asking Jack about his burger shirt; Dad and Mum talking to Jack simultaneously about totally different topics and watching the poor guy getting torn between them; my sis tickling everyone with her gorilla joke; my sisters chatting with Jack... Surreal. And yes, even I'm finding it hard to believe that I'm sitting in the middle of it all.

And I'm fully convinced that any other sacrifice is worth it all.

Night Air

I have mad deadlines to chase. :(

1. NM3224 Essay (1 Oct)
2. NM3219 Presentation (Week 7)
3. MKT1003 Assignment 3 (28 Sep)
4. MKT1003 Project (Week 9)
5. SSD2210 Group Presentation (Week 9)
6. NM2201 Mid Terms (29 Sep)

Now I know why they say, "With age comes responsibility". Argh.



I wanna re-take all those blurred photos.
I wanna pick back up all those dollars and cents I had spent so frivolously.
I wanna have you rub my tummy every night and tell me everything's going to be fine when I'm having these horrid cramps I'm having now.
I wish someone could dredge all the dumb malls and burn all those fake Longchamps and Agnes B bags.
I wanna hear Teddy Geiger play 'live' in a small bar while I sip on Bitter Lemon.
I want to skip school tomorrow.
I want to eat a decent slice of honey pineapple.


Gah. I should stop dreaming.





And I'm back to listening to Teddy Geiger (coincidentally, he turned 21 yesterday), especially when I'm dangerously armed with my new earphones from Jack :).

From this moment on

From This Moment On - Shania Twain

From this moment life has begun
From this moment you are the one
Right beside you is where I belong
From this moment on

From this moment I have been blessed
I live only for your happiness
And for your love I'd give my last breath
From this moment on

I give my hand to you with all my heart
I can't wait to live my life with you, I can't wait to start
You and I will never be apart
My dreams came true because of you

From this moment as long as I live
I will love you, I promise you this
There is nothing I wouldn't give
From this moment on

You're the reason I believe in love
And you're the answer to my prayers from up above

All we need is just the two of us
My dreams came true because of you

From this moment as long as I live
I will love you, I promise you this
There is nothing I wouldn't give
From this moment on

I will love you as long as I live
From this moment on

As overplayed as this song can be during weddings, I can really fall in love with it over and over again with each listen. The message is short, simple and sweet - that all I ever want to do from this moment onwards is to belong to you, to fall in love with you over and over again, and to live in the dream I've been having every night. I was listening to Shania talk about how she and her husband derived at the song (yes, she wrote this absolutely sweet song, melody and all, with her husband), and she mentioned how she just escaped into this alternative, romantic world during a noisy soccer match and wrote most of the parts in her head, there and then.

While not every romance ends with marriage vows and wedding bands, I hold true to the belief that to be wholly in love with someone it's not just about the little impulses, the butterflies, the hugs and kisses, the flowers and diamonds, the presents, the time spent together or the physical things. It's about mutual acceptance, trust, honesty, forgiveness, altruism, and the little pitholes. And most importantly, it's about treating each other like family; like someone you know you wouldn't want to lose your entire life, and like a part of yourself you wouldn't want to get rid of.

And while I continue to drown myself in this song, my readings and little visions of my loved one, I hope this could inspire people out there to think long and hard about what they want from their relationships. Companionship? Sweet, unrequitted love? Or is your idea of love a flawed one?

21 years

Happy 21st Birthday to me. :)

I'm an old woman now. Haha.

I'm supposed to be attempting to decipher cryptic readings for NM3224 tutorial later this week, but I have to get this over and done with, just to gain some proper closure.

I'm not a fan of crowds, so holding a birthday gathering for my extended family and some of my closest friends was a miracle, and the credit goes to my parents and Jack for being the super PRs and entertaining whoever I could not pay attention to. Major thanks to my 3 gurlies (and that one boyfriend) for braving the heatwave and staying on til late, despite my lack of attention towards them. Thanks to all the presents and birthday cash, and thanks for simply turning up.

Thanks to my late grandma for that important golden key to my life. I still love you, and I know you'll continue to love me until the day we meet up there. :)

Thanks to Jack, who returned home late, braved the strange looks, defeated that odd guy, and helped my parents a great deal in making my 21st birthday gathering so special.

Thanks to my Dad, who flew back that Saturday morning just to make sure everything's in running order, and to see his little girl grow up. Thanks to Mum (and Dad) for my birthday present, the buffet, the truckload of food, and helping out in every way they could. (And two more to Dad, who attempted to put out the small fire at the buffet table with his bare hands, and giving up his bottle of Kahlua to my ambitious ice cream-making stint.)



Thanks to everyone's SMSes, Facebook greetings, and every other way I could have been reached.


And you had to make me feel loved, yet again, and disregard yourself just to make me feel at the top of the world. Thanks for going out of the way, sleeping late and waking up early just to get my present to me on time, and then falling sick yourself.

I'm may be 21, old, rusty. But I'm still the girl whom you love, and will love you through all time.

Writer's block.

I'm insanely wide awake, because my brain is still worrying over my pitch assignment.

After having have the world collapse on me when I received my grades for 3219, I was in dire need of some comfort binging and some good entertainment to take my mind off thinking about my choked writer's pipe.

We watched it in 3D! While it didn't really impress me with the Transformerish idea of machines coming to life and taking over the world, the twist was unthought of and, thus, took me by utter surprise. You mean little children are taught about world domination at this age? Gah.

Dinner at Kim Gary was impressive. We had obviously thought too highly of our gullet capacity, because we ended up struggling to finish the food. Good food, reasonable prices. Little wonder why there were always queues during meal times.

It wasn't about the sights and sounds, or the experience of having the world at my feet. To have the warmth of the one I long for, to hold the hand of the one I miss every second in time, suffices me. You can make me poor, make me suffer, or make me a sinner. Just don't take me away from you.

Jack's 23rd Birthday Date

I love celebrating birthdays, especially when I'm the one planning them.




I had this little treasure hunt in stored for Jack, since I figured out it's been a long time since we had a proper date. So I wrote the directions of our destinations on slips of paper, and he could only open one after we were done with the place.

Destination 1:



I haven't been to this place previously, and I was keeping my fingers crossed that they would be open, and it wouldn't be too crowded. And this little gem in an alley near Bugis exceeded my expectations. We took the corner seats, which were simply a raised platform with a coffee table and cushions to sit on. The cafe was cosy and quiet, and an excellent place to unwind and cuddle on a rainy afternoon.



The Coffee Nations' signature brews were alcoholic coffee of varying origin and combinations. I wasn't a drinker, so I had Irish Coffee, which was an aromatic blend of smooth latte and alcohol. Jack had Cafe Royale, which was black Arabian coffee sweetened with caramelized cube sugar and a shot of brandy. Coffee is food for my soul, so I was enjoying every single sip.





Jack was brimming with joy over his sausages and wedges, while I was filled to the brim with tuna sandwich with focaccia. The service staff were polite, the atmosphere was good, and we weren't pressured to leave the place.

Destination 2:

We spent the entire afternoon at Marina Square and Suntec City Mall, walking off our lunch and chatting. And when Jack decided to open the slip of paper for Destination 3, we couldn't find the place at all! And when we found the place, we realised that *gasp* it wasn't open. Thanks to my horrid planning. So prompted by Jack's craving for Xiao Long Bao's, we popped over to Crystal Jade at the Fountain Terrace instead. The service was a far cry from the small establishment where we had our lunch at, we had to pay for tap water, the place was filled with noisy chattering of the dinner crowd, and we got literally chased out, because they cleared our cutlery and the table lining immediately after we finished eating. BAD BAD BAD SERVICE.


But, oh well, apart from the Crystal Jade episode, I had an enjoyable day with Jack, and I just hope we could have had more time to spend with each other instead of rushing home in separate directions at 9pm. Oh well. The downside of staying so far apart.

I'm feeling terribly melancholic this very moment, largely due to 《你不是真正的快樂》and 《突然好想你》, and something I read out of my dry coursepack this afternoon.

"It is the mind which creates the world about us, and even though we stand side by side in the same meadow, my eyes will never see what is beheld by yours, my heart will never stir to the emotions by which yours is touched."
- George Gissing

Yes, I admit, I've been feeling absurdly troubled for the past 1 week, trying to unravel this throbbing conundrum in my head. I know that I should have put things down the moment I was hit by those cruel words; things should go back to where they used to be from that moment onwards.

That things should have died in me 2 years ago.
That I shouldn't feel that missing puzzle anymore.
That我不應該覺得你不是真正的快樂.

I don't know.

Yes, I'm certain of this love I have, of something which is going to grow, blossom and bear fruit someday. So something I hold so true to my heart, it hurts to even think about letting go. And then chance played a trick on me, and threw into a situation which made me stop and ponder. I shouldn't even be thinking about what's gone on and gone away with time, but when it cut too deep to heal, there tend to be wounds that can never fully heal, even with time.

Sigh.

The Proposal

If you're thinking this is it, no, it isn't. No one has proposed to me yet. And I had spent the entire MRT trip home thinking about the gist of the movie. Zilch.

Miss Congeniality gave Sandra Bullock her big break into Hollywood of the 20th century, but I didn't see much of her until this movie. And it just looked wrong, with her up against a much younger, much hotter Ryan Reynolds, with that smug look. Everything didn't fit, not even when the current society doesn't view such relationships as a stigma anymore. The 8 Days interview with Ryan Reynolds made me raise my expectations for this movie, only to have it stampeded upon by the lack of chemistry, the broken story, those missing love pangs, and the purely absurd nature of love in the movie. Yes, there were the laughable moments, but no, it was an empty movie filled with faces and not much substance. I hate to bash movies, but I had to be true to my memories and not blindly ace a production for fear of being sidelined. Probably a just pass for a movie.


And I absolutely heart my 3224, 2201 and 3219 lectures.

This was friggin' funny, so I had to kop it. Apologies for the crude humour. Face it, we all live by it.

Yes, yes. 5 minutes more and I'll go to bed. Just had to express my awe towards my cousin and his wife, who happen to be parents of 2 little monsters-in-progress. I've seen countless students and their monstrosities during my tuition assignments, and watching a 3-year-old and 8-month-old interacting totally threw me off guard as to how much I could actually handle if I had been a parent. Yikes. Parenthood suddenly sounds like a suicide mission.