2009

Gah. I hate penning down New Year Resolutions, because I know I seldom fulfill them (like what Hong Ying said during lunch just now). Anyway, I checked out what my 2009 New Year Resolutions were and, true enough, I didn't touch half of them. *Laughs* Just to summarise:

2009 New Year Resolutions:
1. Pull up my CAP. --> Fulfilled, but I should have been clearer.
2. Stop conflicting with my parents, my mum in particular --> Unfulfilled, and probably will be the case until I get married.
3. Exercise. --> Which I obviously haven't.
4. Save money. --> Which I obviously haven't.
5. Strengthen existing relationships --> Fulfilled.
6. Write more lyrics. --> I've got more half-songs than proper songs. Gah.

... which obviously shows how bad a procrastinator I am. But wouldn't it be nice to look back in one year's time and find out that you actually SET GOALS for yourself, and perhaps have even achieved them?

As each semester of Uni life comes and goes, the stark fact of life gets more and more daunting; to be inching closer and closer to working life, to full-fledged unbridled adulthood, to slogging as a bottom-feeder...

But I'm also thankful, despite all the setbacks this year heralded, for the priceless moments in life. To overcome boundaries, fighting for myself, fighting for us, growing up, learning from all the pain... And many many more events which made me stronger and more of a fighter than a quitter.

Yes, I'm admittedly afraid of the big world out there. Yet at the same time, the boundless sphere is always an attractive carrot. And this Great Leap into a new decade is just the beginning to many things.

Shoddy is an understatement

As usual, I was browsing straitstimes.com to get my daily dose of quick news updates, and I this forum letter caught my eye.

Christmas ruined, thanks to Singtel's shoddy service

To summarise the complaint letter, apparently (Mdm) Ouyang's Christmas was ruinned because of Singtel's red-tape-ridden system, which resulted in a communication disaster between her, the company and the technicians.

Should it be a coincidence that I'm a MIO plan subscriber as well and, coincidentally, my home phone and Internet service has been disconnected intermittently ever since I got the MIO box and, coincidentally, I faced such shoddy service when I called Singtel up to fix the problem. Seriously, whose idea was it to combine telephony, Internet and cable TV together, only to have everything break down when the box set screws up? Didn't anyone do a trial of the system for at least a year to ensure that subscribers won't get disconnected while they're in the midst of an important conference call or while they're talking to their loved ones on the phone?

The problem came just a month after my mum was psycho-ed into signing up for the MIO plan, when the Internet would be disconnected at times of the day when Internet traffic was significantly higher. So we called Singtel, faced the same taped music only to have a taped voice tel us that "Sorry, all our operators are currently busy. Please call back later." At this point of time, most people would have simply cursed, slammed down the phone, and continued putting up with the horrid Internet service. But I persisted until I got to speak to an operator, who tried in vain to get me to keep restarting my box set, which unfortunately didn't help much (duh.). So they arranged to have a technician come down to my place to take a look at the problem. Brilliant. Until he showed up, replaced the set, and dismantled my power box in the process. I wanted to disembowel him. And then there was no further communication/feedback from Singtel. Zilch. And just a day after the box was replaced, the problem came back. Until now. That's the reason why on MSN I'm like a schizo, signing in and out near to midnight, because the service will come on and off. And the best part of it is that when my sis switches on the main computer when I'm using my lappie, the Internet goes off.

WHAT IS THIS? But then again, I know tha complaining doesn't work. Only consumers' buying and W-O-M power works. And I know what that means.

師走

師走(しわす or shiwasu) is the ancient name for December, a month of hustle and bustle, as people prepare for Christmas, the New Year and more importantly, springcleaning of one's mind and soul. I'm not a Christmas-y person, simply because it's become so commercialised; it's no longer a season of giving, but a season of coerced consumerism. Spoils it all.

Family is doing away with all inexcusable extravagance this time, especially when Dad's overseas. Christmas shouldn't be about excessive spending anyway. We'll be sitting down together tonight, including Jack, and having a great home-cooked Western dinner. No 50-bucks turkey, no quiches, no Christmas lights, but we'll be blissfully happy. And will probably be happier if Dad could be around.

Merry Christmas.

Dissonance

I shall NEVER access my results via SMS in future, not even when the NUS site crashes and the ISIS site is a dick; I almost had severe epilepsy on the MRT. Judgment day sure was cruel, as it always was. Remember the challenge I had laid down for myself at the start of the semester? Well, I didn't manage to achieve that and, despite having done better just so ever slightly, was sorely disappointed by the modules I had utmost confidence in. Well, isn't that always the case every semester? That all the hard work seldom reap fruitful results? That that one step forwards is always too small, too insignificant?

Argh. Forget results. Nothing numbs post-results blues like a mind-blowing movie, and AVATAR happened to do the job this time round. And it didn't fail me, finally, after sieving through reviews and evaluating the watch-worthiness of the film.


Would you, if given a chance, to live life in a whole new world and do things you've never even dreamed about? But what if everything's suddenly not yours when you wake up, as though from a dream you never want to leave? So are we all craving for such attempts to live, as an avatar, to the outside world we feel alien to, for the means of blending in and surviving?

Apart from this, AVATAR had more than just one thought-provoking statement to holler to the world. In this shrinking world, are we fighting other living things, just because they're different from us and they have things we wish to take possession of? Are we judging people simply by the tongue they speak or the colour of their skin? Why are we so indifferent even when a pinch of humanity appears to haunt us? I sat through the entire 161 minutes, full of questions, not for the movie but for the real world. I'm just so glad that James Cameron managed so many nuances and agendas in this movie, because it's, after all, 15 years of hard work and sweat. It deserves 4.8, penalised so slightly for the final fighting scene and the slightly Jurassic Park feel. Verdict: it's a movie not to be missed.

Edited 29/12/2009: An edited version of this (thanks to the 1000-char limit) has been submitted by me under the username [ohjulie] to inSing.com under the AVATAR movie review! Click here to read it!

Winter Solstice Gathering 2009

Which Gen-Yer would remember Winter Solstice, much more have a gathering?

Well, we did. :)

After several unsuccessful attempts at meeting up (the last time was kite-flying at the Marina Barrage, just before the exams), we finally gathered majority of the Imperial Family for a steamboat. As to why we're thick-skinned enough to give ourselves the title, the reason goes way way way back into the history books, during our secondary school days. Oh well, let's just let the whole story stay in history. :) Anyway, steamboat-ing was fun, although we almost turned XXL's kitchen into a war zone. And what's Winter Solstice without 湯圓? It was also a great opportunity for us to play catch-up with Conrad, who FINALLY turned up for our gathering after so many light years. The first question he popped me was "Did you take Slim 10?"

-_-'''

I had to remind myself that the last time we met was in secondary school. But the boy didn't change one single bit (except for his height), and was doing what he did best the entire time he was there - yabbling non-stop about his life in the army (he plays for the band!). Do all guys have to do that?

And it's going to be another day that I pray, for the light over darkness.

Murder on the ad agency floor

Previously we've seen how the 3 local telcos were tearing each other's hair out over data prices. SO mind-others'-business me decided to scour my favourite ad site for interesting ads to talk about. And my intuition was on-spot. :)

This ad was done for FIAT by Leo Burnett San Paulo to promote the FIAT Linea' reverse parking sensors. It came out on 2 January 2009, playing on palindromes to emphasize the "going backward or forward, it's all the same" message. Smart, I'd say.

Then...

Wait. Before we're all up in arms and crying foul, let's look at Mercedes Benz' ad; the ad agency Jung von Matt/Limmat (a Swiss company) had, similarly, played on palindromes and, similarly, to promote reverse parking technology. The message, "Backwards as well as forwards", bodes similarity to that of Fiat's. And it came out in the same month as Fiat's, except later. Now, what is creativity? Am I going to drag Adorno and Horkheimer out of their graves and get them to write lengthy theses about this practice? Or were they really right? Is the creative world shrinking alongside the cliched globalisation theory?

Okay I need to stop doing homework during the holidays.

All images courtesy of joelapompe.

Boogers

Warrao moments of the day:

1. Spotted a beeyoootiful champagne-coloured Audi TT along Dunearn Road, but the driver was an Ah Pek. White crop and all!
2. Some Ah Ma yelped and cursed her lungs out at a bus that didn't stop at the bus stop for her. How do you expect buses to stop when you don't FLAG them? If the gahmen wants to push for a national initiative to promote graciousness, I'd reckon they start by educating the elder generation first.
3. Some show-off drove his R8 on the same stretch of road THRICE in 15 minutes. Then Jack darling came up with his lamest joke ever.


My fellow Singaporeans never fail to amuse/annoy me with such antics.



And I'm glad for whatever time I have to spend with you, simply because nothing's ever enough.

Rest

Been keeping myself busy, at breakneck speed, to take my mind off thinking about things. I've learnt alot from myself during this period, including educating myself that sometimes it's just better when I'm kept in the dark; I'm a much happier person this way. Keeping away helped, because it gave me breathing space, devoid of everything which could possibly kill my mood. And driving was a miracle pill in disguise, because I have to shut everything out and concentrate on the wheel.

Cooking's another. :)

Julie's homemade japanese curry with pan-fried spiced white fish fillet.

The hols didn't take me off media after all. They call this 職業病, or some kind of "occupational syndrome". And I was grinning from ear to ear when I flipped open Saturday's papers to see this ad by M1.

Orange = ?
Green = ?
Red = ?

See it? While this ad will probably reignite the telco battle for subscribers, the real reason behind all this hair-tugging is because M1's obtained retail rights for the Apple iPhone, following in Singtel's footsteps. So now, everyone's either fighting for iPhone sales figures, or for EPL rights.

And while watching the Singtel shop at Jurong Point fill up in the early afternoon, I was wondering aloud to my mum why everyone wants an iPhone, even when three-quarters of the users probably under-utilise the phone capacity. You see, every telco wants their thumb in the Apple pie (pun intended), so consumers (especially in Singapore) are following in their kiasu footsteps by owning an iPhone.

"See, I got iPhone. You only got slide phone ah? Aiyo, so suah gu."

But then again, we shall see how long Apple carries the iPhone craze, until they conjure up something more capable than the 3Gs. It's simply; look at the iPod Nano. With the first generation Nano launched only in 2005, it has been revamped 5 times, and launched its 5th generation just this year (it was launched on 09-09-09). If we all keep our fingers crossed, Apple should be selling another generation of iPhones by mid-2010. I'm no market speculator; I'm just an informed consumer. So think twice before hopping onto the Apple bandwagon.

To the zoo! To the zoo!

Double dates are love, especially when it's an excursion to the Zoo. :)

This time round, we had the company of the "younger" couple in Geyao (no prizes for guessing who). ;) Friday's sun was unforgivingly scorching, and it had to be coupled with the exhorbitant prices that tourist attraction charges. Which Singaporean would pay $3 for bottled water? But asides that, it was a good refresher for "old birds" like us, whose last visit to the zoo was probably 10 years ago. Fortunately, my favourite spot in the zoo, the now-revamped Picnic Site, kept my favourite Saga trees, which I remembered ambling around as a toddler and then as a Primary school student on an excursion more than 10 years ago. Oh god, I'm so old.

The animal shows were, well, not as enjoyable as they were when I was a 10-year-old happy clapper. Perhaps it's only now that, with a conscious mind, I realise how exploited these animals are in the process of altering their natural behaviour just to entertain us, controlled by food and commands. I would definitely enjoy the Zoo even without the animal shows.

The hot afternoon sun beckoned most of the animals to their afternoon naps, so it was a dampener for us. Plus the queues at the KFC totally killed my appetite; where did my A&W go? I miss the mugful of fizzy Root Beer, and the crispy onion rings...

Then the boys found their game at KidzWorld. KIDZWORLD. Jack was all groggy throughout the walks and the shows, but he perked up when he and Eugene started playing on the cross-the-water-raft thingy. BOYS.

(-_-)'''

Oh, and did I mention that the horses at KidzWorld were darlings? I was particularly attracted by a white mare named Candy, who didn't spend the whole time with her heard buried in her food bucket (like most of the other horses were), and would hold still when I snapped a picture of her. Oh, and I think she has a lovey dovey thing going on with Buddy, the handsome chocolate stallion in the neighbouring stall. :)

And before we knew it, it was closing time, and we found ourselves still wandering around in the zoo compounds, searching for the white tigers. To our dismay, they've kept them in their holding pens for the night :(. Oh well. At least we enjoyed ourselves. The rest of the evening was a blur; waiting for the bus, falling asleep beside Jack, waking up to say goodbye to Eugene and his missus, falling asleep again, then waking up abruptly at Ang Mo Kio. Yes, I crashed. But it was a day well spent, especially with our shy couple, and with Jack :).

Edited 2.51pm:

Oh ya absolutely have to share this lol. We were watching the penguins at the Splash Amphitheatre, and I asked Jack:

Me: Dear, have I told you the joke about the polar bear who ate the penguin?

Jack: Huh, no.

Me: Oh, that's because polar bears don't eat penguins, so I haven't told you such a joke before.

Jack: -.-'''

Foot tales

After the super-emo-ish post yesterday, I'm almost back to normal; I just have to be attuned to holiday life, or what I call life in which Jack can't be with me 24/7. I'm the stubborn and spoilt kid who's always getting her lolly, and blows angry bubbles of saliva if she doesn't get her way. Oh well. We'll just have to live through it.

Urgh. And don't make me talk about it. I was sorely disappointed with New Moon, from the script to the actors, and to the action it had promised but failed to deliver. As of all adaptations, the movie doesn't do justice to the book, and readers who watch the movies often get disappointed over the loopholes and 'huh?' parts in the film. And I had to be taken in by the Jacob hype; Taylor Lautner, who plays Jacob Black in the Twilight films, had loaded 15 kg onto his 17-year-old frame to fulfill the role of a shape-shifting werewolf in New Moon. And that's the ONLY convincing and ticket-worthy part. The rest of the movie was redundant, and even more so if you've read the book. And Edward should not have even taken off his shirt when he's so belly-ugly! OMG the director of Eclipse should feature a fight between half-naked Edward and half-naked Jacob, THEN Robert Pattinson will realise how belly-ugly he is. OMG. Repulsive. Especially when you put it next to calendar-guy-worthy Jacob Black. The Volturi fight could have been much better, instead of making it look like something which happened in a Starbucks blender. I had loved the fight scene in the book, literated in words, and the movie totally shredded the scene, making it look like a cake fight during a birthday party. No one was really scary. Edward was pasty. Bella was too strong a character. Jacob and the wolfpack was... disappointing. Oh well. It's another 16 bucks down the drain.

Those walkabout days are back, at least for now. Route for Monday's walkabout was Farrer Park to Jalan Besar to Bugis to Raffles City to Suntec City.



Oh, and have you heard about Gong Cha (貢茶)? Jack and I found this gem in the basement of City Square Mall, the first Eco Mall in Singapore. While you can read about the Eco Mall by Googling it, you should never miss Gong Cha for the world. It's a smooth tea topped with creamy milk (and coconut milk, if I'm not wrong), and peppered with a little tea powder. There're various ways of drinking it, and I shall not go there. Just remember to ask for the version with 50% sugar, because we had tried the one with 80% sugar and I almost died from diabetes.

Read the instructions before consuming it!

After a very long walk to Jalan Besar in search of the hidden gem that Jack was raving about the entire week, we finally found it! It turned out to be High 5 Nasi Lemak @ Jalan Besar (Yes, that's the name of the shop!). Hidden at a corner of the supposedly sleazy area, the rice was fluffy and tasted ol' so lovely without the guilty 'omg I'm having Nasi fats' feeling. Jack loved the fried chicken thigh, so I guess that's worth a try for the meat-lovers as well. And to end off the beautiful (and sinful) day, we had a nice long walk to Suntec. :)

Oh. And today was another well-spent day, although it was without Jack's company. I managed to secure an interview with Will from Recruit Express, and hopefully I'll hear from him soon, I drove the car out for tyre maintenance, and hung out with Fay after that, since her boyfriend wasn't in town. Apparently they met through their CCA as well. :) As usual, we were debating over the nitty-gritty things, like why I would rather work my ass off than to go on a holiday, why I wouldn't go for SEP, why worrying over things now is necessary (she begged to differ), why it'll be good to continue tuition even after I start working (she begged to differ as well), and loads of random stuff I'd rather not remember.

Free apples, courtesy of Starhub's marketing!

And tonight, it's still you

It’s at times like this, when it’s not long before bedtime, that I realize the loneliness of having to fall asleep and wake up alone and cold, without you by my side. It should have become habitual; to have no one but myself to wake myself up and sing myself lonesome lullabies to sleep. And then I’m starting to find it hard to close my eyes and pretend that sleeping alone is normal. I don’t want to just see you and say goodbye to you at the end of the day, I realized; I want the hugs, the kisses, and your very existence which keeps me sane and motivated to keep myself alive and well. I want to hear your voice and feel your arms around me before I drift off to dreamland, and your morning kisses and that addictive body heat which keeps us warm throughout the night. I no longer live for myself and myself alone; I live for us, and for the future I’m holding so tightly to. At times like this, the only way to save my sanity is to let it all out, to keep those sobs silent yet strident in my head, to keep my heart from dying from the dull aches in my chest.

And tonight’s going to be one of those nights again, where I long for your place beside me, for the goodnight kiss I’ll never have until I say yes to an eternity with you. I hope I survive.

The Time Traveler's Wife

I finally finished the book today. 2 months after I bought it. To be exact, I had read the first 200 pages or so of the book, and was forced to abandon ship when the assignments and exams came flooding in. Then I decided to pick it up 2 days ago, from my sis’ desk, and devoured it within these few days. I’m not a fast reader, and reading The Time Traveler’s Wife was made difficult by the chronological jumble-up (no pun intended). I won’t be a spoiler for those who haven’t read the book, but I’d say it’s easily one of the better books I’ve read, next to Anne Rice chimology. TTTW wasn’t dense; it was more of fitting the story together from Clare and Henry’s perspectives, because Niffenegger wrote the story from both perspectives, and you’ve got a protagonist who would appear alongside himself within a single time frame. Oops, spoiler already. I shall uphold the integrity of the author and stop rattling on about the plot. I had hit a brick wall today; it was so hard to digest, towards the end the story, to read Henry’s last letter to Clare, I had to cry just enough to wet Jack’s right shoulder in order to detach myself from the protagonists, and finished the last of the book. The last time I cried over a book was… I forgot. I loved this book, and I’m glad I bought it. I just won’t be reading it anytime soon, because I’m not sure if I can overcome the emotional waves within the plot, now that I now what’s going to happen. Now I feel like Henry. And it’s comforting that… he’s never really gone from Clare. He’ll always be there, at some particular time and space, waiting to be brought by the ramdomness of time and chance to her side.

And I loved the poignant lines.
I really, really do.


"Do you ever miss him?
Every day. Every minute.
Every minute, she says.
Yes, it's that way, isn't it?"

Yes, I really do miss you.

Jobless.

I've gotten so used to rising at 7am, bathing, getting out of the house by 8am, and being with Jack from 9am to 9pm, so the past few days have been a torment. And I thought I would be popping champagne at the end of the exams. Living like this sucks, especially when I have no idea what I'm going to do tomorrow. Have applied for temp jobs, but as usual I'm not expecting too much out of this job hunt since I can only work for a month.


Boardgaming with the Gordon and Gerlyn yesterday was fun as usual, and for the first time in so many sessions they didn't bicker. Did they? Anyway the next boardgaming session will only be in a month's time, when the couple returns from their month-long holiday around Central Asia. When will it be my turn? But then again, with no financial backing, no one bothers about holidays.

Dinner at Saizeriya was a pretty affair, although Gerlyn and I still weren't impressed with the guys' eating habits. Lesson of the day: I need to stop watching them wolf down escargots in order to keep the bile in my stomach from rising to my throat. Spicy tuna spagetti + loads of Tobasco sauce is lurv. :)

Bad day. Pure bad.

I desperately need to do some bitching.


1. Some people have NO IDEA what an EXPRESS QUEUE means. In case you need some prescription lens for your cataracts, an EXPRESS QUEUE means 1. you can only queue there when you have 10 or LESS items and 2. pay via CASH or NETS. Hello?! Are you blind?! Can't you see the sign stuck at the start of the counter? Or were you thinking that your fake Coach bag will entitle you to circumventing the instructions and joining the queue with your trolley-load of groceries? Omg sometimes such people make me wanna trade in my red passport for something else, so that I don't have to be segmented along with them.

2. That Ah Mei Cafe at IMM should fold up; the food sucks, you've got to wait 20 minutes for simple prata, and at the end of 20 minutes you fork apart your dry and crusty prata to find out that the inside is half-cooked. SO WHAT if you serve fatty, artery-clotting briyani? SO WHAT if you use dumb customer-paging devices? Because you just lost another customer.


And sometimes I find it so much easier to solve problems simply by keeping it all inside and crying it all out at the end of the day. Saves all the trouble.

Feels good to be back.

Yesterday marked the end of Semester 5, and boy, did I end it with a bang, scribbling like a mad lie detector for my SSD2210 paper. I hope all the effort Jack and I put into this module is justified. We shall see.

Indeed, Semester 5 has been hectic, so much more than all the other semesters I've ever had. Yes, even more than last semester, when we were rushing recordings and rehearsals for FBH. Those crazy 12am (a.k.a midnight) MSN project discussions, missing the last bus, spending 1 day to conjure up an assignment and spending the next 1 week editing it, mad dashes for tuition, and basically sacrificing alot of time at Geyao and with family, friends and dates. Family wasn't quite understanding; Dad was Skyping me every night and pestering me about each and every family member's whereabouts, Mum would give me the cold shoulder after her long bath, and my sisters are (as usual) anal. *sighs* I'm just glad such things have come to an end (not including my sisters being anal). And December's largely going to looking for a job (anyone hiring?), catching up with friends, reading (time to spend that book prize), spending more time at home, and claiming back all those dates. And those movies.

Oh. And I'm insistent on watching New Moon, even when Straits Times gave it 1.5 out of 5 stars. Yes, laments are all about how much the wolf boys are sheding their shirts and how bad the action was. If the action was bad, then it's just plain bad, no disputes over that. But why are people complaining about topless guys? Doesn't your 80-year-old neighbour walk along the corridor and watering his plants topless too? Besides, it's all about sex appeal, and that's what's drawing the female screamers (and cryers, and identified by Taylor and Kristen). It's like why men buy FHM Singapore, even when the models in it look like that. Besides, isn't the take-off-shirt thing written in the book? So isn't it only rational that the script writers put that in? Perhaps the only boo-boo was getting Edward to go topless; he looked more of a new-born hamster than a beautiful predator. Urgh. I'll just watch it, and then rave about it. And one more thing: Yes, I concur with majority of the female population that Taylor Lautner is one god of a good-looker and I do ogle but, no, I do not have paedophilic fantasies about him (he's only 17), nor do I wish to marry him (that position's taken ;) ). He's simply a good-looking and buff actor. Period.