erratum

yes. the little eastern heretic has spoken. she shall henceforth be known as little eastern heretic (LEH) instead of TEH :P

sigh. her idiosyncrasies. such... yes. indescribably quixotic.

heretics unite ~~ brooches!

hey all!

went out on an excursion with kn and TEH (the eastern heretic) yesterday after work... to city hall!

we went on a romp across the white bridge spanning the s'pore river (oh what a disgrace. i don't even know the names of our landmarks :P ah, blame social studies for the useless propaganda and insufficient practical knowledge - for all you know, miss lim, if we ended up flunking our a levels we could still be trishaw-women and wax lyrical on the bridges and lime-coloured supreme court roof!). that was rather nasty cos i was dressed in a mid-sleeved white cardigan (my 2 streetwise kakis were decked in 1. sleeveless SEXYSEXYSEXY camisole top and 2. white teeshirt) and had a long skirt to boot. the end result was a very sweat-drenched NANA complaining all the way from the bridge to the shop (located on south bridge road).

the aircon from the shop was a very welcome incentive for us (well, at least for me) to start purchasing anything we could lay our hands on in gratitude for the reprieve from the sweltering heat. haha! eventually kn got herself 2 packets of earring-appliques, a chain of black pearls and a roll of 0.4mm fish wire (to re-thread the pearls), whilst yours truly bought 2 chains of pearls - 1 black and 1 au naturel :) am rather pleased with the purchases (though a tad on the ex side), they will come in useful for the date tml! :) denise was agitatedly anxious about our evaluation of her recommendation, but honestly dear. the shop was great and the goods were good, so fret not! we appreciate your recommendations! :D

after the frantic shopping spree (and a-very-happy-denise-armed-with-2-more-chops later), we proceeded to march gaily to that IT mall (shucks, the name evades me all the time!) where my mates retrieved CASSSSHHHHH *ka-ching!* and NANA thick-skinned-ly accepted KN's offer to treat me back for a lunch that i had treated her to aeons ago. moral of the story: make friends, lots of friends - you'll be reaping what u sow! :D that is true, and i thank the Lord for all my friends :) so we traipsed back to Petals, a subsidiary outlet of the SHATEC group of restaurants (after Rosette shut down, regrettably) and had our tea there :) kn and i shared a set meal comprising of caesar's salad, lobster bisque and grilled salmon with flat lobster in orange hollandaise sauce, followed by hot apple crumble :) sounds yummy? it was, to a certain extent, considering that all the food was prepared from scratch by SHATEC graduates :) i'm proud of the young aspiring chefs - well done! the orange hollandaise sauce was especially endearing - i was expecting an inappropriate, clammily sweet sauce of orange puree, but was refuted by the nicely seasoned offering that had just the slightest suggestion of citrus and was infused with a rich creamy base. looks like i might just have to tweak my notorious criticism of fusion cuisine - not everything tastes like high CRASS crap :) though i feel i must mention that the traditional lobster bisque doesn't contain carrot shreds :P heh. i guess they were trying to work in the concept that Singaporeans require more dietary fibre :) but i hold the opinion that our peristaltic functions are fine, it's just our attitudes that are severely constipated :P denise sampled the tiramisu and proclaimed it to be acceptable. the nice thing was that the waitress/waiter brought us samples of the desserts for us to choose - much better than the usual blind imagination of a piping hot dessert that ends up to be a horrendously thinly-sliced, lukewarm disappointment :) we were torn apart laughing raucously over a range of topics ranging from scandals, passing-out ceremony dates (NANA hereby retains the proffered suggestion of being a free escort for the exchange of free food and drink :D) to the use of a spade-shaped culinary device that was offered to kn at the start of the main course.

kn: *picking up the spade and examining it* what is this, a butter knife?
(waitress puts a bread roll on kn's plate)
NANA: i think it's some sort of a dessert thing.
*mrs wong yells in hapless supplication and faints - the horror of her pet student getting this question wrong*
TEH: no la! looks like some main course thing.
NANA: oh yeah - got flat lobster right. maybe it's...
kn: oh, to pry the lobster one!
NANA: ... no la! to flatten the lobster la! maybe it's not flat enough, then u're supposed to PIANGPIANG on it before eating.
*the others collapse in laughter*

... various happy experiments/surgeries were done on the main course using the spade before the waiter came to retrieve the plate...

TEH: *addressing the waiter* so what is this for?
waiter: for cutting the fish. *duh look*
kn: *GASP* i was half correct!!
NANA: oh man.
*kn and NANA die laughing. kn chokes on her tears*
waiter: *incredulously, to kn* are u okay? *to denise* your friends are (hand signal = NUTS) :P

loss of decorum in public = priceless :D

sigh. sorry mrs wong. please don't write to cambridge and request for a revoke of my A1 for f&N haha :) i really mugged hard for the egg essay... despite not being able to identify spade-shaped objects at the dinner table :P

i realised that i could fit into size 12 skirts! yayness. haven't seen size 12 since... sec 1. haha :P but the top needs more toning!!!! gambatte ne! :) swimming later - 20 laps at least!

i scouted the entire raffles city for a brooch/ruffled white shirt but was disappointed until kn spotted a wonderful brown suede/felt one (with weird dreamcatcher-like feathers sticking out at 5 positions along the perimeter). i promptly purchased it excitedly and requested for the feathers to be cut off (we must be the weirdest customers in a long long time) and also bought kn a nice blue-sequined brooch! :) hehe. so we're even, dear! hahahaha. the blue brooch set off her lacey camisole perfectly. very lovely :) kn suggests that i place my brooch on the non-dominant side during the interview so that the judges wouldn't jiggle their eyes out oogling at a brown flower on my chest when i gesticulate :P

denise bought a pair of golden-sequinned shoes! they're princess pumps and are really rather cute. but the sequins are rather blinding :P OKIES OKIES truce!!!!! u have WONDERFUL taste, dear :) pls don't kill me.

wish me luck for the coming interview, guys! i need loads of luck. and i pray to our Lord that i will have the strength to perform well! :)

:pray, [think]

i send out a heartfelt request for all my kakis, soulmates, blood brothers and sisters, acquaintances, friends, shoulder-brushers, brief-hi-ers... whoever you may be, please spare a moment today to pray for Joan Chan Shufang, an RG senior of mine.
If you guys read The Straits Times, last Sunday they carried a story on her in Lifestyle. She is suffering from tongue cancer and is facing the very painful fact of imminent premature termination of her life in 3 weeks to a few months' time. Her treatment options are "limited", and all she can do now is to live out her days with her family, friends, and the unanimous love and prayers from strangers like us.

there is a mass to be held this saturday at the church of our lady star of the sea, in Yishun (right behind yishun national lib) from 9am onwards, in the AV room on 4th floor. It's a catholic church, but if you're free and would like to spend some time to join others in prayer for Joan, please do try to make it (regardless of race, religion, denomination, love of wasabi flavoured ice cream... etc). Detailed directions can be found at joanchanshufang.blogspot.com.

sitting down
in the middle of an empty room
dark in the edges (filled with stark whispers
cutting through
the pregnant silence)

someone is mourning (but not;maybe)
dressed in white
i can see frills in the collar
meticulously worked over with a spidery hand
in blue satin.
i can see
opalescent glimmers of
the things that make us (not happy)
on the cheeks
turned (pointedly) to the side.

i advance
tremulously

and i cannot suppress the fear in me
when the mourner acknowledges my intrusion
by turning to face me

i recognize
my face in tears

and my heart (anointed by the awfully sad droplets)
clasped in the skeletal hands
wrapped delicately in white (worked in blue

satin)

and there is no trace of soul.

would you like a retroposon to go with that?

did my first stint in the bookstore on saturday from 3-9pm (said bookstore shall remain anonymous, for its own sake :P) haha. bookstore assisting is really fun and educative. For one who has had limited experience in servitude (tends to strike out in rebellion and petulence when ordered to serve in an obsequious manner) and sales (the only thing i'm selling is my rotten cranial remains, at half of its factory price :) good as a substitute for manure), it's a really eyeopening experience. i'm intrigued by the amount of work the tongue can do - sweet talking gets books sold, if nothing else. Simply by gushing over several copies of sparsely illustrated children's literature by some really obscure writer, i managed to convince a guileless mother to purchase 3 of the series of (apparently useless and mindbendingly simplistic) books.

hehe jj says i ought to start asking for commission! :P the only ire is the necessity of attending to customers who are apparently either visually handicapped or outright illiterate (in that case i have absolutely no idea what they're doing in the bookstore in the first place) and saunter/wander/drift/swarm into the bookstore AFTER closing hours. thus making the poor darth-vader-dubber NANA rasp rapturously about more obscure writers for an additional half an hour @_@ i threw in the towel and called it quits after i made an additional 18 bucks of sales after 9pm... by the time i shut the system down it was already 9.37pm and 2 more blur souls came in expecting me to miraculously restart the machine just to collect like 2 bucks from them.

NANA: sorry, man. tough luck... i'm bloody hoarse :P

anyhow. i simply HAVE TO tell you guys about this really bizarre dream i had this morning/last night. i was reading a book titled Near Death Experiences in Children blahblah and a book about 101 philosophy questions (there was one about terrorist shooting and the ethics of voting or minimal sacrifice vs maximum death). And right that night, i dreamt that i had an argument with my mum, and i committed suicide by leaping out of the window (i didn't note whether it's the bedroom one, or the kitchen one. more likely the kitchen one...) and fell to the ground floor. i vaguely register gasping on the ground floor before this funny cartoon with 4 origami-instructions-like pictures popped up and showed what sort of haemorrhage occurs for what degree of rib-puncture of the lungs... apparently the 4th picture (with both sides of the "folded paper" shaded green representing equivocal haemorrhage) (ok i know this is weird. don't even ask me what it means. it just popped out and i have never seen the term equivocal haemorrhage before) was circled, showing 2 ribs broken off and puncturing both lungs. so that was my injury. then i was suddenly transported to the A&E or something, and i was up on the ceiling looking down (yes, in comes the proverbial out of body/near death experience part) and i saw myself on a bed with all sorts of tubes and all. i guess at this point i was sucked back into my body cos i suddenly, viscerally felt myself gasping for breath, and i could (weirdly) see myself sitting bolt upright in the hospital bed and gasping like an incipiently dying fish. but just as abruptly as i was drawn into the body i was repelled out again, to the ceiling, my body flopped lifelessly back onto the bed, and the doctor came in and yelled "tell the family to prepare to collect the body"!

and this is the really weird part: the voice of the doctor was surprisingly real, and just as he was yelling i could PHYSICALLY feel my heart not beating, myself not breathing, and i felt very, very DEAD. really. i don't know how to describe this, but i did feel like i DID die. the weirder part is, after i KNEW i was dead, i heard the alarms of the machines start ringing and all.

then i was magically transported to some other place where jj was being executed by gunshot (aka the philosophy book situation) and i met up with his floating soul and we started chattering about how we both died. haha. totally surreal.

moral of the story: DON'T read too much non-fiction in a day. it does funny stuff to ur subconscious. lol.

am still trying to figure out if i really DID die last night? hmmm. so far the closest theory i've got to explaining the physical experience of the dream (i've never FELT in a dream before) could be that i happened to have contorted myself into a facedown position and thus managed to enact a semi-auto-asphyxiation situation which coincided with the timing of my death in the dream. but such coincidences are really rare, if they DO happen at all.

ah well! philosophers must have all gone mad due to the subconscious manifestations of their voluntary thoughts :D

hip, hip hypocrisy

can anyone say hypocrisy? i just looked in the mirror at myself and found that hypocrisy is just a synonym for yours truly. and i feel awfully ashamed of myself.

all that talk about keeping calm and blase about interviews. all the nonsensical proclamations that i don't give a damn about which faculty takes me in (not which faculty I GO TO. there's a huge difference). all the useless preaching about keeping a "ping chang xin" to mian dui the rejections and unfavourable outcomes.

Oh, dear Lord. Save my soul for i have succumbed to the sin of lying to myself. in so doing, i have deceived the people around me, and i have even partially convinced myself. but i know the Devil is eying my denial with greed, so please save me.

i cried twice yesterday. once, when i ignorantly and irresponsibly poured my orange gourami (TT, which stands for The Terminator) and angelfish and 2 other larger gouramis into the arowana tank. The arowana snapped open his jaws and chewed TT like a gummy sweet. Despite refusing adamantly to partake of any living food in any given form in the past 4 months that I have been here. i thought TT was gone for good, but miraculously he was hanging on to his dear sweet life - for all of 6 hours, before succumbing to the calls of the Great Beyond.

Thus TT became The Terminated. yes, not a funny joke. my mentor came up with it in a sad bid to cheer me up cos my crying was making his goosebumps protest.

I am an awfully irresponsible girl.

The second flooding of the lacrimal ducts came when i was helping my mentor (the one with the sick jokes :P) cut fin clips for DNA digestion. Sometime in the late evening, and it was raining depressed raindrops outside. alex the mentor decided to tell me a story after i confided in him my disappointment in myself for being such an ingrate and hypocrite when i am already being favoured with the chance of being considered for medicine.

alex: let me tell you a story.
me: *unaware of the imminent floodgate-opening story* ok, say lor. free entertainment, haha.
alex: you know har, i had a friend. he was also like you, he worked like a workaholic and cared about his career and money the most.
me: most youngsters are like that - very materialistic. (note that i still couldn't shake off the hypocrisy despite all the self-berating)
alex: yar. so he worked and worked and worked and forgot about his family. he slowly forgot his mother (his father, i assume, has already left this world some time ago) while he worked his guts out to earn all the money and the certificates. then one day his conscience struck and he thought: oh, i forgot all about my mother.
me: *faking nonchalance* hmmm.
alex: so, like any other modern "filial" youngster, he called up his mother. "ma, come i treat you to dinner." The mother was so happy to hear from her son again and couldn't say much more than her eager agreement to the dinner appointment. so they met for dinner at the restaurant. the mum has become much thinner, older and more frail since the son last saw her, but she was so happy. she was smiling, and laughing, and he had never seen her any happier before in his entire life.
me: well, yeah. i mean, they lost contact for so long...
alex: the mum was really really happy that night. so she said to the son: "next time, we come here again, but on one condition: i will treat you. promise?" the son casually agreed without thinking. he thought, just a meal can make her so happy, it's not even a classy restaurant. he sent the mum home and they parted, mutually promising to make a date for the next dinner soon.
me: *thinking, oh no. she dies. i bet.*
alex: then, not long after the dinner, the son got a call from the police. they say the neighbours found the old lady dead in the flat alone. so naturally the son was quite sad and all, but he thought, well, she's old. and all the usual mental excuses people think of when they're trying to convince themselves they're not guilty.
me: yeah... *thinks: he's hit the nail on the head - i AM trying to run away from my fear of rejection by feigning apathy*
alex: wait, not finished yet. during the funeral on the day after the death, he was there busy with stuff and visitors when he got a call. he answered, hello? a male voice said, is this mr XXX? he said, yeah, speaking. the voice says, oh we're calling from YYY restaurant, your mother made a reservation for tonight but paid upfront quite some time ago, we're just calling to check and confirm your presence tonight?

suddenly my throat just closed up tight and i couldn't breathe, and everything clouded over with salty depressed guilty tears taken from the chilly april sky. and i cried.

in my mind, i can still see vividly the image of a well-dressed businessman and his wife, sitting at a small round table set for 3, looking at the sole empty seat and weeping silently together to mourn the loss of the last reunion dinner for the family.

alex, i'll never forgive you for making a stupid girl sick with the flu cry twice in a day! >_<

brainiacs in need of supplementary sponsorship

something has been weighing heavily on my mind these few days.
i realise that a great majority of people have been overtly concerned over their imminent scholarship interviews/tests and their outcomes. with people, i refer to my peers... this same issue has been observed by pammie, who has likewise expressed her opinions on this issue on her blog.
i don't have much advice to offer to my anxiety-ridden mates except the fact that worrying does no good and goes nowhere. you can go for the test/interview and worry your head into a permanent hillscape, and it doesn't ensure that you'll perform satisfactorily. you can come out of the test/interview and speculate till the cows come home and seasoned stockbrokers fall on their knees in abject admiration, and it still doesn't alter the already predetermined outcome of the test/interview written on your portfolio. in case of rejection, you can cry your disappointment into a river of salty tears, and it still won't change the outcome a single iota. and it thus follows, to any rational person, that all these worrying, fretting, speculating, crying, moping and all sorts of emotional rollercoaster stunts that all of you force your poor stressed bodies to undergo is simply and utterly USELESS.

thus, please save yourself so much emotional turmoil. go for the tests with a calm heart and peace of mind - trust in your capabilities, and yet bear in mind the parallel, if not superior, capabilities of the other candidates. do your best. when you finish, don't discuss the questions if it upsets you, and engage yourself in useful activity (e.g. preparing for the next interview or a hobby) if you're agitated and restless. when you receive the results and you're told it's not contestable, and it's not to your favour, accept it as best as you can and shift your focus to another more viable option. if they are to your favor, and you find that you're still crying, for God knows what reason, you ought to dial the number for a Woodbridge ambulance. immeidately. you might be experiencing severe sudden happiness shock syndrome (SSHSS), which causes temporary (or sometimes permanent) psychosis.

alternatively, for the latter persons who find it difficult to even speak coherently into the phone to ask for the aforementioned vehicle to transport u to a comfortable quiet padded cell, NANA offers an economical alternative service of rolling-pin-whacking on the cranium, which costs next to nothing (you just have to provide the rolling pin).

as an afterthought, maybe the misshapen head you get after you regain consciousness in a psychosis-free form may disturb u enough to send you into severe sudden unpleasant shock syndrome (SSUSS). which present as signs identical to that for SSHSS.

oh, which also means that another round of cranium-whacking is in order! :) business will be booming for NANA and her infamous rolling pin then.

editing a thesis:assignment in bioinformatics

i have duly assumed the unofficial post of editor for all incoming assignments, theses and personal statements for the people who are acquainted with me and my poisonous pen.

very poisonous pen. lethally poisonous.

suck on the nib and you'll be chromatography-compatible. now if THAT doesn't scare you, my lameness will. haha! :P

anyway! i'm subscribing to the morning express on "Crrrasss 95" every morning! it's addictive, listening to babyish glenn whine infinitesimally and hearing FD's chuckles in reply (out of exasperation, insanity or a mixture of both, it's for us to guess and him to know). Today's Honorable Professor Haaaaaaiiii-kinoyoto-san's quote was pretty amusing:

"Do infants enjoy infancy as much as adults enjoy adultery?"

yes, crrrasss, i know, but then again crrrasss is so hard to define objectively. *chuckles* and being low crrrasss is apparently a compliment :) go figure.

caught short

heya!
interesting things have happened since i last left my potently poisonous thoughts here! i see they're still smouldering :) *waves absently at the smoke* anyway. let's tackle them one by one.

i tried tickle's IQ test - utterly reminiscent of the pri 3 workbooks that my terrorist teachers dropped merrily onto my cluttered head (thus incurring permanent neurone death) and which got me a place for consideration in Rosyth or Nanyang. Up till today I still feel very proud for not uprooting into the land fertile with nutritious, brainy brains, a decision which led to one of the most fulfilling careers in my life as a student leader as well as, SHOCKINGLY AND SCANDALOUSLY, an outstanding pupil of the year. well anyway. tickle's phD test designers proclaim me to be a visionary philosopher. they might as well call me a shitting shitter for all the difference it makes to my puny ignorant brain. hahahaha :D my IQ score is, disappointingly, 136 only. lol. so i'm not, as i thought, very smart. haha. eh pam! do it and tell me if the einstein head they show at the end with ur results is groaning cos of ur stratospheric scores that're indescribable simply because those phD designers haven't had the (mediocre) brainpower to come up with a 2-word description of a person with an IQ score of 307.

*i can just about hear denise say exasperatedly: why DO I CARE what my IQ is???*
*and kn with her 2 cents' worth: wah, 136 arh, NANA so smart... i only 189 lar. so lousy.* *shuffles off and mopes*
*NANA graciously presents KN with a well-placed knuckle on the philtrum*

today i became an accomplice to crime and was nearly arrested by a well-built malay official from the Ministry of labour! and i discovered that neural pathways that're responsible for transmitting shock signals (manifested in humans by means of jaw dropping, involuntary drooling and the like) are instantaneously blocked and rewired to observe the most insignificant minutiae of the face of a threatening figure when in shock. perhaps i ought to perform some behavorial tests and claim my nobel prize for socio-psychology :D let me tell you what happened!
i nodded off to sleep on the bus ferrying fellow scientists and me to buona vista after work today... as usual (well, for the past week, actually) i was as lethargic as a alcohol-ed nematode and utterly ravenous (more like itchy mouth) after work. and lo and behold! i was thinking of curry puffs and poof! a young malay chap with a styrofoam box full of curry puffs appeared at the covered overhead bridge from the bus stop to the mrt station! it was miraculous. so i merrily fished out my wallet and told him i wanted sardine flavoured puffs. he promptly dug around for a pack of green dotted puffs (green dots means sardines, and unspeckled ones are potatoes - the UNIVERSAL code for 3 for-$1 curry puffs!!) and passed them to me. i passed him a 2 dollar note. he handed me a dollar coin's change. and then...

his collar was roughly snatched up and forwards by a burly yellow t-shirted man who shoved a identity pass in the poor guy's feckless face and trussed his arms behind his back. all these happened in a split second - i barely registered the fact that i had just bought puffs from an illegal hawker when the burly puff-seller-accoster (who looked like an overstuffed tweety after a nuclear leak and probably had a couple too many puffs himself) turned to me, eyed the incriminating bag of puffs i had clutched in my ice-cold hands and growled,"Please leave the premises."

oh my. i didn't need telling twice: i just grabbed my bag and hauled ass! and meanwhile everyone behind me was boring individual pairs of laser holes through me cos they probably thought i was:

1. an accomplice to the malay hawker who got an unfair lucky break from the official, leading to insanely furious accusations that i probably bribed the yellow canary-like official with special puffs with extra egg or abalone or whatever, or
2. i was an informant. a stinking, blue-cheese-infested, sneaking and utterly despicable informant.

suddenly i didn't want the puffs anymore, but they still cost me 1 dollar, and 1 dollar is money, so i hurriedly stuffed them into my bag and hoped nobody would suddenly turn around on the train and point a gnarly finger at me, screeching: "YOU'VE PUT HIM BEHIND BARS!!!!!!!"

well. if we think logically, the rough action was probably to intimidate the errant hawker into compliance. and he probably would be fined, not jailed. unless he's a repeated, unrepentant offender. and we all know what God does to such recalcitrant socially-inepts: toss them to Satan for barbecuing! yay. ok. so grilled hawker with sambal isn't very palatable, but then again i felt slightly less guilty about it after it dawned on me that i contributed a dollar towards his fine-to-be.

yes. what an exciting, introspective kind of day.
i'm looking to a run-in with mr canary again tml when i suddenly find myself with an insatiable craving for fried springrolls sold by yet another license-less hawker.

and does anyone want to watch THE MAGIC FUNDOSHI? tickets at 18 each for the cheapest seats, opening on apr 16. it looks really hilarious! :) although hossan leong and kumar are all stuck up snobs in real life.

and i don't even want to go into emma yong! *scuttles off in fear*

dedication

this song is heartfelt. from the depths of my immature, impressionable and innocent soul. yet untarnished by lust and power chase. to be sacrificed in the death of youthful fascinations soon.

ONLY YOU

i walk the streets
eyes unseeing
only thinking of you
my mind poisoned
with constant images of you
only you

[chorus]
oh what have i done
why have i gone
and given my heart
on a silver platter to the Devil
killing myself from deep inside
from wanting you
what have i done (wrong)
i've fallen in love with you

i live my life
in the shadows
the only rays of light
to free my darkness
are constant images of you
only you

[Chorus x 1]

no matter what i do
no matter where i go
i cannot escape from wanting you (so badly it hurts)
all of you
only you

[Chorus x 1]

i walk the streets
i live my life
only hoping that you
will one day see
that i live, and i breathe, and i dream
only you

Only you...

- to my secretly admired. with all of my innocently broken 19 year old heart.

and to all my friends, whom i have confided this secret to: this is how deeply, madly, irretrievably i have gone. ha! :D