The Recovery Post

That, my friends, is the one perk of studying. The breaks. Of course, the worst is over. I still can't believe I have officially taken my last papers in RGS it's crazy how quickly time passes when you forget to keep your eye on it. Just two weeks ago I was getting all stressed out and spending my holidays cramming my brains dry.

Alright, no. That was a lie. Over my September holidays (the one-week one, yes) I successfully procrastinated 10 000 times over the course of many many days, and I cannot for the life of me see how I managed to cheat myself into thinking I was being productive. seriously, for the whole of the holidays I was avoiding revision for any of the sciences other than chemistry and also of course, literature. I think subconsciously I was very much afraid of getting started because it'd sort of be admitting my ignorance and having to face the things I had to study was really crazily daunting. I also wanted v badly to be able to dress up and go out and so I kept wasting time on travel and stuff...

I just made studying sound like a really bad thing, but no. Once school started and I really got into the studying mood it's a pretty cool thing. I managed to rediscover my ipod and fall in love all over again with anberlin & the fratellis again. Good music is the key.

(alright now my sense of time for this post is really screwed because I saved that last chunk as a draft and today I have more to say ahhhhh)

o.k. one downside of this newfound liberation is that it has screwed severely with my sleeping hours. when I got home from my paper on friday I was so eager to take a nap I slept from 11am - 3pm and that night and every night since I have been sleeping at 4am. I should stop, really really really really really. My nose is working up and I can't open my eyes seriously have to peel them open just to see.

I'm going to die so early because of my lousy habits...

o.k. pictures!

so Nicole and I went to the airport to study on goodness-knows-what-day-now. We got there at 4pm or so and officially started work at 5 (haha we are not the most efficient I know). After we finished work at 10pm we spammed a gazillion photos for each other and together on timer mode, with my cam teetering precipitously - okay maybe not precipitous, but still - precariously on a random wall.

this is by far both nicole and I's favourite photo out of the awesome billion because we look simultaneously equally ridiculous.

yey tourist in our own country

beautiful nicole

one of our shots from far away. we managed to catch the last train that night despite our time-wasting. just in the nick-o-time.

The Sunday before my chem and lit papers and thus before all the papers began was insane. My family and our neighbours went for a dinner and I made the mistake of drinking more alcohol than I was used to (did not get drunk thank goodness I stopped before that) but I am not a drinker and the next day I took my tests with a headache. :( fortunately, I am used to my diseased state and so it did not kill me. in fact, I think I functioned fairly well in my discomfort. still, not the cleverest thing to do.

and now I am hobbling back and forth across time and space but I have finally gotten to what I really wanted to write about! The best part of my after-exams is definitely spending my day making my own DIY bokeh filter out of $1.65 black card and then testing it out. It's so exciting I wanted to test it out immediately and so I made my cousins and sis and marcus go out with me to the roadside to take pictures of the street lamps and car hazard lights; the pictures are in no way artistic I just felt so excited playing with the bokeh. today I brought my camera and filter to school and I think I am getting butter! better.

these 2 are the best and most patient they should get a prize. suiching and my sis left after awhile because bored and I wasn't very successful...

well I do think I improved. now can see face :)

ohmy so in love :)

If I could live my days like this forever

I've been spending the past few days in blissful ignorance of the fact that exams are in about a week's time. At the moment I am camping in my cousin's room, where the internet connection, for the first time in my life, is at maximum strength. That's because the internet ding dong is connected directly to his lousy desktop and well, it just occurred to me that I was on a laptop. Feels so nice not to have to worry about disconnecting every 5 seconds. It's really tiring.

Just spent the past half hour chatting with Clarinda she's going off to Germany in 2 weeks or so for University I think I'll miss her quite a lot. :(:(:(

Clar was trying to wake Zhu up cos they're going somewhere.

Me: "Zhu kind of reminds me of me when I'm trying to wake up."

Clar: "How do you wake up?"

Me: "I don't."

Alright, over the course of the weekend I've been far from studying except maybe today. I think I'm taking it too easy apparently there's not enough time anyone who sees this should remind me I have no bloody time and would I please get off the computer to read Hedda Gabler or count chromosomes?

I swear my mom does not care that I have exams, it feels kinda nice actually haha. Today while halfway through studying my mom decided she wanted to cook for the first time in ten gazillion years and so we followed some random youtube videos to try to cook Egg Benedict. The stuff we eat on Sundays at the Botanical Gardens.

poached eggs are too hard to make we cheated. we tried and failed. I have pictures but they are blurry (and embarrassing).

the sister does not give a shit.

"i will drink my chrysanthemum tea"

extremely pleased with our success!

tadahhhhh!

It was very fun and I felt like a TV show. and I also realised I'm quite shitty at cooking unless following instructions (in which case I am quite fantastic). I've been feeling like this for awhile.

On saturday I didn't know what I felt like doing at all, and I suspect studying didn't even cross my brain. but as a result I told my mom I wanted ice cream from Island Creamery, all the way in Serene Centre round Adam Road, which is considerably far-away from my home. We did it.

Reverse-O and Cookies & Cream

very pleased with this machine from the past. it's one of those mini ferris wheels for kids. I am slightly oversized now.

I think going to a non-routine place on a weekend set my mom and I on tourist mode, with my grandma tagging along. So my mom wanted to show me her old kampong place, which we never did get to, because our tourist instincts brought us to Dempsey Road, where I have never been.

instructions were that if anyone asked, we were tourists from Malaysia. ;)

ah ma saw fruits

In fact, this tourist mode is not wearing off. Sunday we had a family BBQ, pictures of which I am too tired to post up at this point in night but they are very splendid, and I will put them up very soon.

and tomorrow I will continue behaving like a tourist in my own country when I go to the airport to study with nicole. haven't seen her in too long I miss her a lot I'm going to bend down and hug her when we meet.

:)

and OH,

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Oh Memory

Today was tragically tiring, with a philosophy paper at 8am and then physics make-up lessons from 12 - 2.15pm. managed to squish in brunch with the bowlers ( :D ) and then rushed off for French prelim papers which started at 3. got home so tired so, so, drained; fell asleep on the couch in the veranda, and woke up at 8 for dinner and chinese tuiton eurg.

I understand there's no need to list my activities, but it's relevant(!). Every day makes me appreciate life and the incredible complexities of the people around me. Different people have different drivers, and very often, they are all amazing.

Earlier on, during my physics makeup, I was feeling slightly impatient and very very weary for the lack of sleep last night (which reminds me, I should be sleeping soon). I'd been waiting for my teacher to appear for a while, while also trying to catch up with the syllabus. Out of nowhere, another teacher appears and casually comments on how hard I'm working, good for me. I said oh no, I'm trying to catch up on work, waiting for my teacher actually. And he says,

oh since she's busy, would you like me to help?

and for the next half hour or more, this teacher who's never taught me in my life is sitting there teaching me the entire a.c. generator concept from scratch. After he was done, he said

wow, I really miss teaching like this.

apparently, he hasn't been allocated classes so he hasn't been teaching for a bit. and he told me that if I ever needed help I could look for him again. and I'm like, wow. I really felt very blessed that I got the chance to know and learn from him and I realised that some teachers are very passionate about their jobs. Even my teacher, she must want to help me, since my failing is of zero consequence to her, and she's putting in so much of her time to help me.

If you ever see this Mr Ho & Ms Siow, I am very very appreciative of your help.

I felt so full up with goodness when I left school (and then this was replaced temporarily by fatigue and zomgness when I entered the french exam, but still).

-

Another thing is something I've realised. Kids nowadays have so many things to play with.

In the past, we played with barbie dolls and that was probably the most expensive of the lot. I remember arranging pillows round the bed with my cousins and then playing teacher-teacher, dancing to hi-five, barney, and watching pokémon. Being able to wake up early on a Saturday morning to catch pokémon and feeling immense satisfaction, or feeling disappointed that I woke late and got digimon instead.

I went to the playground every day and got into many accidents. I played catching, freeze and melt, police and thief, mushroom, and so many games that people would never allow their kids to play now because it's dangerous. I remember the times when playgrounds had no safety features. now those were playgrounds. Rusty tire-swings.

For me, google used to be only for googling "cute puppies/kittens" images. The internet confused me, and I used encyclopedias. The books.

I watched cartoons that made me feel good like the disney classics on video tape (and never understanding how to rewind a tape), and then being mesmerized when I got the dvd for swan princess. Changing into a swishy dress so I could swish the dress around like Odette and singing along with all the songs.

(and also multiple chinese cartoons from my grandma that make me :D on memory)

I'm not actually being sentimental, but it's all these things that made my childhood so achy to think back on and reminisce upon and try to get it all back. These things made my memories.

and kids I see nowadays play with nintendo DS and PSPs and laptops.

so impersonal.

We dreamed in heist

I was feeling in a pretty cool mood yesterday, I think it had to do with the decision not to study for chinese (till 11pm or so) and/or/probably that I got to dress up and go out again.

dress up = no school uniform

heh, I think some lady walked by the house and looked. this is my oops-got-caught face.

So it's safe to say I'm really fantastically vain and adore adore being as pretty as I can be.

p.s: jean, :)

Hey Mr Bartender

mix me a drink, I really need something to tell me it's

okay not to think.

seriously, it never occurred to me that I should be revising for the philosophy paper tomorrow till joey told me that fail philo = retain. and HELL, I do not want to retain. It'd be such a lame thing. oh wow there are so many things I wanted to talk about but as soon as I get on this blogger thing it all goes poof out the window!

but okay, the other day I was telling jean how my shortsightedness felt like I was seeing the world through beautiful high aperture lenses, where close things are so sharp and everything else is blurred beautifully. I also have a habit of removing my glasses in school (haha I actually had to ask rachael and jaslyn to identify themselves today when they said bye) and walking around half blind, but I'm o.k. with that. but see, would it not be absolutely splendid to view the world through cool lenses?

I think boy boy is so cute here. haha, photogenic little tyke.

I am proud of my ling-longs.

i do not know why, but i like this. it makes zero sense.

now see, if I really could see that little air freshening bottle in the car on the dashboard like that every morning it'd be beautiful. it's always been a piece of background until I saw this shot and I'm like wow.

glasses coming off.

So you see, I've been in this state of I-have-no-idea-how-to-feel-ness -ALEXYTHIMIA- but anyway, haven't been feeling the stress from exams even though social studies has passed, and chinese this morning. most of french is over, and tomorrow I've got the french prelim papers. I really hope I do o.k.

Hopefully the exam spirit is creeping back slowly into me (though I assure you it is not pleasant at all), but it keeps me going. I have spent the past weekend shopping (like I always say: zero sense of self preservation), as well as teacher's day. I did not get anything for my teachers this year and it is not that I do not care about them, once again it has slipped my brain and although you might say it's not a fair reason and it's lame (actually I agree,) but I really do appreciate many of my teachers a lot!

I'm coming to appreciate people more and more and more and I love the world so much. Everyone around me is incredible and spectacular and I learn from everyone every day and and and right now, I feel extremely blessed because I have been getting by happily, and in more comfort than many others (screw you if you think this is me being politically correct), in love with life right now.

(right now as in at 11:52pm Thursday night, in waiting for tomorrow's philosophy paper)

honestly though.

k lemme spam pictures taken with my funky canon ef 50mm/1.8 lenses. I don't think I'd like 50mm eyes, seeing everything so big is a little blegh.

so, yesterday, my mom, sis and I went out for (for what, actually?) a while. haha. I think I just wanted to get out of the house, there's nothing wrong, but I really did not feel like studying. and I think we all needed a break (stress tension in the house yo) so we went shopping/walking/tea-drinking at takashimaya.

aww.

mirrors beside us. how could we resist? that little two fingered thing is my sis' hand.

egg restaurant we chanced upon a few days back! this is the menu, filled with everything eggy. awesomeness, really.

alright, I realise this post is getting a little bit long, it is okay for you to just pause right here and take a breather, have a cuppa, go pee, look out the window at distant green things. you might even want to stop reading, but wait-

The other day, like 2 days ago, Tuesday. We pulled out our old pokémon season 1 vcds and watched it. Episode 1. It makes me so nostalgic, and as a result we dug up our old nintendo 64 with the bigass pokémon stadium cartridge, and that's really one of the things preventing me from productivity as well.

.

full arsenal of mini-games to keep me occupied for evermore.

yeah.