well well well.

it has been too long, my friends. too long since i've flexed those literary fingers of mine. in fact, those said literary fingers might not even be any more gifted with language than the commonplace digit.

but i digress.

i'm here today for the noble reason of....insomnia :(

i seem to be plagued by it since resolving to avoid caffeine at all costs over the uni break. and now that a new semester has begun, the need for coffee finds me again, and the effects of a cuppa are potent indeed.

so much for enjoying my morning cup of fresh brew as i sauntered to campus. thus i pay the price.

on the bright side with greener grass and a silver lining to the cloud above, i'm back to doing a blog entry! in like a gazillion years.

so i shall start with general sweeping comments like, life has been A-okay the past few years, uni's going good, getting a bit busy. the usual things you would say to an acquaintance you've encountered in a shopping mall, whom you've last spoken to a year ago and have never really known much about, except that he's kinda like a nice guy, quite good on the guitar, studies engineering or something like that.

going into a bit more detail, it's now my 2nd semester as a 2nd year vet student. phew. it's been nearly 3 years since i've come to melbourne! and i feel like i've been through and learnt so much. about myself, about how big the world is, about other people, about my friends, about my family, about cheem-sounding jargon like olecranon and cholangiocarcinoma.

and before this post ends up filtering towards the path of "what is life all about", i shall politely divert my mental train to a different track.

like...

i'll be going to bendigo this weekend! it's the highlight of my week big YAY. and the reason for that is chunpeng's over at bendigo hospital for a 10-week rotation now. it being the weekend, he's not working and we've decided that it'd be fun for me to go up to bendigo for a weekend trip. bendigo's a 2-hour drive away from the city, or a 2-hour train ride. by the bye, i think singapore's the only country in the world where going from Point A to Point B is an absolute given to be faster by car than public transport. futile comments aside, yes, the train journey takes the same time as a car ride. for reasons beyond the comprehension of the meagre minds of men.

ANYWAYS. (i feel the aforesaid mental train racing headlong into a brick wall on the tracks) (don't ask me why there would be a brick wall appearing on train tracks)(some crazy organisation of atoms and molecules into a latticework randomly, eventually pooling their miniscule brains together and deciding something hard, red and approximately rectangular in shape would be the most delightful thing to be)

again, the mental diversion. so yes, up to bendigo i go for the first time ever. it's apparently a big, small town. like one of the bigger of the small towns around melbourne. which still ends up, in any case, to be a town. which is not a city. so if you get the gist, it's gonna be quite an interesting change from city life here in melbourne.

well, that's it for now. till then.

well well, today was a rather interesting day.

started off kinda....."Bloody hell i just wanna get a few more hours of sleep dammit", but eventually responsibility and committment poured a bucketful of cold ice water over my sleep-misted face and i rolled out of bed. fortunately i got out on the correct side, and felt pretty good after washing up.

met jianliang for lunch at shaw tower for dim sum, which was a colourful event. he was still same old same old, had quite a laugh. esp at the incessant monologues he held while he was driving and the numerous comments and noises he emitted. he is clearly a forerunner in, if ever there was one, singapore's biggest motormouth. of course i mean this in a good way (i would never badmouth anyone honestly!) and he was highly entertaining.

then it was bugis street with meifen. the minute i stepped out of the cool air-conditioned bugis junction into the sticky, humid, stagnant air outside, i had to channel all my willpower into blocking the nerve signals frantically sparking their way to my leg muscles, to fight down the urge to turn around and head back into the building. or jump into a hole broken through the ice in antarctica in the middle of its harshest and coldest winter. that would probably just suffice in dousing the momentary fire i was set on.

in simpler terms, it was damn bloody hot and my perspiration couldn't bloody evaporate because the air itself was bloody saturated with water vapour from god knows where, and i honestly just wanted to bloody run into a fridge and hide for a few hours.

but duty calls, and meifen wanted to buy a bag from bugis street. the dutiful friend in me pricked, no, stabbed my conscience with a letter-opener and bade me to carry on with what i came here for. that is, to go to bugis street and accompany mf as she looked for a suitable purchase, you fool.

aiya anyways, we walked around a bit and i was starting to get accustomed to the temperature, that is to say, the temperature one would encounter in a diamond-lined furnace fitfully burning away in the deepest pits of hell. the fans that shopkeepers benevolently placed in their shops helped quite a bit also.

i went there with the intention to disappoint shopkeepers all round, not even allowing them the shortest glance of my wallet by stuffing it into the furthest reaches of my bag.

and when i left bugis street eventually, i was $40 lighter and 4 items heavier. blooooooody hell. i think i'm a retail addict. it's practically compulsive shopping, walk walk walk, see see see, ooh i like, buy buy buy. i need psychiatric help, i tell you. i think i get more exercise from reaching into my bag and opening my wallet to hand over dollar notes than i do from walking around the shopping malls.

yikes. anyways, headed over to the library and wanted to get more Pratchett. but unfortunately it wasn't to be, because i called brendan and somehow it occured to me that i must take a bus over to ridley straight away so that he could fetch me back from there. so off i went, in search of an elusive bus-stop ouside something called the smu school of accountancy, "aided" by verbal instructions from brendan. with the accusing punctuation marks because with his ever-so instructive instructions, i made a circuitous route to the bus-stop, hopped onto bus 111, and endured a torturous route which circled and looped like the most agonised and demented serpent you could ever imagine, before finally heading in a general direction of my intended destination. i swear the bus passed by the same tree (distinguished by a sort of hangy-down, droopy type of look) three times and the lady in front of me looked positively green with nausea from all that spinning. after much anguished (and of course, inaudible) curses at bus companies all over the world, i finally reached ridley. and met derrick coming out (he went to the gym).

then, with the full expectation of swinging open the front door to find brendan all ready with the car keys out to go home, he was, gasp..... absent. not a single particle of brendan to be found. after a quick call, it appeared he was upstairs in the study, not ready to go home yet la, i thought i told you the earliest i could leave was 5.30pm, now only 5pm, but that's the earliest la, when we leave can also be the latest, so you go find something to do, watch tv or read something la, when i'm ready then i call you. click.

suppressing violent thoughts (ok i exaggerate), i hunted down a magazine and proceeded to devour it for close to three-quarters of an hour. even made a coffee with chocolate milk, was stumbled upon by auntie carol, auntie doris and uncle tommie, went to do a #2 somemore. (yes, it is extremely unsociable behaviour to post private and sensitive information about certain, ahem, processes that a person partakes in on a daily routine [possibly less frequently] but nevertheless it served the purpose of showing exactly how long the period of time i was made to wait was)

finally the King and Queen of Singapore arrived in their regal splendour, and bade their base and subservient subjects follow, for they were now ready to depart. follow i did and we reached home. shower, dinner etc etc. minor details.

then at 8pm i went up to change and get ready for the 9.30pm GV Grand Gold-Class harry potter movie. yup you got that right. GOLD-CLASS. anyways, i was done by 8.30pm, went to enquire as to whether His and Her Royal Highnesses were ready to leave for our appointment to meet my cousins at 9pm at great world city. the fine oakwood door to their resplendent bedchamber swung open to reveal, His Imperial Majesty had just awoken from his royal slumber and would be hastening to get ready to leave in the monarchial carriage as quick as he can. when he finally came down it was already 9.07pm exactly (the memory was so clearly etched in my mind) and we drove out in a jiffy. only for His Venerable Supremeness to discover that the carriage was low on horsepower. ie. oh shit, we need to drop by caltex to go pump petrol. comments swallowed, i waited in the car. then when we left the station, it was oh, in the general region of... 22 bloody minutes past 9 freaking oh-clock. brendan drove like all of hell's demons were clambering atop the roof of the car and i think we must have lifted 10 inches off the ground when we went over a bump on the road. also i ruminate that we caused 3 different pedestrians to hastily leap into the nearby bushes to avoid our car, and 2 fellow drivers to scribble down furiously our license plate number as use for incriminating evidence.

anyways, we reached by 9.35pm and hastened to the theatre. where everyone was waiting, for I had their tickets. all in all, gold-class wasn't that nice also la. reclining chair, big and comfy. blanket given. a small table in front. a few service staff came in before the movie started to take orders for f&b and left without a trace later. screen size and audio/video quality were all the same.

aaaaand of course, the movie itself. yaaawn. totally different from the events in the book, possibly the only things retained in the movie version were albus dumbledore's half-moon spectacles and snape's oiliness. again i exaggerate. but anyways, i have learnt not to expect too much from any movie version of any book. there were of course some gripping scenes in the movie. and the odd confusing moments where i thought i was watching the lord of the rings, when dumbledore and potter were in the cave and the inferi swarmed, which incidentally all looked like gollum. and dumbledore conjured the flames, which incidentally looked like gandalf battling the whatchamacallit.... yes, the balrog.

anyways, director had a lot of balls to add some of the things he did in the movie. of course he must have had full blessings from rowling but still, what he added really changed the storyline significantly. like the random fatherly concerns that dumbledore had for potter (him and hermione spending a lot of time, him needing a shave or whatever), the miscellaneous shots of malfoy testing out the disappearing cabinet or cupboard or whatever. and what he omitted changed it gigantically also. no fleur, not rufus scrimgeour, no tonks-lupin screentime etc etc.

aiya a lot of things la. but i suppose the director didn't want to simply repeat everything in the book word for word. it'd be like watching the book on a screen, he must've thought. well i for one would have liked that thank you very much, but it appears arty people need their queer little 'artistic impression', 'poetic license', 'my perspective versus your perspective' moments. wanted to leave his mark yada yada. not just mindless copying etc etc. probably wanted to stamp "RICHARD YATES" clearly across the screen for everyone to see the whole time.

anyways, post cut short by unforeseen circumstances (ie. bedtime). will possibly resume in near future.

till then.

well well well. another seat-gripping account of the numerous exciting things that happened this week.

hit the gym on sunday before dinner. had a fantastic italian, i should say 'meal' but really, the amount of food i consumed sufficiently constituted 3 full meals.

monday went with melho to get ingredients to make her lamb kebabs, and surprise surprise bumped into siqian at bukit timah plaza. shows how small singapore is. after the rebound, we hit the aisles at ntuc and decided to bake brownies for her bbq too. after the flurry of domestic activity, mel and sq left for home and i headed out for dinner with the cousins at holland v. dessert at cold rock was sorely disappointing. all of us heard recommendations from friends to check the place out (no worries, benedict!) but i think the hype purely stemmed from the gimmick of teppanyaki ice cream. the ice cream they used tasted like the cheapo $1 for a 1L tub type of ntuc ice cream, and the toppings (1 type for $1) was too damn expensive and too damn small a portion! grr. this is a sweet-toothed dessert-fanatic speaking here! honestly! $1 for a meagre teaspoonful of nutella mixed on a (potentially) unhygienic slab with an over-priced cupful of (what was) cheap ice cream can get on your nerves.

but the company was good, and the holland v atmosphere was soothing on a weekday late night. think it's one of the best places to go to at such a time. no cars, no crowd. it's getting hard to find such places in our beloved furiously-"upgrading" singapore.

tuesday (ie. today, for those slow on the uptake) woke up at 6pm! i amaze myself at times, and apparently others as well. my mom nearly went into shock when she arrived home from work only to find out i woke up only a half-hour ago. and gloria and yiting had to ask several times ("a.m. or p.m.??" "wait, 6p.m.?!" "what time?!) before they could fully grasp the situation. and the funniest thing was that i was pretty sure when i got out of bed that the clock said 4pm. so i went downstairs, thinking that that's not too bad, still have a few hours of daylight to muck around before having to go over to glo's house. so i was reading the papers, and then mom came home. and still i (unwittingly) thought, wow she's back early from work today. imagine the trauma i experienced when the next time i walked into the kitchen i saw that the time was 6.45pm! i felt like rip van winkle. (did i get that right? it's an uncommon name.) anyways, went to ridley. had a BEEEG dinner trailed closely after by azabu sabo ice cream (NO green tea!) and or-ni. then played monopoly deal with glo yt yiling and jiawei, which was a hoot. (no it wasn't a nocturnal bird, although some of our cards were flying through the air at times, pillows even)

then a rather unhappy event happened, which is an Unmentionable, and cannot hitherto be written down here. but anyway because of that i was stoning quite a bit midway through monopoly deal.

and that's that. now it's time to squeeze in a few hours worth of harry potter before i catch it at the GV GOLD CLASS theatre (muahahahha) on thurs (muahahahhaa). i hope there's a free flow of champagne, or at least seats with inbuilt massage capabilities. maybe a bed? we'll see. it'd be dumb if i fell asleep during the movie though.

till then.

again i have in my mind a raving post that positively dies wanting to be heard by people (the audacious exhibitionist!) and yearns to be recorded for all with eyes to see.

hence i am subjugated by the thoughts floating in the vast expanse that is my mind, and will throw myself prostrate at their feet, following any commands made to the utmost.

geez, that last paragraph was a bit heavy.

anyways, i LOOOOOOOOVE the drums on the Killer's Jenny Was A Friend Of Mine! so inspiring and stirring. just makes me feel like running to the nearest music store and purchasing a drum kit in the hopes that i can miraculously imitate such a brilliant drumming performance without prior training whatsoever.

sooo, in the general light of things, i've just finished my first semester of vet science. the course that i have been dreaming of entering since i was in sec 3. and though dramatic effect bades me to say something jaw-dropping like "and then i discovered, with complete horror yet slashed with a tinge of resignation, that this was not the career path i wish to pursue in future", the truth is that i really love it! to the ultimate degree, i daresay with a resolute sort of finality. even though i slept in lectures, skipped some even, left studying till the eleventh hour, this is exactly where i want to be, except probably without the self-hatred for not being hardworking enough. but one thing i realised is that i do not want to be mediocre at all in this course. this was my greatest wish when deciding on my career path, that i could work with animals, and i sure as hell do know now that i do not want to be a washed-up average student with washed-up average grades and nothing at all to prove.

so i hereby set a goal of studying hard next semester. of course i will make allowances for skipping classes i feel will not benefit me (and detractors will argue that i could keep giving myself more and more allowance until in the end, history will repeat itself) (but i argue that firstly, there is noone reading this right now so who are the said detractors? besides, i make this vow to myself only, and in breaking it, nobody would know, much less care) but in the vague, nebulous view of affairs, i will work harder and play less than in the 1st sem! and i will strive to get better results! i for one hate losing, and the competitive streak in me would like to express its view that everyone else can go (being very polite here) fly kite while it starts to kick some behinds.

grand resolution thus made, i shall move on now.

today.

today was a sunday.

today was my second sunday back in singapore from melb for my winter break, went to orchard with benedict, walked around (even in the rain), ate and drank, chillaxed, lamented the lack of activities available in singapore for an exciting day out.

err day before was saturday.

day before was my first saturday yada yada yada, had a family bbq! met up with the cousins except yiting, who had (swine) flu (cos she's such a pig). feels good to be around them all again. aeryn and aeriel are growing up so fast, aeriel speaks quite a bit already and can even say Atlas' name (well, more like spit the sounds out into an ear-splitting shriek that sounds more or less something like 'Atlas'). and aeryn is well on her way to becoming singapore's most illustrious lawyer in the near future at the rate she's going. what a precocious child.

and before the day before today was friday.

which was spent with some of the GLC, minus ahmeng and hongyi who are living it up in china. we had lunch and plenty of fun at taka, and conquered far east plaza after that.

so that is the story of my life (well, at least the past few days of it). tmr's for driving and tuesday as well. then i'll be trying to get fit as well at the gym as much as i can. then comes the GLC stayover from wed to fri and hopefully a meal with the cousins over the weekend. this is as far as myopic ol' me can plan, and i shall take whatever fate and destiny decide to lob at me with gungho and a tenacious spirit of adventure.

but for now, what i plan to do in the immediate future is to hit the washroom (OKAAAY unnecessary details) and pop into bed.

after an insanely long hiatus from the weird and wonderful world of blogger, i have decided to stage my comeback.


ok, not really. i am just taking a SHORT break from studies, and decided to brush the dust off this page and bring it down from the attic (or up from the basement).


anyways, past few months of 2009 have been play play play play play play play play, SHIT exams are here, study study study. and now i'm in swot vac (our study week) and 5 days from my first veterinary science exam paper. wow. even though the course is rigorous, and the competition is high, it still amazes me when i take a step back and go, "I'm actually studying to be a vet!" and just a short while ago, i was still in nappies running rounds in the playground pissing off my parents. thus is the miraculous nature of hindsight and reminiscence.

i thought it would be nice to log my dreams of the future. of course, dreams are just dreams, many may not get fulfilled, some may even be forgotten. cut the crap about you having to be the one to make your dreams, in the real world, hopes get dashed all the time, and people rarely have the perseverance to see their way through to their ultimate goals in life.

then again, for the benefit of my future worldly-wise and jaded self, here's where i hope to be down the long and winding road.

i want to work with wildlife.
i do NOT want to spend forever in a vet clinic in singapore, pushing papers and seeing cats and dogs, and dogs and cats. and the occasional rabbit.
i want wolves, cheetahs, polar bears, owls, lemurs, giraffes, elephants, pandas, and every other beautiful creature of nature out there. i want to put my veterinary skills to good use, but at the same time, devote time to conserving wild animal populations and studying wild creatures.

i want to live in a european country. i want to speak the language, sample the cuisine, rub shoulders with locals and explore the lands. i want to experience the liberating feeling that the world is bigger than the confines of my home country, extending far beyond the barriers formed by the skyscrapers and high-rise apartments of singapore.


and believe it or not, those are the only major goals i have planned. clearly, i need to spend more deep, reflective time with self and get to know me better. also, i need to think further ahead and plan in advance. then again, it's sometimes better to have lesser expectations to prevent any crippling disappointments. okay, i admit that's a tad pessimistic, but ah well.

and hence i make my departure, away i go to my crisp stacks of notes and glaring desklamp for the night. i bid you well.

yesterday night in melbourne at nearly 11pm, there was a reported tremor felt by residents across melbourne. the tremor measured 4.6 on the richter scale, with its epicentre located 90km southeast of melbourne.

i was happily preparing to go out of my room to a friend's new building apartment to watch slumdog millionaire (fantastic show), and when i opened the door several of my neighbours were standing in the corridor while a few more were poking their heads out their doors. a tutor was also standing there, and they were all slightly panicked, saying that they felt the ground shake. our floor tutor also hurried across from his room after feeling it. suffice to say that i was clueless about this, maybe i have my head in the clouds and feet off the ground half the time that i missed the shocking tremor felt by everyone on my floor, and nearly everyone in IH.

but anyways, this incident somehow reminds me of how precarious the world that we live on is. everything we've built up over the years, skyscrapers, shopping malls, business districts, houses and homes, or on a personal level, lives, careers and relationships, could so easily be destroyed so many ways by the forces of nature. one day you could be rushing off to work, or making breakfast, or doing a number 2 in the washroom and the next instant a major earthquake, flood or bushfire wipes out your entire life as you know it, causing irreparable damage to your world. and again this in turn reminds me of how insignificant we all are.

do the natural phenomena CARE whether you've spent nearly all your life savings on that house which just collapsed in the earthquake? do they care that your loved ones mean the world to you if they ever perish in a tsunami? do they even bother to step back and reflect one moment that the crops which produce the food you survive on were razed in a wildly spreading bushfire?

we should not, for even one instance, forget that we lead fragile lives in a volatile world, and that living for one more day is a lucky roll of a dice in an all-encompassing game.

i have recently joined the legions of adoring fans, the multitude of ardent admirers, the throngs of reveling readers of the marvelous Terry Pratchett.

here's a walking and talking repository of razor wit, who has bowled me full over with his insanely funny Discworld novels. honestly, you haven't caught me on one of his books yet, if not you would be throwing worried glances in my direction as the hysterics overcome me, possibly checking me in to a mental health institution if i was in a particularly good mood to begin with.

he phrases the most mundane of sentences in a brilliant way, more like that of a corkscrew or even a lunatic scribbling mess that a woowoo (i.e. mental patient) produces with some floor and a chalk. out of the totally berserk clauses and paragraphs, he chucks guffaw-inducing imagery and metaphors at you like a knife-thrower with a grudge.

then comes the thorough and amazing detailing and plumping up of the imaginary territory of Discworld, held up by Great A'Tuin the Great Sky Turtle, what more can i say? Discworld and its various quirks are mapped out intricately in the novels, and pervading many of them are the issues dealt with in any civilisation, modern or prehistoric.

he comes up with the most wacky characters and plots, and in many novels the lives of the many characters overlap. reading a book about the witches can bring you to a scene involving Commander Vimes or the Librarian of the Unseen University in Ankh-Morpork, who incidentally happens to be an orang-utan.

so heed the call to laugh your brain cells to death, and read the phenomena that is Discworld.