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.

sometimes you leave a person alone for just a second, and the next time you turn back he or she is a totally different personality. i, not particularly investing my belief in all that jazz about being in constant motion in life and how one should adapt flexibly to changes in the grand scheme of things, absolutely detest such occurences. one day you could hang out and chat easily with the person, and the next you feel awkward just approaching the person, not knowing what to say, how to act. even making eye contact feels as painful as running a marathon with a sprained ankle and a torn knee ligament.

and worse is seeing them make new friends, friends that they have so much fun with when you aren't there. seeing the many photos on facebook of their escapades and outings certainly leaves me feeling more than a little sore. why couldn't the person call me out instead? he/she would have been the first person to invite me on any outing, any shopping trip, any dinner or lunch, any movie, and yet now the person barely even corresponds with me. no messages or emails, random house calls.

puzzling is that inertia still counts a tad, the ex-friend remembers your birthday, writes messages in the same style as before, lots of 'love's and 'miss-you's that are only a formality, only a hollow spectre of what was. this only serves to instil a creeping doubt, whether the person really does wish for your company, when honestly, it's a far shot.

don't you really hate life's little quirks sometimes? some days you feel that all you ever encounter is loneliness, disappointment and the chill of longing that sucks you into a gloomy mood. as much as it sounds like a corny pop song or a particularly gruesome poem, that's how it really is, isn't it?

well in cases like these there's only the option of sucking it in and sticking it out, as is with most other situations in life. nothing's fair in this world innit? unless you count the unanimous unfair treatment everyone gets, which makes us all equally miserable and singly disparaging.

so all i can do is find other pastures to graze, other fights to pick. if only i could say that this stems from my unwavering determination in life, my supreme strength of mind and will to survive. in truth it probably comes from the ugly shrivelled part of my mind where hope dares not to tread. this is resignation, the knowledge that things have changed irrevocably with the person and can never be salvaged again, a complete lack of belief that anything will get better, that steers me in another direction.

ah well, so life's a b*tch? sure looks like it.

some funny stuff i found at a website that i can't rmb the url of! eep.

something occured to me a few weeks back. it was something i've read before last year, heard many times before on the telly, and finally something that was mentioned in a recent movie.

now before you get your hopes up about what astounding nugget of information i am about to produce here, i should probably say that many people would have thought about this certain, SOMETHING, that i'm being unneccesarily mysterious about before in their lives.

i am speaking about the peculiar, ingenious, most extraordinary phenomenon of a predator ensnaring its prey by means of bewitching it and practically hypnotising it into an enrapturing entrancement. the prey in this case almost loses all its senses, only feeling the unshakeable desire to stare into its predator's eyes (where applicable) and if possible, arrange itself neatly on a dinner platter with roasted veggies to be presented to the widening mouth of the aforementioned ravenous creature. of course this isn't a laughing matter, as the consequences are terrifying. this form of dazzling one's prey, such that it is near to throwing itself prostrate at your feet begging you to kill it, is truly fearsome.

i first heard this on Animal Planet (of course). on screen was a rabbit directly facing a snake, not a big one or terribly frightening one, just a normal old rabbit-gobbling snake. and the narrator mentioned something about the rabbit being "bewitched" by the snake's eyes, and how it was mesmerised into paralysis, simply standing there watching the future cause of its untimely end without a single twitch. a bit of an easy meal i would think for the serpent, kinda like fast food except that burgers and fries don't stare at you from behind the counter.

and then i came across this.... i don't know what to call it, phenomenon? method?....i shall settle with "thingamajig".... in Twilight. edward cullen (aka Predator) tells bella (aka Prey) that he is the perfect predator and that everything about him draws her in. his eyes, his voice, his looks, his smell even. everything about him makes her want to be near him, and then it would just be a simple matter of choosing where to take a bite out of. and best of all, she would so dearly love for him to do so, even at the expense of her life.

?!?!?!??!?!

does this not scare you!??!?!?!

does it not make you fear everything that attracts you now!??!?!

what if, at the end of every dangling carrot, there is a yawning black mouth with hideously sharp teeth and tremendously bad breath waiting to swallow you??!?!

that, by the way, was a metaphor.

should we not be afraid of predators hypnotising our minds and making us blithely turn off our innate alarm sensors or worse, WANT to be eaten/taken advantage of/robbed/injured/mugged/etc etc??!?!?

what if people perfected this thingamajig (or even this CRAFT) and used it for ends that i can't even think of!??!?!

i fear to take even a single step down this path of imagination. in fact, i might even pause and hesitate, before doing an about-turn and retracing my steps.

it's insane!!!!!! there could be millions of conspiracy theories if you consider it. well maybe not, i don't know, i was just trying to add to the overall sense of panic and chaos.

ah what the hell, i shall leave this now to steam in the juices of my imagination and ponder upon this matter further.

i must admit that i am a person with a rather critical eye, i rarely see any people, male or female, that i find good-looking or beautiful. so at the times that i DO think someone approaching perfection in outward appearances, i find it a big enough event to post on the ol' blog.

so who is this extraordinary being i speak of, the one so well-endowed in the looks department?

he is none other than........ RAFAEL NADAL.

i've already established that he is my current fave tennis player, ever since he appeared many seasons ago and overthrew federer in one of the early matches of his inspiring career.

and i've probably already mentioned in passing that i found his looks exotic and attractive.

but when i watched his match against murray in abu dhabi (unfortunately he lost to that clown), i was once again bowled over by his near-perfection. his is a rare blend of fine features AND great body, extremely totally overwhelmingly hard to find in the modern world or any world at any point in history in fact.

with the fear of sounding tremendously superficial and overly indulgent, i shall include a description of nadal, which does not capture the extent of his great looks at all.

nadal has wavy tousled locks, very dashingly held back with that warrior headband of his. and he has fantastically deep-set eyes, squinty but not too much so, which gives him that Clint Eastwood charisma. it goes with his image as the Spanish conquistador, dangerous, lethal and fierce. then we move down to that subtle trace of a stubble around his chin, perfect in its near-absence because noone likes a scruffy looking fella or a santa claus lookalike with scraps of dinner entrapped in a full-grown bush underneath. and of course there's the body, artistically sculpted almost. killingly proportionate, with long legs but not so that he looks like a newborn giraffe. most guys have long torsos unfortunately, but nadal's is an amazing proportion that only few other guys like Rain and Jerry Yan have. nadal also has the right muscle bulk, which is truly hard to find. many guys are either too scrawny or overdo the gym training and protein shake-drinking. his bulk is even nicer than cristiano ronaldo's, who's just a tiny bit too lean. nadal has AMAZING biceps plus triceps, and sinewy forearms and lower legs. and on the few occasions he lifts up his shirt to wipe away the sweat off his forehead, everyone in the tennis-watching arena holds their breath when they catch sight of the abs of course. well actually the last time i saw his abs they weren't great six packs but still very defined so i shall conclude, in my absolutely biased perspective, that he has since then trained hard and improved his abdominal muscles. he has the perfect broadness of shoulder, not too broad like a swimmer's, which can taper drastically to a tiny waist that gives a literally "V" torso that's a bit repulsive (namely Phelps). nadal's neck muscles are defined too, and his thighs, from the look of his fitted berms/capris, look suitably slim and proportioned for his calves and hips. and he has a great skin colour, tanned which matches his red indian looks perfectly, unlike some tanned westerners who look burnt. and from a particular image of him walking back to the base line from the net, i could tell with my eleventh sense that he has great back muscles too, an area most people forget to work on when in the gym. and to add to the overall effect, there's his predatory glares and glances, insanely extreme grip on the racket that gives him a aesthetically superior swing, athletic efficient effortless movements on court that make him look super duper strong and fit, and an iron strength of mind that has turned the tide in many a set that he was down.