a brief history of the smile

2011-10-16T22:39:00.003+08:00

I'm sorry, old friend, it's been a long time. It is -almost - nice to find you all ready and waiting for me, password and username already saved and all, like a childhood bedroom or a loyal pet.

And what a splash of sunshine I find. I don't even remember the last time I felt so cheery. Why can't we all be happy indeed! How nice that I could announce that with such unabashed certainty. Thank you for reminding me, self of three years ago, of life before potential heartbreak blended - potently - with a brewing quarterlife crisis.

Oh, things fall apart. But we're all here to rebuild

2008-12-23T01:31:00.002+08:00

When does the need for self preservation blur into plain selfishness? And when is selfishness necessary?

Personally I think self-sacrifice is overrated. Selflessness doesn't exist. One just expects to get paid back by someone else, in a different time, in a different way. It's just a game of musical debt really, and I don't see what's so wonderful about putting's one's own future (life? happiness?) on the line if the returns on that investment are going to be marginal.

I don't think I;m a selfish person, despite what certainpeople say. However my sanity has its limits and the final sem before I graduate and during which thesis must be written is definitely NOT the best time to cross the line.

Sorry, you're important, but so am I.
And i am fucking exhausted.

from christine;s blog

2008-11-27T00:44:00.002+08:00

01. What are your nicknames?
Lynn, nette, nettesy (oh god groan) dom calls me xiao jie, boyfriend sometimes calls me a cat and people who find my chinese name amusing call me by that too - its ying ying

02. How do you style your hair?
wash, blow dry. if can be bothered I pin it back in a complicated style that involves 8 bobby pins. if cannot then that's it I leave it to flop around

03. What's new in your life right now?
Utter boredom, an uncertain future, suspicious sleeplessness and a weeklong el cheapo trip to vietnam

04. How many colors are you wearing now?
1, white jammies

05. Are you an introvert or an extrovert?
Unless I'm with a small group of close friends, I am extroverted for the first 2 hours, then i get tired and wilt in a corner.

06. What was the last book you read?
Am multi-tasking between suchen christine lim's fistful of colours, salman rushdie's midnight's children and foucault's history of sexuality.

07. Do you nap a lot?
No but i sleep every morning on the train to school from tampines to clementi. That's a whole hour of sleep! To ensure that I get this much beloved rest I do the kiasu Singaporean thing and take the train backwards to pasir ris. kill me now!

08. If the person you secretly like is already taken, what would you do?
spend two days bitching and then move on

09. Is there anything that has made you unhappy these days?
Unfortunately. Yes.

10. What was the last thing you ate today?
Dad's birthday dinner at Equinox. It was some 5 course degustation menu by the guest chef (what on earth does degustation mean??) It involved a starter of duck liver and a brioche, tomato and mint soup, the entre which was a seared scallop with potatoes, baked fish and some green sauce, sea bass and mussels and an oozy warm chocolate pudding with cherries for dessert. And complementary cocoa coated almonds and cake.

11. How long does it take you to get ready in the morning?
45 mins.

12. What websites do you visit daily?
gmail exchange facebook bookforum

13. What classes are you taking right now? And if you're not in school anymore, what's your job?
Asian American lit, Modernism and Empire, Making of a Nation, ISM

14. Do you like to clean?
No.

15. What's the last song that got stuck in your head?
Snow, red hot chilli peppers

16. What are you doing right now?
Doing this and not studying.

17. Are you a picky eater?
Not really but I'm picky about prawns - i only eat them butterflied, shelled or if they are sliced into half lengthwise. I dont eat prawns that have been boiled, steamed, fried etc whole with the shells on, and I don't eat prawns cut into smaller pieces than half, and i dont eat them minced, mashed or mixed up with other stuff.

18. What kind of cell phone do you have?
Sony Ericsson.

19. Worst time of your life?
i dont remember.

20. Tell me something good.
exams END TMR!

WHY!!!

2008-10-30T02:10:00.002+08:00

can i just say how much i hate...

People who jump on bandwagons
and wear obvious amounts of eyeliner
and have disgustingly weird chinese accented-singaporean-accented english

I am being mean and making horrid generalisations about said person. ARGHGHGHGHG

OMG you innocent being. Why do you annoy me so?

this is a muggy post

2008-10-24T00:42:00.002+08:00

I'm finally getting started on all my disgusting essays. They're only disgusting because I have to do them. In theory they're actually nice, interesting things to think about.

1. ISM about Spatial Representations in Singapore Short Stories. I have very complicated thesis involving de Certeau, Foucault and Pierre Nora..best to revise since I'll probably need all of my 5000 words just to explain them?!?!

I've heard that some writers regularly google themselves to see what people say about them so I shall add that my ISM involves short stories ranging from early 1970s by such people as Catherine Lim and Robert Yeo, to the 90s (Alfian Sa'at's Corridor and Philip Jeyaratnam's First Loves) to post 2000 (Daren Shiau's Velouria and some assorted stuff by David Leo). There, I've name-dropped :)

My original idea was meant to be something about nationalism and city spaces, but its morphed into something quite massively beyond me about the urban text as historical representation; text as memory as tactic as opposed to text as history as strategy. Gahhhhh.

2. Singapore Studies Merlion poems essay
Which is not Christine's. Basically the merlion is an empty signifier upon which people can project their perspectives on national identity.

3. Modernism and Empire.
Dunno what's going on. Such a strange module.

4. Asian American
Ditto.

And thesis woes abound!!!!!

I was looking through my mass of readings just now in search of one particular sheet when I realised that I could recognise/ differentiate readings just from the font they were printed in. It was rather horrifying though I felt vaguely intellectually smug as well.

Why is this such a muggy post? I really also wanted to say that despite all this ZOMGcrapload of work, I'm really very happy.

2008-09-15T00:59:00.002+08:00

Sex is not equals to dating is not equals to eventual marriage

There's nothing romantic about a straighforward f*ck and I am glad I never deluded myself otherwise.

Cheers to a short but poignant history of experiments and its happy conclusion

And because the representational powers of language fails, thus the enigma remains.

2008-07-18T14:23:00.003+08:00

Nonetheless, you gotta love a lit major

2008-07-14T17:53:00.000+08:00

I just read Vic’s post and I’m feeling inclined to letting my own work rant out now. It’s terribly un-fun. Ok it’s fun in a work way, meaning I like the stuff I get to write, I like doing things like editing and prettifying articles, and thinking of advertising taglines and writing copy and all that (Oh for those who haven’t realised I’m interning at an ad/design kind of place called first media and i basically do copywriting type work for them).

Yes it’s interesting. But I’m I hate sitting in an office for 8 hours a day just waiting for people to give me stuff to do and doing them. It’s monotonous and there’s only so much intrigue I can find in, well, writing stuff. I’ll go crazy if I had to do this for the rest of my life and whatever I do with my life in the future I’m sure as hell it won’t be...this.

Which brings me to my sad and lonely office life. Having either unwitting offended someone...or many someones...the office experience is panning out to be a largely solitary one. Either that or people are generally not friendly to interns. I don’t know but I seriously can’t be bothered to try an make people like me because it’s not worth the trouble. Seeing as I’m not friends with anyone here, and lunch is a drag because I don’t generally go with the office people. Having wonderful friends I usually have friendly non-office lunch partners maybe twice a week. And for that I am infinitely grateful.

But that doesn’t change the fact that this doesn’t help my already draggy office days. I find myself looking forward very much to whatever happy distractions and activities there are in store. I wake up much happier on days with lunch kakis. Weekends are the most blessed thing ever and have saved me from shrivelling into a friendless, spikey hermit.

WAFF the carnival was a blast and looked forward to it for a whole week. And I’m happy that I’m dropping by camp and meeting JC study mates for dinner and reunioning with Borders gang, and that I always have my wonderful USP friends to be with.

UGH BUT ITS A DRAG TO BE HERE and i think three more weeks of this will KILL ME until i DIE FROM IT.

smile for me

2008-07-01T16:22:00.002+08:00

I think you'd have to stretch the adjective quite a bit to call me pretty.
I am short and I have very insecure-making thighs and A TUMMY
(Unfortunately, my favourite foods include such things as scrambled eggs with mint and cheese, cheddar flavoured Ruffles and similar)

I have a weird nose bridge
My eyes...i dont like them either
My hair only behaves if its blow dried within an inch of its life

I have fat arms. I will have massive scallops soon if I dont watch it

I am sad. I henceforth refuse to own mirrors

But i think i have a nice smile, at least :D

Who am I?

2008-06-27T12:26:00.000+08:00

What Lynnette Means

You are relaxed, chill, and very likely to go with the flow.

You are light hearted and accepting. You don't get worked up easily.

Well adjusted and incredibly happy, many people wonder what your secret to life is.

You are a free spirit, and you resent anyone who tries to fence you in.

You are unpredictable, adventurous, and always a little surprising.

You may miss out by not settling down, but you're too busy having fun to care.

You are very intuitive and wise. You understand the world better than most people.

You also have a very active imagination. You often get carried away with your thoughts.

You are prone to a little paranoia and jealousy. You sometimes go overboard in interpreting signals.

You are friendly, charming, and warm. You get along with almost everyone.

You work hard not to rock the boat. Your easy going attitude brings people together.

At times, you can be a little flaky and irresponsible. But for the important things, you pull it together.

You are a seeker. You often find yourself restless - and you have a lot of questions about life.

You tend to travel often, to fairly random locations. You're most comfortable when you're far away from home.

You are quite passionate and easily tempted. Your impulses sometimes get you into trouble.

What's Your Name's Hidden Meaning?

why not?

2008-06-19T10:08:00.001+08:00

It's a lovely lovely day!

what did they say was the opiate of the masses?

2008-06-17T17:20:00.004+08:00

To be working is, above all, to learn to live with routine. I never knew how much a flexible timetable called for appreciation until my collision with regular working hours.

Everyday I wake up between 630 to 645 and am out of the house by 730 so that i can get to the train station early enough to take a train backwards to pasir ris, grab a seat and concuss blissfully and enviously while sad people living in simei, eunos and paya lebar bang elbows and frown. I get to work by 9, I stay at work from 9 to 6 or so, I get home by 730 and by the time I'm done with mandatory dinner/shower/phonecall to boyfriend my day is over. I go to sleep and the days repeat themselves

I don't mind working. Its fun to get to do things like think of titles for art catalogues and write copy for wedding advertisements. Its also fun to do pseudo-CDA and write design rationales. Its also fun to write stupid articles for GRC newsletters that are by default so filled with ! and "In true spirit of community cohesiveness and solidarity"-type statements that it's laughable.

Its fun it really is i just never realized how un-fun it is to have so much time toed up doing just one thing. and it doesnt help that i don't always have anything to do at all. Sometimes when i'm done with whatever i need to write I sit at my desk and facebook

Or read. OR message or covertly use adium

My favourite part of the day is walking to work in the morning. From the train station there's this back lane that goes between the back of two rows of restored shophouses. There are old trees that line the path, and these loom down in a most friendly manner. Walking under all this green with clear morning sunshine in my face is when I start to wake up and it makes for a very pleasant start to the day. There are a couple of tame cats that sit on the path sunning themselves. They're terribly sweet and run towards people rather than away.

The cats usually hang out in this basketball court looking area (what its doing there I have no idea since its more like half or a quarter of a court and i've only ever seen little kids playing badminton there). When I pass them, I turn the corner and reach the office.

Working (even if it is only for 2 months) makes one appreciate a whole bevy of things. Like lunches with friendly people (I dont have all that much to say to the people i work with though they are nice and all); dinners with friends and other loved people; weekends and the person who makes the effort to plan the weekly get together; websites like bookforum and n+1 which provide great stuff to read; my new phone which thankfully has a decent sound platform and allows for proper earphones rather than that crap sliding plastic bar that was my old nokia....

thats a lot to be grateful for.

I am writing something for the first time in 3 days that has nothing to do with lacan

2008-04-20T23:35:00.003+08:00

I'm feeling terribly disillusioned with self.
I know it's got much to do with the fact that after weeks of rushing out essays (I've done 4 - but I write very slowly) and despite all that still have 2 left to do and I'm zonked
And also with the looming exams, two of which I am just refusing to think about; the mere mention of the last one is enough to send me into spasms of panic attack.

But still.
I just can't quite see the point of it at the moment. I don't see the sense on investing time and effort and brain power on producing a beautiful, inspired essay when all that comes down to is this little alphabet thats your grade. And then its forgotten.
And lately I've realized that while I feel alot better about beautiful and inspired essays that doesn't mean I do better for them. And the last time I felt happy about writing an essay - meaning i felt like I genuinely cared about what I was writing - was when I wrote about If We Dream Too Long last semester. This semester everything's just about meeting the deadline and handing something in. Ugh.

I've developed a really odd essay writing method. I would'nt even call it writing, it seems more like an act of compilation, oddly enough. What happens is
1. Trawl through Jstor and the library, zap/borrow/copy as much material as it takes to make you feel safe
2. Read as much as you can without burning out eyeballs, type out whatever looks vaguely useful
3. Free associate and type out as much as you can possibly think of that might be vaguely relevant to essay
4. Stare at all the crap that's been typed out, think of thesis, write first para.
5. Cut paste, cut paste, and repeat until all the stuff that's been typed out has been reorganized into an essay.

It's highly inefficient, but it prevents the severest sort of writers block, and you're almost guaranteed a coherent, if not particularly outstanding essay. It worked twice to get me an A- and something called an A-/B+(high) - whatever that means.

But oh the thought of becoming a sad and uninspired essay crunching machine!

Better days must be ahead.

On a happier note, I have discovered marvellous icecream at the daily scoop . It is happy and lychee martini flavoured. It has oscar wild quotes on the wall. it is happyness in the midst of lacan :)

2007-12-03T02:48:00.001+08:00

(i know it sounds silly, but don't we all sometimes?)

hershey is lying on the table looking dead at 4 in the morning

2007-11-28T04:08:00.000+08:00

It's 4 in the morning and after spending one whole day asleep in various locations, I'm now fairly awake and attempting to decipher some very strange reading about the Gothic thats 85% examples of books that I've never even heard of much less read.

On a sidenote, I discovered the perils of a comfy bed this morning when I woke up for my 9am level4 cold war paper at 8.24am. And the fact that I even woke up at all was purely arbitrary. It was purely a very fortunate stroke of luck that I woke up at all. Hello jae and brandon. I'm descending into slobbiness, but i shall resist. hmmph :(

I hate how facebook has this great ability to prey on insecurities. (At least, it sometimes does on mine and i really REALLY hate it) There's always an icky price to pay for being nosey. (Junwen, you will read this, find this cryptic, and then talk to me in MSN and I will tell you and you will tell me I'm being silly). But really, someone remind me that what i don't know won't bother me the next time I go poke around people's facebook profiles :(

I'm not in the mood to study anymore.
Someone should come up with a term for sudden moodswings mid-post. Because that's what just happened. Weirdly. Its what happens when you try to multitask by blogging and facebooking simultaneously.

Hershey is lying on the table looking dead.

cookies and milk

2007-11-19T01:51:00.000+08:00

It's been so long since I blogged. Everyone of the last few posts seems to begin with an apology.

Apologies, once again. I didn't want to bore everyone with the usual defensive angsty-ness. Or cryptic posts about unknown and unnamed someones or somethings. I've realized, after years of blogging, how often poetic emo-ness can pass off as good writing.

It's been a hell of a sem, what with three of my closer uni friends jetsetting all over the world for SEP. We're in three different continents, just think about that :(
I had the hell-iest of hell weeks ever, what with a 2000 word essay, a 3500 word essay about something i know zilch about, a research proposal and a 5000 word group paper due all within a week of one another. It's almost over - I just need to get through today and then off to random happy days of nachoeating moviewatching catchingupoversushi-ing dancingatunion and oh...right its reading week.

I'm not complaining!

Having just sent the last section of my paper out, I'm feeling incredibly relieved and somewhat stunned that I have a still functioning brain (yes, all three of you remaining cortex cells, I do refer to you. and i salute you). I feel tempted to lapse into an angsty there must be more to life than all this mindless scraping through school but I shan't. There's too much unhappiness going around and I really don't want to contribute to it.

I miss the teeny little random happy things in life that give you the tiniest of system shocks and make you believe, for that one moment, that there's still a lil bit of magic left in being alive. Like receiving emails from people wanting to return me my matric card before I even realize that its gone missing.

Once I walked out of the lift and into a cloud of rainbow-ey soap bubbles. If you've never had the chance to walk into a cloud of soap bubbles let me know so I can remedy it. It's surreal, and very cheering to the soul. The soap bubble cloud resulted from a bunch of small kids with bubble guns, and god bless them for that. I'm old school; i like my bubbles blown. Sometimes I blow bubbles out of the window of my 4th storey PGP room (and other times I blow cigarette smoke, but thats a different story. *smile*). I hope the person living on the 4th floor is a bubble junkie too. if not, well sorry said with a smile

The point of this post is I guess, just to talk about the little things which oh so often seem to get lost in the big hurriedness of life; the flurries of deadlines and papers and essays and meetings, and the sheer busyness that makes people go scratchy and cranky and tired. It's easy to be unhappy, especially living here and now as we do - easy to fall into the trap of believing that there's a great big out there with greener grass, better education, nicer people, whatnot. It'll be nice if we can all believe that happiness is this thing we can grab hold if we just manage to run fast enough to get out of our skins and reach the end of some illusive rainbow. We'll all have really good excuses for being unhappy, and no good reason to attempt to remedy that sad fact.

But its a lousy way to live, really it is. I'll take the small things as they come. And eat cookies dunked in milk while watching the rain and listening to either one of them wainwrights.

Its so much easier to get through life with ambitions that are this simple.

loves

2007-10-01T02:13:00.001+08:00

sometimes i really feel like wringing your neck

but i still wear your goddamn sweater to sleep

*smacks self*

Lit Majors on MSN

2007-09-28T14:02:00.000+08:00

phaeriedust//phaeriedust.blogspot.com says:
i have a pimple on the place where my adams apple would be if i had one. random observation

chrispy is infectious. approach at your own risk says:
haha

chrispy is infectious. approach at your own risk says:
perhaps it symbolises your subconscious penis envy

chrispy is infectious. approach at your own risk says:
lol okay equally random

chrispy is infectious. approach at your own risk says:
im sure its very cumbersome to have one

OMGWTF

2007-09-24T10:43:00.001+08:00

no im not plugging garage party.

this is just a damn delayed reaction.
omgwtf

sigh i got nothing to say.

a brief introduction

2007-09-09T18:06:00.000+08:00

i dont want to blog on the wordpress blog because the oddest people (ie my parents, and random people in the States) read it.

I decided that my old template, which was pretty but had annoying heartshaped icons all over it, was my excuse to not blogging, and hence i've gotten something more cheerful. Yes, I need reminders to be happy too! Don't we all? And besides, its yellow!

I'm happy right now because I went for ice cream with natalie at Island Creamery and its such a friendly place. I like the randomness of the million and one pictures on the wall. As well as the lone guy sitting in the corner plunking on his guitar and playing to himself. If Jamie was reading this I'd say it was an *ahh* place. I also got myself a black dress with big bright yellow and orange flowers all over it; half price from future state. Eugene saw it, frowned and said, very tactfully that he'd like it better if the colours "went together better" - which is of course a very polite way of saying that it was garish, perhaps, or loud, but what the hell.

I think life should be a shout of colour and its time my clothes start reflecting that :)

A note on *ahh* places: The term "ahh* is part of a great and ancient tradition started by best friend Jamie and myself. It was inspired by the "Anna" series of books, the most famous of which is entitled mister god, this is anna. As Vernon Sproxton describes in his introduction, mister god, this is anna is an "Ah! book".

According to Sproxton, Ah! books are those which "widen the readers' sensibility in such a way that he is able to look upon familiar things as though he is seeing and understanding them for the first time." But nevermind Sproxton...we were so enchanted by the concept of Ah!-ness th of at we kind of just started using it to refer to anything immensely happy-fying and uplifting.

We used to make lists Ah! moments, and places, and books. I think we were awfully happy people then.

And i think this post is making me want to reclaim my inner Ah!.

(im trying to find a picture of the book but i can't find the edition i have)

2007-05-08T23:56:00.000+08:00

we inhabit a dark universe, one in which we use the few moments of light we are given, as points of reference.
...
I often find myself swept downstream by the song's awe'ful power humming along to its prevailing topline: pain. But I also seek to express the whole journey. these brief moments of sight. these points of clarity. these expressions of hope and deliverance. the upward struggle of the searching soul.

daniel bedingfield, album sleeve of gotta get thru this

2007-03-16T22:53:00.000+08:00

things to do with the blog
1) figure out how to make font nicer
2) tagboardify
3) update links
4) get rid of the hearts
5) improve the side bar

I'm back to very ad hoc and guesstimating CSS usage.

And on a totally seperate note, I'm disillusioned already.
Disillusioned before I even manage to blog about the previously illusioning thing that I was getting happy and floaty about.

Still, its all a state of mind. I always say it's never about how it ends - its about the fact that it happened, and whatever beauty life throws you and takes away should just be left as that - something that is easily found and lost.

oh don't think i haven't moved on already. i'm quite happy, really
today's just a grumpy day. Already I feel the stirrings of an emotional rant. And I dont even have anyone or anything in particular to direct it to.

I guess I just want something reassuring to welcome me home at the end of the day. Hey, don;t we all?

the new template that i do not like

2007-03-15T02:43:00.000+08:00

there are compelling reasons for me to get my act together and start piecing together the bits of stuff that I've been neglecting for the longest time.

I cleared out my PGP room for one :) now you can detect a table and a bed

I ALSO ATTEMPTED TO REDO MY BLOG!
It ha sat there in a templateless state ever since Jae's squirrelled site disappeared and refused to host my beautiful personalized template and i was too lazy/depressed/both to fix it. Well now i'm tired of that blue blank screen and i'm trying to find a nice new template that itsn't black based for once.

Unfortunately, as much as i like the picture in this one it don't seem to be working very well. Its 2 in the morning, however, and i have to be up for breakfast and emergency library trip by 7, and i have no great love for dealing with the technicalities of CSS at the moment.

Be satisfied, however, that yours truly is rebuilding her shattered relationship with her blog and await further prettification

wheeeee!

lynnette loves you

2007-02-28T00:13:00.001+08:00

I get such an ego boost when dear xing jian posts up my bored in class doodles. Nevermind if they look messa and all.

Yay :)

2007-02-28T00:13:00.000+08:00

I get such an ego boost when dear xing jian posts up my bored in class doodles. Nevermind if they look messa and all.

Yay :)

2007-02-23T05:56:00.000+08:00

R. Star Losing Your Memory Lyrics

You're losing your memory now (4)

Call all your friends,
And tell them I'm never coming back.
Cause this is the end,
Pretend that you want it
Don’t react.
The damage is done,
The police are coming too slow now.
I would have died,
I would have loved you all my life

Your losing your memory now.

Where have you gone,
The beach is so cold in winter here.
[ Lyrics found on http://www.metrolyrics.com ]

And where have I gone,
I wake in Montauk with you near.
Remember the day,
Cause this is what dreams should always be.
I just want to stay,
I just want to keep this dream in me.

Your losing your memory now (4)

Wake up, it’s time little girl, wake up.
All the best of what we’ve done is yet to come.
Wake up, it’s time little girl, wake up.
Just remember who I am in the morning.

Your losing your memory now (4).

Thanks to Dominic who got me Ryan Star's album "Songs from the Eye of an Elephant".

It's a beautiful song about not wanting to forget.
I don;t know if it's a coincidence or if I got it right, but this seems to have come straight out of that much beloved movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Remember the snowy beach where they wake up one morning?
Montauk (as mentioned in the song) is the name of that random train station where Jim Carey meets Winslet for the first (or second) time. Anyhow, its where we as the audience first see them meet.

And like the movie, this song has the same undercurrent of inevitable loss, the bittersweet pleasure of reliving for the last time what you know you must eventually give up. That combined with the distant, haunting hope that it might just, somehow, be possible to undo the damage.

-Just remember who I am in the morning-

It works out alright for them in the movie, doesn't it?

There might be ways to anaesthesize yourself. To cut short the process of hurting and then simplifying the recovery. The one step, just add hot water method of getting over heartbreak. The denial - or avoidance - of unstoppable emotion.

And that while the end might sometimes be pretty, the whole point is of course, the process of getting there.
Some memories cannot and should not be erased

2007-01-26T02:55:00.000+08:00

I'm 21!

Thanks all at the barbeque, I appreciate you guys more than you'll ever understand :)

2007

2007-01-15T01:10:00.000+08:00

I've been going around people's blogs and i'm happy to see how happy nearly everyone sounds. What with Brandon's (unexpected) healthiness (cough) and eemin still reminiscing about happy days in danang and Glyn's streak of transligual poetry and all. Particularly cheery was Aileen's account of painting chrising szehaning housing big-pgp-room-owning and etc. ( I havent read yours for ages,gal, I'm sorry! You may have noticed that I've been out of the bloging scene for rather long)

2006 was a mad year for me, an utter rollercoaster and even now I'm still reeling from the effects - and not all have been good. That's partly why I havent been writing. It doesn't become me to post up an account smeared all over with gloom and angst. I mean, who needs more misery i guess we all jave enough of our own. Which is not to say that my life's depressingly bad. It just means that i'm coming to terms with a crazy world that's spiralling too fast for me to keep up with.

I can't look back without nostalgia and a tinge of pain; I can't look back and not want to hold onto the beauty that's past; I can't look back without a deep down inside wish to turn back time. Maybe it just gets that way with everyone, maybe everything just seems better in retrospect. But nostalgia is a powerful thing; in a way we're all looking for a kind of stability thats fixed firmly in memories of the beautiful.

I'm sounding sentimental. But let me assure you that all this is sincere, I've spent many nights thinking about the past year and all that was in it. And to speak of it like this is like scraping a raw nerve.

And I am grateful for all that I have been given. And all that i have lost. It means so much to me now, the multitude of things that I took for granted, that so many of us willed ourselves into believing it would last forever.

I feel so litle now, really. to quote plath, like I'm living in a bell jar. Mostly feeling nothing very much. What I do feel comes detached, vague, like hearing a sound from a very great distance off. Leftover existentialism from the darkest days of the old year I suspect. And hope, because I can't imagine life in a permanent state like this. And once again, it doesn't become me.

This post is partly whiny, but its also an assurance that it won't last. And also, in the meantime, a request for patience. There's so much to love. And so many who love me.

To 2007, to turning 21, to a better year ahead.

cheers

Destination Danang

2006-12-09T21:20:00.000+08:00

Dear all!

I have removed my annoying tagboard...I hope. I'm so out of touch with my blog its embarrassing.

Anyway, I'm flying off to Danang, Vietnam from the 11th (Monday) till the 30th for an immense exercise in bond and karma building. Among other things, we'll be starting a library and a reading room thingie for little bitty Vietnamese kids, painting and renovating a school, or a few schools, doing some teaching and hanging out with kids, etc, etc.

I'm looking forward to it!

Yeah, Christmas will be spent there. No more tinsel and fairy lights for me. People say what we're doing is a million times more meaningful. I guess its meaningful different.

I'll miss everyone, and here's a be-earlied christmas siwh to all of you people who still bother with my blog. I;ll try and update this, web excess permitting

Cheers, and farewell sunny Singapore!

post run

2006-11-11T01:36:00.000+08:00

there are days when you awake expecting so much from the world only to have her fuck you over and throw every good thing you imagined back at you in the reverse.

well I just had one of those days and the sense of fucked-overness was mitigated only after a midnight run. I used to think that the best thing to do at times like this would be to live through it; to face the god damn music till the concerto ends and then be glad for not hiding from the truth. Well thats over. I'll admit. I'm lousy at handling unhappiness. I over rely on people to help me deal with bad times. I have some wierd complex that makes me incapable of living with my own issues, and an even weirder one that somehow makes me expect there to be someone at any time who'll help.

There I said it. Incredibly flawed self but I swear I will get over it. In the process, in the process, but i gotta stay sane and i think I need to get past myself before anything else. I was talking to Glynsen and we were complaining about life. He suggested that all of us just need to see a big genuine smile once in a while.Not from any significant other or whatever, but just, well, a smile. To remind us all to be happy I guess. And then we were talking about smiling at ourselves in the mirror to cheer ourselves up and so forth. And in case we find it too hard to smile for ourselves, then we should do it for the people around us who ALSO need to see smiles.

I really should start practiscing what i preach. All these reasonable, rational thoughts and here I am letting my mind run away with itself as usual. I need to get over myself

I really do. This whols sem has been one massive attempt to run away. It's worked to a degree. There are things i promised myself to do. And I;ve reasonably managed to do them. At the emotional level, however, somethings are still pretty fucked. But less so. And I swear I will get over the damn thing.

I'm being vehement because i realize I'll never got on with life if I continue having the same hang ups about the same stupid things. It isnt even person or situation specific anymore. It's just. well. me. and I dont like it. And neither should anyone.

For some reason Eliot comes to mind. Give. Sympathize. Control.
Anyway. goodnight.

2006-10-16T21:55:00.000+08:00

Saint Exupery's 'The Little Prince' Quiz.

You are the little prince.
Take this quiz!

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2006-10-10T00:07:00.000+08:00

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant,
gorgeous, talented, fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small does not serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking
so that other people won't feel insecure around you.
We are all meant to shine, as children do.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously
give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear,
our presence automatically liberates others.

It doesn't always come easy.
Someone help me to believe this. It ain't that easy to face the world alone.

I'm getting there
But help me. Someone?

Possibly anyone. please.

2006-10-07T14:44:00.000+08:00

I want to meet the world. I want to taste the drunkenness of things being various. I want to embrace the beauty that is in the world and remember that these are gifts that in their fragility are so easily lost and forgotten.

Time is away and somewhere else.
You've had your time, I'll have mine.

And I'll not waste in on further unhappiness.
(ranting ahead)

Never forget that nothing in this world should be taken for granted. Not happiness or love or beauty, indeed, but also pain. and hardship and suffering.

I guess what I am trying to say is that nothing lasts forever.
In the midst of every darkness there will be a light, a point of reference, and god forbid you lose sight of that.

I awoke one morning with an intense blaze of clarity of what I had lost and gained. Would you believe me if I said that happiness is most fully realized after it has been lost for a period? In being drunk on utmost and seemingly endless contentment we forget that happiness is a choice; that it requires effort; we forget that nothing really comes for free.

It's all over now, really.

2006-09-07T15:00:00.000+08:00

I have paid my price to live with myself on the terms that I have willed
- Rudyard Kipling

The Grand Theory Part 2, guest-starring reality

2006-09-03T23:50:00.000+08:00

(in case you were wondering, part 1 is here

As stated previously, I don’t entirely believe in the one, but what I do believe in is the basic idea of love, pure and simple, forming the foundation for relationships, including but not restricted to romantic relationships, so to speak. And yet, I’ve asked before and I am still trying to figure out how in the world would anyone recognize love?

We all want it, we all think we’ll eventually find it, but we all don’t know what it is, except in retrospect. We spend our lives trying to find that perfect love, but more often than not we can only hope to learn what it isn’t.

Correction. We spend our lives trying to find that perfect relationship, and when we do we call it love. Because, to quote Ken and Eugene, they really are two different things. Related, yes, but nonetheless different.

It begins with falling in love. Being in love with someone isn’t the same thing as loving someone. Falling in love is a conscious decision, and it happens in one of those magical moments in time, in one of those ephemeral split seconds that demand to be grasped tightly and immediately to prevent their being lost forever. To quote Kenneth again, there is a moment for falling in love.

Falling in love is beautiful, it’s sweet and fairytale and romantic and ideal and happy and desirable, but it isn’t the most permanent of things. It is almost entirely an out of control emotional state, and emotions are hardly reliable, especially when they belong to people like me. However, this emotional state forms the basis for a relationship to begin.

I don’t believe people stay in love with each other forever. Very lucky people do, and then you get the kinds of scenes you see in Kodak and Citybank advertisements, those with old looking couples gazing fondly at one another while watching the sunset or some equally cliché and impossibly blissful picture. But for the normal majority there will come a time when his jokes start sounding stale, when her little habits just stop seeming as cute as they once did, when the thought of seeing one another no longer ignites electric rushes of anticipation. As much as I would like to believe that relationships should be able to propagate themselves, and that love would be an unstoppable force against all odds facing the people in question, I have to recognize that that simply isn’t true.

Falling in love is easy. Staying in love isn’t. Staying in a relationship isn’t either. But given enough effort, and commitment, and time, and lots of other things I can’t even begin to think of, this road leads all the way down the line to the core of love itself.

Neither could have said if their mutual dependence was based on love or convenience but they had never asked the question with their hands on their hearts because both had always preferred not to know.
Love in a Time of Cholera

And if I could, I would wish to end it without rancour and without anger, without the sense of seeing the memories of an almost perfect life go down in flames before me, without a phoenix to rise from the bloody ashes. Because I would like to believe in the possibility of love existing beyond the boundaries of the romantic.

But cest la vie. There is a great difference between that man wants in theory and what is achievable in our imperfect reality.

Dylan Thomas

2006-08-31T21:09:00.000+08:00

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light

and yes junwen, you were right about the core

2006-08-28T23:45:00.000+08:00

please don't make it this hard.

if this is payback its being done in the cruelest way possible.

if only you knew, kind sir, if only you knew.

6th MC Elections!

2006-08-28T01:22:00.000+08:00

Free publicity via New Media:

Fumin for President
Jaesson for VicePres (consider both meanings of vice)
Junwen for Secretary (kahlua, vodka -hic- or me?)
JinRui for Finance (let's pretend DnD made a profit!)
Lynnette for Welfare (and I'll implement a welfare state, heh)

ok thanks everyone

And, yay, a number 5 with Junwen's stamp of approval.

A Study in Contradiction

2006-08-17T02:42:00.000+08:00

I'm tired of hearing about principles and theories and postulations. Apparently they go nowhere and no matter how much you think about what should or should not be done, what is ir isn't right, where and how far one should go, a basic truth still stands -

That we are fallible and human, and governed above all by the changeability of the human heart.

I never understood this until now.

Principles are, after all, what we make of them, and fallible humans that we are, we create exceptions, we construct situations, we excuse ourselves when these theories fail. After all, the instinct is for satisfaction and happiness. Truth and ethics are realized only with great and constant effort. It's not easy, but understand that you betray your own ideals even as you tell me of them.

To be fair, at least the only one to lie to is yourself

2006-07-31T12:36:00.000+08:00

Well fuck it

I think I could be happier, only I forgot how.

2006-07-31T00:39:00.000+08:00

obviously i need a better reason..or in fact any reason at all.

so give me one

and i am finally seeing
why i was the one worth leaving

i learned the art of swerving into the loneliest evening

"an awkward morning beats a boring night"

2006-07-29T13:09:00.000+08:00

(spotted on a customer's tee)

Anyway. I'm not sad and I'm not angry. I'm not even tired.

Yet.

In fact all I want to do is finish my 8 days of work and go buy a pair of pretty heels.

That's good, right?

CAMP

2006-07-25T00:10:00.000+08:00

Camp is over and I look back at it with strangely mixed feelings. I'm glad to have been there, to have experienced and learnt the many things I did and to have survived. Yet somewhere another little voice questions if all that we went through for camp was justified.

I've read Aileen and Vic's blog and it must be said that neither were fully happy before, or during, the camp. Perhaps, as Aileen said, all of us were too busy to pay enough attention to one another to notice. Vic was sad because she said she felt left out of the non-games programmes, partly because they were run by the couply people. And yes, it is true, we did run into a bad habit of throwing Vic the random little things to do, like scoring and wet weather. And Dominic, Jae, and I are also guilty of keeping much of the haunted house and clues stuff to ourselves, mainly because we wanted to keep it under wraps to prevent info from spreading to the freshies. That was totally a mistake and we apologize.

I'm sorry too for whatever stress we put Aileen and Sze Han through. It is true that we weren't always the most sympathetic of people, even though I think most of us did try to make it easier for Aileen. But as for the fights and the quarrels about programme matters and etc etc. Well.

I believe we wanted to do this as friends, and I hoped that working on camp together would bring us closer and all that...basically, all I hoped for was for the bunch of us to have fun together. In a sense, yes, we have had fun running around, going for endless coffee meetings at Pacific and cheonging last minute matters in our new home named ChatterCube and argueing about the best way to tortue the innocent and happy freshies and so many other things that I will one day look back on and smile. But to quote Sze Han, friends are the hardest people to work with. And I don't want any work-related camp screwups to ruin the friendships we have. I, as always and its becoming a cliche, wanted everything to be nice and happy. And I'm sorry for all the times that this didn't happen. I don't know how to express it, but I really am.

I feel like I'm giving so little back in exchange for all of what you guys have one and all you guys have gone through (refer to Vic's blog and Aileen's blog and previous post).

I wish I could turn back time and make everything have gone better.

Still, camp seems to have been well received, and so thank yourselves guys. credit goes out to you and none of in could have happened without you.

YOU includes the FOP people, Fumin, Jit Soon, Eemin, as well as certain members of the 5th MC who lent their unfailing support and help in times of dire need, people like Edwin and WenQi and KENT whom we love.

In fact kent probably deserve a seperate thank you for mysteriously appearing at the last second and helping us with the food stuff, the rahrah-ing and organizing, for distracting the freshies away from our messiness and fooling them into thinking that the time-filler cheers were actually planned and for not complaining when I crashed his room.

YOU also includes Joyce for her last minute and invaluable help with clues, haunted house, the ball-ball, the make-up, for staying up late with all of us and for helping us fill in as a last minute OGL cum stationmaster and for in general being a very nice person.

And how can I forget the (george) Lucas (ho) for his brilliant video which I foresee will go down in NUS history as the greatest FOC video ever made

YOU also includes Brandon and Jae for the destressing smokes, the pink elephants for being themselves and the half a prawn for being the occasional half a prawn, my WONDERFUL OG NINJA for having such a fantastic attitude as well as Jon Kwok, Vivien, Yiling, Gay Yong and especially JinRui for pulling the OG together and for not forgetting me despite my sporadic appearances. I feel loved ;) thank you for including me in the group even though I was hardly with you all.

YOU must ALSO include PRof Teo for being such a giggly good sport and chuckling all the way through the inaugaral Haunted House tour.

I was quite happy at the camp, actually. Makes me feel doubly bad for those who weren't.
But I digress.

advertising for aileen and vic

2006-07-17T01:55:00.000+08:00

My two cents worth on the latest topic on the AILEEN and VICTORIA relationship forums.

Namely: On the Possibility of sustaining a relationship between a Guy in NS and a Girl in Uni.

The honest sincere truth is that, truly, I would have little to say. My dating policy strictly excludes NS guys. To date, I haven't dated one. I haven't even been in a position that might lead to me dating one.

It's not that I don't think these sort of relationships will work. They just won't work for me. True story: I'm terrible at commitments. I can't ever decide what I want. I don't want to make someone else suffer for my indecisiveness (although that's happened before, regrettably). I'm also very bad at sustaining anything over a long term period, especially if the thing in question involves great and constant effort on my part.

I'd probably make a better friend than a girlfriend. But who am I fooling.

Everything will self destruct if I wait long enough.

Counting Down

2006-07-14T23:16:00.000+08:00

"I'm feeling so wonderful you won't believe how wonderful I'm feeling. If I could articulate how wonderful I'm feeling right now you'll go wow I can't believe she's feeling that wonderful."
Nurul the Great

Remind me to post this up again when I can actually say it and mean it. That will be approximately next Friday, when I foresee myself looking back at the USC camp and marvelling at what a smashing success it turned out to be, and looking forward to Pal's birthday party which would alsp promise to be a smashing success.

With 3 days (or less) to go before camp everyone's going a little crazy. To date, camp has caused
1) Lynn and Jae to self destruct in Harbourfront
2) Victoria to not be able to spend time at home fulfilling family obligations
3) Dominic to have less time to spend with Joyce even though Joyce has been away for 2 months
4) Aileen and SzeHan to argue
5) Aileen to not be happy
6) Jae to be sick
7) Everyone to be busy tired and stressed.

The dynamics of working with friends are so much harder to figure out. In a sense, everyone feels obligated, or no, everyone sincerely wants everyone else to be happy, but simultaneously everyone expects to be happier working with friends who want them to be happy, rather than with strangers who don't give a damn.

I hope we don't all end up hating each other after this. We came into it as friends. That has no reason to change. And I'll spend a long time being miserable if it does.

Till then,
Cheers

Love your very sleepy panda-eyed bruised camp vice-director lynnette kang

My life as i know it

2006-07-12T20:32:00.000+08:00

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Notes from Team Merlion

2006-07-10T01:55:00.000+08:00

Today I will wrote about the reason why I haven’t been writing for the past month or so. I know it’s the holidays and you expect that a lot of stuff happens during holidays, more than term time at any rate. Yes. True. I’ve just been so preoccupied by stuff that I haven’t had time to write about it.

My blog isn’t even one of those that people read for deep and interesting and well thought out arguments or fully developed theses about life, the universe, and everything. Its one of those that people read to amuse themselves by my silly exploits and extreme good luck (how many times have I lost my wallet?) or to update themselves about my life. In other words, it’s probably interesting only to those who know me. Therefore if you already know me you will probably already know what I busy my little self with. Therefore I am tempted to conclude that this post is unnecessary and terminate it here.

But anyway. I feel like blogging about camp. So you’re just going to have to indulge me.

USC FOC abbreviates University Scholars Club Freshman Orientation Camp. FOCs. We all know what those are. I had great fun at mine, and I’m crossing my fingers and hoping that this year’s will be at least as good. I think I’ve sold my soul for camp. I’ve had fights with my parents AND boyfriend/domineering Boss about camp related stuff. I’ve forgone a perfectly good and nicely-paying holiday job because I needed the time. I misplaced my social life somewhere along the line. I’m tired.

What sane soul would want to spend a perfectly good 3 months worth of slack time in meeting after meeting after saikang work after meeting? It doesn’t make sense, even to me, but nevermind how it happened, there are (at least) 6 of us who for better or worse fall in the above category, and we’re sticking it through to the end. Forget the fact that we’re all overworked and underslept and thoroughly sick of the Pacific Coffee at Citylink, and that we have a week left to go and everyone’s just rushing for time.

We’re doing it and the end is near.

If you’re a camp-planning virgin, I can assure you that a 6-person committee is MINISCULE. We’re not a 6-person committee of specialized planners or saikang warriors. We’re a 6-person committee of planners moneycollectors photographers gameplanners excelsheetcreators secretaries doers thinkers scriptwriters filmproducers phonecallmakers everything all in one. USP (uni scholars programme all say we’re not scholars!) is a tiny faculty. We’re as small as say, medicine or law. BUT while doctors and lawyers get to devote their entire lives to their home faculties, USP-ers (yes I refuse to call us scholars!) divide their time between USP and their home faculty, like arts or whatever. And since we’re small to begin with we end up never having enough people to do stuff. I mean, think about it…6 people would be the size of some obscure sub sub committee in Arts. But on the other hand, USP’s smallness makes it somehow nice. Arts camp had OGs with 40 odd people in them. We have weeny OGs with maybe 12 people. Its nice to be able to get to know everyone personally.I think I like the people here. Uni life just wouldn’t be the same without the bunch of crazy people I know (pals. frogs. whatever you may call them). As a matter of fact our camp com is totally nepotistic. We signed up as one massive bunch. We are first and foremost friends. We just happen to work together. In idealistic moments I like to imagine that because we all met through orientation (more or less) and PGP and because we all love each other so much, we all decided to embark on a shared mission to spread the love and propagate the friendships we formed in USP to the freshies. Oooh feel the love!

*dances around tossing flower petals and flashing a peace sign while John Lennon plays in the background*

I probably sound silly. But it must be true to some degree that to get a faculty to bond as a faculty there is essentially no other way to work other than the bottom up. Especially if it’s a small faculty like ours. People as a general rule do not feel sudden urges to declare undying love for an organization. They do, however, tend to form bonds with people that they share something in common with. The main reason I’m so attached to USP is because most of my closest(ish) uni friends are here. I’ve no impetus to move my affections elsewhere.

(Gosh.Tthat was a weird sentence!)

But in any case. I’m happy with how I spent my hols, and it’s been a (gut-wrenching hair raising heartbreaking) experience. Kudos to all the nice com people who’ve worked so hard on this. To quote Jae, the weirdest thing about the camp so far is how people are fighting to get more work given to them because they think everyone else is doing too much work. Dominic thinks I work too hard. I think Dominic works too hard. Aileen thinks SzeHan is overworked. SzeHan insists that he’s doing Ok. And Jaesson can’t find enough stuff for us all to do.

Surreal but true. Such are the days of our lives

I love Jaesson Dominic Aileen Victoria Szehan.

Silly Thing that Isnt Me

2006-07-06T23:14:00.000+08:00

TEN FIRSTS:
First Best Friend: ang moh chick in primary school called merlinda

First Nickname: random permutations of name - nettenette, netty, lynnie etc.

First Pet: i group my formative years into a random blur collectively known as 'when i was young" and during this time i recall owning a sweet silky terrier called sammy, 2 bunnies, goldfish, a cage of hamsters and a cockatoo. don't ask me why theyre gone i think death just swooped down on the household one day.

First Piercing: the ears. though a very rude joke flashed itself across my mind (oh no lynnette shut up)

First Crush: I can't honestly remember. i think it was Brett the Hitman Heart. Or some wrestling character in pink and black.

First CD: Enya. Strange but true. It was the paint the sky with stars album.

First Car: is awaiting.

First Alcoholic Drink: White wine. At some wine and cheese party

First Kiss: Some things are best left unrecorded. (quote unquote valerie)

First Stuffed Animal: This teeny pink bunny that I was super attached to and I cried because I left it on the kiddy ride in cold storage one night and couldnt get it back.

NINE LASTS:
Last Alchoholic Beverage: White wine at Raffles Hotel the Courtyard

Last Car Ride: To Toa Payoh from school courtesy of Dominic the Domineering.

Last Movie Seen: Havoc. its not as good as it looks.

Last Phone Call: Kenneth Blake Goh who ditched me for the shower.

Last Song Played: Nada Surf's If You Leave. Does it count if it was because I was practising the guitar? If not, then Tori Amos.

Last Meal: Dinner?

Last Time In Love: ohhh last week and the week before that and now and for a lot longer

Last Time You Cried: Pretty long ago, actually

EIGHT "HAVE YOU EVERS":
Have you ever dated one of your best friends: Nope.

Have you ever skinny dipped: Thought about it but the sea snakes scared us off

Have you ever been on TV: Yeah a bit...just a bit

Have you ever been drunk: Not really. I get sleepy before i get drunk and besides i can't drink that well

Have you ever kissed someone, and then regretted it: Yeah.

Have you ever been stoned: its my normal state and i dont even need the drugs.

SEVEN THINGS YOU ARE WEARING:
1) Sec 2 class tee with the silly cheer
2) grubby black shorts
3) left contact lens
4) white contact lens
5) lucky fairy necklace
6) Erm. Underwear.
7) my heart on my sleeve ha

SIX THINGS YOU'VE DONE TODAY:
1) Script meeting at cityhall
2) Gave Jae face and went to school for games briefing
3) Saw a lot of USP freshies in chatterbox
4) Sent friend off at the airport
5) Cut nails
6) Blogged.

FIVE PEOPLE YOU CAN TELL ANYTHING TO:
1) Cuppycake
2) Nicolez
3) JunWen
4) Jamie in Australia provided I get a calling card
5) White iprints notebook that is my diary

FOUR FAVORITE THINGS IN NO ORDER:
1) Reading on the bed in a cosy bedside lamp lit orange and yellow room
2) Feeling loved
3) Finding that perfect book or CD after hours of browsing
4) Random hugs

THREE CHOICES:
1) Black or white: That's racist.

2) Hot or Cold: I would like you to think I'm hot, but as anyone who's been in an airconditioned room with me can attest, Im unfortunately usually cold.

3) Chocolate or Vanilla: Chocolate.

TWO THINGS YOU WANT TO DO BEFORE YOU DIE:
1) Fall in love,
2) Change the world

ONE THING YOU REGRET:
I don't do regret.

The Grand Theory of Relationships

2006-07-06T02:57:00.000+08:00

This is a nice, bloggable topic because its been coming up so often in recent conversations with random people. And I'm arguing about it so much I'm beginning to confuse myself. So here goes an attempt to verbalize (then again. I'm writing. prose-alize? To quote Brandon, TOO MUCH ELANG)

As of now, most of us don't really know what we want. Because we're all such clueless people, we think we've miraculously found what we want (in this context, Mr or Ms Right aka THE ONE) when we chance upon that one person that makes us that little bit happier.

Do I believe in THE ONE? I used to. Now I'm not entirely sure. Because there will always be someone that makes you a little bit happier than the one before, someone who seems that little bit more right than the previous. If ONE-ness is based on feelings, and if feelings are as eratic as this, then. erm. Question mark. Unless the quality of ONE-ness is transferable or otherwise rehabilitable, then that just seems wrong.

I have a friend who believes in Signs from Above. Meaning, basically, that God has somewhere in the world planted THE ONE for each and every person (with the exceptions of nuns priests and the odd sad soul who got overlooked) and while He tries to be subtle about it, He leaves a bunch of indications and signs that would lead the attentive observer towards the right ONE, eventually. Leaving aside all religious arguments my main issue with this is that these signs and indications are very often things that one only realizes in retrospect. It's one thing for a happily married couple to look back and reminisce about all the happy coincidences that brought them together, and its quite another to expect poor, confused people to take in whats happening around them and give thanks for the blessed intervention from an almighty hand. And in any case the existance of THE ONE assumes that events are at least to some extent predestined, which in effect and by way of a long argement which i will leave out excludes the possibility of free will. And I'm not exactly willing to buy that at the moment.

In place on an absolute ONE, I propose a scale of ONE-ness unique to each individual. Meaning, quite simply, that some people are more right for each other than others. This ONE-ness, which we shall arbitrarily name the O-constant, can be gauged from several factors such as personality, individual values, shared interests etc etc I will not go into details. The main point is, it’s simply easier to love some people than others. And the easier it is, the more likely that things will work out. Sometimes the O-constant is large enough so as to ensure everlasting fidelity and love. But that’s only sometimes. In most cases, it’s a little investment game we play. We find someone that seems right (high O-factor!) and if we think its worth our time, we sell our soul for a while. It doesn’t always work, but sometimes it does. And when that happens, consider yourself blessed.

THE ONE is whoever feels right, whoever makes you happy, whoever you can envision yourself spending a lifetime or more with, with no regrets. It is not decided by destiny, or by mysteriously heavenly powers, but by one’s own heart. Therefore, no. I don’t believe, at least not now, that THE ONE will descend from heaven and charm the socks off the person in question in a blinding flash of light. The possibility of ONE-ness waits within everyone, waiting to be uncovered by a revelation of true and unexpected love. It’s not easy, but it happens often enough for me to believe that it will someday work out for me too.

Where has the romantic idealist gone?

Shopping for a slightly more practical theory, perhaps. But the romantic still lurks somewhere within.

After all, I still believe in love.

More later.

Earth to Lynnette

2006-06-29T00:00:00.000+08:00

Someone tell me to snap out of it.

Once again, silly idealistic little daydreams of impossible fairytale worlds are not going to survive the inevitable transition to the real world.

Snap out of it, my girl.

Prelude

2006-06-28T00:25:00.000+08:00

What ravages of spirit
Conjured this temptuous rage
Created you a monster
Broken by the rules of love
And fate has led you through it
You do what you have to do
And fate has led you through it
You do what you have to do ...

And I have the sense to recognize that
I don’t know how to let you go

Every moment marked
With apparitions of your soul
I’m ever swiftly moving
Trying to escape this desire
The yearning to be near you
I do what I have to do
The yearning to be near you
I do what I have to do

But I have the sense to recognize
That I don’t know how to let you go

A glowing ember
Burning hot
Burning slow
Deep within I’m shaken by the violence
Of existing for only you
I know I can’t be with you
I do what I have to do
I know I can’t be with you
I do what I have to do
And I have sense to recognize but
I don’t know how to let you go
I don’t know how to let you go
I don’t know how to let you go

no signboard

2006-06-21T20:42:00.000+08:00

I want to live life intensely and completely, to love wholeheartedly, and to feel the purity of every god damn emotion explode within me.

There are moments that suspend themselves in time, moments of such heartbreaking beauty that make me want to return to them again and again. I want to save all these and carry them with me; as talismans of possible happiness in a gloomier future.

And yet all anyone ever really has is the present.

And therefore, remind me to be happy, no matter what.

(phil delon gillian ken if you're reading this, remind me again when you have to)

DVDs lynnette wants to watch

2006-06-20T00:34:00.000+08:00

Garden State
Trainspotting
Amelie
Wings of Desire
The Breakfast Club
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
City of GOd
Il Postino
Dead Poets Society
Heathers
Benny and Joon
What's Eating Gilbert Grape
Ed Wood
Baghdad Cafe

Good Things that have happened in the past One Month or so

2006-06-17T23:19:00.000+08:00

1. Aileen had a beautiful wedding and I was part of it, made a thank you speech, and was mentioned in a thank you speech

2. I lost - BUT FOUND! - a misplaced paper bag containing, among other things, my mother's pearls, my lucky fairy necklace from Australia, and a bra. What a lovely testament to the potential *niceness* of people and the tangibility of small and everyday. Props to the people at 4Leaves at the basement of Bugis. Thanks for making shopping centres safe places for silly shoppers who leave things around. (cough cough aileen)

3. I re-watched my all-time favourite movie Edward Scissorhands in good company and fell in love its dark, fairytale romance all over again. Movies like this make life worth living.

3. The discovery of wonderful friends in the course of an unpleasant crisis, so to speak. I don't want to dwell on its details, but thank you all you people who will be mentioned in the next few points.

4. Aileen and Vic for sitting in the loo with me for all the time it took for me to weep my eyes out and talking to me with admirable patience and reason and for providing me with much needed tissue. I love you girls, NUS and PGP wouldn't be the same without you guys wiht me on the 5th floor.

5. Sze Han and Dominic for being solidly calm and reliable and keeping the entire situation from erupting into an explosive frenzy and especially to Dominic for driving us down and for "xiao jie how are you-ing" every 5 seconds and for basically. well. everything.

6. Russell for appearing and not conplaining even though I killed his night out with BabyVic and for talking to me at Subway and hiding the twenty bucks even though i REALLY wanted to buy you guys dinner and for the nice messages at the end. Yes I know you're blunt but so am I so I think we more or less understand each other.

7. To other people who didnt know everything but who were nice - Cuppycake Junwen Phil Delon Ken Eugene Pam oh my gosh guys you have no idea how much i love you all.

8. I realize I'm starting to thank people. Im supposed to be making a list of things that happened that made me happy. Oh well. I guess Im happy that I have so many people to thank. I'm a lucky girl cos I know so many nice people :)

9. I went on a damn cool speedboat ride from the merlion that's taking a shower because someone wanted to cheer me up! It's like hopw damn effective. I swear I spent the whole day giggling.

10. Victoria is having fun at CFA7! I'm just happy that she's happy cos I'm happy at Cheers and I want to spread the joy.

Bad things that have Happened in the Same Period of Time

There are many but I refuse to dwell on them. I've learned that being around peole who want you to be happy makes you want to convince them that you ARE, in fact happy, and when you start trying to act happy you can't help but BE happy after a while.

And this suits me well and good because...well...life's too short, once again, and I just want to float from moment to beautiful moment.

So there.

The search for a great and endless love

2006-06-07T01:10:00.000+08:00

It begins and ends in one's own willingness to deceive oneself.

It transcends the mere romantic, really. Its an illusion that taints everything we do. We believe that the powers that be are somehow greater than the sum of humanity and that they are somehow obliged to gratify our own desires. God, at least as I see it, becomes this strange and wonderful magician who waves a wand and produces all the manner of wonderful things. Quothe from Bible: Ask and ye shall receive, and we believe that somehow a love from this strange and unknown magician will help us drift safely through the sands of time.

Its not disprovable, but neither is it believable except through faith.

Faith is the noble brother of delusion. It is, on a good day, a secure pair of rose tinted glasses affixed firmly on holy noses. And on a bad day, it is nothing more than an excuse to believe what we want to believe.

All this in the name of the search for that Great and Endless Love.

2006-06-04T15:13:00.000+08:00

The last girl in the last reason to make this last for as long as I could

First kiss in your first time that I felt connected to anything
The weight of water, the way you told me to look past everything I had ever learned
The final word in the final seconds you ever learned to me was love

Snow Patrol
Make This Go On Forever

Updates part one

2006-06-01T20:43:00.000+08:00

With regards to everything that's happened for the past month or more and the reason why I MIA-ed for so long, well, I have a really good reason

I was LAZY. and BUSY of course, but mainly toe former. Thoughts congeal in my brain if left for too long, and end up being displaced by later events that congeal again all too soon before I blog about them and hence, my MIA status. Do excuse me.

But anyhow. A summary

1. CAP
Here goes my results.

Structure of Sentences and Meaning A+
Reading Film and Cultural Texts A
Biodiversity and Conservation Biology B+
The Life, Birth and Death of Stars B+
Introduction to Jap Studies B

Really ironically, my lowest grade came from a 11o1E introductory module, one that's supposed to be really crap easy and brainless. And the Lit module that I thought I would at the very least fail got me an A. Weird, but true and I'm not complaining. CAP this sem was 4.3, which is kinda better than I expected, and this puts my cumalative at 4.35.
But whatever.

2. Apple
ishop at Cineleisure, which is the Club21 Apple store at the top floor below the cinemas at cineleisure is my current venue of money-making. I don't honestly know what exactly I'm doing there because I'm the least technophilic person I know. The good thing about ishop is, the guy in charge only schedules me to work like 1 or 2 days a week, and its on days that i tell him I'm free. Excellent for me cos my schedule's too messy for any sort of regular job, what with FOC and teh wedding and cheers and an insistent social life.

Its a scary place.

There's absolutely minimal training ("the computers are here, the ipods are there, this is zillah and you can follow her. Ok go on"). and I had the absolute worst day of my life on ,my first day there. I didn't know anything, or anyone, and I had to ask someone for about 80% of the stuff customers asked me. I was as clueless as...as...Jae trying to sell Shakespeare in Borders. Or Vic trying to play Cocktailopoly. Or Junny-wen on a date with a girl (shitdamnscrew!sorry!)

I swear I almost quit after day 1. I came out at 9.30 slightly delirious, rattling on to Jae about mysterious mac devices that would, if connected to one's ipod with the correct wire and suitable dock, park one's car, toast one's bread while simultaneously switching on the television and the ceiling fan. Im not kidding. Do not underestimate that little ipod, there are a surprising number of things a person with sufficient time and knowhow can do with it. And a corresponding number of confusing devices to fulfil these. But anyhow, the second day was a thousand percent better, and I guess I'll still stick with that little fruit for now.

3. cheers
I've finally started proper work with Cheers and I am so glad I'm here. I'll admit I was apprehensive and kinda not sure whether the whole rahrah the little children scene was my thing or not, but Phil was right - it kinda all fits together when you actually start doing it properly. Practising scenarios with fellow cheerios acting like children is ABSOLUTELY nothing like dealing with the kids themselves.

Primary school kids are noisy bratty messes, but they're also incredibly sweet and responsive. At least those I dealt with were - really energetic and enthusiastic, and most of the time fairly obedient. It's really moving to see their responses on their evaluation sheets after the programme - one kid wrote that the only thing he didn't like about the whole thing was the the instructors he liked (ie us) were going to have to leave. Coming from a little kid, that statement just seemed to sincere and filled with possibility. There was none of the coolness and detachment that older kids, or teens, seem to be filled with. It was just...sweet.

And that's why i feel this absurd sense of happy fulfilment now.

More to say, but I gotta go.
Be glad I blogged. I'll be back soon!

hello i-leen

2006-05-04T16:06:00.000+08:00

Your True Love Is an Aries

Why you'll love an Aries:

An Aries has the red-hot seduction skills to woo you
Never boring, an Aries will give you the romantic challenge you crave!

Why an Aries will love you:

You have the intensity and energy to go head to head with your Aries...
And the undying passion to keep an Aries coming back for more.

What Sign Is Your True Love?

whooops.

You Are 22% Evil

A bit of evil lurks in your heart, but you hide it well.
In some ways, you are the most dangerous kind of evil.

How Evil Are You?

I'm less evil than aileen?????

Your Quirk Factor: 48%

You're a pretty quirky person, but you're just normal enough to hide it.
Congratulations - you've fooled other people into thinking you're just like them!

How Quirky Are You?

is that supposed to be..uhm...a compliment?

People Envy Your Ingenuity

You're a person with unique ideas, big plans, and a zany outlook on life. Many people look to you for inspiration.
People envy your creativity and "who cares?" attitude. They feel very ordinary next to you - and they usually are!

What Do People Envy About You?

you poor little ordinary people. look at great anbd wonderful me!

lalala. i'm enjoying the great nothingness of the holidays. get ma a job anyone? nice pay and interesting people required :)

2006-04-27T02:25:00.000+08:00

i have a paper at 9 tomorrow and i can't sleep

i hate feeling edgy unlikeable and alone

:(

inspired by crystal

2006-04-25T03:03:00.000+08:00

Funnest Class
EN1101E, if nothing else for my coool, quirky, happy tutorial class plus tutor. Its the only class ever where we consistently left later than the stipulated time. No mean feat considering it was held at 5 pm on Thursdays

Second Funnest Class
My USP writing module. Because also of a collection of weird, funky and very amusing classmates, a deceptively dapper Irish-ish prof and a brilliant line-up of readings and lessons. Where else would one find such diverse essay topics as: chinese cemetaries, HUPs, hubs, Hello Kitties, SAF and the remains of the chinese?

Most disappointing class
Stars. Its not about stars, darlings.

Most unexpectedly good class
Its a TIE between
1)EL2101 because for some undefinable reason, it simply felt nice, and
2)How Technologies Work, which on hindsight, was highly interesting, very useful, and by far the least gut wrenching science USP module ever. Kudos to Parwani, who can make even exam questions sound amusing. Where else can one get to battle Aliens named Alien and Balien to answer questions on wave theory?

Least Attended Class
Most Unarguably, Japanese Studies, JS1101E
Lectures attended: 3/15
Tutorials attended: 2/6
Final Grade: ?

OK. the end and goodnight im on a panadol high

2006-04-25T02:52:00.000+08:00

Dear all

Last minute studying has never worked for me and will not start this time. To quote Brandon, my CAP gone for (insert extreme sprot that involves falling from great heights).

I had time, really I did, but it seemed so essential to just hang with my friends, my darling fellow frogs of the last year. It is a sad fact of my life that almost non of them will be staying her next sem, and so, if I will, saturate myself with guitar playing hamster chasing sitting on the floor in someone's room talking afternoons on self-declared free days.

why do i feel like everythings changing too fast for me?

I'm going nostalgic.
It was a brilliant sem, a brilliant past year, and I wish we could sll stay this protected forever.

Lovingalways,
(though i sometimes neglect the blog)
lynn

2006-04-09T14:26:00.000+08:00

Click here to view my house

Samuel says very smart things

2006-04-02T20:46:00.000+08:00

Himbos are

Paris Hiltons on steroids with a phallus.

What a description.

And here they come!

2006-03-27T01:40:00.000+08:00

Welcome, o beloved friends from Harvard.

Invasive Species

2006-03-25T04:55:00.000+08:00

You know how people in hostel are always desperate to use the dryers in the laundry and when there's one that's finished its cycle, the whatever clothes are in there are automatically taken out, dumped out on top of the dryer, leaving the little guy vacated for next in line to use.

It happens. I try not to think about the random person that may have manhandled my clothes. I try not to do it, anyway. But it happens.

I just picked up my stack of freshly laundered displaced to the top of the dryer articles of clothing. While sorting them out in my room

I found

CKs.

Not mine.

Male.

I'm like, wtf. thats not mine what do you want me to do with it and why is it even in my stash of laundry?

Its like the reverse of underwear thieving. Or else a really embarrasing mistake. At least he's spared the indignity of having to deal with a strange person's undies.

Its not like i can return them. And its kinda weird to throw them away? And no fucking way am I going to carry them back down to the laundry room.

I feel like throwing them down 3 levels to Brandon's moss.

Sigh.

2006-03-24T22:53:00.000+08:00

long island tea

2006-03-23T01:04:00.000+08:00

Junwen wants to have a final drinking session and volunteers to supply Galliano and absolut.

why does that sound so suspicious?

Can't help but love stupid drunk males.

I have a bifurcated penis

2006-03-20T22:19:00.000+08:00

Ten Top Trivia Tips about Lynnette!

Carnivorous animals will not eat another animal that has been hit by Lynnette!
The Vikings believed that the Northern lights were caused by Lynnette as she rode out to collect warriors slain in battle!
Dolphins sleep at night just below the surface of Lynnette, and frequently rise to the surface for air!
Lynnette will give a higher yield if milked when listening to music!
The Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter is made entirely of Lynnette.
The pharoahs of ancient Egypt wore garments made with thin threads of beaten Lynnette.
Olympic badminton rules say that Lynnette must have exactly fourteen feathers!
Lynnette has a bifurcated penis.
Until the 1960s, Lynnette was not allowed to enter Disneyland.
India tested its first nuclear Lynnette in 1974.

Newton's 3rd Law

2006-03-14T23:59:00.000+08:00

Good thing: We won 3rd prize in Arts Quiz!
Bad thing: Among other things, the cash prize was 18bucks. There were 3 of us and a $5 registration fee per person. Go do the maths

Good thing: I lost weight!
Bad thing: Due to a disgusting case of tonsilitis over the past week which resulted in swollen lymph glands and whatever else, I look fat and round and this has been commented upon. So sad :(

Good thing: I'm going to start some sort of training which will get me a job at Phil's company and in the near future I will be less broke!
Bad thing: My dad doesn't want to pay my school fees and they took it out of my account and I think I over-shopped or something due to large number of people being born in March and in the even nearer future, I'm broke.

Bad thing: I got for the first time in my life, a B- for my lit paper
Good thing: The tutor actually thinks its a good grade. Weird.

Bad thing: I started crying after namazie's silly class today because I was stressed and confused by too many physics equations and because I didn't know that triangles were the same thing as delta and I felt stupid because someone was trying to explain the heisenberg's uncertainty principle to me using a line and a ruler even though i already knew what the principle was. (then again namazie's explanation was so odd it made it seem as if i didn't)
Good thing: I had nice Crystal and Nat to fuss over me and SoonPal to laugh at me and the co-op to buy hazelnut chocolate and Jae to scream at and then apologize to.

Conclusion: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

How Tech Works: USP's most useful module

the hole

2006-03-07T10:47:00.000+08:00

My second earhole closed up due to months of neglect and non-earring earing. I tried to repoke it in Jae's room because I found one of my old studs there and thought I should put it to good use. So in went the earring and out came a scream.

Its not a good idea, trying to reopen a healed piercing with a none too sharp earring stud. Its kinda like trying to jab a shitake mushroom with the sharp end of a chopstick. (not kidding, its that exact same consistency and everything)

Jae was hiding in a corner because the blood scared him.

Just for the record, when I went ear-piercing with Brandon, somebody mysteriously disappeared to the washroom leaving me with Brandy to hang on to instead.

ha

Anyway, the bleeding got a bit scary and I ended up using Jae's vodka (peach or plain?) as a disinfectant. So i really should be thanking him for his generosity.

stupid matric card

2006-03-04T16:41:00.000+08:00

The Queen of All Lost Things (meaning me) lost her matric card at the start of last sem. No, wait, I lost it even before the start of last sem, sometime during rag rehearsals at Xenbar. I remember assuming I left it at Xenbar and therefore resigning myself to the fact that I would never get it back.

And so I subsisted until now on no matric card.

I borrowed library books on other people's cards (i think I pissed a lot of people off. I'm very lousy at returnuing books on time)

I had to go on a matric card hunt everytime I wanted to use the USP computer room to print. When all else failed, I knocked on the door and stared in with big, sad eyes.

I would be the only idiot using ezlink card for identification during exams.

And so my life was for the past semester and a half until last Thursday I decided to get my act together and go apply for a new card at the student centre since I was going to be there to pay my bills. I was very proud of myself :)

And then TODAY, yes, TODAY I receive an email from OSA, telling me to go down and collect my lost card which has been found .

Absolutely. Perfect. Timing.
Now i got two matric cards.

Its not like owning two cards is going to make up for all the times I didn't have a card. Think what, (0+2) divide by 2 = 1 issit??

If you're laughing at this, I'm telling you, its not funny

2006-03-02T11:26:00.000+08:00

why is it even called square one?

It isn't the beginning; to have gotten there one needs to have made the decision to take the first step already. And so there are no square ones and no absolute beginnings, even more so when you make a conscious choice to undo a commitment made and land yourseld back in a situation you intended to avoid

There are too many fucking squares in the world

chere

pooooooooofffff.....

2006-02-28T21:33:00.000+08:00

Oh I've been such a bitch its a wonder i haven't been banished to some level of hell in a cage with ravaging hamsters chewing at my toes and a nest of roaches for good company already

i've watched myself being shoved along some fucked up out of control sine curve and dragging along a whole host of unfortunate people with me.

I keep forgetting not to make silly excuses for myself. Silly little over-emotional girls need to reminded of such things as the following:

the world does not revolve around me and my silly microcosm of non-essential not really very important problems

and i have absolutely and utterly no right to involve poor innocent trying to be nice people in my drive towards self destruction even if i insist on heading down that trajectory, God forbid

and my own warped logic will not for one second stand the test of reality. therefore feeling sorry for myself on the basis of the random self-pitying thoughts trekking through my brain is henceforth prohibited.

and really, i should have nothing to complain about. theres so much of life to live, and it really doesn't make sense to waste any of it sitting around radiating misery.

One of my Hemingway lectures mentioned the Law of Positive Energy; meaning, that you're supposed to give back more (positive) energy to the world than you take out of it. I remember thinking it was a wonderful concept. And it is, and it should be my mantra for everytime little miss depressive comes knocking.

adios, and if you read this and see me being silly at some later point in time please do the world a favour and smack me hard.

really really

Post dated from Nick's wedding:

2006-02-26T02:00:00.000+08:00

This was supposed to be posted on lke the 12th? but I didn't get round to publishing it until now.

Nick's really my uncle but he looks young, and in fact isn't really that much older and as a result foled me for the greater part of my life into believing that he was my cousin. It only clicked a few years ago when it dawned on me that Nick's father was my grand-uncle, which would make Nick my....

nevermind

As unauspicius as this might sound, it struck me during the wedding that weirdly, I've been surrounded most of my life my failed/ non-existant ages. My grandparents on both sides are more or less not on speaking terms with one another. My parents split up when i was 8 or 9, and an 2 outta 3 of my mother's sisters had dysfunctional/MIA/ultra loser husbands. I don't think any of my cousins plan on getting married. Hardly any of my mother's closer friends are married - One had a fiance die of cancer, another one's like nun-ish and married to the church, and another one is fanatically feminist and man-hating.

It’s disconcerting to think that this is my norm. I am so used to father-less, husband-less households that they seem more real to me that father-ful, husband-ful normality.

But what I want to say it this. Living the way I do is difficult, but not in the way most would expect. I am not scarred for life, I do not hate my parents, and I don’t feel that marriages are doomed and therefore fiercely for the idea of a lifetime of spinsterhood. On the contrary, if anything, it makes me doubly determined not to fuck up my life the way my parents did, and their parents before them.

Being the only kid in a single parent household, for me, makes it hard to live through the little things. Tiny insignificant details that no one thinks about.

Like food. Food’s always been a strangely hairy issue at home. Its hard cooking just for two, and even then there’s always tons of stuff left behind. So we’re not much of a cooking family, and when I’m off in hall, my mother never cooks, and I have no idea what she eats because the fridge seems permanently devoid of edibles. She calls me in school and says she hates eating alone. Well its sad but what can I do? As much as I feel a degree of responsibility towards her I need to live my life too, and I can’t try and multi-task as a daughter and a husband-surrogate. It’s too exhausting. And there’s only me and her and no in-between buffer.

Like the faux passes of kindly but unknowing relatives at wedding dinners/ new year visits/ funerals. Like a cousin twice removed morbidly put, you can’t blame them if you see them once every funeral . Its very difficult to answer a question like “Where’s your mother?” without bringing on a barrage of questions. Or something like “How are your parents?” Gee, they’re hardly on speaking terms, and how are yours? Its awkward and I don’t like it. At Nick’s wedding my mother wasn’t invited, and my dad nicely turned up with who he called his “lady friend”. It was the most fucked up thing ever. Nick’s sister and a bunch of other people were all trying to figure out why my mother wasn’t there and the moment Dad + Celia walked in a dozen pairs of sympathetic eyes turned on me. I don’t give a shit what they do, but I do wish they’d settle their messy little affairs among themselves and not leave me to handle situations that I have hardly anything to do with.

I wouldn’t want to inflict this on anyone, ever. I’m prepared to mess up my own life, but not my kids’, if I ever do have any. I don’t feel prepared to sacrifice my sanity and happiness for the sake of my mother even if my duty as a daughter decrees otherwise. As un-nice as that might sound, and anyone’s welcome to despise me for it, well I don’t want to go through life saddled with the burden of a decision that wasn’t even mine to make. And I can’t expect anyone to do the same for me.

And still I believe in happy endings.

In the middle of Nick’s thanking everybody speech he kinda choked and started tearing onstage. I don’t blame him, I would too. There’s so much too hope for, and so many possibilities for happiness. I don’t believe I’d consciously give any of it up.

Lost letters

2006-02-26T01:06:00.000+08:00

In The Diving Bell and the Butterfly Jean-Dominique Bauby is almost fully paralyzed save for the ability to blink his left eye. It is through this that me manages to sustain contact with the outside world. His friends construct a specially designed alphabet board, one where the most commonly used alphabets in french are placed in front, and then painstakingly read out letter by letter until Jean stops them with a wink. It goes on until he forms whole words. Sentences. The stuff of everyday conversation, but with oh so much effort.

Jean describes his visitors' efforts at conversations. Nervous ones tend to go too fast and miss his blinks. Thorough, meticulous people make for laborious work, but Jean is seldom misunderstood. Then there are those who, in response to a long and effortful "how are you" or similar, answer with a bland "fine" and leave it at that, and the ball is back in Jean's court.

It takes him that much effort to speak, and would cost the other party so little to try a little harder to contribute to the conversation. If I was Jean I'd be going crazy. I'd feel like I was speaking to the most unfeeling of brick walls ever.

And that's what its like now. I hate the way you dismiss me, the way you brush aside things I say with the most perfunctory replies. I m trying to tell you something, and you don't listen.

You don't even see how hard it is for me to speak, and you walk out of the door ignoring my presence and leaving me cold.

did you even realize that?

Love thang

2006-02-23T23:42:00.000+08:00

The Keys to Your Heart

You are attracted to good manners and elegance.

In love, you feel the most alive when your partner is patient and never willing to give up on you.

You'd like to your lover to think you are optimistic and happy.

You would be forced to break up with someone who was ruthless, cold-blooded, and sarcastic.

Your ideal relationship is lasting. You want a relationship that looks to the future... one you can grow with.

Your risk of cheating is zero. You care about society and morality. You would never break a commitment.

You think of marriage something you've always wanted... though you haven't really thought about it.

In this moment, you think of love as something you thirst for. You'll do anything for love, but you won't fall for it easily.

What Are The Keys To Your Heart?

Your Five Variable Love Profile

Propensity for Monogamy:

Your propensity for monogamy is low.
You see love as a gift that you should give to many.
It's hard for you to imagine being with one person at at time...
Let alone one person for the rest of your life!

Experience Level:

Your experience level is high.
You've loved, lost, and loved again.
You have had a wide range of love experiences.
And when the real thing comes along, you know it!

Dominance:

Your dominance is low.
This doesn't mean you're a doormat, just balanced.
You know a relationship is not about getting your way.
And you love to give your sweetie a lot of freedom.

Cynicism:

Your cynicism is low.
You are an eternal optimist when it comes to love and romance.
No matter how many times you've been hurt - you're never bitter.
You believe in one true love, your perfect soulmate.
And if you haven't found true love yet, you know you will soon.

Independence:

Your independence is high.
You don't need to be in love, and sometimes you don't even want love.
Having your own life is very important for you...
Even more important than having a relationship.

The Five Variable Love Test

I sometimes wish someone would just give me the perfect vanila cookie recipe and let me live in peace forever. I am both an idealist and a cynic. I believe in a perfect love, but not necessarily for me. Mr Right aka the one aka soulmate probably does exist, but I don't know if I'll recognize him even if he tapdanced in a striped hat on my nose.

jump on the bandwagon

2006-02-23T10:57:00.000+08:00

and here is

My Johari Window

The Princess of Doom

2006-02-18T00:02:00.000+08:00

I'm hungry andI want chocolate chip cookies!

I sit lonely and forlorn in my ivory tower, awaiting my cookie in shining armour to come rescue me from the abyss of hunger in which i pine.

I come, fair princess, to rescue you from NOOOOO let GOOOOOO!!! ARRRRGHHHHH!!!!!

crunch crunch crunch

Not very polite to eat a visitor and his friends. (hey. cookies come in PACKS, dont they. I'm sure they make friends in there)

Maybe I should wish for a KNIGHT in shining armour, bearing gifts of the finest cookie, to come visit me instead.

Dedicated to Natalie

2006-02-14T01:29:00.000+08:00

Four things/people that make me smile:
1. Feeling loved :)
2. My yellow big eyed floober ball
3. Jae
4. My pals

Four ways to win my heart :
1. Tolerance - Put up with extreme moodswings (mine)
2. Conversation - Talk to me over long, coffee saturated breakfasts about life, the universe, and everything!
3. Chivalry, and
4. An overload of affection

Four things i believe in:
1. That God is too big to fit into any one single religion
2. That happiness - or contentment- is a choice
3. That its good to be alive
4. Ghosts

Four things I'm afraid of:
1. Becoming cynical and jaded and bored with life
2. Being alone
3. Roaches
4. Losing my wallet/ handphone irretrievably

Four things I do everyday:
1. Sleep
2. Eat
3. Blink
4. Yawn

Four things/people I want to see right now
1. Massive plate of french fries with 3 kinds of dip and an icecream soda
2. Christina's missing tutorial that I lost
3. My quitter shroom in Aussie
4. A massive Borders gift card for S$_____(insert very large number)

Four People who should also do this
1. Jaesson
2. Victoria
3. Big Sam
4. Vasudha

Love ya all.
happy valentines :)

2006-02-05T23:28:00.000+08:00

You have a 53% chance of surviving a T-Rex Attack

You have an above average chance of surviving a T-Rex attack. You are able to recognize what the real dangers are as opposed to the imaginary ones. Go team!

Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com

The Picto-Personality Test

You are a person who likes to have fun all the time.

When alone, you let it all hang out and ignore every social convention.

You are intelligent. You use your time to its fullest potential and will go very far in life.

In the future you will be happy and live richly.

Take this Test at QuizGalaxy.com

You fit in with:
Spiritualism

Your ideals are mostly spiritual, but in an individualistic way. While spirituality is very important in your life, organized religion itself may not be for you. It is best for you to seek these things on your own terms.

100% spiritual.
60% reason-oriented.

Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com

the world is an evil place

2006-01-26T11:48:00.000+08:00

I woke up this morning sleepy stoned and damn hungry and therefore went in search of food, feeling really thankful for the emergency stash of breqakfast cereal in my room

When I got to the cluster kitchen in my hostel, imagine my shock horror and pain when I discovered that my personal very pretty pink and white bowl from ikea and my spoon and various other eating devices were NOT THERE!

Did someone steal them? Is someone using them without the knowledge of their owner? Are my cluster mates evil? Is there a conspiracy to steal my stuff therebu making it impossible for me to eat, resulting in a slow death by starvation for yours truly?

There are a million bowls there and I don't see why mine has to be the one disappearing. I mean, i really don't mind people using my stuff but they have to psychically figure out when I will decide to want them and leave them there for me at these times. Grrrrr

Who could have done this?

This must be a job for Section Omega

My age begins with a 2

2006-01-22T00:40:00.000+08:00

Happy Birthday Lynnette. And its officially over, now I'm 20years and 43 mintues old. Technically its a little more than that sice I was born at 8 something in the morning but oh whatever.

I love everyone, thank you so much nice people out there who made my 20th such a blast.

To Eugene, brilliant purchaser of Chez Goth and Burn in Hell, I salute you. I canot believe I spent like an hour sitting amidst breakers and bicycle-ers and whatevers forming circles of slothful royals and bring down the temperatures of hell. That game is crazy shit man I love you all.

(And while I'm at it, thank you kent glynsen qingru victoria junwen chunhui crystal pal brandy too)

Natalie I love your silly gingerbread men and cows and your military men and rambling aimlessly down orchard and pretending to read Namazie's notes in Starbucks and making ice-cream and attempting to make smiley-faces outta icecream mix at yukiyaki (yakiyuki? hmmmmmm)

And I had the craziest birthday night ever with the frogs of PGP aileen szehan victoria and jaesson. Surprise cake with mini chocolate cream fight in my room resulted in very unbecoming stains on my green sheets. Chez goth marathoning at west coast macs (cut the chains of material possession! and again!) and driving through NUS in the dead of night blasting that nutty numa numa song and singing along with the windows down is a BRILLIANT way to turn 20. I assure you of this, nevermind the bemused/annoyed stares from late night joggers. Vic! I'm sorry russell wasn't there but I do hope DOTA was an adequate replacement. I love you anyway!

And despite the unconvincing lie ( can i borrow a lighter? I...erm...need to smoke... thank you jae for the almost there at midnight cake and for chauffering the whole lot of us crazy singing frogs around the island and for the offer of supper twice in a row.

OH and thak you nickywicky and gillywilly for the pweeeettyyyyy necklace and for the company and for consenting to be dragged around orchard in my quest for a flowered shirt. You guys rock, as always

and thank you too everyone else who remembered and called/msged...sam saurav cal val phil junwen and et al. MUAH

MUAH MUAH MUAH

I'm twenteen!

2006-01-16T09:52:00.000+08:00

It's nice and calm and sunny and I'm in my room blogging to the tune of Jewel and my beloved Tori.

In case you were wondering I'm perfectly fine.

And you were right it's time for a litle change, only this time its your turn not mine.
nobody said it was easy

Deal with it, seriously. It's been long enough.

the new year resolution

2006-01-11T12:30:00.000+08:00

It was nerve wrecking and a total test of courage but I'm glad I did it. If I stuffed up and totally humiliated my poor self then oh well it's over and I can tick off one item on my laundry list of new year resolutions.

~~Do something you've never done but want to do~~

There. In case you're wondering, this thing in question is an vocal audition for this band in school. I've done many things in stage but singing isn't one of them and i've been dying to try it out. I'm scared of mics. I'm not very good at attempting to stay in tune while trying to look as if I was staying in tune without trying. Karaoke sessions with Ann usually involve a lot of picking out the orange crackers in the bowl of mixed nuts and not much else.

But hell, I've done it and it was fun, and funny, and I met interesting people. So yay for Lynnette.

2 days to Friday the 13th, the FantasticRockingInsaneDeath-defyingAmazingY birthday of JaeSharnzLynn

Sorry I couldnt think of an adjective beginning with Y. The surprise test thing that materialized in the middle of the otherwise dead boring EL lecture did not do me any good.

Be Nice to ME!

2006-01-08T23:31:00.000+08:00

The following is a list of desired stuff for the birthday of your's truly. Hell, if y'all are hellbent on getting stuff for me then who am I to complain?

Pretty non-white sweater - There's this really nice green one at Esprit that costs $89, so if anyone's feeling generoue, there you go

Bag thingie, sling across kind. Feeling generous? Get me a Crumpler. SLightly less generous? There's this khaki/green Billabong one with yellow and white print at Marina Square's Walllet Shop. But then again. I trust your taste.

Haviana-type slippers but less expensive variety. 40 bucks on flipflops is consumer exploitation.

Eric Khoo Twelve Stories/Mee Pok Man DVD boxset

Earphones. Nice ones.

Any book and/or CD from Christmas that I don't have

I don't really a\want anything else. if you are really desperate I accept money too. :)
Lynnette is a very broke girl.

2006-01-06T21:14:00.000+08:00

life is beautiful.

and lynnette is a happy girl.

Soberization

2006-01-06T00:08:00.000+08:00

Belated Happy 06 guys!

I had a short but pretty sobering conversation with Ann today while we were out ~~window~~shopping in town about another mutual friend/ex-colleague. We were discussing what to get her for her birthday and this sort of led to more talk about her. While talking about various assorted ex-colleagues, I mentioned that I was surprised at how long she had worked at Borders (for most of us it was at most a holiday part time thing) and wondered why she wasn't doing anything else.

When I first met her she told me she was working at Borders (me:and?) and teaching tuition (me: and?) and not going to school and not intending to for the time being. I remember being fairly surprised, and being a horribly narrow-minded fresh out of JC girl, under the (wrong) impression that going through the secondaryschool - jc/poly- uni/work route was the only plausible and practical option available to anyone my age.

So I was rather surprised when I was told that she was in fact studying at MDIS (or somewhere) and that she part timed at Borders, and gave tuition at the same time just so she could pay for her own school fees. Her parents were, apparently, unsupportive of her pursuing her studies, leaving her to struggle along the best as she could. I went back home, read her blog, and yeah, in between the fairly benignly happy entries there were brief mentions of the said lack of parental or financial support, the stress, and the difficulty in having to deal with so many things simultaneously.

"Having to work part time,teaching tuition and coping with studies is nt an easy task at all...". I'm not b=very proud of the fact that for the 6bmonths i worked with her I never got to know her better. We're ok friends, we've been out together rof lunch and movies and stuff, but we were never close. I've had other friends from a totally different circle make snooty comments about her clothes (typically minimalist tees and khaki pants) and the fact that she's quiet, never really hangs out with the rest of the gang, and oh well, little stuff like that. But thats another issue anyway.

I remember thinking at first how aimless her life was, like, does she really intend to spend the rest of her life working here?. If all she did in life was work at Borders or at her tuition with the sole aim of earning money then it didn't seem as if she had much of a life plan. Like at least I was going to school; at least I was headed somewhere. What I'm ashamed of is assuming that she chose to live that way...of assuming, in fact, that she even had a choice. I'm not rich but at least my parents can, and will, pay for my school fees; if I work I'm free to use what I earn as I wish, and while there are things that I crave/desire/want, there's nothing that I really need ~~(although the green velvety sweater at Esprit looked really pretty).~~ (haha ok ignore that.)

It puts the phrase "I'm broke" (a very much used line in my vocabulary) into perspective. Who am I to complain when I spend 600bucks on a shopping spree in Thailand and have more CDs and books than the combined shelves in 3 rooms of my house can hold?

There are people who deal with so much more than the weeny little everyday troubles that plague my life. And if nothing else, I really should be grateful for what I have, instead of constantly griping about what i don't have . I guess if you were looking for a New Years resolution, you have it

PS: Ironically, people are expecting me to post up my birthday wishlist soon. Friday the 13th guys!

Post Xmas Xhilaration

2005-12-29T01:22:00.000+08:00

Christmas was brilliant.

I love home
I love everyone who turned up for our party at Crystal's you know who you are
I love Brandon for his stupid toilet roll quote (Oh damn I still owe you a post)
I love Natalie for her pretty picture holding thing
I love Junwen for Watchmen (It is SO BRILLIANT!) and for the stolen handphone charm.
I love the pal with the cursor pointing at the wrong icon
I love my gal pal
I love Jaesson

To quote Athelete (incidentally a brilliant brit-rock band),
I love everybody here

I got nice presents too, this year's seemed especially many. And I'll list them down because they make me happy. Indulge me please. I know its the thought that counts, but these are all such terribly nice thoughts that I just have to share them.

Happy To Be perfume
Lancome makeup thingie
Birkenstocks
Guitar
Scented Candles
Bright Yellow Marimekko pencil case (its yellow and flowery!)
A Ewe Boat and a Skiing Sheep
Iprints Notebook
Fuzzy Pink bedroom slippers
A Cheongsam (!!!)
Crabtree and Evelyn box of pretty things
Watchmen
Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere and Smoke & Mirrors
Big huggable pillow
Small green pillow
Placebo's Without You I'm Nothing
Barenaked Ladies' Greatest Hits
Funky CD by obscure band called Within Temptation

Im happy. I hope everyone else is too.

Kids and other demons

2005-12-05T01:37:00.000+08:00

I spent the entire of today cleaning out my room and study to make room for the truckload of stuff I managed to accumulate in the course of one sem at PGP. Its terrifying, really. So far I have about 3 bags worth of miscellaneous stuff, a carton of cds, an even bigger carton of books, and there’s more waiting to be dragged home tomorrow. I don’t understand how the amount of stuff I own managed to triple itself without me doing anything at all.

Anyway, so that means I gotta clear out the existing stuff to make room for the stuff coming back home. My bookshelves are exploding, and my mother refuses to get rid of the 3 shelves worth of trashy romance novels that no one ever reads AND SO while they sit there and take up precious space my poor dears have to suffer in a cardboard carton. Its supremely unfair. Jude Deveraux and Danielle Steel get shelfspace while (insert superior, literary nose in the air look) Kundera and Saramago don’t.

So to rectify this sad fact I cleared out the shelf next to my bed and chucked most of it and now I have like a mini bookcase in my room within stretching distance from bed. Its so nice seeing all these books lined up in large numbers. Happy sight ?

On another note, I’ve been talking to this ten year old person from Canada on msn. I’m not entirely sure what her name is, and apparently she picked up my name on Orisinal’s guestbook. Which in itself is somewhat surprising. It’s really strange, though, cos she’s like the most intense 10 year old I’ve ever talked to. She swears more than I do - and her msn nic was something along the lines of fuck you mark I hate you I love you I cant stop thinking about you. I don’t know if it’s just me, but I sure as hell didn’t say stuff like that when I was ten. At ten, I was more or less typically anti-male. And I’m not even sure that fuck was the prevalent and preferred cuss word at that point. Today she came online again and her nic was something about wanting to kill herself because she had lost a friend.

It’s just so…wrong. I always thought that at 10 you’re still more or less innocent and happy. I mean, ok, I’m sure she doesn’t actually want to kill herself, but its unnerving seeing that coming from a little kid. She’s that angsty at 10…imagine what she’d be like when she’s like, my age.

I feel old. The words “generation gap” suddenly flashed across my mind. It just feels so different, somehow, I can’t reconcile myself to this being the accepted norm. If I do have kids ever I’d like them to stay innocent little kids for a while longer. I’d want them to believe in fairytales and ideal, safe worlds for as long as they could. I always thought that was the best thing about being a kid…you believe anything is possible. The disillusionment comes later.

But in any case, I’m scared of kids. Of having kids rather. Too much responsibility. And the world isn’t such a pretty place to grow up in anymore.

xx Still dreaming xx

ps: sorry brandy! I know I owe you that annoying little entry. Coming soon!

second chances

2005-11-30T17:41:00.000+08:00

There have been complaints. And so.

Take my Quiz on QuizYourFriends.com!

I'll be back to normal blogging right after lit tomorrow!

I want my swedish meatballs sushi buffet salmon sashimi spizza for friends haagan daaz icecream french fries toffeenutlattes

sigh

All I Want for Christmas

2005-11-30T17:05:00.000+08:00

1. Pretty Things
-Clinique’s new fragrance, Happy to Be (I’m a happy person)
-Those things that have eyeshadow and blusher together nicely coordinated
-Silver Necklace (Mine broke)
-Lotsa lotsa pretty Indian bangles

2. Sort of Useful
- Scented Candles for my room
- Birkenstocks
- Roxy-ish Pullover Sweater

3. Books as Always
-The New York Trilogy, Paul Auster
- Italian Fairytales, Italo Calvino
- Cosmicomics, Italo Calvino
- Smoke and Mirrors, Neil Gaiman
- Neverwhere, Neil Gaiman
- Fascist Rock, Claire Tham
-Blankets, Craig Thomas
-Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut

4. I still love CDs
-David Gray: White Ladder
-Death Cab For Cutie: Plans
-Mae: Destination Beautiful
-Mae: The Everglow
-Nitin Sawhney: Prophesy
-Nitin Sawhney: Human
-Patrick Park: Loneliness Knows Me By Name
-Plumb: candycoatedwaterdrops
-Snow Patrol : Final Straw
(There’s a fabulous little shop that stocks all the indie stuff called wakemeup music, Its somewhere in Queensway)

5. Assorted Miscellany
- Eric Khoo DVD boxset with Mee Pok Man and Twelve Stories
- Prints or postcards or posters of Van Gogh’s paintings
- Book on henna designs

the we love lynn quiz

2005-11-24T22:10:00.000+08:00

3 papers down and 1 more to go...
Econs was terrible, but English was alright, and tech seemed to have worked to some degree anyhow.

Here's the prodict of an evening of destressing - Take my quiz!

Take my Quiz on QuizYourFriends.com!

2005-11-21T16:27:00.000+08:00

oh no econs was a killer. I didn't do something like 10 marks worth or more and I am going to fail.

My Tech had better start Working or else.

2005-11-21T10:47:00.000+08:00

Lynn with two n's doesnt want to do her econs paper

Planned to sleep early last night but didn't.

Planned to wake up early for last minute mugging, but didn't.

the best laid plans of mice and men...

Speaking of which, my wireless mouse died on me too. I'm tempted to make a very ~~wretched~~ rat-ched about it, but i won't.

Promice

eski bar

2005-11-19T00:44:00.000+08:00

Mugged econs with Jon today and it somehow managed to be quite fun. I'm over last nights angsty-ness, thank you ery much.

The intention was to go for dinner..a fast dinner, mind... and then head back and mug.

Well what really happened was: Dinner at Crustaceans. Which was brilliant. Their baked cod with white wine marinade is brilliant. It comes with really nice potatoes and orange caviar things and olives and random yummy things. I reccommend :)

20% off for dbs cards!

And then under coercion and peer pressure I ended up heading to eskibar, where i had to loan a fuzzy sweater and look eskimo-ish because i went dressed in a racerback and slippers. Note: The eski freeze, which is apparently their in house dessert special, is totally not worth the fifteen bucks. Its basically bits of chopped up kiwi and melon on a chunk f ice with mystery alcohol - we suspect grand marnier and midori.
.
And for good reasons I am extremely averse to kahlua and baileys now. The bit of white russian I attempted to drink was a serious mistake.

ugh

shit shit shit damn damn screw!

sorrrryyyyyy....

2005-11-18T01:40:00.000+08:00

It shouldn't happen this way, not here and not now, not when the illusion of happiness is so close to real, not when there seems to be so much to live for and believe in.

There's so much that's falling apart at my feet; whole universes crumble and at the end of the orbit lies and truth fall into disarray, love and hate collide, and there's noting left to hold on to. And I need a sanctuary, something constant, to help me believe that there is more to life than this.

There's so much that you don't know, that no one does, because I have tried to make believe that none of it matters.

I can't hold everything together forever.
I don't ask much.
I just don't want to feel alone.

Is that so impossible to ask? The world laughs at my request and turns her back on me. And the sun fades once more into the horizon.

To put it simply

I need to know that my existance matters. That if I fell the trajectory would be memorized and mourned. That my scars represent pain that exist for something other than itself.

And it is painful not to be rememebred, because what is meaningful is seldom forgotten

blogthings

2005-11-12T21:52:00.000+08:00

Your Power Color Is Magenta

At Your Highest:

You energize yourself and push others to suceed.

At Your Lowest:

You feel frustrated and totally overwhelmed.

In Love:

You are suprised by who you attract. You're a love magnet.

How You're Attractive:

Open and free spirited, people want to explore the world with you.

Your Eternal Question:

"What is my next source of inspiration?"

What's Your Power Color?

You are a Self-Discoverer

You're not religious, but you've created your own kind of spirituality.
Introspective and thoughtful, you tend to look inward for the divine.
You are distrusting of all forms of organized religion.
You especially dislike religious gurus and leaders, who you feel are charlatans.

What's Your Religious Philosophy?

friendsters are friendsters forever

2005-11-11T23:46:00.000+08:00

I was reading my old friendster testimonials today in a fit of irrational gloominess and they got me really, really sentimental. I know friendster is all passé and blah and not used by anyone anymore and its rather to be waxing lyrical over an online friend-making device, of all things, but still.

Ok, don’t disillusion me. Don’t tell me that people are SUPPOSED to say nice things on testimonials, or that 90% of everyone’s testimonials are probably made up of permutations of the same assortment of adjectives as everyone else’s. Yeah despite all this I’m going to let myself bask in my testimonials and feel like I’m being appreciated.

And that I have friends.

And that my friends love me. ( and I love you too…)

Because, see, despite all outward appearances my singular greatest fear is quite simply, loneliness. I’m haunted by the thought that someday I’d end up losing all my friends. Or that I’m not being enough of a friend to the people around me. That I’d end up living out my days alone in a dinky little room, talking to my 31 pet cats because I have no one else to talk to.

And if that’s not enough reason for me to take testimonials seriously, well, you’re free to leave me a tag telling me how silly I am. Better yet, put it on a testimonial

winks

The Frog of PGP II

2005-11-09T03:06:00.000+08:00

The Frog of PGP took revenge on me today by hopping onto my foot when i was walking back from the back gate.

I apologize for any seditious remarks present in my previous post. No insult to frogs intended.

(Are frogs citizens???)

The frogs of PGP

2005-11-06T21:09:00.000+08:00

Three weeks ago we had a little drinking session in Jae's room which resulted in two of my friends getting wasted to the extreme, throwing up all over the everywhere, and us attempting to clean up/ give them showers/ send them to hospitals/stay awake. Imbibing copious amounts of baileys and kahlua cocktails is not a good idea.

Two weeks I had a spectacular crying fit that refused to stop. Crystal and Jae stuffed me with chocolates and then it got better. My mom called, yelled at me, and I started again. Aside from that, we did however, manage to have an incredible sushi dinner at Genki - Between the 8 of us i think we cleaned out at least 110 plates of stuff. For $15 a person I say thats not bad. Attempts on the part of Kent and Jae to swallow two whole jellies in one mouthful, however, did not go well.

giggle, giggle, choke, SPLAT

We are the frogs of PGP.

pgp pgp pgp pgp pgp