Iridescence

Laziness, lanterns and Boys' Night Out!

2007-09-26T19:36:00.000+10:00

I fucking gross myself out with how lazy I am and my astonishing propensity for procrastination.

It is now mid-sem break and I am still grappling with issues such as whether to unwrap my textbooks so that I can at least know the colour of the font within or print my lecture notes as saving graces for happily ponteng-ing classes since the beginning of time.

Major dilemma is, unwrap and print already must READ!
Never unwrap, never print means got nothing to read ma.

Yes la I am a fucking escapist in denial.

And like past semesters, I forsee this saga culminating insidiously into heaps of overdue work and readings which if converted into money, can afford me 5 lamborghinis, even if it means having repeats of the same colour.

Kenny just called to remind me of an impending term paper dateline (coming Monday) for one of my modules. Out of the 6 lectures and 2 tutorials lapsed since the start of term, I've only been to half of the first lecture and zero tutorials.

Har? Write what term paper? Don't even know what's going on leh.
But I'll figure something out lah.

Problem with me is, I ALWAYS manage to figure something out.

At the eleventh hour, I can fucking word fucking magic and churn something out. Be it for my submissions, exams, assigments blah blah blah.

Yes I am lazy. I like to delay. I spend like 10 minutes trying to settle down with my books then give up and go do silly things like fiddling with lego blocks.

Big fat hairy deal?

I STILL SHOW RESULTS!
I DELIVER!

At the end of each and every semester, I can proudly post my results up on my blog and hao lian a bit to everyone because for my 3 entire years in NUS, I have been a above average student with the lowest grade I ever obtained being a very ugly and demeaning B.
And that's only one B mind you. No B+s also. I give very good reasons for my grandma to go around the marketplace boasting about me and my plentiful A's, albeit her having some problems pronouncing "A".

I'm not afraid to say I'm smart leh. I'm not being cocky hor. If you have it, flaunt it. Same logic as those people who saunter along East Coast Park or Siloso Beach topless because they have killer bods mah. Got then show lah!

And it's not all about brains anyway.
Must study smart!

Why plough through all 19 chapters when you know the exam's gonna comprise of only two bloody essays? Read those you like and write what you know la. Dunno don't write. Know then write. Very simple logic one leh.

But yeah lah.
Not an excuse for me to continue rotting in my disgustingly lackadaisical attitude towards school lah.

I should at least PRETEND to be conscientious and hardworking so that my mama won't think she's paying fees for me to sit at home, shake leg and peel dead skin all day long.

***********

Wah I had the shiokest mid-autumn festival this year!

Sunday was spent with Yanyan, Shuyin and Zhengchang at Yanyan's ulu ulu Loyang valley condo soaking lazily in the pool making a hell lot of obscence jokes and very irritating loud noises, followed by flopping on the deck chairs like wobbly dead squids.

There was this super act-chio chinese girl with a not-too-bad figure but very-very-bad face tanning at the other end of the pool whom we were continually bad mouthing and making snide comments about. All for no good and apparent reason. In fact, she was pretty harmless lah, splattered on her deck chair in a skimpy bikini while getting baked by the scorching sun and minding her own business. Ok lah. She had some pretty ugly company with her but yeah, still nothing really wrong.

Aiyah. We are so going to hell lah.

After swimming we COOKED.
Again.

Then Mike, June and Clara joined us for dinner, tea and mooncakes!!!

Bright and cheery colours turn me on biiig tiiimee duuuude!

The girls tried to suspend our lanterns on their pouted lips.
Clara failed, gave up and hung them on her ear instead.
Now we all now who gives good lip service when the curtains are drawn and the doors are shut.

And then we hop down to the old-school sandy sandy playground and cavorted around with paper lanterns and sparklers.

Shuyin bought the lanterns earlier at some provision shop adjacent to the condo's pool. Some people lor. Act girly-wirly and buy the small small cutesy ones. There were these small spherical ones with the brightest and most colourful retro prints on them which made me damn excited when I first saw them. Check the first picture out. Shuyin was holding one of these puny things.

Alas in the end, the dumbo spheres came without candle stands in them. Ok actually got. But only if you consider like a small flap of flimsy cardboard 0.5cm in width and like 1cm in length at the base of the sphere proper enough to support a normal, well developed candle not suffering from growth retardation. Got more stupid or not you tell me?

And when we finally managed to get the candles to stick, stand and stay after dripping like countless goblets of wax and cooking our fingers in the process, the diameter of the sphere turned out to be less than the height of the candle and the lanterns couldn't close fully without getting lit ablaze by the flame.

Which was exactly what the lanterns were good for anyway...

...to burn lor.

Which of course made Shuyin extremely ecstatic because the only thing she looked forward to the entire evening was not to carry lanterns but to burn them.

Very arsonist.
Fuck. I have weird friends man.

At least we had the conventional cylindrically shaped ones to keep us entertained lah.

Yanyan brought out some sparklers she had stashed away at home (dunno for what, foreplay maybe) and alas, they were disappointingly short-lived and quite unbright. Maybe that's what happens when you start sticking them up moist and dark places.

Anyways, we had pretty much lots of novel fun creating stunning visual effects out of them.
You bend them 90 degrees a bit above the metal handle, light them up, then spin them by the handles about the point of inflexion very quickly.

This is what you get!

VERY NICE!
June in the centre had the nicest effect.
Mine looked so lousy and mediocre leh. Blah.

Spent the rest of the night helping Yanyan scrub her filthy tiles and getting absurd wine stains off them.

BOYS' NIGHT OUT at my place on Monday evening for tea and mooncakes again.

I was just pretending to enjoy the pomelo la.
Actually, I hate them. Fucking bitter.
I think the pomelo is parsley's and celery's good friend because I hate all of them and naturally they would find solidarity by banding up against a common enemy like me.

I tell you, if I ever had to eat another mooncake within the week, or next 2 weeks for this matter, I will convulse, foam at the mouth and die. My mom just brought home a box set of Hilton mooncakes each with FOUR fucking yolks in them.

The yolk more than the lotus paste. Can die!
I'd rather eat durians I figure.

I like the symmetry of this shot! But I look damn black in it lah.

The boys watching youtube.
We spent the bulk of the evening gawking at silly youtube videos including Britney's flopped comeback performance, cheap Kelly Poon MTVs, gross old men digging their noses on MRTs and some very fake ghost clips la.

Aiyo I feel so juvenile. But we had a whole lot of good fun and laughter.
Getting together with the boys makes me feel genuinely happy, like there's no need for pretence or a pressure to watch what I say.

Tim actually got me a nice Nike singlet the last time we met for dinner as a birthday gift, albeit belated. Damn thoughtful lah.

Yup we don't see each other that often. We ain't paddling for the same team like we used to do so. One's an architect. One's a lawyer. Some are still slogging over school. But at the end of the day, it's heartening to know that it's real friendship we accord one another with.

Wah.
Suddenly so emo nemo.

Ed and Tim got bored playing with mooncake crumbs and decided to flex their biceps for the camera.

No. You really don't want to mess with these guys I swear.

(As I am typing this, Ed's MSN online status just flashed and I am laughing to myself cos I think it is fucking coincidental. Cheap thrill.)

We placed the cam on the floor, faced it up and looked down for a shot.

Remind me to never fucking pull the same stunt again because besides looking oddly disproportioned, everyone ended up looking weird and ghastly.

ANGLE ANGLE ANGLE!
ANGLE is VERY IMPORTANT!

Ate fucking lots of mooncake that night man. I think we all felt nauseous at the end.

You guys are dah bestest! =)

I lurbch all my friends laaaa.
Girl-friends, buddies, brothers, sisters yada yada!

I am dead certain I made at least 10 errors in the entry (typo, spelling, grammer etc) but I am too fucking lazy (what did I tell you?) to proof read and correct them. Every time I try to do so, the pretty pictures get me fucking distracted and I end up admiring them for the longest of time instead.

Give you a chance to gawk at my engrish leh!

And for the record, stop stealing pictures from my blog and Friendster and posting them up at weird places. It is very fucking rude to do so.

TWENTY THREEEEEEE !!! gasp

2007-09-14T23:35:00.001+10:00

Warao long time never blog.

But it's been birthday week and I've been busy busy flitting around having very nice birthday dinners with very nice people.

As of now, I am a contented little boy because I know that at the very least, there are people who still remember and care enough to ask me out, buy me stuff and make sweet little gestures like sticking candles on a slice-o-cake or a pint of ice cream and then making me feel special.

For the last 3 hours, I have been sitting at my desk editing the photos I took over the week and playing around with Friendster. Ben says I am very fucking loserish because I'm still fiddling with and amusing myself with Friendster whilst the whole galaxy has comfortably migrated to Facebook.

Facebook very big deal meeeeeh?

Blah.

Daddy and Mummy bought me a supposedly very expensive chocolate cake and sang me a birthday song!!!

I was convinced the cake was ex because it tasted unbelievably rich and very very very very heavenly.

I love my Mum and Dad!

Dinner with Alaric, Jayson and Daniel (who had to leave early)!

The boys got me a slice of cake topped with a candle after dinner together with iPod radio attachment and an orange iPod sleeve - shared by the rest too.

Made me very freaking happy because the previous chiong iPod attachment I got from some obscure booth at Comex could not fucking work AT ALL! I got it on the last day of the fair and had no idea where the booth came from, probably some cheap stinky shop in Sim Lim or Funan but which exactly I don't know, and thus there was no way I could seek exchange or refund.
So much for imitation electronics hor. Now we all know better.

Kiddo Ala gave me a case heaped with happy looking coloured markers, perfect for my design module this sem, and a notebook with classic birthday wishes scribbled within. Sweet.

And all the stuff came packed nicely in a pretty cardboard box!

Kiddo Ala and I!
Thanks for being "dah-little-buddy" and for sticking thru all this while!

The girls and I took off for dinner at Sushi Tei and Ben & Jerry's after for desserts!

They stuck a candle atop a pint of strawberry cheesecake plus New York choc fudge ice-cream and sang me a chirpy birthday song.

Oh and Yanyan gave me Espirit vouchers worth a hundred bucks!
More new clothes!

Wah.
How can don't gam dong...hor?

Weirdly, the photos above, if looked at individually and not in the context of knowing it was MY birthday we were fussing over, it would look like the birthday candle was for each of the girls and not me because the tub was placed strategically in front of them in ALL of the photos.

Wanyi, who is now happily roosting down under in Aussie Wozzie, commented that YY and I looked very couplish and that she looked blissful in the photo.

I lurbch yew all tooooo!

Had dinner with girlplen Mandy too but the photos we took at Fosters with it's super-wuper quaint ambience turned out too dark and blurry for anything.

But of cos the both of us had a wondahful time talking and talking and talking (as usual) and she got me a nice snug beanie from HK!

THE BIRTHDAY LOOT!

Shiokness!

Wah not 21st still can get so many presents.
Not bad leh.

Thankeeeew ebelibardy for everything!!
The birthday smses, the cards, the pressies, the company blah blah blah.

It's times like these that I look at my life *emo emo* and feel that I'm indeed lucky and blessed to have pals, gals and family who care and loveeeee me *emo emo emo emo emoooo* despite me being the mean, horrid, rude and nasty person I am.

Ah...and those who have yet to buy me my birthday dinner (you all know who you are lah hor), don't think you can run away eh!!!

QUICKLY ASK ME OUUUUT!!!

Happy birthday to me!

Yaaaay!

Grooovy!

2007-08-26T14:36:00.001+10:00

Wah lao.

I'm like so damn Hairspray siao can?
Which explains the new layout.

Happy-flappy-sing-song-dance movies always have this kinda clingy effect on me.

Hello! I watched Moulin Rouge a grand total of 16 times!
And now that I've conveniently reminded myself, I think I shall go dig out the DVD and watch again later.

Your best friend Elson sent me a thesis which drawled on and on about how I'm devastaingly lacking in humane moral values and that I'm gonna suffer retribution so severe yada yada I will burn in hell yada yada.

Please lah. My accumulated karma is probably enough to bury me alive already leh.

I think somewhere along the lines he mentioned something about sueing me for slander (shouldn't it be libel instead?) and defamation. Wah. So scared. Lucky I have many many lawyer friends!

I'm not gonna expend more than 4 paragraphs on him because he is expired news and I cannot be bothered be with. You shouldn't too.

On to happier news.

My McNugget (Wanyi is very angry with me because I kept spelling it as MacNuggets. "NO 'a' NOOO 'a', she says ) cravings drove me so nuts, I realised there was no point in living my life in constant agonising oppresion. At 1.24am 2 nights back, I walked into Macs and brought home a 6 piece nugget meal. Upsized somemore cos the fries smelt so damn good!

Fat then fat lah hor.

I never recalled Ronald MacDonald, or Birdie, or Hamburglar, or Grimace ever telling me Macs is fattening leh. They look like pretty honest and decent people who are unlikely to cheat and mislead innocent kids into get hooked on stuff which might end up clogging arteries later in their lives, so I shall conveniently assume Macs is harmless stuff.

*deluded*

And hellooooo, where the fuck are they anyway?
Like when was the last time you walked into Macs and are able to feel genuinely happy because you see Ronald and his chirpy gang painted on the walls and beckoning at you welcomingly?

Granted, it's not like they've become totally extinct. More of endangered lah, like pandas or something. Quite rare and hard to spot.

Which left me pondering over how Macs has changed over the years. Albeit being a commercial establishment from the start, it's become ostensibly more commercialised. Of course, clap clap clap for it's expanded range of services like home delivery (which is not free I just realised) and 24/7 outlets which have half their air-con systems shut after midnight so you can sit and enjoy sleepless nights soaked in stifling grease.

Ronald and gang are probably on unpaid leave and hibernating in Siberia because Macs has stopped targeting children as their primary consumer base and moved on to the larger masses. It's no longer a kid's thingy. Their ads speak volumes for their evolving marketing strategy. There's the eerie looking moon-faced thingy with his/its saxophone coaxing pubesecent teens to not go home and instead, rot at Macs gouging on fries and free plain water at unearthly, past midnight hours. Little boys and girls don't exactly pick up the phone and dial for their burgers while watching soccer on tv.

Mac's is for everybaaardy now and you're supposed to be able to walk in, grab a Happy Meal (which makes me very happy indeed because of the toy) even if you're 69 and wearing adult diapers, without feeling paiseh.

Of course, nothing wrong per se with diversifying their consumer base. Must keep up with the times mah. But are the new and the old really mutually exclusive? Surely, clown-faced Ronald and his bumbling legion didn't need to have their airtime cut so drastically leh.

Modern kids might still love Macs and its entire greasy repertoire but they'll never be getting THE Mac experience we used to have back in times whereby Mac was mainly a kid's thingy.

Warao. I want to watch dancing hotcakes and flying burgers grooving to the tune of "if you wake up to the happy sound, yippee yai yai, yippee yai yai yai! The rocking hot cakes are coming around!" on mainstream TV channels! I don't even think they play such things on Kids Central nowadays. And where's stuff like the old granny going "dai ni chu lai hen ma fan"?

And the popularised Happy Meal toys leh? They used to play it up on TV so much that everyone knew what toy was available what week and when. Kids nowadays possibly ain't even aware that the meals actually come with something you can play with and keep. Aye, I still have a set of those rubber toy dragons that came with Happy Meals during the Chinese New Year seasons ok!

Children nowadays don't know what they are missing out on lah. They're being made to grow up too fast in all aspects. Now, even Macs is driving them in that direction. Very cham.

Ironically, it is the old fogeys like us who are clamouring for a taste of such familiar and juvenile pleasures which once used to grow up on and rather unfortunately, we're not likely to ever get them again.

I want my childhood Mac-xperience baaaaack!!!!!

I'm such a "home-wrecker"! Hur hur!

2007-08-23T17:32:00.000+10:00

Ever since I got back to updating the blog, I've been getting quite some emails.

Random ones from random people, but nonetheless littered with the very mundane and very boring old stuff like "I like your blog", "I think you are bloody pretentious", "you write well", "you are cute", "stop thinking you're so damn good-looking cos you are not" blah blah blah blah.

Warao.
Don't they like teach creativity and originality in schools anymore?

What?
Tagging on good ol' tag-boards getting out of fashion issit?

Or issit cos I don't reply to my tags so people need to air their comments over email?

Of course, if you have nice things to say or pleasant words of encouragement, I welcome your emails with open arms and legs and whatever. Don't come and tell me I am shameless. Please lah! Who doesn't like positive comments and a pat on the back?

Conversely, if you are feeling sore and vindictive and want to send me a cheap, unintellectual email telling me I am ugly or fat or smelly or that reading my blog gives you the rashes, don't. I will ji tao ignore you. Worse, if I'm in an insultive mood, you might be quite unpleasantly humiliated.

Just last night, this email came in.

Nothing offensive at all. In fact, brimming with adulation and encouragement.
That's why I had to blot out the identity of the sender since he had no malicious intents at all.

Thank very much for taking note of me although I think it is not exactly difficult to spot a hip arts guy amongst the engineering masses. ( I can smell the vehement insults coming in already ).

Also, I don't give my MSN address out to random strangers as and when it is being asked for. I am not doing MLM or selling some blah ginko and seaweed health extract so I don't exactly intend to know the whole fucking world. Point being, don't ask, thank you.

Ok back to the harmless email.
I replied politely and thanked him diplomatically for his kind words, albeit declining to offer my MSN lah.

Just this morning, this email came in.

I'm not blotting out the sender's identity this time round cos unfortunately for him, I woke up today feeling like insulting someone or killing random animals. Elson's mail makes possible the former and I honestly think people like him need to be brutally humiliated for being so fucking stupid.

I cannot be dead sure that this one and the previous email are linked or that the guy who sent me the previous mail is indeed Elson's boyfriend (or ex-boyfriend if bf really did dumped Elson's sorry ass).

But the temporal coincidence of both emails and the fact that both mentioned something about me constantly cavorting around in Engineering despite being an Arts student (they might have deliberated over this in their discussion/fight), plus double mentions of spotting me with that unapproachable look just leads me to logically deduce that there might probably be some underlying connections.

Be it or be it not, it doesn't change the harsh reality that simply by walking around in engine minding my own business, I have so heartlessly caused poor Elson Seetoh to kena ditched or face potential ditching by his boyfriend of 2 long, loving years.

Boo-hoo.
I'm going to hell, BUT I AM SO NOT SORRY CAN?

Seetoh ah Seetoh (I know for sure you are reading this), is your bf/ex-bf not giving you enough good sex? Why are you so anal-retentive. Afterall, anal-retention isn't supposed to get you better ass-prodding, you know that right?

I'm gallivanting all over Engine because I so badly want to seduce your bf/ex-bf who is oh-so-crazy over me. Well, that, on-top of the fact that I have a part-time job in one of the Engine blocks lah.

What? So now it becomes my fault that your bf/ex-bf is going goo-gaa-goo-gaa-gaa over me and my blog? Or is it yours for not being able to give him the hots they way I do?

Either you are very ugly, very stupid, or both, which render you so incapacitatedly insecure and paranoid. For these very reasons, you truly deserve to be dumped hard and fast.

To the bf/ex-bf (whom I am more certain is reading this), please lah, do yourself a mega-favour and ditch Seetoh Elson, if you haven't already done so. I don't know if it works the same way for you too, but freakily paranoid and dumb people like him make me itch uncontrollably because I'm allergic to stupidity.

Back to you, Elson.
It is indeed true that I hang out with good-looking and popular people, they way you said it, only because relative to you, most people can quite aptly be described to be that way.

And no no no I don't exactly think I'm cute and intelligent. Rather, I don't really need to because a lot of other people, including your bf/ex-bf already have done the thinking on my behalf. I'm so lucky ain't I?

Either get a restraint order, a straitjacket and a muzzle for your bf (provided you still have one) if you decide on being so insistently possessive or convince him to elope with you to Iceland where you all can share an igloo and he'll never set eyes on others again (unless polar bears and penguins work out fine for him as well).

Don't bother me with your petty domestic quarrels.
Call the police or something.

That was Mr. Elson Seetoh for you.

If you're bored or something, go try stealing his bfs/gfs/dog/goldfish/pencil-box from him lah. Very entertaining.

Many many food!

2007-08-19T20:23:00.000+10:00

Short short post today, with some quite expired pictures.

I am in a very disgruntled mood now because it is very very warm.

The air is not moving and I am sitting in my stifling room taking cursory glances at shopping catalogues and the multitude of ads from Courts, Harvey Norman, mobile dealers etc etc flooding yesterday's papers.

And that, above the fucking humid weather, is annoying me quite badly because I realised that I need (want) many many new things of which I am currently unable to afford.

Samsung U700, a gold PSP, tickets (and a companion) to watch The King and I, a laptop cooler (My lappie is burning up and shutting itself off sporadically and it is kanina disconcerting), and a BMW 7 series.

Warao.
Being a poor, incomeless student sucks.

The only craving I can satiate and afford is chicken MacNuggets.

I keep having constant, sudden desires for MacNuggets ok. Very bizarre. Out of the blue, golden brown Nugget chunks with stumpy feet and arms (like those in the ancient Mac ads) will randomly dart through my mind and then dance to the "good time, great taste" jingle.

Then I will contemplate calling MacDelivery which is supposed to be 24/7 and has no extra delivery charge, JUST for one box of 20pc nuggets. Which leaves me very conflicted and troubled because it is quite paiseh call up for one pathetic order of nuggets, but at the same time, I am lazy to walk down and get them myself despite Macs being a 3 min walk away from my block.

Hai.
Now you see why I'm such an angst-filled teenager.

Photos like I mentioned.

From last week, or was it last last week, when Shuyin and I had a cookout at Yanyan's new condo.

Now people high class hor.
Live condo already hor.

Ladies in the kitchen!
Sexy!

Shuyin is very gross. She is a closet exhibitionist because she knew I was snapping pictures from behind (my new SLR makes very loud and camera-like snapping noises) so she purposely pull up a bit of her bra for the camera.

White and lacey somemore.

I cannot post direct shots with their faces because they will complain very ugly cos never put makeup la, this la that la! And then I will get death threats from either stating that they will find the ugliest picture of me from our entire photo-taking history (which is quite rich) and then put it up on their blogs.

I will not take such unnecessary risks.

Photos courtesy of my new, spank-ass Olympus digital SLR camera!

Food tasted as good as they looked, especially the portobello mushrooms!

I honestly think we are very talented. *smirk*

And there was desserts with Shuyin and Lulu at Island Creamery 2 nights back.

If you don't know what or where Island Creamery is, you are indeed very swaku and for that, you deserve to eat low-grade, oily and cheap Marigold neopolitian (is that how you spell it? The flavour with 3 stripes one lah) for the rest of your mediocre life!

Tea tarik, horlicks, pear sake, tiger beer sorbet, kaluah and coconut (erm..) flavours!

Subsequently when Shuyin and I got home after that, we couldn't sleep!
Sugar rush leh!

We did some nifty photoshop on this picture, printed it out with the outlet's complimentary photo paper and printer, then added it to the montage of photographs gracing the shop's interior.

Very nice!
Look out for us when you visit!

I am quite in a good mood suddenly because I've been reminded by an A*mei song playing on 93.3 that I've bought tickets for her concert in November with Becca and Kuahkuah.

So exciting!

MacNuggets anyone?

Wah...I finally blogged!

2007-08-17T13:56:00.000+10:00

I have not blogged for ages and it took 4 tries before I could get my blogger password correct.

Lazy lah.

Nothing much is happening because I am no longer in the laid-back-land-of-pleasures where I sleep at 4am everyday and wake up at 4pm to do absolutely nothing but look forward to sleeping at 4am again.

I am back in sweltering hot Singapore where I have to walk with my arms raised every 10 minutes so that I can air my pits and not drown in my torrents of stinky sweat.

But alas, home is where the heart is leh. Aye! I felt cryish singing Majulah Singapura at the NDP preview ok! I also felt cryish when I watched little boys, little girls, aunties, uncles and all the chap-a-lang people recite the pledge over television during the actual parade. In fact, I am the true epitome of a flag-waving patriot because I can very sing national songs off memory without consulting lyrics. With conviction and feelings somemore one ok!

Weiyin and I at the Marina Bay 2007 preview.

Last week, I went to watch 881 and I happened to quite-like it, afterwhich I went around telling random friends that it was actually worth a $9.50 ticket.

Come on lah.

If you want to be fussy and picky and critical and lament that the plot is skimpy and the love-triangle shit is cliche blah blah blah, fine. But it would be undoubtedly hard to discount the film for its glitzy bling-bling, glam costumes and the entertaining repertoire of song and dance, unless of course if you're blind, deaf or simply lack an eye for aesthetics.

I thought the acting was quite riveting as well, although the emotional scenes were a little too drawn-out and somehow coerced.

I am not a professional film critic la so I will not pretend to act like one.
Underlying point being, I thought the film was a decent production and I genuinely enjoyed it, at best for it's superficial properties.

And so like I said, I started propagating the film to my friends la. And because I obviously make friends with people with good taste and open minds, most of them liked it too.

With exceptions.

I was watching a youtube clip of one of the movie's songs in lecture 2 days back when this random guy sitting next to me stole a glance at it, and then commented,

"Oh. You watched the movie ah?"

To which I replied, "Yah" very nonchalantly without even looking him in the eye because I do not like to talk to strangers. Worse, ugly strangers.

"How was it?"

"I like it," I told him. "It's worth a watch."

"Wah! Don't want la! Local production watch on VCD can already. Plus it's hokkien speaking. So low-class!"

Ok.

Not word for word, but the gist is there.

Fucking rude I tell you.

First, you peek at other people's laptop. Second, you interrupt my video-viewing by starting a conversation with me without even saying hi. Then you come and insinuate that I have no class and taste because I professed my liking for a supposedly hokkien, thus low-class movie.

Hokkien = low-class meh?

Why?

Because cheebye and lanjiao and kanina and the entire wonderful family of explicit profanities happen to be hokkien issit?

"Fuck" is also a very very rude word. In fact, it is the rudest rude word that your mother and father and grandmother and grandfather warned you about. It is the king of rude words because it's part of the world's most spoken language which a lot a lot of people will understand and then come to dislike you if you mouth it at them.

Does that make Hollywood flicks in which "fuck" is being screamed and ranted in like every other line low-class as well? Highly unlikely.

Not a single hokkien profanity was used in 881. How does that make it any lower-class than any other English film littered with coarse and undignified language. Not that I have anything against the word "fuck". Don't come point fingers at me and accuse me of acting politically correct yada yada. In fact, I am an ardent fan of the word "fuck" because of it's amazing versatility and ease of use. Just that right now, if the coarseness of language is to be used as an indicator of whether a film is low-class or not, then 881 would very evidently fall short of such a judgment call.

Unless you argue that hokkien is by nature a low-class language, regardless of vulgarities or not.

Which shouldn't even be worth arguing about since it is a ridiculously unfounded assertion. If so, that would make a lot of our ah-mahs, ah-gongs, aunties, uncles, ah-cheks, ah-sims, ah-pa and ah-bu very very low-class and depraved because a lot of them speak and converse in fluent hokkien.

Go lor.

Tell them they are low-class lor.

Conversely, I think the hokkien dialogue and songs add flavour and authenticity to the film.

I can relate to it tonnes better than the perfectly prosed archaic mandarin in Curse of The Golden Flower or Flying Daggers or whatever there is.

Dialects are a fading tradition ok. I mean, how many people within our generation can decently pull off speaking or understanding a Chinese dialect?

Fuck. I am Cantonese by blood but I cannot understand and speak Cantonese. But at least I feel deep remorse and regret over this sad truth. I WISHED I could, so that I can order dim sum with more gusto, watch campy HongKong police serials without having to squint at the badly-worded English subtitles and loudly sing Shang Hai Tan at KTV sessions.

I WANT to be able to master Cantonese and I do not find speaking my dialect low-class or what not.

Saving grace is that I can speak and understand hokkien to a degree of decent fluency.

And because of this, I confidently feel that I am superior to the masses (my generation) because I am pretty certain most are don't know even a single dialect, and don't give a flying fuck at all.

And it is such cultural apathy that will inevitably erode the fine flavours of our traditions and roots. 30 years down the road, our children will not know understand a single word of dialect languages because we, their parents, cannot speak or understand them in the fucking first place.

I will mock the heavens the day kids start to not know what "cheebye" and "lanjiao" means.

And it's indeed a pity because like any other language, they deserve to be preserved and perpetuated for their distinct modes of expression.

Gone would be the days whereby Cantonese cook good soup, Teochews make good porridge, Hokkien make good business people yada yada yada. Yah. These may be stereotypes. But still, culturally sanctioned stereotypes which hold, or once held much truth in them.

On a different, yet equally irritating note...

...for fuck's sake, please STOP sending me emails or tagging me telling me how not-good-looking I am and that I should not think that I am good looking or what not.

I DID NOT, at any point of time, publicly profess that I think I look good.

People usually say that on my behalf when they run into me on the streets or in the gym or something. I cannot control what they choose to say or convince them otherwise, and I have absolutely no good reasons to.

I am entitled to their compliments as much as they are entitled to compliment me, if they think I deserve it.

If you're not happy with it, maybe cos you're sore, sour, jealous etc etc, then take your petty grievances elsewhere, perhaps to some cheap plastic surgery outlet, instead of sending me trashy emails or tags detailing how shameless and ugly I am. I have had enough of such pathetic nonsense really.

The world is indeed full of stunningly stupid people.

I'm so in love with the 881 songs, I think I will buy the soundtrack.

You should too, if you liked them.

Support local lah!!!

Tolay is flylay!

2007-06-29T23:27:00.000+10:00

Today is Friday.

That makes yesterday Thursssssdaaay!

And yesterday was also a relatively happy day because fucked up and very brainless UNSW exams finally (after one entire week of snail-paced drudgery) ended.

Gong hei gong hei ah!

And so I went to look Jac up on campus at the law faculty, not cos she's a fledgling lawyer but cos she had to run some very serious *cough cough* errands there. Aye...people had to pick up and then deliver important package ok.

Hanging around with Jac = take many many many photos!

Don't take wasted cos we both own uber sleek and powerful digital cameras.
When their powers combine, we can snap very snazzy and of cos very many shots of ourselves and whatever other rubbish that comes along our way.

Ah.
You all see me beaming very radiantly right?

*smug*

Exam over happy lah. I'm seldom so smiley ya know. Brett says I look like Oscar the Grouch when I'm out and about with a normal expression. Brett is a very rude boy, but since I'm in a good mood, I shall agree with him for once.

On a side note, please kindly ignore my hair in the pic and all other pics to come.

As of late, I try to avoid walking under birds or going anywhere near one because I have good reason to worry about them roosting and then laying an egg on my head. Fuck char kway teow and chai tao kway man. The first damn thing I'll get done when I hit home is to CUT MY HAIR!

Waaargggh!

After trotting about on Jac's delivery mission, we went shopping in the city, met up with Warren and Sarah, and caught Ocean's 13.

Then DINNER!
Got good food means must blog liao lah. *Heh heh*

We ate at a Bavarian pub/restaurant at the Rocks, near Opera House, called LowenBrau.

Don't know how to pronounce lah.

For the stupid-wupids, Bavaria is Germany's largest state and since last night, I have decided to like Bavaria because presumably, it has extremely good and delectable cuisine.

The same way I decided to like Sweden because of Ikea meatballs, Korea *ahem* because of my trusty Samsung digicam and Tasmania because of wombatish wombats.

Wooooo!

Heaps massive place with great ambience, very very pretty Bavarian (I hope) waitresses frolicking around in their low cut Bavarian dresses, dispensing beer and serving platters.
Complete with rich Bavarian accents.

Very Bavarian indeed aye!
I like!

(Each time I type the word "bavarian, I pronounce it mentally in my head and it sounds suspiciously like "barbarian". Quite funny.)

Happy, hungry and soon-to-be-very-gluttony people.

Ok jiang zhong dian.

Warren and I had this huge meat platter for 2.

By huge I mean huge because Aussie servings are by right huge to start off with and when already huge stuff is further described as huge, then it actually means very very huge.

Understand?

Full stacked with an assortment of sausages (Warren and I both loved the one stuffed with melted and oozing cheese), hams, roasted pork belly, mash, pickled cabbages, schnitzels and topped with a golden brown chunk of crackled pork knuckle!

And there was this tangy gravy we drizzled over everything.
And mustard too!

The wheat beer Warren and I got had a fruity mango flavour to it.
Fucking unique can.

We couldn't finish the food lah.
The last I saw, almost a quarter of the pork knuckle, a huge thick wad of honeyed ham and half a chicken schnitzel was left. We had to sweet-talk the boobsie waitress into seriously clearing the platter away from the table cos she was so convinced I looked like I had the capability to eat more.

No need to say lah.
I felt fucking fat after the meal (bah what's new?).

Every bit worth it though!!!

I'm headed down to Berrima tomorrow with the boys for the Chinese restaurant we missed out on weeks back. No more heroic adventures this time round puh-leeese!

Must enjoy whatever's left of Aussie Wozzie eh.

Oh yeaaah!

All the best team!
Give the other boats a run for their money ah!

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

OHMYGOSH!

2007-06-27T15:10:00.000+10:00

I can't stop grinning from ear to eaaaar as I watch these!

Popo said that I would wait the entire day just to plop in front of the tellytube and watch the show with my dinner platter. And whilst the show ran, I would not at all respond to anyone and virtually anyone.

You haaaave to watch these I swear.

I feel like the innocent little boy I was agaaain.

Awwwwwwwww!

Yah I'm still alive lah.

2007-06-25T22:43:00.000+10:00

*Ching Chila Ching Chong Chiaaang*

Congratulations and celebrations!
Three out of four fucking papers down and I am still in one piece.

I'm literally slogging through this whole examination ordeal not cos it's stressful or intellectually challenging or what have you....but cos it's dah bloody last lap and to be honest, these silly exams do not matter at all.

Hello,
I'm on exchange leh.
Pass can already hor.

But I reckon I'll do better than just passing lah.
Remember...never ever settle for mediocrity! *smug*

I had two papers today, one in the morning and the other in the afternoon.

I arrived at the examination venue 45 minutes early and spent that time whacking away senselessly at the nearby King of Fighters machines in the student lounge area while a horde of other exam-goers sat behind in the background, cramming and all stressed up.

I managed to complete the game twice in that 45 min ok
Bow to me please.

Yesterday, I spent the entire day cavorting around the western suburbs with Kim and Brett, indulging in the endless hedonistic pleasures of food, wine, and fucking senseless shopping sprees. Carefree and mobile gallivanting, of course, courtesy of Kim's ass-spanking neeew BMW 7.

*clap clap*

All hail the logic-defying absurdities of being dirt wealthy.

Won-daah-fooool dinner at a laid-back, cottage-style, and not forgetting POSH (blah what's new?) diner nestled in some obscure nook and cranny within the suburbs.

Bloody thankful I've got these boys to bring me around, snooping for cheap thrills and the hidden troves of adventure and culinary delectables.

Got FIREPLACE ok!
I was pretty much confined to loitering around the vicinity of the crackling ambers, partially because a functioning fireplace is pretty much a novel item, and mostly cos it was fucking cold.

Congruent to the super-super-wuper cottage-y ambience exuded by the interior setup, I half expected to see topless elf girls and elf boys serving food and drinks while impressively balancing elvish cutlery on their sexy pointed ears.

None.
Blah. Disappointing ok.

While on a mindless spending rampage, I bought a very very very pretty Pierre Cardin wristwatch for my grandma!

Oei.
Studded with crystals and made from sterling silver hor.

Don't play play!

Ok lah.
It wasn't exactly all THAT expensive.

But it made popo smile from ear to ear for the rest of the evening.
I think she was so happy she forgot to shower and eat her vitamins.

Wanyi says I am very xiao shun.

*courteous bow*

Some very long overdue pictures from our very happening bak-zhang wrapping session 2 weeks back.

Here's popo stir-frying the fillings for the nonya zhang.
Mince, corriander powder, some special sorta sugar and a few other ahem..secret ingredients (OF WHICH I KNOW!).

The entire ensemble, ready for wrapping.
I swear I'm addicted to smelling those leaves.
Fucking fragrant can.

Ah see..
concentration ok!

I tell you, she can wrap those dumplings to standard sizes and shapes with extreme precision and incredible speed. So pro, I wanted to give her an arms salute with the kitchen fruit knife.

I tried wrapping a few and I made a total bloop outta them.
So kena chased away to wash dishes.
Heh heh.

Wrap wrap wrap the entireeee day (and I mean it...), we made like 200!

Still got a lot in the fridge now leh.
*nudges Jac and Sarah*

Hiak hiak!

Had a horrendously miserable lunch with Jac and Sarah today at some bleak looking Indonesia eatery just off my exam venue.

I honestly wondered if dogs would have wanted to eat, or even sniff at, whatever we ordered.

*nudges Julius..hiak hiak*

The sole comfort stemming from our very unpleasant experience was this photo we managed to take of ourselves, forced smiles and all.

Then again, not a very nice photo basically cos I one-eye-big-one-eye-small and my hair looks like a ruffled stack of barn hay. I hope the incredibly expensive Ralph Lauren hoodie stands as a saving grace eh.

I've put on so much weight, I scared myself looking into the mirror while trying on some clothes in the mall's fitting room. I will pitch a tent outside the doors of Planet Fitness the moment I get my arse back home..I swear.

Will you still waaaant me and lurrbch meee even though I look like a fatty-fatty-fat-fat ogre? =(

On a random note,

while I as suavely flapping my wallet's flappetty flap around yesterday to foot the bills for my very expensive and impulsive purchases, Kim caught sight of this photo wedged in the display compartment.

"Ya guys look very happy aye! Ain't it great to have great friends like thissss? Betcha miss them!"

Kinda hit a soft spot in me.

Maybe I really do.

Hao.
Xie xie for putting up with my super random post.

(-__-')

2007-06-21T18:25:00.000+10:00

Maybe it's just me.
And that I suck at interpreting abstractions in art.

What a talented young artist.

Your friend har?

BIG FAT YAWN!

2007-06-20T13:28:00.000+10:00

Late last night, Teo Lala and I were having this random MSN chat about our old-skool library trotting days.

Back then, National Library branches were the IN places to hang out at orhkay!

Basically because we didn't know enough about the hedonistic pleasures City Hall, Marina Square (I wanted to say Suntec but I realised Suntec didn't exist during my fatty fat fat primary school heydays), Orchard blah blah blah could provide.

So I hung out at the Geylang East National Library lor.

We spoke about how there used to be this borrowing limit of 4 books per card and how the antiquated system required us to queue for hours (LITERALLY), patiently (impatiently for me) waiting for the very very lazy librarian to manually check out the loans with her pen-like scanner. And the classic due-date stamp.

YES YES YES!
THE STAMP!
Chop chop chop!

If there was anything good about the absurdly long waits, it would be to watch the librarians very ferociously slam the stamps down onto the due-date sheets. If the sheets got too full and cluttered, then they'd have to like rip it off and GLUE ON a new one!

And hor, I tell you, sometimes...when they're just too LAZY to do so, or when the queue starts snaking like the Hello-Kitty kinds, they conveniently enter the due-date amidst the jumble of expired ones. VERY IRRITATING ONE CAN? Have to bloody scan the whole mess just to ascertain when the book is due for return.

Those were the good ol' days where kids grew up on decent, trusty books and not on the perils of the internet (MSN, IRC, animal porn etc etc) to become well-learned and literary young adults (ahem ahem..like ahem ME...).

Lala said that she was obsessed over Babysitter's Club.

I read all sorts of junk la. Tom Clancy, Michael Crichton, James Paterson, Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys AND Nancy Drew combined adventure (I wondered why they didn't get down and dirty for a threesome romp) and mostly very bleak kinda adventue thrillers.

Particularly HOT was this Fear Street series by R.L Stine. Oh my gawwwd..I feel stupid actually typing his corny name out here la. But then again, I was uber hooked onto it, despite the fact that his books had smatteringly cheesy titles which blatantly lacked originality..like..emm...
"The Knife" or "The First Date" blah blah blah. In all fairness though, the largely similar storylines (who kill who and the eventual whodunnit exposed in a very sudden plot twist) gave us kids a very cheapo cheap thrill.

Being such a popular series, it was of course hard to locate on the shelves. Usually snapped up very very rapidly. Sometimes, when I'm running high on luck, I'd be able to find like 5 or 6 newly returned ones, but only after hawking around the return shelves like a desperate vulture lah, minus the cackling.

Problem was, one time only can borrow 4 leh. Meaning I'd have to risk the excess being taken by some other Stine freak.

Nothing a little ingenuity couldn't solve though.
I used to hide the excess books which I wanted but couldn't borrow....

...IN THE TAMIL BOOKS SECTION.

Chuck them behind the neat rows of tamil books which are rarely touched.
Borrow what I can, hurry finish reading them, then prance back to the library the following day to retrieve the hidden loot.

I tell you ok.
The feeling of discovering that the stash was still there, untouched, unscathed and unviolated was indescribably SHIOK!

Heh heh.

I already said, I was a naughty little boy.

Teo Lala said she did that too though.
So it wasn't just me lah.

On another note, I wonder why I have such irritatingly blunt friends.

Can click to enlarge.

Blah.
For your misdeeds, the whole world shall see your VERY UGLY MSN DISPLAY PIC.

Hiak hiak.

Exams are like 2 fucking days away and I'm sitting around peeling dead skin off the soles of my feet.

When I've accumulated enough skin, I'd flick them at my unsuspecting grandma.

How very commendable.
Clap clap clap.

Ok lah.
The flicking part's a joke. I lurbch my popo ok!

Since I got whacked silly by that bloody lung infection weeks ago, I haven't been able to work out properly. Each time I attempt to go for a run through the grassy hills around where I stay, I start panting and gasping for air like 20 minutes into the workout.

Earlier on, I tried jogging again and I lasted barely 30 minutes.

Paddling stopped since the winter chills set in.
And I'm not gonna get any till I return home to Sunny Singapore.
Even that...remains debatable.

Damn.
It's a fucking vicious cyle.

I am now committed and resigned to the fate that I will sit around, eat (a lot because it is fucking cold) and get fatty fat fat fat!

The tummy's making its return.

Maybe I'll diet on the dead skin I peel off my feet.

Massive!

2007-06-19T17:06:00.000+10:00

Not-too-new song. Granted.
And tagged with a certain bleak patch in the history of modern mankind.

But it does sing of hope and world peace (very politically correct).

And I'm simply amazed by the sheer number of singers invloved as well as the seamless synchrony.

It's like one massive star choir man.

Prooooot!

Heh heh

2007-06-19T02:31:00.000+10:00

I can't stop reading and re-reading this particular slide from one of my lecture notes.

I just think it's very amusing.

Essentially, the client's trying to manipulate the therapist into fixing up an appointment wth him/her at a time whereby the therapist in unavailable - by using suicide as a "threat".

Quite funnily sacarstic, the way the therapist responds.

Hiak hiak.

NAH! DONT SAY DONT HAVE!

2007-06-18T01:32:00.001+10:00

Ms Wong Wanyi...

NAH!

Don't have don't have.

Click on the peekture to ENLARGE and feed your ego all you want!

*polite applause for the very quotable quote*

At least, something which made me happier.

2007-06-18T00:26:00.000+10:00

I was hunting for this particular song on Baidu but ran short of luck.
Sometimes, their fucked up links just don't work.

Fortunately, like dah legendary fairy godmutha, pweeetty Wanyi appeared online and I made her search for it as well using highly reliable Singapore internet.

Since receiving it from her, I've been looping it endlessly and trying very fucking hard to fight off irrepressible urges to shuffle to the song in my bunny bedroom slippers.

Super upbeat and remniscent of my childhood mandarin pop days!

Better news is...
I FOUND DAH MTV wor!

YouTube rocks man!

Cmon cmon!

Get your arse boogeying to the very vibrant and colourful MV!
Got words ala KTV! Can sing along somemore!
Don't shy!

Wheee!

Me meeee! Hear me siiing!

2007-06-16T21:46:00.001+10:00

Wheeee.

My rendition of a sorta-kinda-quite oldie-old song sang by both 王杰 and 齐秦, called 原来的我.

Sang it at last week's Youth League get-together session. The folks thrusted me a super duper old song book (thus the old song, cos most of the others were so ancient I have no idea what they were, or simply too hard to play) and a rusty guitar. Luckily for me, I still had a vague impression of the melody and what not.

The guitar a bit out of tune ah. My skill not too good also.

And I went embarrassingly flat towards the end and fumbled on the lyrics because my eyes couldn't keep up with the tempo on reading off the songbook.

Nonetheless, reckon it didn't sound toooo baaad lah.

Hiak hiak.

WA-HA-HA

2007-06-15T16:18:00.000+10:00

Some coincidences really really scare the silly shit outta me!

My jaw dropped and hit my dick when I saw this latest entry from pweeetty Wanyi's blog.

In case you're too bloody lazy to click on the link, or you can't bear to leave my blog, I've copied the whole chunk right here.

How very fucking apt and very surreal.

***********************

Friday, June 15, 2007

Friend Poaching

There's this article in the latest CLEO (pg 94), which I find quite interesting.I know of things like that happening, but I didn't know there was an "official term" for it.Will share some parts!

***Friend Poaching - The new way to widen your social circle

A few months ago, I caught up with some friends for a beer at the pub. They'd invited another friend, CK, and it didn't take long to realise that CK was my kind of girl - chatty, not at all shy, loves a laugh and a drink. Within minutes of meeting, we were chatting like we'd known each other for years.

After a few drinks, we exchanged numbers and promised to catch up. CK and I are now super close and speak every second day. What happened to the friends we met through, you ask? I see them occasionally and so does she. But CK and I have more in common. Ok, I'll admit it. I friend poached.Many people would say what I did was socially unacceptable, but I'm certainly not alone in this. Friend poaching is a growing trend in our society, where working long hours and having fewer chances to meet people are the norm. If we can't make more friends on our own anymore, what's the harm in stealing our friends' friends?

Ally, 26, believes it's all about social upgrading. One of her best friends, Jess, works as a fashion editor, so their group of girlfriends is constantly being asked for her mobile number by people desperate to cash in on Jess' cool factor. It got so frustrating that Ally decided to coin a term for this trend - glomming (which is defined in the dictionary as "stealing" or "seizing onto").

"That's the thing with glomming," Ally admits. "Less cool people try to glom people they think will make them look good at their upcoming party and so try to get these trendsetters direct, not through the person who introduced them. One of my friends tried to glom Jess, but I'd had enough and flat-out refused to hand over her number. Everyone makes friends through friends, but it's another thing altogether to glom. If you haven't got the social skills to make a connection with someone you want to be friends with, don't try and get in with them via their real friends. There's something in that that just reeks of desperation."

......

Mel, 22, doesn't agree. "It feels like they're going behind your back," she says. "I guess it's a territorial thing. I have different sets of friends and I like it like that. But if my friends from school start becoming mates with my work friends, then everyone starts hanging out together and I'd hate that"

.......

Psychologist Todd Zemek says the key issues that arise when friendships spill over into other friendships are loyalty and history."People can be very territorial about their friends. You really have to consider the middle person's feelings when you're in this situation. But at the same time, that middle person should be realistic and ask themselves why these two parties would want to be friends. What are they offering each other that you can't provide? It certainly highlight issues in a friendship that you may not have otherwise recognised. Sometimes it boils down to the fact that people do just grow apart".

Quick go buy CLEO cos this issue got the annual Beauty Hall of Fame!

***********************

2007-06-15T00:05:00.000+10:00

入山不怕杀人虎，
只怕人情两面刀。

也有领悟到它真正意思的一天。。。

I know you like...

2007-06-14T13:28:00.001+10:00

Not as though you haven't had enough of it....

But for convenience's sake, it's here so ya can endlessly loop it, don a fake blonde wig and then twirl around gracefully in all splendour.

Courtesy of pweettty Wanyi who managed to get it off Google.

Enjoy!

2007-06-14T02:04:00.000+10:00

Distance dulls,
time displaces.
Are these inner demons,
or a shifting allegiance.

Trusts waver,
doubts creep.
Changes speaketh,
of facades mirrored.

The sands of time flow,
yet do not part.
Home lies beyond,
yet a foreign land beckons.

Vengeance screams,
the devil is unshackled.
With wretched wrath,
it seeks a pride once tattered.

Your best friend says hi!

2007-06-11T23:42:00.000+10:00

I was browsing through my aunt's dusty old photo albums just moments ago...

...and I found your best friend who wants to say hi.

Xie xie ah.

Go on.
Don't be rude.

Say hi back.

And who the hell (with the exception of me of cos) remembers Dick Tracy anyway?
I can still hum the theme song man.

Gawd.

A not-very-boring Saturday

2007-06-11T18:04:00.000+10:00

Brett phoned last Saturday morning and drawled an entire five minutes on how he was having this irrepressible craving for Chinese food.

“Get it from that roast store down the road from your place then,” I slurred semi-conscious, tinged with slight frustration from being roused awake so abruptly, and for very trivial reasons.

“No no no! Not that kinda Chinese food,” he rattled excitedly. “I want the really superb kind, ya know, restaurant standard!”

I shook Kim up and thrusted the receiver into his clammy hands.

“It’s Brett. And he says it’s urgent.”

Then I plodded back to my bed, sank into its plushy comforts and pulled the woolen sheets right up to my neck. It was barely ten and I had absolutely no intentions of awaking till twelve or thereabouts. Paddle training takes a brief hiatus with the inception of winter and Saturday mornings now have to them a brand new noble purpose – for sleeping in.

A meagre ten seconds after, Kim shuffled out from his room and repeatedly nudged me in the chest with his smelly left feet.

“Brett says he’s craving for Chinese,” he announced.

“Deal with it then!” I punched his left shin with a clenched fist, heard my knuckles pop, then lifted the sheets above my head and hid underneath them. “Let me sleep. Puh-leeese!,” I pled amidst a coerced yawn.

He reached down and forcedly yanked the covers away. Instinctively, I raised my hands to shield my maladjusted eyes from the glare of the now illuminated crystal chandelier dangling from the ceiling.

“Brett said there’s a Chinese restaurant in Berrima which is really good. And we’re going,” Kim went on. “He’s coming over to pick us in twenty minutes so hurry and fucking get washed up!”

“Huh! Berrima?” I was stupefied. Berrima is a small town populated by a pathetic total of 400 people, mostly grandmothers selling apricot jams and butter cakes from the backyards of their tiny stone cottages. More importantly, Berrima lies nestled among the Southern Highlands, a good whole 3 hour drive away.

I heaved myself out of bed, stomped disgruntledly over to the windows and parted the lined curtains in a markedly rebellious fashion.

“So we’re driving for eternity to Berrima, in this weather, for Chinese food?” I questioned Kim cockily, all the while pointing to his collection of garden trees and bushes which seemed to be having difficulties standing straight in face of the gale-forced winds sweeping down the streets. A harsh torrential rain beat down hard, its intense cascade forming a thick aquatic veil which obscured visibility. Rain comes packaged as absurdly huge goblets here in Sydney and right then, those goblets were smacking away at the roof, orchestrating a perpetual and deafening cacophony. Occasionally, the wind would howl, let up a bit, and then howl again. Driving out to the Southern Highlands amidst a hurricane like this sounded suspiciously like a suicide attempt.

“Either we crash and burn cos we can’t see the roads, or our car gets torn apart by the wind,” I challenged as-a-matter-of-factly.

Kim lifted his broad shoulders in a shrug. “Well, Brett’s driving. And it’s his car. Come on! Take it as an adventure LAH,” he quipped in mock excitement, punched me playfully in the shoulder, then took off into the bathroom. “Hurry get ready,” he yelled from behind the doors.

And so I found myself plopped in the front passenger seat of Brett’s black Volkswagen Golf, cruising the highway to Berrima at a cautious pace of seventy. The rain had not relented even by the slightest bit. I sat transfixed, possibly from the unfulfilled desire to sleep more, my gaze fixated on the rhythmic action of the swooshing windscreen wipers. Each swipe was negated almost instantaneously by the abundant rainfall crashing thunderously onto the windscreen. The mechanic arms would sweep, the windscreen would clear momentarily, return to being a spatter board, and then the arm would sweep again. It was a boringly recurrent cycle, and I wondered how terrible it would feel like to be caught up in a job that never ended. The road ahead appeared no more than an illusive and inchoate mirage, shrouded by a misty spray and the surging fountains heaped by passing cars. Brett drove in an eerily silent state of concentration while Kim stretched out on the backseat, seemingly captivated by a 2002 version of the Sydney street directory.

And then the car jolted, accompanied by the ominous, screeching halt of tyres against the wet asphalt. I felt the force from the sudden stop throw me forward. The seatbelt went taut and dug hard into my chest in prompt restraint. A loud, continuous blare of the car horn ensued. I drew in a deep, protracted breath to recover from the sudden episode, then turned to Brett on the left. Feet still terse on the brake pedal, he blasted the horn a second time, then let out an impressive string of very rude and profane language. Kim lurched forward inquisitively, his neck craned between both front seats. Ahead of us, a blue hatchback sped and dissolved into the hazy screen of rain. Apparently, it had cut into our lane suddenly and without warning, forcing Brett to slam the brakes hard. I threw a glace at the rear-view mirror and checked for oncoming cars. None. Then I heaved a long exhaust of expired air.

“Blah. Aussie drivers!” I muttered.

“I hope he rams a tree and dies or something!” Brett cursed vindictively.
“Chill man, chill!” Kim attempted to inject some comfort, albeit quite unconstructively. “Want me to drive instead?”

“Nah, I’m fine,” Brett assured. He loosened up a stiff neck, grasped the steering wheel tight, then started the Volkswagen moving again, partially seething from the anger, and partially recovering from the very close brush we had with a very deadly catastrophe. I slouched back into the seat, shut my eyes, and let out a lazy yawn.

Then in the near distance, an extended and familiar screech of tyres resounded once more. I sprang up in automated tension, then realised we were still cruising safely and steadily. Kim sprang forward again. The shrill screeching culminated in a crisp, resounding crash, then more screeching. I shifted uneasily, peering ahead into the obscurity. Brett slowed down and Kim, head still outstretched like an ostrich, muttered something about skidding and crashing.

Brett steered in advance cautiously along the sparse motorway.

“Sounded like trouble,” Kim said, his eyes peeled and kept on the road ahead.

Brett’s car jolted slightly as it rolled over pieces of debris strewn across the width of the motorway. The blue hatchback which overtook us moments ago lay to the left, stopped at an abrupt angle to the road alongside the motorway divider. Its front bonnet appeared as a heap of mangled mess, folded inward towards the windscreen like a compressed accordion. White smoke emanated from a crevice and hissed upwards in a puffy spiral. Glass shards and irregular chips from the wrecked bonnet littered its proximity, randomly spread in a radial manner. A man, clad in a blue sweatshirt, stood adjacent to the driver’s door, wildly flailing his arms in the lashing rain as Brett brought the car to a standstill. He wound down the window and the man rushed over. The pungent odour from skidding tyres instantly pervaded the warm interior of our car.

“I need some help here mateys.” The man blurted in rapid succession, slightly yelling above the roar of the thunderous downfall. “This guy skid and whammed into me.” He directed our attention towards his red sedan, stationary on the right road shoulder. The boot area was dented inward but other than that, the vehicle remained pretty much unscathed. The man, needless to say, was obviously fine. “He’s still in his hatchback and I have no idea what to do!” he continued.

“Ya dialed emergency?” Brett was quick to cut him off.

“Hell, no! Ya guys came past and I decided to grab some help first.”

Kim snapped open his clam-shell Samsung. “I’ll do it,” he volunteered. Shrill, keypad beeping followed.

I flipped the hood of my sweater over my head and stepped out from Brett’s car into the heavy shower. Instantly, I felt myself shrink and cower from the assaulting glacial wind. The outside air was numbingly cold and the hounding gale swept pellets of rainwater hard onto the bare skin of my exposed face. I made my way around the front of Brett’s Volkswagen and towards the semi-decimated hatchback. For one moment, it crossed my mind that the vehicle would, without warning, burst into a raging inferno and the explosive force would propel shrapnel outward like, possibly like a scene out of prime-time television. As I approached, the white smoke had subsided into weak tufts of vapour seeping out insidiously from the flattened engine compartment. An eerie, morbid silence reigned, less the howling winds and the pattering rain, both which my senses had become unconsciously habituated to. I sniffed, checking for the threatening odour of leaking petrol. Only the rancid stench of burnt rubber remained. A mild streak of relief settled.

Brett and the red sedan’s driver followed close behind. As I closed up on the front right section of the hatchback, I was almost afraid to look inside the driver’s compartment. Proximity amplified the damage. Up front, the small automobile appeared more mashed up than it initially seemed. Steel framing wires protruded hideously from its contorted metal exterior and gaping emptiness remained where the headlights, now smithereens of splintered glass diffused on the drenched asphalt, used to be. Rain, without the slightest hint of mercy, continued to batter away at the shattered rubble. A loud crack resounded from behind and I spun around to find Brett cursing and kicking away a piece of broken glass from beneath his feet.

I clenched my fists and rapped hard on the driver’s window with the knuckled joints of my fingers. No response. I rapped again, this time harder and longer. Brett and the man were at the opposite side and Kim ran up behind me.

“They’re sending a nearby highway patrol vehicle,” he hollered in challenge of the bellowing patter. I nodded in acknowledgement, then turned back to the driver’s window. The intense rain had formed a cascading screen of water which kept me from looking into the car. With the chilly palm of my other hand, I swept away the obscuring liquid with quick, lateral swipes, then bent down and peered within the vehicle. A huge, expanded mass filled the interior. “Airbag,” I thought to myself. A grim article I once read about how often accident victims die not by impact but from being suffocated by an expanded airbag while trapped and immobile in wreckage timely flashed into recollection. Instinctively, I reached for the door handle and yanked it hard. Surprisingly, the door swung open.

A caucasian teenaged boy sat motionless on the driver’s seat, torso engulfed by the inflated airbag and his head craned high, chin resting on the top surface of the bag in a bid to avoid being smothered by the ballooned mass. His blonde hair fell disheveled over an ashened face which froze motionless, both eyes locked in a dull, forward stare. Either dead, or in extreme shock. Kim shoved me aside with a gentle nudge and then reached out with both arms to compress the airbag. Brett lent a hand, now having found his way onto the front passenger seat. The driver flinched, then spluttered.

Not dead.
Good.

With Kim and Brett pressing down hard onto the airbag, I hunched over Kim’s arched back and stuck my head into the driver’s compartment, then placed a hand gently on the boy’s now exposed shoulder.

“Ya in pain?” I asked loudly.

A momentary pause followed. He sat frozen, not budging the least bit. “Cognitive paralysis from intense shock,” I thought, running through concepts from trauma psychology. Then, my focused eyes registered a brief shake of his head. Seconds later, he managed to utter a feeble “no”.

“Can you move? Are you stuck?” Kim sprang another question, now having ascertained his consciousness and ability to respond. I stepped back in an attempt to visually check if the boy’s lower body had been wedged by the inward folding fuselage as a result of the impact. It was impossible to verify given the massive cover of the inflated airbag.

“Dude, can you move?” I echoed Kim’s question.

“I think so,” the shaken driver croaked in a trembling voice. He was gradually starting to drift out of shock, evident from drooped shoulders and mild shifting of his body beneath the airbag. He turned his head towards Kim and I. “Help me get out,” he requested, this time with much more sanity and confidence tinged in this tone.

Siren blared in the background. I turned back and saw a small congregation of cars lined up behind Brett’s Volkswagen, unable to proceed. The rain had finally begun to let up a little and a couple of people had alighted from the cosy shelters of their vehicles, supposedly to render assistance. A young Asian lady paced toward Kim and I, then opened the umbrella in hand above our heads. The sudden respite from the hounding pellets felt welcomingly good.

“How’s he?” she asked, peering over our shoulders into the hatchback.

“He’s alright. We need to help him out. Thanks for the shelter.” I replied.

“I think the highway patrol’s here,” Kim pointed out in reference to the escalating siren blasts.

“Good,” I said, then reached to grab the boy’s upper left arm. Kim edged backward and slowly let go of the airbag as the boy managed to hoist himself out of the seat and out of the car, treading uncertainly and shakily. My hand still on him, I felt a persistent reverberation through his clammy skin, possibly the lingering shivers spilling from the intense trepidation wrought by the accident. Kim fully released pressure on the airbag as the boy exited the car completely.

“Thanks guys,” he muttered, gratitude shrouded by an expressionless gaze.

I turned to look for a car in which the boy could sit in under shelter. Coincidentally, the approaching petrol car rolled up alongside, shut off its sirens, then came to a stop on Brett’s side near the hatchback. Two officers stepped out. One spoke to Brett and the other man while the other came around to the boy.

“We gotta move it. Officer says we’re holding up traffic,” Brett yelled and beckoned to Kim and I as he raced across the motorway to his black Volkswagen parked in the middle of the road.

I turned back to check on hatchback boy, still standing under the umbrella held by the Asian girl and speaking to one of the two patrol officers.

“Lucky brat,” I thought, then took after Kim and Brett towards our vehicle.

Only until we had gotten into Brett’s car and started plowing along the lazy highways did I realise the drenched and wretchedly unglam state of mess I was in. I shifted uncomfortably in my seat, then flicked the in-car heater on at full blast.

“Well Brett, you did curse him.” Kim rubbed in as-a-matter-of-factly.

“Shut up Ricky!” Brett snapped.

I whacked Kim in the shoulder.

“Tell me we’re not going to Berimma,” I muttered to Brett.

He interrupted even before I could conclude my statement. “Hell no! Home to wash up, then to the roast store down the road from my place for some duck rice!”

I hissed, then rolled my eyes.

P.S. NONE of these was made up eh. It really happened hor.

Cold feet!

2007-06-08T23:18:00.001+10:00

The floor tiles at home are so glacial, I shuffle around and sleep in socks.

Hoi!
Red checked socks ok!
Maciam italian tablecloth!

Winter socks are cushioned with a layer of padding that supposedly traps heat and keeps feet warm. Makes walking very comfortable too.

For cheap thrill lovers like me, they also accord the added option of zipping around the house pretending its an ice-skating rink. Not possible with bare feet cos a lot of friction ah. My soles very rough one ok. Man right?

I bought a bunch of em from the shops down the road. 5 for 10 bucks. Super cheap! And they come in all kinds of fancy designs and loud, screaming colours. Alas, I soon realised there is no fucking way I can ever bring em back and wear em in Singapore.

So thick.
Feet will grow mushrooms and rot in the heat.

My feet, despite being very macho feet, have low cold threshold.

So I plod around in these too.

Bunny slippers!!!!

Cute boh?
Very soft, comfy and most importantly, warm to wear.

And no, I didn't get a choice because this is the only pair of bedroom slippers my feet could fit into in the entire house.

See.

Winter brings along its fair share of fun!

#@x%#^*@$x%@$

2007-06-08T00:36:00.000+10:00

The more I sit around doing nothing,

the more I think about how i got fucked 360 by unwarranted vindiction,

and the more du lan I get.

但所谓，

忍一时风平浪静
退一步海阔天空。

和一些无畏的小事一般见识，搞得自己情绪那么激动，又是何必呢?

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MABEL!

2007-06-07T15:51:00.000+10:00

CHING CHONG CHIANG!

Lai ah lai ah!

Chio bu birthday. Cannot don't wish.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MAYBAO LILY WONG!

22 years old liao hor.

Wish you many many happiness, many many money, many many boyfriends, and many many whatever you want la ( I know sex is high on your list. Tsk tsk...DON"T SO HORNY CAN?)

Hope you like whatever we got for you!
I got share one hor!

Don't think I far far away means wo mei you fen.
I chooose one somemore orhkay!

Tonight go KTV you must dress up leh.
Like the songstress mamasan.
Best is wear high split cheongsam.

Take many many photo lemme see ah!

SHENG RI KUAI LE LAH!

Missing you and all the others!

Old school rocks! (again!)

2007-06-07T00:01:00.000+10:00

These few days, I've been spending lazy afternoons and good ol' quality time alone with my grandma, lounging around aimlessly at home.

On hearing my MP3 collection loop round and around in endless cycles, she commented on how distasteful contemporary pop lyrics were, and how they paled in depth, meaning and philosophical significance when contrasted with old school pop.

"Aiyoh! Bu shi qing jiu shi ai, bu shi ai jiu shi si. Ku la, fen shou la, li kai la. Yao si yao huo leh!"

(Aiyoh. It's either about passion or love or death. Then cry la, break up la, leave each other lah. Maciam want to die like that)

I felt a compelling urge to immediately jump to Jay's and Stefanie's etc etc defences when a series of ludicrous Jay Chou raps which, till this very day, makes no sense to me, galloped through my mind. It got me thinking a little about how right my grandma was, in some sense.

She went on to quaintly hum a tune or two from her era, ocassionally stringing in the lyrics as and when she could vaguely recall them.

Her remniscent singing spurred me to launch a massive online search for the oldies she was humming, or those she actually named. Amazingly, I managed to download quite a few. After hearing them, or sometimes just the prelude, I was fucking surprised I could actually recognise a few!

Gawd.

I scare the shit outta myself sometimes.

Pretty pretty Wanyi and I then decided to swap a few golden oldies we had in our collections.

And there's this particular song she sent me of which, in my opinion, had a set of rather good lyrics.

Eh. Those in my generation might have heard it before.

It was the theme song for a very very antiquated SBC (were some of you even born yet? muahahaha) mandarin drama of the same title!

Nothing of the bleak and yucky sort like love, death, dying, divorce, sorrow blah blah blah.

I just felt the prose was fitfully simple yet elegant, kinda like painting a warm fuzzy picture of innocence and singing of a carefree and happy life characterised by little things we often overlook. (Drats..I'm emo-ing!)

Then again, maybe it's the quaint, poignant feeling of hearing a familiar tune from my TV-trotting childhood days la.

Here goes! =p

I've posted the MP3 file in the post below cos there appears to be some problems with it when combined with a post full or text.

青春123 - 颜黎明

我将年少的日子，

谱上美丽旋律，

在悠悠的琴声里，

流过款款的笑语。

我将青春的日记，

写成浪漫的诗集，

让盈盈的泪水洗去忧伤的字迹。

我也曾经来编织属于梦幻的彩褛，

但我会珍惜所有真实的回忆。

我也曾经任性地挥霍亮丽的光阴，

但我从来不曾忘记踏出向前的步履。

Chorus:

让我永远拥有永远拥有纯真的心灵，

在我平凡的生命里不断创造奇迹，

让我永远拥有永远拥有阳光的笑意，

在我成长的雨季里耐心等待天晴。

Very meaningful hor?

Let me know if you recognise the song ah!
Then we can sing CHU-GE-DER!

Whooooo!

青春123

2007-06-06T23:59:00.001+10:00

Ta-dah!

2007-06-05T18:40:00.000+10:00

This silly rhyme has been stuck in my head for the entire fucking day.
I can't stop chanting it mentally.

Kim says blogging might help stop it.

As opposed to repeatedly yakking it out randomly, which he claims is very very very irritating cos he doesnt understand a single word.

I translated ok.
But he thought it was absurd to make up rhymes about crabs crawling over sand rivers, or whatever.

螃蟹一啊爪八个

两头尖尖这么大个

眼一挤啊

脖一缩

爬啊爬啊过沙河

Blah.
Doesn't help.

It's still there.

I shall call someone up and chant.

CHUI !!!

2007-06-05T13:26:00.000+10:00

I oppose the accusations that I only post picture in which I look good, or at least, try very hard or pretend to look good etc etc.

These are super unglam photos for you to gawk at.

Courtesy of some remotely dumb nincompoop who, at 21, still thinks it is very amusing to take photographs of people sleeping.

DON'T ASK ME WHY THE SHEETS ARE BABY PINK OK!
Not my house! Not my linens! Not my bed!

I cannot whine if people offer me soft baby pink covers with retarded looking teddy bears imprinted on it to sleep with.

Anyway, freezing cold here la.
Can keep warm can already. Mai hiam.

Ok.
This is the MOSTEST chui-est part.

I SAT UP and continued SLEEPING IN A SITTING POSITION.
All through hugging the big brown teddy.

Tsk tsk.
I would jump at denying such ludicrous claims.
I mean, who the fuck sleeps SITTING?

But in the face of pictorial evidence, I have no choice but to plead guilty.

Blah.

And when I finally awoke from all that shuffling and giggling at my feet...

By far the ugliest shot.
Al-naturale ok.
I look like a cockster.

Eh...who says grown men don't hug stuffed toys to sleep?
No bolster so gotta make do.

Aussies don't hug bolsters to sleep.
Apparently, I was shocked (very very very) to learn that bolsters are an Asian thing.

Angmoh's don't use them and thus, nowhere in Aussie Wossie sells bolsters except in one of those obscure Asian chap-a-lang shops hidden away in the darkest corners.

OMG.
I love Singapore much much more suddenly.

Teddy is barely a week old (counted as since bought from the gift shop shelves) and he's already beginning to collect and trap clouds of dust.

Either he is a superb dust magnet, or the room is very dirty.
I suspect it is the latter.

I was forced to engage in the very childish act of giving teddy a name.
(-___-')

So I called it Teddy Baddy.
Very original right?

A big warm hug and a tender kiss!

Awwwww!

Wahahahahaaaaa!

I like!

2007-06-04T16:26:00.001+10:00

Wah.
I'm currently super obssessed with this song.
Must learn how to sing so next time go KTV can perform loud loud.
Old school is dah IN THING man!
Woohooooo!

Are you like this as well?

2007-06-04T13:44:00.000+10:00

It feels good to occasionally link what you learn in class to what's actually going on around you and to realise that they have real-world ramifications and implications.

Feels even better to have a lightbulb flash above my head at times and then exclaim to myself stuff like "OH YAH! No wonder I act like this sometimes!" or something along the lines of "That's why _____ constantly does ______. Maybe she/he lacks good sex (or whatever lah. Just an example).

This is today's Personality lecture on socially dysfunctional aspects of personality.

I "printed screen" the slides cos I reckoned part of the contents covered were particularly observable in most people we know, and maybe even in ourselves.

I, for one, admit to displaying some of these traits.

Here's the good part.
Hiak hiak.

Here's the even better part.

MINDFUCKING at the blackbelt level ok!
(Blinks to Wanyi)

Her slides fucking funny one.
Simi Drama-mama/papa, Busy bee and Mind poisoner.

Hao xiang video game characters!

There were like 7 other methods mentioned lah.

But the others I didn't post had more to do with bullying behaviours.
Either that, or they were very serious and extreme ones like feigning terminal illnesses, physically harming someone and then rushing to their rescue, or falsely confessing to crimes they didn't commit.

If you suffer from any of these, drop me a mail and I'll cut those slides out for you to view.

Point being, we might not be compulsive attention seekers lah.

But if we all were to sit down and think for a moment, there's probably gonna be like at least one, and for the majority of us, much more than one, occurence in which we played out on of these tactics mentioned in a bid for attention.

Like I said earlier, I unashamedly confess that at one point or another in life (I can't remember the exact whens and whys though), I've been guilty of trying to elicit attention via such devious and underhand means.

Hiak hiak.

Ok la.
Not devious nor underhand la.

But still, it feels sorta..errmm...weird? Funny? I can't find a good descriptor, to actually see some of our common behaviours documented in theory.

Displaying some attention seeking behaviour is orh-kaaay lah. No biggie.

But if it manifests to the extent of being central to one's social existence and interactions so much so that the desire to be the focus of attention anywhere and everywhere dictates our actions and our social habits, then it is...errm...very very unhealthy? *solemn*

Very enlightening really to further learn about why they occur and how they can affect ourselves and people around us.

Aiyah.
Psychology rocks la can?

Muahahaha!

Super Saturday.

2007-06-02T21:00:00.000+10:00

I awoke today to a megatonne barrage brown, woody chunks heaped all over the driveway leading up to Kim's wing of the mansion/bungalow/palace/villa.

"Aye Kim! Your garden trees disintegrated overnight!" I yelled to him across the guest lounge while stranding transfixed at the doorway.

He bounced energetically from the bathroom, shaving foam smeared across his cheeky face, and stole a glance over my shoulder.

"They're pine barks LAH," he exclaimed in an exasperated tone, forcedly attempting the use of a supposedly Singaporean "lah". His brown eyes rolled mockingly in their sockets. "Bark from pine trees! Mummy ordered a truckload from Flower Power for me to lay my backyard garden with!"

"YOUR BACKYARD GARDEN? Hello! If you realised, it's strewn all over your FRONT DRIVEWAY!

A momentary pause ensued as he stared at me, his mouth upturned and eyebrows raised in display of blatant sacarsm.

I threw back a cocky stare.

"Did you think there was any way the delivery could have possibly driven right into my backyard?" Kim blurted in rapid succession. "TRUCK TRUCK TRUCK. It didn't come airlifted on a Chinook helicopter! We're gonna have to move'em to the back ourselves!"

"We? Ourselves?" I shot back in challenge. "Since when was I involved eh?"

"Since you downed the bacon and cheese sandwich I made for breakfast!" He pranced back into the darkened area of the house where his bathroom and the laundry was and reappeared moments later, cleanly shaved and smelling of his mild, peppermint aftershave, with a couple of red laundry pails in hand.

He dropped them outside the door, right at my feet, sped into the garage, and re-emerged with a rust-coated shovel and an immensely long and flimsy looking rake.

I shuffled out onto the tarmac driveway, shielding my eyes from the piercing glare emanating from the mid-day sun while staring stupified at Mount Pine Bark. I reckoned the entire heap weighed almost a tonne. The winter air felt cool and crisp but under an azure, cloudless sky, the stinging heat pricked intermittently on the skin of my bared top body.

"Come on come let's get down and dirty!" Kim strode up alongside and commanded in a sing-sing voice.

And so, for the rest of the early afternoon, I slogged away at plunging the blunted tip of the shovel blade, time after time, into the gargantuan mass of pine. The wood felt moist and exuded a tangy, raw odour that permeated the surrounding air. It smelt familiarly like the evergreen whiffs I used to awaken to during my field camp days in NS - a pervading and unmistakably vegetative smell.

Each strike of the shovel sent voluminous sheets of pine dust billowing upward and around. The particles puffed out, swirled around in a spiral motion, then settled in a unhurried cascade, mostly onto my hair and body. I tried hard to shut out the screeching noise that rang out loud from the shovel blade scraping unrelentlessly against the rough grey tarmac driveway.

Kim collected the the pails of pine bark as I worked to fill them. In a mundane clockwork fashion, he lugged them across the side alley of his wing into the backyard, emptied their contents onto the garden bed, flattened the heaps out with the dingy old rake, then returned the empty pails to me. The rake looked ready to snap any moment and it's spiked end seemed poised for a trajectory that would take it right into Kim's face. I sneered and sniggered at the comical thought.

"You pay for my chemo if I get lung cancer ah!" I shouted as he strutted out with one of his endless bouts of empty pails.

He responded by throwing me a towel slung across his weirdly shiny shoulders.

I folded it into a triangle, wrapped it around the lower part of my face and knotted it behind my head.

"NINJA-BOY!" He pointed at me and let out a startling guffaw

I threw him a menacing glare. "It stinks of your sweat can?" I whined.

My voice was muffled by the towel and came out sounding funny.

"You would rather get cancer I guess?" He picked up the filled pails, one in each hand, spun around, and made his way back to the rear garden.

And so, for 3 whole hours baking in the blistering heat, I arched, toiled, dug, and sweat in the blistering heat, filling up pail after pail of pine bark shavings and concurrently feeding on delicious pine dust. An occasional car en route to the nearby beach would zip past, the people within looking curiously at me attempting to surmount a huge, black, messy pile of they-don't-know-what. When we finally finished, I felt convinced I had become a beaver, or at least lived my past life as one.

He had the audacity to frolic around, snapping random, candid shots, while I slogged my life away.

At least take one yandao one with me posing maaaah!

Which we did eventually la!

Heh heh.

Eh!

My eyes look quite big and visible in this shot sia!

Very very rare ok!

The hair's in a total flop though.

Tak-glam.

Late noon was scheduled for my Aunt's place.

Kim dropped me there in his glistening black CLK, a whole hour's drive from his place.

Amazingly, after all that manual labour in the early noon, my back and arms didn't ache the least bit.

Gym must have done me some, if not much, good.

I entered my Aunt's drivway to find my grandma, draped in a green sweater and hunched over the neat row of shrubs lining the garage driveway. I creapt up on her from behind, stealthed and silently, then sprang a loud cry without warning.

She jolted, spun round, and immediately snapped.

"Yao si ah! Aiyoh! Ru guo wo you xin zang bing zao jiu hei ni sia si le OK!

( Want to die issit? If I got weak heart, early let you scared die me already!)

I raised my eyebrows and let out a good, hearty, sinister laugh.

"Mei you na me rong yi si de lah. Ni na me strong!"

(Won't so easy die one la. You so strong!)

I proceeded to ask her what she was up to sneaking around driveway vegetation. She told me she was picking berries.

Edible berries apparently.

I never knew my Aunt's driveway had edible berries sprouting up alongside it.

Very impressive.

She picked an entire bowl full of it.

The shocking pink colour of the fruit put me off so I ended up not wanting to have any, despite persistent persuasion from grandma claiming they were wonderfully sweet and juicy.

The dust and smog coating the fruit gets thicker with each vehicle that speeds past my Aunt's house. And also with every successive entry and exit of my Aunt's Jaguar into and from the garage. Besides, I've really eaten enough dust that afternoon to keep me filled for an entire week.

Grandma taught me how to make SOYA BEAN MILK later that afternoon!

Aye. Really soya bean milk made from scratch using raw soya beans ok!

Don't play play.

She prepared the beans prior by soaking them overnight in water to soften them.

Slowly, she took me through the process step by step, explaining the rationale behind each and fussing constantly over how messy I was as a cook.

Blended beans!

The preparation process seemed simple enough but was actually heaps more labourious than it appeared to be.

The liquid essence from the blended beans had to be separated from the solid residue so that the end result would have a smooth, silky texture and be free from residue floating around and about.

I filtered the mixture a grand total of 4 times using a baking sieve initially...

...then a coffee strainer, tea-tarik style.

Pro eh?

My tee-shirt looked oversized for me by the way.
I must have shrunk from dehydration after all that shovelling earlier on.

Bah.

Gotta squeeeeeeeeeeeze man.
Squeeeeze the juice outta those beans!

The came the exciting part!

A grand total of 3 secret ingredients Grandma claimed she came up with herself.

Grandma claimed that most of the stuff she knows how to cook are actually self devised recipes.
Like her chai tao kway, png kway, soon kway, orh kway etc etc etc. Honed and perfected through years of experimentation, she says.

Very impressive indeed.

Slowly slowly must learn.

Waaah!

Secret recipe passed on to me leh!
*Haughty smirk*

Finally, the end product was brought to boil and sugar added to taste.

Ta-dah!
Handmade tao hua jui OK!

Absolutely delicious.

And pleasant to slowly sip in such cold, wintry weather.

The secret stuff really made a helluva difference.

The drink was thick, fragrant, and flavourful in a manner i cannot describe with words leh.

Really different from those you grab off supermart shelves or from food vendors in the market stalls.

Woooooooo!
Another recipe added to my culinary arsenal.

Then DINNER!
After a looong day of good, hard work!

We had an outdoor BBQ with honey marinated chicken wings and peppered baby ribs.
A lil burnt though, cos I paying more attention to Shrek on TV rather than the food while bbq-ing.

My aunt made spicy mee goreng.
My cousin did some tomyam seafood stirfry decked out with an array of prawns, mussels, squid, fish, scallops, onions and mushrooms.
There was grilled portobello mushrooms stuffed with a cheese and bacon mix but we ate it off the oven rack and it was gone before I could photograph it.

Leftover chwee kway from yesterday which my grandma made.
And tao suan she cooked earlier in the afternoon while I was raking dust.

Fucking full right now.
Very very gratifying and heart-warming to have the feel, tastes and warmth of home right here in cold cold Sydney winter.

Very productive day hor?

Shiok!

Cotton mayhem

2007-05-31T20:15:00.000+10:00

While plopped in front of the huge plasma watching a mundane documentary detailing the woes of cotton harvesting this lazy afternoon, my grandma, in a nonchalant and a very very as-a-matter-of-factly tone, told me that she once had a friend who died from being crushed by cotton.

I sat transfixed for a couple of seconds, jolted from a couple of inward chuckles, then burst out cackling like a hyena.

Fucking funny.
To die being crushed under something so light!

Classic epitome of a tragic irony.

It's something like drowning in air or getting impaled by rubber knives.

My grandma, undoubtedly astounded by my crude outburst, immediately chided,

"Ren jia si de na me qi can, ni hai xiao ren jia!"

(People die so tragically, you still laugh at people!)

WAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!

I should reckon, it must have taken like a gazillion bales of cotton to have actually killed that poor soul.

Zhen ke lian.

But still, highly amusing.
Hohoho!

Heh heh

2007-05-29T17:37:00.000+10:00

Rejoice.

I'm back from the dead.

And more so I've realised the need of appreciating life's simple pleasures...
...like eating chai tao kway.

*Hiak hiak*

YES YES YES!
Chai tao kway as in the fried carrot cake lah.

Ta-dah!
This is the zhu jiao - the KWAY!

Zhu jiao as in protagonist. Not pig trotters hor.

My wonder-chef-grandma sneakily whipped it outta rice flour, radish, shredded carrots, heaps of heh-bi, fired shallots and chinese mushrooms while I was sprawled across the bed and full asleep in the morning.

Sometime during the afternoon while she was cooking some other dish, she randomly remarked

"Ni men yi ge yi ge dou bu yao gen wo xue zhu cai. Yi hou wo si le, shen me dou bu jian le!"

(All of you don't want to learn cooking from me, next time I die, all my recipes lost!"

Very morbid.
CHOY!

To which I retorted

"Shei jiao ni zai wo shui jiao de shi hou kuai dian zhu!!!"

(Who ask you cook when I was sleeping wor?)

She immediately gave me the (-__-') face, possibly in response to my absurd accusation, and huffily-puffily replied,

"WO ZHU DONG XI YAO KAN NI YOU MEI YOU SHUI HAR?"

(I cook things also must see you got sleep or not issit?)

Heh heh heh heh.
I amaze myself shit with how ridiculously unreasonable I can get at times.

Anyway anyhow anywhat, the kway was good enough to eat by itself, dizzled with heaps of sweet black sauce and chilli sauce.

Eh.
But the ingenious chef lurking within me saw a pressing need to bring the dish to its next higher level of glory and culinary advancement.

A good chef ALWAYS has his ingredients handy.
An anal chef has them laid out neat, nice and proper.
A photo-whoring chef pictorially documents them.

I'm all three.
Xie xie. *beams*

First, must stir fry the chai por and garlic in oil till semi-crispy and exudes an aromatic fragrance.

I don't know why substance abusers sniff glue, parrafin, crack, pot etc etc.
Nice meh?

I have compulsive urges to take in deep, heavy breaths whenever garlic's being fried in oil.
That, I reckon, is true blue substance abuse ok.

Fucking addictive aroma.

Then add in grandma's kway, mash'em into smaller pieces, and let it swim among the garlic and chai por till it's mildy crisp and a wee bit burnt on the surface.

Sprinkle a few dashes of fish sauce.

THE EGG THE EGG!
Fold in the egg!

And wait for it to become crispy!

See!
Beginning to look like hawker centre chai tao kway already right?

I very pro.

Then the chilli!

I put a lot a lot a lot.

TA-DAH!

Very red cos a lot of chilli lah.
I didn't use the black sauce in the end cos I wanted to eat the white version.

Very delicious.

I am very proud of myself.
My grandma too, cos she say I very "gao" (clever).

I concur with her, hands and feel down.

Aye,
don't be deceived by my happy smile in the photo hor.

I actually feel lousier than I look.

The infection's not going away and I feel like a splattered piece of lethargic sponge flopping around the house all day in a dull looking Quiksilver hoodie.

I hope my chai tao kway makes everything better.

I WIN

2007-05-24T16:01:00.000+10:00

Just so you know, Mr Kimmy...

I DID go to the gym today and had a VERY VERY fruitful workout.

So you lose.

That's dinner on you.

And also, it's 15 chin ups now!

You're lagging by 2,
and that equates to 2 chocobananarama-karma waffles from Dairy Shack.

You lose again.

Pay up soon eh!

Singapura flavour!

2007-05-22T23:11:00.000+10:00

Food food fooood and more fooood at Straits Kitchen along Anzac Parade with Jac.

It's a Singaporean restaurant with a whole extensive range of Singaporean (duh) hawker food on it's menu, run by a Singaporean man who's assisted by a rather dumb and super-blah I-dunno-what-nationality waiter.

Blah is a very convenient generic term to connotate negativity.
Good to use when you can't think of a specific term to describe a certain specific trait, feeling etc etc.

ie: The weather is very blah, that exam was so blah, last night's sex was blah, your dress sense damn blah, blah blah blah.

I think I've lost count on the number of posts I have on this blog pertaining to eating and drinking and indulging in the cardinal sin of gluttony. I don't want to count also.

I would rather count the number of gym, swim and running sessions.
Thank godness I'm moderately disciplined when it comes to working out man.

But aiyah.
Weather cold leh.
Must eat more.

I'm a growing boy leh.

I ordered bak chor mee with lots and lots of black vinegar and chilli.
The chilli here hor...different one leh.

Not spicy and very very uber oily. No kick at all.
So the noodles ended up being not-very-impressive.

It's sole saving grace was the humongous serving (better be huge for the $8.90 they charge) and the generous heaps of bak chor.

Jac got black black chai tao kway fried with plenty of seafood and eggs.

Not bad. Got standard.

Except for the fact that I kept hunting for the kway pieces which were being grossly outnumbered by the tonnes of chap-a-lang squid, prawn, egg and black black I-dunno-whats. It's quite disconcerting to eat black stuff (char kway teow etc etc) because you never know what goes into it. Very easy for kazhua to camouflage inside you know.

And we had a bowl of warm bak kut teh to share.
Not the best I've tasted but aiyah...anything hot and steamy is a marvellous respite from the glacial winds sweeping through the streets.

That includes sex as well.

Jac is the only friend I have here who's willing to photo-whore with me.

Aussies have this aversion for the camera and they see absolutely no point or meaning in snapping pictures or in looking good for the camera.

Shallow, pathetic creatures who do not appreciate the true extent of art, aesthetics and glam.
Poor things.

Each time I ask Aussie mates (classic example=kimchee) to snap a photo for me...

"Aye Kim. This tree very nice. Got the autumn autumn feeling leh. Take a picture for me!" (handing him my sleek and ultra-power Samsung NV3 and preparing a good pose)

"What for? Don't you see trees everywhere? Take it some other time man. People might think we're mental or something!"

("mental" is Aussie equivalent of "siao")

Very rude one.

That's why I appreciate Jac's existence and company.
We better comprehend the purpose and philosophy of producing good friendster/blogger-quality photographs.

Very full. I swear.
VERY VERY full.
Couldn't even budge an inch.
And I could feel the tummy sticking out. Eeeyucks!

So we bummed around and drank hot tea before adjourning for....

DESSERTS!

Never hear before desserts occupy a different stomach meh?
Frankly, i have no idea which stomach it goes into or whether it ends up elsewhere in the kidney, bladder or womb or what not.

Just eat and be happy.

Deep-fried vanilla ice cream coated with coconut shavings.

Not haagan daaz or B&J standards obviously.
But likewise, in Aussie, you'd survive better if you didn't approach food with a king's tastebuds.

We hopped out into the streets, walked for barely 10 seconds, and then slipped into this Asian supermarket to escape from the unbearable cold.

Ok lah.
That's just a blatant excuse.

Actually wanted to look for this super-delicious Korean waffle crisps to snack on while doing work in the library later.

But then cannot find.
So Jac ended up grabbing some Korean biscuits with creamy vanilla fillings.

If there's anything Koreans are good for (besides being intensely rude, ludicrously camera aversive, terribly corny and generally BLAH), it's their cutesy variety of snack foods.

Well, maybe they're are good in bed too lah, but I wouldn't know.

Anyway, back to snack (OMG IT RHYMES!).
Korean snackies are the only line of products you can randomly reach out for with your eyes closed and dump them into your trolley/basket (handbag if you intend to shoplift) and yet be sure that they won't end up tasting like salted cardboard or sugar-coated styrofoam.

UNSW campus after sun-down.

A long long walkway plying through the heart of the campus illuminated by beacons of warm amber lighting on either side.

Very very nice.
Like airport runway.

I'm hungry again.
No joke man.
It's the WEATHER LAH.

My lips are cracking and my cheeks are tingling numb.

I'm gonna start building my igloo with ice cubes from the freezer.
Good night!
=)

2007-05-22T18:04:00.000+10:00

I'm freezing cold and ravenously hungry while sitting here typing this in an agonising wait for 6.30pm to come so that I can go meet Jac for dinner at the Singaporean restaurant down the road and eat bak chor mee.

With many many chilli and many many vinegar.

Theoretically, it's still autumn hanging around right now.
Winter only comes in June and peaks in July.

Nonetheless, every nook and cranny that misses out on the sun is already feeling like a cryogenics chamber. I am now starting to believe I can freeze water, vapour, good etc etc with my bare hands, and feet as well if required. Yes it's THAT fucking cold.

Check back with me in June when the real winter deal strikes.
Maybe it'll hail and I'll be telling you how I can shoot ice beams from my fists and building cool glacial sculptures with them.

Apart from the living with the shivers and a constantly blocked nose, I also have to struggle with dire issues of immense boredom which plague me 24/7.

In this afternoon's awful personality tutorial, I got so bored I crawled around the room on all fours while humming a very upbeat Mission Impossible tune. After being discovered and sent back to my seat, I tried factorising my NRIC number with pen and paper but fell asleep drooling torrents before I could finish the sum.

Okay.
6.20pm already.

Amazingly, writing all this crap took me a good whole 20 minutes.

Bak chor mee time.
Bye bye!!!!

Sydney sights

2007-05-19T22:06:00.000+10:00

This is graphic proof that I am capable of taking photographs in which I/we am/are not the primary subjects.

The resolution is horrific because I drastically dropped the file quality by more than half for all the pictures.

I really do not want to have to sit and grow mould in front of my laptop waiting for cranky Blogger and snail-paced Aussie internet to upload whopping MBs worth of pictures.
Not when I have 4 essays bordering late submissions.

So they're actually nicer than they appear to be.

Well, not that they ain't pretty enough anyway.

If you're interested to know, this slew of photographs took me 55 minutes to upload.

Bother.

Sunshineeeey Sydney!

2007-05-19T00:49:00.000+10:00

Here lah here lah!

Photo's from my short break out and about Sydney with Jayson.
Stop asking me for them already.

And also stop asking me why I haven't been updating, haven't been online, haven't been this and that and everything.

I WENT ON A HOLIDAY.
Holiday got no internet ok.

Sorry ah.

The photos a bit the small cos I don't wanna have to upload individual shots due to the fucked up internet speeds here down undah.

The number of shots I post are also a gross underestimation of the total taken.
Both our cameras combined, we snapped 1766 pics over a course of 6 days.

ONE THOUSAND SEVEN HUNDRED AND SIXTY SIX!

Thank God (if he exists) for digicams.

Round and around the Sydney city!

The iconic pera House, Harbour bridge, Darling Harbour and a dinner almost a hundred floors high up on the Sydney Tower.

Lotsa eating and eating and eating and eating and eating!

Yumcha at Bondi Junction, fish and chips onboard a ferry while heading out to watch wild dolphins at sea, humongous seafood platter at the Sydney fish market, sweet pancakes and crepes at Darling Harbour, Krispy Kremes and of course, dinner with Jac high up above the city in the revolving tower.

Wah liao.

Typing all that out made me feel bloated already.
Belch.

The immediate day following Jay's departure back to Singapore, I hit the pool in the afternoon and did 50 laps, went home for a nap, and then headed back out to the gym for a static row session.

Bad news is, I still feel guilty and overly saturated from that one full week of super rich food.

Man.
I think I shall eat grass from today on.

Literally.

Super-duper-wuper fun sand toboganning down the endless sand dunes lining the coast of Port Stevens.

Embracing the Sydney beach culture!

Splashing around in natural rock pools ar Coogee beach!
And catching waves at Bondi beach!

Taronga zoo!

Wah liao!

The fucking biggest zoo I've ever been to ok.
Took forever to finish viewing all the enclosures and exhibits.

Got WOMBAT!
And koalas! And wallabies! And bilbies! And fennecs!

(Ok..how many of you actually know what these things I'm talking about are?)

Aye.
As you can probably see, I'm trying to get this post over and done with as soon as I can.

I am actually very very very reluctant to blog because I am stuck in this laze-around-and-get-lazier-as-I-laze-around spiral but then again, I thought it would only be right and responsible of me to share with the world how much fun we had trotting around Sydney for the past week.

Albeit done in a very shoddy and minimalistic manner.

Never mind la har?
The gist is there. And the pretty photos too.

I have this apprehension about falling asleep lately.

The past nights, I've been getting horrendously fearsome nightmares, all involving me being caught up in some freaky, sure-to-die situations.

I have been caught in a building collapsing from a mega earthquake, abducted by some masked man and enclosed in a clautrophobia-inducing cylindrical case and doomed onboard a flight which failed to take off and when it finally did so, crashed into the pitch black night sea.

I think I need more than 9 lives to survive all these calamities sia.

Very macabre.

Ain't you people glad I'm still alive?

You know why I don't wanna go home?

2007-05-07T00:23:00.000+10:00

Because of things like THIS!

I refuse to believe that Krispy kremes are over-rated.

Even if they really are, it's for terribly good reasons, ie. how they melt in your mouth, the delectable sweetness oozing all over.

Who cares about getting fat?
Exercise more lor.

=p

A WOMBAT IS A CUTE CUDDLY ANIMAL!

2007-04-28T23:18:00.000+10:00

At least 4 people have msned me asking me what a wombat is, with regards to my MSN nick.

A WOMBAT IS AN ADORABLE LOOKING AUSSIE WOZZIE ANIMAL THAT LIVES IN THE WILD LOVES AND TO BURROW.

It looks like THIS!

A wombat is NOT a vampire bat that lives in a womb or a new variant of baseball bat etc etc.

Yet still, the thing that fucks me up most is the fact that these people (happens to be those I barely talk to on MSN because I barely know them, because I don't make friends with stupid people) just kick start the MSN window with...

"What's a wombat?"

No "hi" no nothing one ok.
Just like that.

Got more rude or not you tell me?

And also, if you don't know what something is and you're really dying to learn something new, then for fuck's sake GOOGLE LAH!

If I didn't know or understand something I come across, I would make a concerted effort to smack Google on, and then savour the joy of reading good, accurate (or usually so) information off whatever relevant sites come up INSTEAD OF lau-kwee-ing myself by asking somebody I barely know.

Stupid nevermind.
Lazy and stupid...I really "boh way gong".

Sunny sunflowers!

2007-04-28T22:51:00.000+10:00

Dah delivery man came knock-knock-a-knocking at my door this afternoon.

Pleasant supriiiiiiiseeeeee!!!

Big biiig cheery bouquet of happy looking sunflowers, a cuddly soft teddy and a handwritten card!

All dah way from Singapore leh!

Okay lah.
Not exactly.

From a florist in Parramatta, a satellite city half-an-hour's drive from where my aunt lives.

Still, the order was made and paid for halfway round the world.
And of cos, the sweet thought came from all the way back home too.

Eh!
First time in my life I received flowers hor!
Significant event ok!

Now I know why people bring flowers on hospital visits, home visits, cemetry visits (counted not har?) etc. beacaaaaauseee when I swung open the door and caught sight of the deliveryman clutching the spanking yellow bouquet, it just made me..errm..happy? Don't know any other word to describe la. Just a nice, fuzzy, pleasant feeling.

My cousin swung by the kitchen and marvelled at the unexpected gift.

"Woooooow! Flowers! Didcha know who sent'em?"

"Yah lah. I do! There's a card. Eh...real one not har?"

"OF COS! Look! There's SOIL!"

"Ohh..yah hor", as I sniffed inqusitively at the petals to ascertain presence of that "real-flower" kinda smell. Got leh.

"Eh..Need to put in the sun or not har?" I asked sheepishly. I know NUTS about horticulture, gardening, botany, ikebana or whatever flowery activities and their related finer points ok.

"OF COS! They're SUNFLOWERRRRS!" she whined stupendously at my appalling ignorance.

"Need water right?"

"YES! Hello! There's soil! Look!"

I seriously felt stupid.

"Sunflowers mean something ya know? I can't remember what, but they do mean something," she quipped eagerly.

Rightsie!

I'm going to google for the meaning now.

Thanks a gazzillion for the thought and the effort spent.
Appreciate it loaaaads.
It did, in some way, make my day. =)

Eat and eat and eat.

2007-04-27T23:12:00.000+10:00

If money can buy happiness, then I think it would look somewhat like this.

It's a kebab roll lah.

Looks a bit chaotah. But that's the beauty of it matey!
A slighty burnt, chargrilled taste that dances playfully on your tastebuds.

I get it from a Lebanese eatery off the road from my Aunt's and Uncle's office.
Very famous for their flamegrilled chicken and the creamy garlic sauce that they give to go along with.

Nah.
This is how it looks on the inside, after I took a bite.

There's the classic chicken, shredded. HEAPS of it.
This shocking pink pickle which surprisingly tastes good.
Tomatoes, crisp lettuce and loads of onions.
All smeared with thick, tantalising garlic sauce.
And wrapped in soft, moist lebanese bread.

Eh.
Not loose loose one ok.
It's packed TIGHT, with heaps of stuff within.

Really heaven.
Each time I eat it, I have to lie to myself that it's not the least bit fattening since the chicky is grilled and there's like a tonne of vegetables inside.

I selectively forget the creamy garlic butter.

But who cares la actually.
It's heaven, in an edible form.

And...

I just had dinner in a super-duper-wuper ATAS clubhouse of sorts.

Back in Singapore, if you dine Al Fresco, people will walk by, wag fingers at you, and think you are siao.

So bloody fucking hot, got aircon inside don't want sit, come sit outside!

Here in Aussie Wozzie, everyone clamours for Al Fresco seating.

Because the autumn (and later winter) night air is just so damn cool and refreshing.

There were heaters lining the al fresco huts.

Very useful tonight cos it's another of those I-can-puff-out-white-mist nights.

Shiokness.

I had some braised chicken cacciataro (I think spell sala, but spell right you all also don't understand la hor) cooked with red wine, 3 mugs of beer and a happy-looking strawberry cheesecake which kept me happy all the way till right now.

I'm smiling non-stop as I type this.
Even though I lost 30 bucks at post-dinner jackpot.

Eat and eat and eat and eat a lot these past days.
Gain back the weight liao leh.

But still yandao la.
Don't worry!

If you think your life is not as exciting as mine, and that you need some good company...

Nah...
Give you...
Don't say don't have...

YOUR NEW BEST FRIEND / FUCK BUDDY leh!

I found it while googling for "cute monster".

Really very cute hor?

If you pray hard enough, maybe you'll wake up in the night to find it standing over your bed and staring at you in the eye.

Don't be scared.

Just greet politely and say something like..errmm..."I need to go and prepare the potatoes in the ktchen. Please excuse me hor."

Might work.

Tra la laaaaa!

2007-04-26T22:26:00.000+10:00

We were treated to a not-too-bad mini piano recital after the BBQ last night, in the mansion's piano lounge.

I secretly recorded one of the pieces played using my handphone.

Quite fantastic to be hearing an Aussie, who has no slightest idea of mandarin, play this song.

The quality kinda sucks cos well..my handphone kinda sucks

And I said some shit midway through.
Very spoiler. Heh heh .

But I was genuinely impressed by how fast pianists learn pieces, even by just listening to it a few times.

(Continued from above post)

2007-04-26T22:10:00.001+10:00

AND!!!
I was forced (by mass request from friends and family (!) ), to subsequently SING the very same song.

Defiantly, I argued that even if I sang the entire piece from head to tail, flawlessly and sounding like Jay Chou, it would make no fucking difference since no single soul in the entire lounger would understand anything

Ok.
Except one other taiwanese guy maybe.

But in the end, I lost lah.

Threatened to let loose some cheap secret if I didn't do entertain the crowd.

So boh pian lor.

Rather lose face this way than lose face through being told on. :(

AND THIS TIME ROUND, it was someone else's turn to secretly record!
Using laptop and mic somemore.

Kan pai seh can?

I admit I sounded like I was whining through the entire song. A
nd the guitar playing was heaps worse than the singing cos I haven't touched a guitar in months.

In short, chui la.

But for a good laugh, gei ni men ting la.
Naaah!

Hen nan ting! Very echo-ish also leh. I think it's the lounge acoustics or something.
I cringe each time I hear it.

I will practise more!
I promise!

堕落的一天

2007-04-26T17:49:00.000+10:00

I think I eat too bloody much at the BBQ last night.
I figured almost 10 chicken wings, 6 steak fillets and an assortment of other chap-a-lang stuff.

Then later sleep...
KENA NIGHTMARE!

I dreamt I killed someone or something. But that took up only like 3% of the dream. I couldn't even remember the killing process. The other 97% constituted me trying to flee to I-don't-know-where so that I could get as far away from being caught as possible. And in the midst of my escapade, I went shopping for puppies. (-__-').

Eh.
Very real ok.
And very scary.

When I woke up in the morning in time for classes, I felt like I didn't sleep at all.

And so, I conveniently plonked back into bed and slept all the way will 12 noon.
Needless to say, pontank classes lah!

BUT IT WAS A GOOOOOD DAY!

Bright cheery sunshine, crisp cool air.

Heh heh heh!
SHIOK OK!

While soaking up the sun, I flipped through the latest edition of Reader's Digest and found an exotic recipe somewhere in the back pages for "capsicum stuffed with minted rice".

I tell you, it looked damn good.
And quite easy to tackle.

So I went supermarket lor.
(I sibeh auntie leh..bueh tahan).

Came back, slogged in the kitchen for an hour over...
and..

TA DAH!

Very delicious ok.
Everyone liked it. (as usual).

I need to go for classes more.
Really.

Siao ding dong

2007-04-26T01:58:00.000+10:00

I wore a ragged blue jeans and a crisp, white polo tee with the word "Levis" knitted on it upon the left breast area.

At the BBQ, some random friend's friend, whilst making small talk, asked,

"Oh. So you're working at Levis yeah?" (while pointing to my polo-tee)

"Huh?" I replied with a wtf look. "It's just a brand dude! I don't work there!"

And no, he didn't sound like he was trying to be funny, joking, being silly etc.
It sounded like a GENUINE QUESTION!

Really gila-siao-ding-dong leh.

Wear Levis means must work at Levis meh?

I'm semi-frozen from frolicking around the lawn during the BBQ just now, out in the chilly night air.

Today cold until breathe got white mist one ok!
Don't play play.

I think I will evaporate / sublime when I return home.
Blah.

Rain rain go awaaaay!

2007-04-23T20:36:00.000+10:00

RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN!

RAIN!

RAIN!

Everyday also rain.

Rain still never mind hor.

When it rains, it's big fat globs of rain, ok...make that many many many big fat globs of rain, that fall at the speed of light and whack you hard in the face.

With a surrounding air temperature of 16 degrees celsius and the unrelenting wind howling right into you.

Not very pleasant.

Especially when I had to ruuuun all the way from the Uni sports complex to the bus stop, frozen to the bone and drenched like a freaking hippo (hippo like always very wet and slimy..no meh?) after my swim in the afternoon.

Good thing is, the moment I got to the bus stop, the bus came!

Bad thing is, the bus docked right alongside the shelter BUT the whole bunch of stupid uni students clamouring to board clumped together in a ginormous, soggy mass right outside the bus door, and smack under the monstrous rain.

Like this.

WAH LIAO.
GOT MORE STUPID OR NOT YOU TELL ME?

Cannot queue up orderly UNDER THE SHELTER and then get onto the bus ONE BY ONE MEH?

1. Stand in an orderly and civilised fashion under the bus shelter.
2. Wait for your turn.
3. When it's your turn, RUN from the shelter to the bus and get wet for like THREE SECONDS AT MOST (10 if you are a very slow runner).
4. Everybody dry (relatively) and happy.

Compounded by the fact that the buses here don't work on EZ-link kind of tap-and-go system.
Have to pay the fare manually to the driver and wait for the driver to slowly count and give you back change if you don't give exact (which a lot of people don't).
Or if you have the travel pass, must feed into the machine (maciam the old transitlink card kind). And the machine takes like4 seconds to process the fare before it re-dispenses your card again.

So you imagine lah.
How bloody fucking long the crowd (including me) stood helpless, hammered by the bloody rain!

DON'T TELL ME THAT I COULD HAVE JUST WAITED UNDER THE SHELTER FOR THE CROWD TO BOARD THEN I BOARD OK!

The thingy I drew was a gross under-reflection of the number of people there.
Got at least 50 odd I tell you.
If I had to wait magnanimously for them all to get onto the bus, then I might as well don't wait.
Cos there would be NO WAY I could have made it on board.

Really very blaarrgh leh.

My mood, fortunately, was salvaged by.....

TAH-DAH!

A HOME-MADE GOODIE PACK!

Never mind the fact that it came in hideous, surgical green.
I'm not usually very fussy about minute details like that.

Let's see what there was inside.

KNNBCCB.
Call me princess.
Never die before right.

GOT LUNCH OK!
And it came packed in a classic, brown, ruffly-wuffly paperbag!!!

I have this thing for paperbags.
Especially this kinda brown ones. (And also the same kinda brown manila envelops as well).

I absolutely relish crumpling them and then hearing that errm...crumply (?) noise coming outta it. Very satisfying.

Everytime I go to Burger King or Macs, I will ask the staff for paperbags.
Nothing to put also ask. So can play with them.

My ambition is to work hard now and make many many money so that in the near future, I can set up my own little business selling (anything), pack them into happy-looking paperbags like these, and send my gratified customers trotting off in a good mood because they too, can and will have an enjoyable time fiddling with the bags.

In the meantime, I shall be contented with hooding myself with these bags and prancing around pretending to be the masked avenger.

Must remember to cut eye holes and nose hole and mouth hole. If not will hyperventilate and die.

Nonsense scribbling on the front and reverse sides.

I am a GROWING BOY LEH!
Grow what? Sideways ah?

There was a burger bun stuffed with heaps and heaps and heaps of mayo-tuna, sun-dried tomatoes and cheddaaah cheeeese! DELICIOUS!

Coffee flavoured swiss role.

Uncle Toby's apricot yoghurt bar! Very nice also.

And a huge banana. (Not very sweet leh).

I finished all during lecture and before my swim.
The ang-moh girl sitting behind must have been very very very dissed by my obsession with the crinkly brown bag. And also very revolted by the sheer amount of stuff I managed to down in 10 short minutes. Very hungry ok.

:)

Thanks for everything.
Pleasant surpriseeee!

And yes la.
It was edible. (Not edible also must say edible)

Autumn is in full fledge.

As seen from the classic heaps of dried, fallen leaves strewn all over.

Heroes time!

Got 6 episodes to watch back t0 back leh!

Shiok!

Sydney Royal Easter Show!

2007-04-21T00:52:00.000+10:00

Eh.

I've finally gotten the Easter Show pictures decently done up.
And half of them I post here are conveniently taken from those I've edited for Friendster.

Aiyah.
Never mind la har?
Don't be so fussy.
Nice can already.

While I'm typing this, I'm hearing a madly irritating croaking emanating (3 consecutive -ing words leh. sounds gramatically sala) from the backyard lawn. It is tingling my nerves because it sounds so disgruntled, it's depressing. Also something about the well-timed rythmic intervals that diss me of heaps.

I am currently very very very eager to put on my hoodie, go out into the lawn, find the frog/toad/mutant/stray alien etc. making the fucking noise, and then trample on it or something to that extent.

Thus so, I'm going to keep this short.
Less words. More pictures.

SYDNEY OLYMPIC PARK!
Where the big, huge, shiny stadiums are!
Since the Sydney Olympics only happen errmm...ONCE...back in 2000, the sprawling grounds are now used to host events like the Easter Show lor.

At the gates!

With my Aussie-buddy Warren and fellow NUS-ian Jacklyn.

Each time I look at this picture, I snort and snigger to myself.
Quite chui.

Many many many performances.

The highlight of the show were the animals.
A lot of them. And they kinda stank.
For the rest of the day, i walked around enveloped in an exotic whiff of animalistic (defaecation) odour.
The cows might have found me sexy!

My new best friend!
KOALA BEAAAAR

Hang like that also can sleep.
Sibeh steady!

There was this parade with lotsa retarded looking mascots (ie. the really dumb looking brocoli gallivanting amongst its bevy of vegetable friends). There was actually also an accompanying brinjal which looked more like a purple banana, but I failed to snap a picture of it. Blah.

The parade was led by your very chio ah-mahs, flocked in their soft pink nighties and brandishing awesome looking mops!

Your girlfriends!

And finally, some nice B&W pics.

Ok.

Time to mince some frog/toad.

Must be careful of spiders lurking in the lawn though.

My friend just kena bitten by a white-tail a few days back and had to be rushed to the hospital for anti-venom.

Naughty naughty animals we have right down under.
Tsk tsk.

V-Tech shootings

2007-04-18T23:37:00.000+10:00

I sat in disbelief as I read the following report, with other related ones, off the Straits Times Interactive portal.

And we all thought the Columbine incident was ghastly enough. It serves well to prove that people tend to grossly underestimate the savage actions an awry mind can drive people to undertake.

It's incredulous, almost impossible to rationalise from a sane perspective, how someone can indiscriminately go on a spree pumping bullets into 33 people he barely knew. Such blatant disregard for life leaves in its wake a putrid stench of morbidity. I sat and thought tonnes after reading the article.

The killer apparently wrote a play entitled "Richard McBeef," as part of a short story writing class. The bizarre play features a 13-year-old boy who accuses his stepfather of pedophilia and murdering his father. The teenager talks of killing the older man and, at one point, the child's mother brandishes a chain saw at the stepfather. The play ends with the man striking the child with "a deadly blow."

Ya can read the full contents of the play here if ya want.

Left me greatly disturbed.
Something was apparently wrong with his psychopathology, yet no one took heed to it.

It's been eons since a piece of news left me thinking this much.

Incomprehensible.

Wherever there are villains, there are bound to be heroes I suppose.
Sure hope this man' s soul ends up in heaven, if there ever is heaven.

Watch for the imminent repercussions.
Intensified racism, anti-asian-ism, hate crimes, copy-cat shootouts, violence proliferation etc etc. News just got more exciting.

Tsk tsk.
The world is indeed a warped place.

Apocalypse now, anyone?

B.Z

2007-04-18T00:13:00.000+10:00

I have many many many many many pictures taken at the Royal Easter Show last week.
But I'm only mid-way through editing them and I am lacking the impetus and motivation to finish doing so. I'm already kinda sick of seeing myself looking so good in the pics.

I'll get them done and post'em once I feel like it. Maybe good sex will get me in the mood, I don't know.

Very busy this week ok.
So many assignments due.
Got 2 mid-session exams somemore.

But as usual, I don't give a big fat flying fuck.
Maybe a little with regards to the Forensic Psychology exam tomorrow, cos its interesting.
But yeah, still minimal effort, cursory reading, and zero commitment.

Eeeeek.
Why I so lazy and lackadaisical ( I think spell sala ) one har?

I am making my paid membership at the Uni gym here very fucking worth each and every mili-cent.

Never study but everyday go swim or run or static-row or do weights.

Thus so, my back is acting up again.

Ok.
This post is getting disturbingly boring.

I am also getting increasingly grouchy because I finished an entire pack of latte-flavoured TimTams within the last 20 minutes and I feel freaking icky inside out.

Half outta guilt, and half outta sheer "jelat"-ness.

Woolworth's was selling them dirt-cheap at 1.99 buckaroos a pack.
I tell you, at that kind of price, NOT buying is a sin ok.

Bu mai dui bu qi zi ji.

And so I whacked lor.
One time buy 5 packs.

One original, one double-coated, one latte, one chocolate mud and one caramel.

(TimTams here got many many flavour one hor. Mai siao siao)

I think I am going to gag or something.
Then go to sleep cos tomorrow 10 o clock got exam. * I love to type in broken england *

Before sleeping, I shall think about wonderful dinner by the Opera House planned for tomorrow evening so that I can sleep a happy boy.

Good night!

2007-04-11T23:07:00.000+10:00

全体肃立！
升旗礼开始！

中正校歌

曰吾中正

至大至刚

矗立星洲

巍巍昂昂

华夏声教

广被炎荒

欧印文明

他山之长

好学力行

知耻是倡

日新月异

不息自强

止于至善

万国同光

大哉中正

悠久无疆

[ Click to listen! ]

好想好想回到十六岁那年。
回到那无忧无虑的快乐时光。。。

我爱中正总校。

While ruminating over lost memories and happy innocence long gone (at the same time feeling very very cry-ish because I watched the youtube graduation video 4 times over), I remembered that I wrote a poetic poem in tribute to CCHS looong looong fucking loooong time ago in my old blog.

Thought it would be very very very apt to recycle the post here.

Emo nemo calls for emo nemo. (What talking me eh?)

Nah.

Where gleaming hues of the crimson sun pour
The morning, like angels, robed in golden splendour,
Treads gently,
Unseen, unheard,
On the tranquil waters.
Emanating silent ripples clamouring for an unknown shore.

Stout branches beckon, clad in luscious green, girded round by iridescent blooms.
Underneath these gnarly trees, zestfull sould seek an ethereal solitude
To watch, amidst the gliding lagoon, fountains dance in exhuberant swirls.
Fluttery breezes leap off the emerald roofs,
A rustic oriental flavour basks around.
In valiant salute, a thatched pavillion stands, embraced by angelic divine.
Wherefore the arched bridge bends, hunched over the rocky shores.
Weary of this changeless scene, yet wavering not in soulful destiny.
Out across hazy gloamings, out beyond the sprawling fields.
Over pathways lapped by sunstreaks, leading skywards to open dreams.

Littered hues of ashen white, specked with glistening silver buttons, lined in flowy red ties.
They prance in youthful bustles, soaked in symphonic chatters,
Of fervent dreams and soaring ambitons.
Of eternal ties forged and of simple pleasures.

Go forth thy children,
Transcend the unchartered.
She shall carry you snug in her wings of comfort.
Rise above the amber clouds, beyond your evanescent visions.
Trudge across the spirals of treachery, past the fleeting angst and agony.
For beneath these majestic ridges, beneath her slumbrous vigil,
Calmed by the ceaseless charms of her swaying waters,
See you through, she shall,
Cometh twilight darkness or wintry heights.

Happy years, amongst these valleys, happy years have come and gone.
Childish laughter and friendships withered, fading along.
They brush past me in a sighing breeze.
Left not the kinship nor thr faces.
Left not the affection nor the bickers.
Alas a dying echo roams and lingers,
In tale of the wrecks tide of time bringeth.

I would gladly remain in contented sojourn.
Wafting through dismal remnants of the journey bourned.
Then she descended, veiled in shrouds of dazzling white,
And speaketh to my restless soul entwined in spires of loss.
Sad music cometh, she tells of a haven.
Where memories live and silent moments roll.Where lonesome souls meet in reminiscent desires.

"Emerge from the hauntings of your forsaken past.
Dismount from my wings, but sow them in your heart.
Flown you in airborne discoveries I hath,
But bestow upon you wings of flight I now will.
There the songs of childhood travel over rock-strewn isles.
There poignant faces beam with gladness most sincere.
There a swelling pride rages in aspiring glory,bears staunch testament to your once belonging."

And so we headed on,
we reached it, and we never more will part.
With peace as calm as sunset, folded round my weary heart.

Emo nemo emo nemo emo nemo.

I LURBCH MY HIGH SCHOOOOL!

Nasi Lemak!

2007-04-09T01:18:00.000+10:00

I am wonder chef!

Because today, I took a culinary potshot at nasi lemak.

Ta dah!

I forgot to photoshoot the nasi in the nasi lemak.
But yeah, the rest of the entourage's pretty much here.

Every dish also got sambal.

Basically because I was attempting to re-create the authentic flavours of melayu melayu cuisine.
And more importantly owing to the fact that I pilfered a whole bottle of sambal chilli from my Aunt's.

Heh heh.

For the good of culinary research and advancement ok!
I'm so sure she wouldn't mind.

But alas, I only added a teeny weeny eeny mini pathetic dash of it into each dish cos the boys, being the (blah blah triple blah) ang-moh-fied asians they are, cannot tahan spicy food.

WEAK TASTEBUDS!

There was pototo cubes stir-fried with mild mild mild mild sambal chilli and onions.

Aussies are mad-hat-crazy over onions.
I am also crazy over onions cos they taste good and also cos I can pretend to be very emotionally needy and teary whenever I cut them so I get tender loving care from people around me. Very usueful ok.

See! I am a true-blue-Aussie-bum at heart already!

I raided Rick's (mom's) freezer compartment and found 2 slices of codfish fillets which, to my subsequent realisation, costed a big-obese-40 bucks! Talk about being atas-ness. If I had 3 cars in the house, I think I wouldn't settle for anything less that 40-dollar fish either I guess.

But it was freeeesssh leh!
Again, cooked in mild mild mild mild sambal and a bulk of tomato sauce and some sugar.
Not bad. Tangy tangy taste to it.

Rick's mama said I put her 40 bucks to good use.
I'm honoured.

There was no fucking way the boys could have stomached ( or mouthed ) the sambal chilli as in sambal chilli per se with the rice. So I had to improvise and stir-fry some of it with heaps of "heh bi" to make "heh bi hiam". Nothing as sedap as good'ol' chilli on rice la...but oh wells...what to do when ya cooking for pussies? Blah.

And of course, there was boring ol' crispy ikan billis.

I kept saying "ikan billis" and that pretty much pissed the boys off because they would rather me refer to it as ANCHOVIES. One particularly pressing reason for their case, as put forth by Rick, was that no one could be dead certain every single fish in that whole pile had the name Billy. (-___-')

"Well, how would you know ALL of them are Billys? There could be John, Sebastian, Dolly, Chris yada yada yada right in that shoal ya know! Don't be presumptious matey!"

Very funny Koon Young.

The rice was pretty tricky to cook though.
I think I added too much coconut milk. It came out kinda wet and sticky.
But yeah, not too bad la.

Those bumbling idiots were clueless as to what authentic (CHANGI VILLAGE) nasi lemak had the potential to taste like. So they totally loved whatever I whipped up anyway. So did Rick's mummy and maid.

I feel very accomplished.
Like I've brought a piece of exotic Singapura right here into Aussie wozzie!

After eating like 3 serves ( I cooked too much bloody rice ), I attempted to do some readings in the outdoor cool of the EAST WING'S back garden.

"Attempted" is a very very important keyword to note.

I cannot study in peace with the boys around because certain people will then decide to become a mega-irritant by taking chui photographs of me in my dishevelled, unkempt and very frustrated state.

And yes I fucking fell asleep eventually.

I drooled over my textbook and the ink from the highlighted parts totally dissolved and ran all over the pages. So much for wanting to keep the $140-piece-of-shit nice, clean and proper so I can sell'em off before I leave.

I posed for the 2nd and 3rd peektures la.

AWWWW! You know I cannot resist the camera la!

I thought the hoodie one quite cute. In a retarded manner.

It's bloody 1.51 am now.
While I'm sitting down writing this, Rick's re-heating the food from earlier on and eating it all over again.

I am wonder chef! *smug*

YAY!

Didcha knoooooow?

2007-04-04T22:10:00.000+10:00

The following is from a pamphlet produced by NUS promoting the institution as an exchange destination among foreign students.

I picked up a copy while helping to man the NUS booth at the Exchange Expo here at UNSW a week ago.

So now we all know

Chewing gum is NOT illegal.

Don't anyhow go and scare little children say police will catch because they chew gum ok.

See..

We all learn new things all the time.

I wonder if smearing used gum on lift buttons, MRT seats, traffic light poles etc. is legal...

Just this afternoon, I stuck a piece (actually it was 2 pieces combined to become one big wad...CHEW ONE NO KICK ONE LEH) of used gum beneath the fold-in-fold-out lecture hall table because I wanted to dispel the rubber and eat my tuna sandwich instead.

To my utter dismay, the nearest bin was like 10 steps away from me. So boh pian lor. Aye...back pain ok.

Heh

Dash the Dinosaaaaauuur!

2007-04-04T14:00:00.000+10:00

I received the first ever easter present in my life from a friend.

SURPRISE!

It was a CHOCOLATE EASTER EGG!

How novel!

It's called Cadbury Eggosaurus basically because I think it defeats the size conventions of chicken, duck, quail, pigeon, swan, parrot etc egg or what not.

I mean, it could have been passed off as an ostrich's egg.
Or maybe an emu's.

But those bumbling flightless birds seem a bit too stupid and unappealing.

That's why they decided to give ownership of the egg to a DINOSAUR!

The box says that the dino is called DASH.

I think it's a confused little creature who suffers from dissociative identity disorder.

It has trouble deciding between being a T-rex or a velociraptor because it looks like a little bit of both.

The graphical depiction makes it look like a boy dino but apparently, it lays eggs.

Gender identity disorders maybe?

But who fucking cares when it pops out (presumably) rich, creamy, chocolatey eggs!!!

Very weird species.
The big egg contains small eggs.
But the smaller ones have this sweet sugar coat which are quite delicious.

Half dozen Nutellas.
Apple strudels.
Easter chocolates.

I'm a diabetic in the making.

*Heh*

See!
I was all eager and excited over opening Dash's egg!

HAPPY EASTER!

The photos were using my mobile (lousy camera + lousy flash ) in the not-too-bright university park at 11.30pm.

Pardon the fuzzy-wuzziness eh.

I'm going away on a road trip to either Queensland or Melbourne with my aunt and family over the Easter weekend.

I'm a happy boy.

Thanks for the easter eggie! =)

Very very pain.

2007-04-02T22:51:00.002+10:00

Cannot gym.

Cannot swim.

Cannot jog.

Cannot paddle.

Cannot stand too long.

Cannot walk too much.

Cannot sit too straight.

Congrats to me!
I'm now a proud new member of the Eat-sleep-and-get-fat Club.

Won't you join me too?

Tak-glam

2007-04-01T20:55:00.000+10:00

Something's gone awry with my Samsung NV3's USB cable.
I must have sit on it or something because it staunchly refuses to connect my camera to the lappie.

This is a very annoying limiting factor to my glorious papparazi moments because without the cable to recharge the camera, its as good as picha.

I mean, the camera works bloody fine but there's no way I can get it charged other than via the USB cable that came with it. Alternatively I could try to stick it up some powerpoint by pure brute force or attempt to generate lightning from my fingers like Darth Vader or Storm.

But then also no use.
Cannot transfer the photos to my lappie.

Fucking brand monopolies.

The person who next invents a universal USB cable for an array of electronic gadgets (ipod, mobile, cam etc etc) deserves to make it big.

I cannot find the exact Samsung cam model here in Sydney.
In fact, I cannot find ANY Samsung cammie.

I am now stuck in happy happy Sydney without means of pictorially documenting my exciting escapades.

To alleviate my cam-withdrawal syndromes (I walk around and make irritating camera clicking sounds in people's ears), my friend took the kind liberty of snapping me while I was working ferverntly on my darned term paper in the sheltered platform overseeing his backyard.

With his expensive I-dunno-simi-model phone camera.

My friend claims I look sexy when I'm engrossed in a state of undiverted concentration.

SEXY MY FUCKING FOOT!

FUCKING UNGLAM CAN?

Ruffled hair, black-rimmed glasses and a dull Quicksilver hoodie to complete the chui package because it is cold cold cold.

It is very rude to spring surprise snapshots on people when they are in a helpless state of chui-ness.

Hello! Even good looking people have their ugly moments ok!

In repentance, friend redeemed himself for his heinous crime by giving me another chance at a golden kodak moment.

Take out speckies.
Flash the twit sign.
BIG..WIDE...GRIN!

Got dimple somemore leh.

I WIN!
*sniggers*

I am majorly sleep deprived.
Too much beer, too much heaty BBQ food, nursing and washing up a mega drunkard (BLAH), and late night phone calls to halfway around the world which were mildly pissifying.

Then when I finally slept a pathetic wink and woke up a complete grouch to face the term paper, I had to slip in the bathroom and hurt my freaking back.

Now cannot even walk properly.
Fucking hurts.

Maybe I shall take a day off from uni tomorrow.

CANNOT WALK HOW TO GO SCHOOL YOU TELL ME?

Nothing to write but die die want to blog.

2007-03-31T11:05:00.000+10:00

My throat's been sore, dry and inflamed for the past 6 days already.

I put back on 1.5 kg. Very good.

2 days past, I realised that I have an essay due 3 days later.
And following this realisation, I slipped on nice clothes and headed out to Scruffy's. Look at my face (although you cannot see..but imagine la...DO I CARE?)

While we're at it, I am madly in love with Scruffy's, their ludicrously cheap beer, chummy staff and the giant plush hedgehog.

I tried shopping for a new jacket but ended up buying a multi-coloured striped mambo polo tee, in which I look very dashing. Heh.

I cooked chicken curry.

I got 96/100 for my maiden exam here after spending an hour preparing for it the night before, half of which was spent watching an episode of bleach.

I am hooked onto Heroes.

Ok.
That's all the boring shit I have for now.

I heart Sydney.

2007 New South Wales Dragon Boat State Championships

2007-03-25T21:46:00.000+10:00

I have been mega grumpy these past days from serious lack of proper sleep.

While roaming the mall at Bondi Junction a few days ago, Brett suggested that I get myself a Mr Grumpy tee-shirt going on a discount.

"No thanks Brett," I replied adamantly. "It's so not me. Besides, I already have a red Mr Happy one!"

And Brett turned up his nose and gave me a disbelieving snort. I wonder why, because i REALLY DO have a red, happy-looking Mr Happy tee already.

The temperatures dipped today. I hope it stays this way so that I do not have to change my boxers everyday. Very lazy to wash clothes often. After all, it is fucking autumn already and autumn is supposed to be breezy, cool and complete with fluttering maple leaves.

Ok.
Jiang zhong dian.

Very long never post photos already.
And so, here are the ones from yesterday's NSW State titles, held at the Sydney International Regatta Centre.

The centre is nestled away in Penrith, way west of central Sydney and set against a backdrop of grassy green hills sprawling uninterrupted along azure blue skies and calm, shimmering waters. Very very pretty.

The race waters are clear, still and very-very current free. No used condoms, dead cats, oily petrol patches and reckless, frolicking river taxis emanating noxious smog, all which are very aptly characteristic of someplace familiar...say...Singapore River?

Besides being aesthetically pleasing, the Regatta centre is also built on the forefront of harnessing technology to improve race efficiency. Basically, it is every paddler's race haven because it was built for the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

See! Got olympic logo!
I look very black in this photo. Must be the shadows, and also owing to the fact that I am simply too fucking lazy to photoshop all my shots ie.adjust the brightness and contrast and yada yada yada. Now we all know what the neon green team jerseys are for.

Adjacent to the race arena is a ginormous grandstand cum spectator area with comfortable cinema-like folding seats.

This grey structure housed in alignment with the finishing line has a full glass facade, allowing race officials a proper view of the race endings. Not like they really need such a good view, because the bouys demarcating the lanes at the finish line are fitted with movement sensors that clock lap timings the instant a boat crosses the line. Don't even need to manually record time.

How cool is that huh?

The centre also comes complete with the most practical of all features - a long, fully fixed and very stable pontoon attached to the rock embankment alongside which 5 race boats can dock up to, end to end. Never underestimate such a seemingly simple facility. It makes embarking and disembarking fucking heaps easier. Don't have to tread with the constant trepidation of slipping, landing face flat and breaking your nose while full embarrassing yourself in front of the entire paddling fraternity, all courtesy of wobbly, makeshift pontoons made from crumbly rotting wood.

Long looong race lanes, stretching into the settling morning mist.
The perspective of length give the venue an odd, quaint and rustic charm.

Biiig biiig announcement board with goes click-click-click-a-click whenever the letters shuffle from an announcement change, very much like the ones at Changi Airport.

At the conclusion of each race event, a retarded looking I-dunno-what comes on and and starts clapping its gloved hands very very very rapidly. Hen hao xiao.

Chinese Youth League Dragon Boat Team Australia!
YEAAAAH!
This blue team jersey looks not too bad.
And so do I.

My trusty grey owl paddle with my paddler ID tag.

To compete legitimately in any major dragon boat event, every paddler must be registered with the state's dragon boat federation, in my case, the New South Wales Dragon Boat Federation. Registered paddlers are issued with a paddler ID on which your details and pretty photograph are printed on. Very pro looking. Got nice looking boats gracing the base of the card somemore.
I think its the ideal souvenier for me to bring back to Singapore.

The "Sweep : Yes " part indicates that I'm a certified-able coxswain and thus, can legally steer in races.

Here, the coxswain is called the sweeper and the to cox or steer a boat is known as to "sweep".

Don't play play hor. To be a certified sweeper, I had to go through a short assessment conducted by the federation during which you have to pull stupid stunts like navigate a boat through obstacles, around buoys, away from shallow waters and embankments, and the most exciting of all, ludicrously sharp turns while the boat is in full motion. All made more challenging by the spanking new 3G boats we train in here. Lucky never fall into the water. Very good experience.

With some of my team-mates.

BLAH!
All looking away from my camera into ANOTHER camera.
Stupid ang mohs take photo don't know how to take one by one, direct attention to the active camera and count 1,2,3.

Aussies don't like to snap pictures.
I tried asking once or twice but most of my team-mates shun the camera, for I-don't-know-what reasons.

Either that, or CCWA-ers are fucking camera whores, a statement I can make with the fullest of convictions.

If anyone wishes to challenge what I say, I will proceed to show you the 450+ photos of SAVA and Regatta I have in my lappie and then subsequently throw a kettle in your face.

Warming up!

The lady in the centre with her plams clasped in Slyvia, CYL's head coach.

For the record, she can outrun, outrow and outshout most of the guys in the team (including me ok), and is capable of effecting 12 unassisted chin-ups at one go. I stroked (the Aussie term for pace) with her on a few of our training sets and almost broke my arms trying to keep up with her stroke rates. She is also a nice, fair, motivational and respected coach who has garnered the adornment of each and every of her fellow rowers. Absolutely no popularity issues. *ahem ahem*

Many many boats!
Note the colourful team jerseys characteristic of local crews.

Watching the women's crew compete in the Premier Womens events.
They came in 4th in the heats and unfortunately, didn't make it to the finals.
Nonetheless, you do not want to mess with them because like Slyvia, a handful of them can mount the chin-up bar and do counts of 6 or 7 totally unassisted - which, in my opinion, is highly commendable for any lady.

I paddled in the Premier Opens.

Here's the race lineup.
Thank goodness I was slotted on the left!

My right side's coming up fine, but still not as good as the left.

Slowly slowly.
With more practice, I will become a very valued ambidextrous rower.

Results for race 15, Premier Opens Heats 4!

FIRST OK!
FIRST FIRST FIRST FIRST with an ass-spanking timing of 2:03!

*smirk*

My team-mates watching from the shore told me that we won by about a quarter of a boat's length.

That took my crew straight into the finals.

Zhen shuang.

Bumming around, waiting for the finals to commence.

Wah.
I am seriously appalled by how hairy my arms are, and also by the ugly veins running through them.

My barang, including trusty'ol Crumpler.
It's amazing how many things the darned bag can hold and still not rip at the seams.

The finals was a tough fight.
We were the leading boat during the heats and I supposed that gave the crew a psychological edge over our competitors.

During the finals, however, we fell behind our competitors in the adjacent lane and the whole mental advantages were reversed on us. Also because the competition this time round was much fiercer with better teams coming down hard on us.

BUT BUT BUT we managed to secure 3rd!

Not bad eh?

Ok and now for the bad bad baddest news.

I bloody lost my medal, albeit a bronze one.

MY FIRST EVER MEDAL SINCE I STARTED PADDLING!LOST!

LOST!

LOST!

I slung it across my neck after the prize presentation, afterwhich we all trotted off happily to the showers. Then I removed it, hung it on the hook on the cubicle door while I was showering, and then CONVENIENTLY FORGOT to replace it into my bag.

I only realised that it was gone when I got back home and I did not tell any of my team mates for fear they would bludgeon me to death for losing a testament of their hard-earned efforts.

FUCKING HEART PAIN CAN?

Don't you all dare to mock me or rub it in I tell you.

And to make things fucking worse, my cam went flat just preceding the prize presentation.

I was thus unable to pictorially document my glorious moment with the glowing bronze medallion slung across my neck.

And I had to fucking lose it.

KNNBCCB.

I hate my life sometimes.

Random pictures.

I had a great time at the race nonetheless.
It was a most valuable experience nothing could have bought me to be able to compete alongside the best teams in NSW, and at an actual olympic race facility.

Really grateful to the CYL boys and girls who were so amazingly welcoming when I first joined you guys, and also to Sylvia for having so much faith as to put me in the crew for the opens and to insist that I take the sweeper assessment despite only having been with the team for less than a month.

Gotta keep up the training!

Move past the States cos the National Titles are in 2 weeks time!
This time round, we're gonna be up against the big boys from all across Aussie Wozzie!

I think I will go home a much better and stronger paddler.

All haaaaiill meeee!
Heh heh!

Daylight savings time is finally over.

We can all start being honest people once more and cease living in the deluded self-thought that we have one hour more simply because the days are longer and nights shorter in summer.

I am now officially 2, instead of 3 hours ahead of Singapore time.
This means that I do not have to stay up till fucking 3am Aussie time in order to msn chat with bloody friends who log on only at the stroke of midnight, Singapore time. Now I only have to stay up till 2.

Very good.

Can sleep more.

Today is race day!

2007-03-24T00:46:00.000+11:00

I have to be at the Sydney International Regatta Centre at 7am later in the day.

It is in Penrith.

Penrith is like a full fucking hour's drive away from where I stay.

My very-nice team-mate is picking me up from my very doorstep ( yes I said she's very nice didn't I? ) at 5.30am.

Thus so, I need to be full awake at 5am.

It is now bloody 1am.

I ought to be sprawled topless across the bed, snoring, drooling and uttering nonsense in full slumber.

Unfortunately, it is horrendously warm and stuffy, my groin is sweating buckets.
I am fucking sure this is summer cleverly disguised as autumn because it bloody wants to stay longer but cannot do so cos its visa is expiring.

GO AWAY AND COME AGAIN NEXT YEAR LA!

Ok i am going to close my eyes, count some wombats/kangaroos/koalas and pretend I am an ice cube floating in a glass of nice, cool long island tea.

Wish me many many luck for the State Championships later on.
I'm rowing in the Opens!

It would be a celebrated irony if my first medal comes from Aussie Wozzie!

Xie xie.
Byebye.

Ugghh...

2007-03-21T22:01:00.000+11:00

I'm bloated.

I'm indigested.

Every inch of me is aching.

My head is spinning.

And I full feel like puking my guts out.

(and no...hot tea didn't help...)

Blah

2007-03-18T22:01:00.000+11:00

I have NOT eaten a single molecule of ice cream since I got here in Sydney, and that is a staggeringly stupid thing to do because ice cream is so fucking cheap here, it's cheaper than Coke.

And thus so, before heading off to the drive-thru movies this evening (exciting exciting), I thought it would make me a much happier boy if I could complement the experience of see-ing show from the plush seats of an expensive convertible with a big, fat (literally) tub of ice cream.

Ben and Jerry's specifically.

And so we hunted.

The entire city (well, almost la) and all the supermarkets, cafes, convenience shops etc. it had to offer.

On car. On foot.

And fucking finally, we chanced by this obscure little bistro, well-nestled in a crevice between the intersection of two buildings along Town Hall, that displayed a tattered Ben and Jerry's advertisement on its tainted glass facade.

Salvation.

I walked in...

...to find a tiny rack stacked with Cherry Garcias.

Fuck.

Got more fuck or not you tell me?

If I were to have bought and eaten those, I would be forced to feel utterly retarded and then wham myself on the head with an inflatable sledgehammer, simply because I could have savoured the very same flavour simply by crossing my street and getting a bottle of Benadrine cough syrup from the pharmacy.

No need to find high find low.
Waste energy. Waste petrol.

Cherry Garcia..
How ironic.

On a happier note, the drive-thru was good.
Starry skies, cool autumn night, and a good'ol Aussie classic which was rather entertaining.

And a large Mac's sundae topped with golden sweet caramel made it all the better.

Tomorrow 9am got class.

Sian.
Blah.

2007-03-16T22:44:00.000+11:00

While driving us from campus to some atas riverside bistro for dinner just now, our dear friend Rickimchi, sensing the foul mood I was in (which I conveniently attributed to PMS and maybe lack of good sex), attempted to tickle me with a joke.

Have to give it to him lah.
Cos I did find it quite amusing.

I let out a little guffaw at least, albeit rather snigger-ishly.
So it was a sniggerish guffaw.

And also owing to the fact that he was so animated whilst relating the story, he flailed his arms around as though on a morphine high, and almost ran the Mercedes CLS up a kerb off Elizabeth Street.

Wasted never dent the car.
If not can ask father buy new one.

Anyways, he went on to tell me he found the joke off the internet, and it's called Nick the Dragonslayer.

And so I thought I'd share my 3 seconds worth of amusement with you people.
I came back, googled, and here it is, taken from here.

Nick the Dragonslayer

Nick the Dragon Slayer had a long-standing obsession to nuzzle the beautiful Queen's voluptuous breasts, but he knew the penalty for this would be death.

One day he revealed his secret desire to his colleague, Horatio the Physician, who was the King's chief doctor. Horatio the Physician exclaimed that he could arrange for Nick the Dragon Slayer to satisfy his desire, but it would cost him 1,000 gold coins to arrange it. Without pause, Nick the Dragon Slayer readily agreed to the scheme.

The next day, Horatio the Physician made a batch of itching powder and poured a little bit into the Queen's brassiere while she bathed. Soon after she dressed, the itching commenced and grew intense. Upon being summoned to the Royal Chambers to address this incident, Horatio the Physician informed the King and Queen that only a special saliva, if applied for four hours, would cure this type of itch, and that tests had shown that only the saliva of Nick the Dragon Slayer would work as the antidote to cure the itch.

The King quickly summoned Nick the Dragon Slayer. Horatio the Physician then slipped Nick the Dragon Slayer the antidote for the itching powder, which he quickly put it into his mouth, and for the next four hours, Nick worked passionately on the Queen's voluptuous and magnificent breasts. The Queen's itching was eventually relieved, and Nick the Dragon Slayer left satisfied and touted as a hero.

Upon returning to his chamber, Nick the Dragon Slayer found Horatio the Physician demanding his payment of 1,000 gold coins. With his obsession now satisfied, Nick the Dragon Slayer couldn't have cared less, and knowing that Horatio the Physician could never report this matter to the King shooed him away with no payment made.

The next day, Horatio the Physician slipped a massive dose of the same itching powder into the King's loincloth. The King immediately summoned Nick the Dragon Slayer.....

Quite funny ma.

And yeah, Rickimchi also added very out-of-the-blueishly, 4 hours after he told the joke, just before he dropped me home, that the moral of the story is...

...pay your fucking bills.

Very apt indeed.

Sports and study make me a brainy hunk!

2007-03-15T00:58:00.000+11:00

I lead a fruitful life in Sydney.

Monday
Day : Classes
Evening : CYL land training

Tuesday
Day : Swim, Classes
Evening : CYL water training

Wednesday
Day : Classes
Evening : Gym, Grocery shopping

Thursday
Day : Swim, Classes
Evening : CYL water training

Friday
Day : Classes, Gym
Evening : Dinner with my Aunt and family

Saturday
Day : Study a bit, watch TV, Alone timeeee!
Evening : CLUBBBIIINNNGGG!

Sunday
Day : Sleep in late, Run the hills!
Evening : Slaccckkkkkkk!

*Repeat cycle yada yada yada.

Never have I been more regimented by routine.
Maciam BMT.

For you Sydney pals and gals, if you urgently need to grab hold of me for pressing reasons ie. your dog is going into labour, need me to accompany you for emergency abortion, your gas stove exploded in your face etc etc, good news is I am easily locate-able because there are only a limited number of places you can find me - either on campus, in my room, in the gym, at the pool, paddling by Pyrmont Bridge, my aunt's place.

I'm not complaining la.

Structure in life is good sometimes.

Anyway, only 3 and half months left!

Fucking Random

2007-03-13T23:51:00.000+11:00

I absolutely relish the gurgling sound of water boiling in my electric kettle.

Very random.

But I just had this irrepressible urge to tell the world.

Busy laaaah!

2007-03-13T22:54:00.000+11:00

I have oh-so-many-things to blog about.

But 所谓力不从心, I'm just too fucking overwhelmed with stuff that needs to be done, so much so that if I sit down diligently to write nice, long and entertaining blog entries, I will be made to feel very very guilty thereafter.

Especially with my $360 worth of textbooks and course readings stacked up neatly in a corner of my desk, waiting to be unwrapped and read.

Aussie books are ridiculously priced.

I'll be nice and take the next 15 minutes to splash some pics up here, on the accord that everyone at home misses me so damn much.

DON'T SAY DON'T HAVE OK!

In fact, 15 minutes is debatably a gross underestimation, considering my retarded internet speed and the screwed up blogger pic-post process.

Yes, I'm still NOT over that.

Let's start off by taking a look at my room. =)

My room is not-too-big, not-too-new, but quite-quite cosy.

Ok lah. Must admit it's a teeny weeny bit untidy, fundamentally because I have weird sweat fetishes and thus so, like to leave my dirty clothes and boxers around so that I can sniff at them when I have troubles falling asleep.

Ok kidding.

It's just me.
I am untidy.
Happy?

Also kindly note the sunflower inconspicuously perched on the top of my bedframe with a very-slappable and smug smirk on its face. Ok la. Picture too small cannot see the face. But I'm telling you the smirk really very smack-able.

Also note the blue, framed collage sitting proudly next to it and the happy looking photographs stuck on my bedside wall.

Just in case you all have been wondering if your gifts have done good by value-adding to my stay in Sydney, you have your answers.

See! I very li hai hor?
Can turn the most impractical things into useful stuff! *smug*

Joking lah.

Those things make me happpppyyyyy and very very homesick! =(

Guess what?
I bought a CAR for added mobility in ginormous Sydney!

A SPANKING NEW, GLISTENING JAGUAR SOMEMORE HOR!

Ok la.
Not mine. My Aunt's.

But secret is, although I am well unlicensed, I drive it around her suburbs ie. to the mall, to the supermarket, to mundane but gigantic places such as Spotlight and Harvey Norman, when I get bored of playing with the stairs at my aunt's place.

And NO, I haven't gotten caught.

In fact, the suburbs are pretty lacking in police patrols and traffic laws are almost non-existent.
So I just pretend pretend smoke through lor. Not as though I can't drive anyway...just that I couldn't..errm...pass. * hiak hiak *

I am a cautious driver one ok!

Overhead cables against a gloomy gloomy overcast sky.
A little sunlight's peeking through though, but yeah....generally cloudy these past days.

The weather's getting cooler and the air smells cool, crisp and fresh to the skin.
I can walk stretches after stretches of roads without feeling the least bit warm, sticky and drowning in my own sweat.

Sydney beats home hands down on this.

And finally,

MEEEEEEEEEEEE!

I hope this bears staunch testament and provides compelling evidence for the fact that I AM SO NOT FUCKING SKINNY.

Stop saying I am la.
No doubt I've lost some weight, with all the not-s0-appealing greasy food and the increase in time for physical activity in replacement of active socialisation, I am still far from skinny.

Qing da jia fang xin.

I promise I will not return looking like a jew from the Holocaust.

Anyway, that was self shot (duh!) while waiting for my bus to paddling practice.
I thought the evening sunlight made me look bright and cheery.
Not too bad aye?

Rights.
I shall now resolve to read at least one chapter of my Management textbook.

It will be hard because the fonts are green and i fucking hate reading words in any other colour except black because I think that non-black colours make the content look unimportant.

You know, like how those captions, side comments, useless summaries blah blah always get printed in some colour other than the main black text.

My fucking arms, shoulders, obliques and backs are fucking sore from training.

Good news is, I'm heading down to Penrith in late March and April for the State and National titles. It's gonna be an ass-kicking experience to race out of stinko kallang, boring Bedok or the oh-so-whatever Singapore river.

Heh heh.

I might just return home a master paddler and with a killer bod.

Heh heh again.

(15 minutes my fucking foot. It took double the projected time. =p )

2007-03-11T21:13:00.000+11:00

Sometimes, simple things, when embedded in prevailing contexts, brims inherently with aprofound significance.

2007-03-11T03:58:00.000+11:00

" If only I could turn back time,

if only I had saved what I still had...

if only I could turn back time,

I would stay.... "

- Turn Back Time
Aqua

2007-03-08T21:58:00.000+11:00

As of now, I am a happy little boy.

After an entire month of dragonboat cold turkey (bath-tub simulated paddling NOT counted), I hit the water again with the Sydney Chinese Youth League Dragonboating team!

Now this is indeed a joyous cause for elation and celebration, so please get out of your bloody seat or bed or what not and say a bloody "YAAAAY" for me!

Ya can check'em out at http://dragonboat.cyl.org.au/index.html.

VERY VERY VERY nice guys and gals these peeps are.
I didn't feel the least bit awkward and was totally at home throughout the entire session.

Even got a lift from one of the team people right back to my very doorstep leh.

Wow weeee!

We paddled till dark, breezing throught the cool crisp autumn air with a flashy little beacon of light erected at the hull of the boat, right within Darling Harbour, flanked by the dazzling skyscrapers of metropolitan Sydney.

Blanketed by the darkness of the descending dusk, SKY-HIGH fireworks rocketed up from a atas-atas yatch (nabeh..it took me like 5 fucking tries to spell yatch right..and I'm not even sure I got it correct) party like 500m away from where our boats were. Iridescent colours spilling across a blackened palette of shimering stars, RIGHT ABOVE our heads.

Of course, we stopped, sat, and watched awestruck, soothed by the rythmic swaying of the calm Darling waters.

I'm beginning to love Sydney just a little bit more.

Okok.
I'm gonna drop the adjective-laden poetic thingy and get on with trashier English.

Strictly dragonboat jargon from here onwards.

Non-paddlers can conveniently re-read the nice, witty psuedo ending 2 lines up and start feeling happy about having read a blog entry from me.

Wah...training here no joking matter one hor.
I mean, it's not like it's super duper tough or anything. In fact, it's not almost as draining as some sessions I've had back with my precious team back at home.

They've this hell pyramid set which goes like 15 easy row, 30 power and fast rows, then 15 easy, then 60 power, then 15 easy, then 90 power, then 15 easy, then 120 power, then 15 easy, then 90 power...yada yada till you hit back 30 power and end off with 15 easy. Very confusing hor.
And also very tiring ok.

And well, after each set.....

YOU HAVE TO SWAP SIDES LAH!

Left swap to right, right swap to left.

AND LIMPEH ONLY KNOW HOW TO ROW LEFT CAN OR NOT?

Everyone else was like freaking ambidextrous man!
Very very paiseh.

And thus so, each time i paddled right, I was the true epitome of a magnificient fountain, gurgling in all its splendour.

Blah.

I tell you all ok...
When I get back arse back home, I will be then able to row LEFT AND RIGHT just as well!

*smirks*

I shall hug my dear paddle to sleep tonight.

Good boys don't lie

2007-03-07T01:04:00.000+11:00

Today's Forensic Psychology laboratory class was a hands-on practical on detecting lies and deceit.

I am now a very dangerous person, also known as the-last-person-you-will-want-to-tell-a-lie-to, simply because I now know, just by watching people and analysing the contents of their speech, whether they are being big fat liars or not.

If they are, I can then gleefully proceed to light their pants ablaze, because liar-liar-pants-on-fire mah. Funny boh?

Anyways, yeah, we had to pair up and come up with 5 short anecdotes, out of which 2 are untrue, and then tell them to our partners We will then take turns in attempting to play human polygraph and bust each other's arses on the hoax stories.

I partner-partner with this geeky looking Asian girl sitting beside me simply out of mere convenience. After taking like eternity to come up with her 5 anecdotes, she proceeded to rattle them on to me.

The first one went something like " Oh...you know...my mother has like heart problems and hypertension and now she is on drugs to control her blood sugar level so that she doesn't get worse. And these drugs make her sleepy so I have to do the cooking and cleaning for her now..and I'm really tired these few days."

(-___-')

Got more stupid or not you tell me?

Obviously, heart problems and hypertension has no fucking business to do with blood sugar levels. Either she is very very dumbdumb, or she cannot differentiate between hypertension and diabetes. Also possible that she gets confused whenever she hears salt and sugar and subsequently, cannot tell the difference between them.

I can't recall what her other stories were la but I knew I busted her second lie with as much ease at the first because she was on about something really stupid again. Something about visiting the casino when she was 5 and winning 70 bucks on a slot machine. Hello! 5 years old can enter casino meh?

Want to bluff people also can bluff properly and convincingly.

Tsktsk.

From now on, alongside being a very very good liar, I am also a very very good lie detector.

You all better be careful with me ah.

Hiak hiak hiak.

2007-03-06T00:26:00.000+11:00

Today is a very ghastly day.

Basically because while trotting back to my apartment after classes and a swim at the campus pool, a most unpleasant whiff pervaded my nostrils. Really very smelly I tell you. It was sharp, mildly pungent, and came across somewhat like a hybrid between raw, unfresh meat ( the kind you chuck into the refrigerator and subsequently conveniently forget about its existence for months ) and crazily stinko sewage.

I looked around for signs of all things foul that would likely emanate such odours, ie. garbage bag, garbage bin, garbage truck, garbage cart, garbage-lying-around etc, but found none. In fact, the fucking stench seemed immensely incongruent because the streets leading to my apartment were lined with pretty dandelions. Happy sights don't go with smelly smells. Actually, they're just some bright, cheery yellow flowers la. But since I don't exactly know what they are because I am not a botanist nor a taxonomist, I will simply call them dandelions. Enid Blyton always wrote about dandelions as bright and cheery anyway. So yeah.

Then I saw a dead bird, lying stark at a foot-length ahead of me. It didn't really look like a bird anymore simply because it was flattened, gutted and totally mashed up. Fortunately, I was able to deduce that it used to be a bird because the entire bloody clump was nicely garnished by ruffles of twisted feathers. No head, no beak, no nothing.

Just a putrid mess of minced bird flesh and overflowing innards.

Fucking smelly never mind. To think I almost stepped on it!

Cannot fly then don't stand in the middle of the road la.
Really bird-brain leh.
Retarded.

Ok. On to happier things.

Here's a smorgashboard of photos from last Saturday's Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.
Sorta like the Sydney version of our Chingay, only that it's literally ChinGAY.
They shut off some major streets in the city just for the parade procession and boy was it a loooong parade. Lasted like 2 hours.

2 complete hours of drags, fags, lesbos, dykes, macho gays, 6-pack gays, sissy gays, butches and all people crooked decked out in the most flamboyant costumes you could ever imagine while shuffling, dancing and gyrating behind convoys of iridescent floats. ( whoa..very long sentence! *snigger* )

The entire procession, from start to end, was incredibly colourful and enjoyable to watch!

The crowds started flocking in and lining the sidewalks at about 4-ish in the late afternoon.
Me and gang included.
And the parade didn't actually commence until about 7.45 in the evening.
It was a fundamentally long and boring wait because there was nothing to do but to stand around, simmer in the bloody summer heat, and pretend to be very interested in making small talk with the other exchange students whom I barely know.

Upon seeing this pinky winky angel wing-er strut pass, I immediately regretted not bringing my assortment of coloured boa feathers out so that I could have risen to the ebullient festivity all around me. Wasted sia.

Heh heh. Ok la. Kidding.
I don't have rainbow feathers.

And the word "feather", at this very moment, conjures revolting images of the dumbdumb bird who got squished into pulp.
Very disconcerting.

Watch out for the Lesbian Patrol.
Check out their batons man! They were swaggering in front of the crowds and swinging their thick black batons in all ecstasy and running them across the metal barricades.

I was greatly thankful I wasn't anywhere near them in the front rows, basically because you never know where those batons have been stuck up before. Later kena the chup man. Ewwww!

*Hiak hiak *

I think this photo is incredulously amusing.
The poor drag was attempting a pole dance with the steet sign but this shot just made it look like he/she was ramming straight into the metal rod.

Hen hao xiao.

DYKEs-ON-BIKES!

And yeah that's really what they're called. Quite a cool name hor.
Rhyming somemore leh.

Basically just like a hundred over bikes worth of lesbo riders.
Nothing spectacular, but considering they actually got together a massive horde of lesbians who can decently manouvre a motorbike at 100km/h topless with their breasts ( or whatever is left of them ) wobbling in the process, yeah...it was quite a sight nonetheless.

If you're dying to find out how you can be chic dyke-on-bike, you can visit them at
http://www.dykesonbikessydney.org.au/.
Apparently they're a staple item every year at the Mardi Gras.

Some goof dressing up as a gay ice cream.
I thought it was remotely funny watching a ginormous ice cream hop-hop-hopping-around down the street la.

Topless psuedo-firefighters doing the limbo-wimbo!
I thought their dance moves were actually quite nifty.

This one was just pure obscence la.
He/she was merely prancing around like a sheep on sugar-high while randomly thrusting his/her hips excessively.

Like siao one like that. Absolutely no theme or significance or whatsoever behind it.
Just random crudeness.
So distasteful.

Pirated Dreamgirls!

The banner behind read "Little Miss Sunshine".
On a closer look however, you might realise he/she is not really little nor sunshine-like.
More likely "Giant Mr Peacock".

Your friendly gay skeleton says hi.
Don't be rude.
Better say hi back.

I have a slew of more pictures following to which I am simply too lazy to attach captions to.
Nothing special enough to warrant witty captions so instead of insulting your intelligence by making you read some stupid description of whatever is already evident in the photos, I will just leave them as they are.

I actually snapped like a million photographs but majority of them turned out to be nothing more than fuzzy-wuzzy streaks of coloured lights, maciam the kind you see when you're high on hallucinogenic drugs. So yeah, no point posting.

Aiyah the parade rocked big time la.

Groovy music, daring people, friendly crowds and happy colours.

Old MPs trying to break their legs doing hip-hop can lick ass la.

Speaking of Ikea, I took a train ride down to the Sydney store at Homebush Bay with roomie Xinwei to get some stuff for our new room.

The Ikea here very cheapskate one.

Bought fucking loads of stuff but still, they refuse to give plastic bags.

In the end, we had to purchase their shopping bags at 2 bucks per piece.

Fucking CHUI can?

Look like some old aunty.

The only saving grace being the fact that it matched my polo! *heh*

Had to carry 2 gigantic bags of furniture and stuff onto the train.

Kan pai seh.

And finally, a random picture to prove my point that Sydney summers are truly abhorrent.

Not a fucking cloud in the entire fucking sky while the fucking sun beats down like there is no fucking tomorrow.

Say hi to skin cancer baby.

Blah.

Why I ( and everyone else ) should love me more.

2007-03-01T23:35:00.000+11:00

To convince myself that I am truly worth more than the wretched slew of emo crap I've been putting myself through since I landed my arse in sunny Sydney, I sat myself down with pen and cheap, flimsy Aussie paper, stomached a dose of shamelessness, and came up with this.

Sorry hor. Handwriting a bit sengeh...I think my "S"s have very slinky curvatures and it more than makes up for anything else. Beat it ok! I have sexy S! *heh heh*

Please also note that I did up the list while stewing in the outback summer pressure pot and 10 minutes after what was meant to be a leisurely run up and down the hills of my suburbs.

That's why I only managed to come up with 12 points.

I assure you, there's really actually a megatonne more.

Also because A4 paper not very big, write more means must squeeze small small...then you all cannot read. Not very good lah.

I feel I love myself much much more now.

You guys better as well. =)

I've actually wanted to do a blog entry with a 10000 word commentary on the last most boring book I've read during bits and pieces of my spare time chugging the endless Sydney railroads. Unfortunately for me, and fortunately for you guys, that last most boring book happened to be a tattered publication advocating the benefits of eating prime, Aussie home-grown rice which I picked up off a bench in Central station. Not quite entertaining I would reckon.

And just when I changed my mind and decided to blog about the last-last most boring book, which was John Steinback's "Of Mice and Men", I realised the book was too short to warrant a 10000 word review.

So I shall conveniently post pictures again. Heeehaaaah!

Old ones this time.

We were headed to Chomp Chomp for desserts after one of our happening dinner outings when Darric suggested visiting this creepy tunnel nestled somewhere within the atas private estates of Serangoon Gardens.

It sounded like a positively scary place because Darric claimed that each time he had to ply through the tunnel to get home, he would get so terrified he pisses in his pants or shorts or skirts or polka dotted panties. Aiyah and being the suckers we were for all things paranormal, we decided to take a leisurely trek there lor.

Yah and after a long long walk and finally getting there, we realised it was this short, brightly lit, spacious and frequently used underpass. I swear animal porn looks scarier.

Fortunately, the ultimate saving grace was that the tunnel perspective of length and depth made a fucking good photo opportunity.

One whole hour of shooting and snapping and a few good hours of brilliant photoshopping by yours truly following....

Alaric!

Mabel!

Darric !

Weiyin!

Meeeeee!

Aiyah.
My Samsung NV3 rocks la.
Photoshop rocks too.
And my models rock the moooost!

I've got a few more to post but stupid Blogger is crapping up on me.
The darn photo posting interface keeps getting jammed at the upload process and the rest of the pics refuse to come on out.

I will now stop trying before I go crazy, rip my mouse apart and feed it to the ridiculously huge daddy-long-legs spiders lurking suspiciously amongst the tall grass of my backyard.

I'm now going to watch Harry Potter and the Goblet (or issit globet? ) of Fire on DVD.

I miss home big big time!
Draaaats!

Let Me Let Go

2007-02-27T20:14:00.000+11:00

It's uncanny how some songs so aptly echo your feelings sometimes.
Almost as if they were written especially to reflect your own voice and thoughts.

And when you come across such lyrical coincidences, would it be better to find comfort in the fact that someone else out there felt the same way...

... or just to sink into the stark familiarity of the lyrics and then wallow in them till you fall asleep from the sheer swirls of helplessness?

Let Me Let Go - Faith Hill

I thought it was over, baby
We said our goodbyes
But I can't go a day without your face
Goin' through my mind

In fact, not a single minute
Passes without you in it
Your voice, your touch, memories of your love
Are with me all of the time

Let me let go, baby
Let me let go
If this is for the best
Why are you still in my heart
Are you still in my soul
Let me let go

I talked to you the other day
Looks like you make your escape
You put us behind, no matter how I try
I can't do the same

Let me let go, baby
Let me let go
It just isn't right
I've been two thousand miles
Down a dead-end road

Let me let go, darlin', won't youI just gotta know, yeah
If this is for the best
Why are you still in my heart
Are you still in my soul
Let me let go

The lights of this strange city are shinin'
But they don't hold no fascination for me
I try to find the bright side, baby
But everywhere I look
Everywhere I turn
You're all I see
Let me, let me let go, baby, won't you

Let me let go
It just isn't right
I've been two thousand miles
Down a dead-end road
Oh, let me let go, darlin', won't you
I just gotta know
If this is for the best
Why are you still in my heart
Yeah, you're still in my soul, let me let go
Let me let go, let me let go

Many many pretty pictures!

2007-02-24T23:06:00.000+11:00

There is this oddly quaint, yet inexplicably serene feeling that comes from just passively watching the world go by.

Just this afternoon, I wedged myself into an inconspicuous corner adjacent to a street intersection near Market City. I sat on a raised kerb from which its crimson red paint was peeling, and simply watched, my attention devoured by the bustling ebullience of cosmopolitan Sydney. Crowds hurried by in a quick, graceful mess, as if trying to keep up with the steady breeze weaving its way through the stifling summer heat.

Almost oblivious to the passing procession of people, a lanky busker played on his guitar.

As if by some bizarre coincidence, he belted out a soulful rendition of "Right Here Waiting".

I sat, listened and ruminated.

Okay.

Enough emo nemo shit

It's mentally exhausting to have to write in fluent, lucid prose and baked brains courtesy of Australian summers ain't exactly wired for thinking.

I've been bumming around like a sluggish tourist waiting for school to start. When I'm not out and about occupying roadside kerbs or roaming the same old city streets, I'd be at home in my aunt's place, pretending to be banana-in-pyjamas, capering up and down her 3-storeys worth of persian carpeted stairs. You do need get 3 bloody flight of bloody staircases inside your very own house in bloody Singapore unless you live in a bloody mansion. Elaborately carpeted with warm, maroon persian rug somemore ok! Very novel indeed.

After say..errm..a year plus of not blogging, I seem to have lost the knack to write entertainingly. Alas, it is with much regret that I confess the loss of my once decently fluid prose. This has spurred a vicious cycle ( cannot blog properly > don't want to blog > cannot blog properly more > don't want to blog more ... ) that's putting me off blogging. In fact, I had a rather difficult time resolving my dilemma of whether I should sit down and diligently blog, or to help my uncle pick slugs from his massive lawn, under the blistering summer heat. Apparently, the latter option seemed a lot more inviting but unfortunately, by the time I made up my mind, uncle announced that the slugs were away on vacation, possibly in the neighbour's adjacent lawn.

Thus so, I am blogging. In repentance, I shall (and have been reading) read mundane classics like "Lord of the Flies" to revive the literary genius in me. Soon ah..soon. Heh.

Meanwhile, I'm gonna dump a whole shitload of photos I've snapped on my act-tourist rampage since I got here 2 weeks ago.

From this juncture, I will also write my captions in easy-to-read pre-school english because it took me one fucking hour to upload these photos via the new blogger interface. I am already thinking twice about being a regular blogger in view of how absurdly tedious it is to post pictures now that they conveniently decide to kill off bloggerbot in hello. Ugh.

This is Warren, my university assigned aussie mate! Howdy Warren!

Warren is a nice guy. He shows me around campus, takes me on happy city tours, puts up with my shop-trotting habits and finds accomodation for my sorry arse.

Warren can also speak excellently fluent cantonese while I stand by and pout over the appalling fact that I'm cantonese by dialect, yet unable to understand a single word of it. Bah.

Most importantly, Warren works in a giant department store chain called Myers from which my shopping trips may enjoy potential subsidies via nifty staff discounts. I am very utilitarian leh. But I liiikkkeee... Hiak hiak hiak!

Dragon boat races at Darling Harbour!

Totally neat!

At least, it sets a somewhat familiar stage in an unfamiliar culture and environment.

I was brave enough to pick randomly pick the kindest person I could find out from within the flurry of competitors and then ask him if there were any teams for me to join for the duration of my stay here in Sydney.

To which he promptly replied with much zest and pride " Join MY team! The Chinese Youth League Dragonboat Team!"

Sounds macho enough! Heh heh.

Now the only thing that stands in my way of actually joining them is..errm...their flashy lime green spandex jerseys with a saucy looking black dragon across splashed across where the breasts and chests ought to be. Also, the team happens to train in the waters near the Sydney fish market. I worry of smelling like barramundi, salmon and dory following each training session. *belch*

Then again, my primitive urges to row are driving me so nuts, I take my paddle into the bath and spend hours playing with it while splashing around in the bathtub. Every single day.

I'm better off with them. Heh.

Random sightseeing pictures!

These seagulls...they're fucking everywhere over the city, more so in the coastal areas.

Reminds me of the Finding Nemo animated ones cackling "mine mine mine mine MINNEEEE" in that irritating, raspy caw. Ain't helping that they look remotely retarded as well.

Don't like.

Chinatown! Outside Market City.

The passing crowds that I talked about la.

Here's one with the city skyline, taken from a floating platform off Darling Harbour.

I will bitchslap anyone who asks me who the 2 girls in the foreground are.

I don't know who they are. They just happened to be sitting there and I thought they would make decent foreground compositions for my shot. Not chio also nair mind...cos back facing me.

Heck.

Random alleyway along the city streets.

For the hopelessly stupid or the plain unobservant retards.

Enough said.

Random shot la.

Notice board on UNSW campus grounds.

It's so ugly it's beautiful.

Ya don't really get to catch such stuff in Singapore.

Random train leaving Central station. ( I am abusing the word "random" but I don't give a flying fuck )

I took a walk down to the Rocks and the hallmark Opera House with buddy Xinwei.

I scare myself silly sometimes. This time, the length of my outstretched arms shock me.

Reflection shots!

Xinwei and meeee!

My shadow and meeee!

COGEE BEACH!

I went twice actually, first with fellow NUS-ian Jacklyn and our aussie buddies.

And then again with Xinwei.

The second visit, I was actually dressed for the beach, complete with board shorts, trunks, sunscreen, beach towel and all! Heh heh.

After 15 minutes of riding on ginormous foamy waves that assaulted the shoreline and getting whacked senseless by them, I flopped like a dead fish onto my beach towel and soaked up a little radiant sunlight. After all, I badly need a tan, considering how porcelain-ly fair I actually am. Hor? *Heh heh*

Got wind got sun got lapping waves...and so I dozed off.

Needless to say, I'm uber-sunburnt now. Gah.

My trusty crocs!

An emo nemo shot of Xinwei standing atop one of the many boulders encircling a well-nested rock pool, perfect for wading in.

Finally, pics from my send-off at the airport.

Obviously, the shots have not been posted in chronological order.

A bit blur leh. Dunno why.

But nair mind la. Yandao can liao.

Miss my rowers heaaaaps and heaaaaps!

I'm supposed to miss them less by looking at the sunflower plush the girls gave me.

I'll try and see if it works.

Emo self-taken pic while waiting for my train.

I thought it looked pretty decent. =)

I've been stuck at this blogger interface for the past 2 hours.

2 fucking goddamn hours for such a simple, thoughtless post, all thanks to the madly slow pic uploads and hopeless Australian internet speeds.

When I say everything here is slow and laid-back, I mean everything.

I'm going to surf friendster for a welcoming change.

God save the new Blogger.
If there ever is a God, that is.

Wheeee!

2007-02-20T23:55:00.000+11:00

（这。。。是我心中。。。确实的反映。。。）

寂寞城市- 周蕙

今晚的夜色很美
美得让人想迟一点睡
若是夜空少了星星的点缀
月亮会不会累
这夜色凄凄的美
没有爱的人容易憔悴
就像霓虹般亮丽的周围
只是一种寂寞颓废

城市里所有寂寞的人类
有几个和我一样偷偷的流泪
若是将它一滴一滴积累
会不会流成一条冰冷的河水

城市里所有寂寞的人类
有几个像我一样厌倦了疲惫
若是真心一颗一颗的摧毁
会不会全世界和我伤悲

整座城市陷入漆黑
孤独人在寻找自己的定位
伪装变成了一种防备
防备怕被人看穿心碎

（这陌生的城市带着无限的精彩。。。
但我却抱着一样无限的孤寂和消沉的沮丧来迎接它。。。
值得吗？）

Harrooow Sydney!

2007-02-11T21:52:00.000+11:00

Yes I'm in Sydney already.
It's been pretty boring till now...

...and thus I have nothing much to blog about, unless you wanna hear me go on about mundane issues such as not having to change my boxers in 3 days cos I don't perspire in this cool weather.

Tired.
From doing nothing.

Sleeptime.

Will post some pics soon!

Wheeee.

Iridescence

Laziness, lanterns and Boys' Night Out!

TWENTY THREEEEEEE !!! *gasp*

Grooovy!

I'm such a "home-wrecker"! Hur hur!

Many many food!

Wah...I finally blogged!

Tolay is flylay!

OHMYGOSH!

Yah I'm still alive lah.

(-__-')

BIG FAT YAWN!

Massive!

Heh heh

NAH! DONT SAY DONT HAVE!

At least, something which made me happier.

Me meeee! Hear me siiing!

WA-HA-HA

I know you like...

Your best friend says hi!

A not-very-boring Saturday

Cold feet!

#@x%#^*@$x%@$

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MABEL!

Old school rocks! (again!)

青春123

CHUI !!!

I like!

Are you like this as well?

Super Saturday.

Cotton mayhem

Heh heh

I WIN

Singapura flavour!

Sydney sights

Sunshineeeey Sydney!

You know why I don't wanna go home?

A WOMBAT IS A CUTE CUDDLY ANIMAL!

Sunny sunflowers!

Eat and eat and eat.

Tra la laaaaa!

(Continued from above post)

堕落的一天

Siao ding dong

Rain rain go awaaaay!

Sydney Royal Easter Show!

V-Tech shootings

B.Z

Nasi Lemak!

Didcha knoooooow?

Dash the Dinosaaaaauuur!

Very very pain.

Tak-glam

Nothing to write but die die want to blog.

2007 New South Wales Dragon Boat State Championships

Today is race day!

Ugghh...

Blah

Sports and study make me a brainy hunk!

Fucking Random

Busy laaaah!

Good boys don't lie

Why I ( and everyone else ) should love me more.

Let Me Let Go

Many many pretty pictures!

Harrooow Sydney!

TWENTY THREEEEEEE !!! gasp