who am i?
in every bit of my splendour, credit myself for the smallest of the glory?

i am an average girl. so average i don't exactly think too great of myself.

i have a few groups of lovely friends from the varsity, a few good friends whom i have kept in contact with from primary school to secondary and friends from cca in my JC days whom i adore. i don't exactly have fantastic family background, but i do have good support from my mommy and sister. my church friends are my source of spiritual encouragement and great fun in times of distress or joy.

i manage to be alright at some things too. i can act quite well and am a drama queen. i like to write and thankfully, i can do it tastefully. i speak eloquently as well, maybe not as fabulously as many public speakers, but i do get by. i am a normal leader; always digressing, always guilty of many booboos my young ones commit as well. i have a happy smile which people can agree with. i enjoy singing but sometimes i can get it very wrong.

i am almost borderline at my studies. i don't do too well, neither do i do too badly. i know i am not born too intelligent, so i use dilligence to make up for it. whenever i write essays or go for exams, i get nervous because i know i am not endowed with the best of the talent. i have my occasional slips here and there where i don't do very well.

i am not very attractive; no thick eyebrows or big eyes. i have a pretty awkward height which according to societal standards is indeed so (but i find it fine). i find myself quite fleshy but i am glad that i am healthy. i like my teeth and i think it is probably the only saving grace on me. people will find me a bit goofy looking because i don't mind having a rubber face.

i am an average girl. so average i don't think i can stand out anywhere.

so,
who am i to say that i am strong?
who am i to boast that i have conquered much more than i am born to conquer?
who am i to credit my achievements and how i have turned out to be?
who am i to claim that i am talented and gifted in every way?

growing up... argh don't remind me
taking passport photos doesn't agree with me at all.

i have always had troubles taking decent passport pictures. i always end up looking, in the words of the teenagers, noob. i think i just don't have the talent.

whoever can take decent passport photos?! i mean, who can look hot and pretty when you are so embarrassed and awkward sitting in front of the salesgirl (who is probably puberscent and irritated because it is only a part-time job)? you don't know where to put your hands and you don't know whether you should smile. it's worse when you have to convince yourself that you should look happy. passport photos should never exist. we should all just be identified by our fingerprints!

let my "mommy-face" stick with me for the next 5 years. oh let me dwell in my misery!!

a satire on typicality.
i am going to write a blog post on the topic of typicality.

today was so fun! it is a public holiday but my tuition girls had to go to the temple for prayers in the morning. i had wanted to change the tuition timing to around 10am because we might have family dinner (which will be delved into later) at night at 7plus. because they cannot change and family dinners are inevitable, we rescheduled the tuition to wednesday at 730pm! i feel quite horrible but didn't have a choice. hopefully they are fine with it!

since i have my morning free, i decided to go for a swim at the newly renovated woodlands swimming complex. we took a straight bus from our house, 913. the bus was fast! took around 10minutes. it is so pretty now! when we reached the complex, the deep pool was very crowded! however, we carried on our plan. thanks to weiying, angie and sihui, i had such great chance to work out! the sun was no joke today. it was scorching and slicing! every minute in the sun sliced deep into my skin. now i am sunburnt! i am tanned and according to my mother, less ang-moh already (my dear biased mother feels that i have caucasian-like fair skin)! it was very fun swimming though!

after that, sihui brought us to a myanmar restaurant at city hall. we took the north-south line and everybody had a seat. we were very happy and excited. weiying and sihui lay on angie's shoulders on their way there. the restaurant was quite ulu. i had a bowl of myanmar's specialty dish called mohinga. esther and sihui had the same thing too. angie had myanmar curry chicken. it has a unique taste, very different from anything i have eaten. i have an insanely patriotic palate so it didn't exactly agree very well with me. the waiter was very good, they were attentive to our needs.

after that, we shopped around at raffles city shopping centre. we went straight to dorothy perkins and topshop! the former had a great sale going on! clothes were cheap and pretty. i bought a grey long-sleeved top at $17.10 while sihui and esther bought clothes there too. sihui couldn't find the topshop pumps she wanted so she went to ask for the size from the people at topshop. weiying was however, hungry already because she didn't eat anything at the restaurant. angie and i then accompanied her to the basement 1 of the shopping centre to buy food. we wanted to bring her to chippy british take-away, but she found beard papa instead and bought a cream puff. we were very happy for her. esther and sihui then joined us and we went off. sihui wanted to meet shumin and junming at first but changed her mind. so, all of us went home.

angie, esther and i walked home from the mrt station. it is around 8 minutes walk away. we were talking while walking and because we had so much fun talking, we decided to talk a longer route so that we can talk more. it is only around 3 minutes difference but we wanted to talk a bit more. it was while we were walking that we talked about blog posts, interesting and boring ones, fun and sickening ones, sad and happy ones and TYPICAL ones. we then decided to experiment writing a typical blog post. it was so funny and we laughed our way home. after we laughed, we found out we were all serious about writing a boring blog post. and so we did.

wow, i can so write a Masters Thesis on the topic of Typicality huh.

alfred tennyson, you know me so well.
but why is it still so difficult to get over?

i have been reflecting on this situation for the past few months. and i figure it is time i agree to tennyson. it is time i relent to the merciless hands of Inevitability. isn't this the perfect example of oscar wilde's saying; art imitating life? and a century after tennyson wrote this famous line, this very art is still a haunting mimicry to our lives.

my lament is not a case of lost love, it is a lament on a love lost. lost to perhaps Inevitability. we may wax lyrical about the paradox of it all but paradoxically, beneath the beauty lies pain so seering it is beyond words.

can i blame myself for all the drama? i guess. i haven't been the perfect friend in this situation. i tried too hard to feel normal that it backfired on me. i wouldn't say i am entirely at fault, but i think i am a guilty party. perhaps only God, not time, can heal. i wouldn't want to hurtle forward in such phenomenal leaps, but i ask only that God slowly heal and recover what we have lost.

until then,
alfred tennyson, you are so right.

who wants to be employed now?
because of my unemployment for the past ahem, 3 weeks (gasp! i didn't even realize!), i have found the perfect way (okay, maybe a few) to wile my time away. unemployment can be fun too!other than going overseas which will really hurt the wallet, most of the recommendations would be less intense on the purse strings. and surprise surprise, sometimes the best things are for free; meaning you don't need to have moolah to have fun!

as most of you would have read, my violent and in my sister's words, neurotic craving for cheesecake got the better of me one afternoon. so i decided to google it. i did not find a lot of images of cheesecake, but i did stumble into the place i will probably be spending the next 3 months in. i hereby officially declare this website to be the second best worldly/material/secular thing other than The Great Cheesecake! you find out every details of restaurants, food and lo and behold, CHEAP food! just as well, i don't have to keep introducing sun with moon as the best restaurant in town.

i need my dose of cheesecake.
RIGHT NOW

i have a deep and unsatisfied craving for CHEESECAKE. it has been going on for some days and it is still unfulfilled and i am left discontented. contrary to belief, a craving is not an irrational or illogical issue that plagues a female being. i know of boy(s) who associate a girl's uncontrollable craving as a feminine trait and of course, like how we are always misunderstood, one that is irrational. let me clarify it once and for all, it is not irrational.

my craving for cheesecake can be completely rationalized.

firstly, i have always had a sweet tooth and even if i don't have a craving now, i will still want to have a cheesecake after a sumptuous meal of savoury content. it is not the matter of the moment, but more of the desire of having something i know can satisfy and deliver. i know a good cheesecake won't fail to do so.

secondly, cheesecake is a marvellous dessert! the creamy texture and smooth consistency of every mouthful of a reputable cheesecake is simply irresistable. i love it especially when the graham crust breaks between your pearlies and as it lands on your salivating tongue, melts into inexplicable sensation. the classic cheesecake is the perfect answer for my palate anytime!

thirdly, i have been resisting this craving for the past few days. so, if i haven't done anything stupid (i.e go online to buy overpriced, overrated cheesecake/ spend a big bomb on different types of cheesecake/ fix the oven at home in order to bake one), you can totally trust that my craving is a rational (and peaceful) one.

lastly, the very fact that i can put my craving down in words speak for itself. by blogging about it, i have allowed my body to go from the "controllable-and-going-strong" stage to the "controllable-but-body-in-state-of-confusion" stage. i have allowed my very senses to face the compelling powers of a cheesecake and of course, emerged victorious (because if i didn't, you wouldn't have seen this post; i would have probably thrown the laptop to the wall, stamped on it, hurled verbal abuses at the cheesecake pictures i have been indulging in and burned the remnants of this laptop).

my need for a cheesecake to satisfy a certain urge and longing is totally lucid. it is certainly sane and it is one that is not running on absurd wants and foolish daydreams. my serious craving needs to be satisfied because i want it to be satisfied, it is as simple as this. rational, very rational to the core of our understanding.

but you know what, i actually don't care whether it is rational or not now. AND I DON'T CARE IF YOU THINK IT'S A GIRLS' THING! I DON'T CARE IF YOU THINK MY CRAVING IS RIDICULOUSLY IRRATIONAL AND SILLY! I DON'T CARE IF YOU THINK I AM CRAZY AND WILD FOR WANTING A CHEESECAKE SO, SO, SO, SO BADLY! I KNOW IF I DON'T GET IT SOON, I AM GOING TO INFLICT SOME SERIOUS AND ZANY HARM ON SOMETHING/SOMEONE!!!! I DON'T CARE!!!!!!!!

JUST PLEASE GIVE ME A CHEESECAKE NOW, I MEAN IT.



RIGHT NOW.

girls' nights out, 4 hours away from singapore!

the themed restaurants of taiwan weren't exactly in our itenararies, but we managed to visit some during our 6-day visit!

our breakfasts were always spectacular affairs. even though we kind of ate the same thing (dan bing ham/ dan bing hotdog/ dan bing bacon/ dan bing etc) for like 2 days, we managed to try some other things too!

why do they look great while i just look like i just got up?!!!!

of course, it wasn't just all eat (even though we really just ate all day) and shop, we visited famous taiwan sites (yeah, just evidence that we are not bimbos who only care about shopping)! here are some:

even though this taiwan trip kind of left me with a wrecked bank account (no shopping for the next six months!), as i was uploading the pictures and reminiscing about those 6days my friends and i were there, it all seemed pretty worth it. for one, taipei is a splendid city for some shopping and holidaying after a treacherous season of mugging. and another, spending exclusive and personal time with friends is, i would say, priceless.

but of course, next time i'll make sure i earn enough money to put me on such high-cost friendship building sessions. and like what the true blue masters of the sea would say,

till next time!

i just caught "the notebook" (i know, this film came out eons ago) because i was feeling a little bored from my massive retail therapy that has left me S$40 broke. i don't know whether it was the money or the show, but at the end of it all, i was crying like a baby.

this show is splendid beyond words.