to be or not to be, that is the question.
-Hamlet, by William Shakespeare
as Hamlet contemplates whether he should be alive or dead.

do you want to choose whether to live or not? a very interesting conversation sparked off with angie and est just this afternoon. it got me thinking if i want to ever have the decision power as to my living and my death.

well, it took me 3seconds to come a decision (2secs to stone awhile first and 1sec to breathe before answering) - no. i don't ever want this power.

one of my all time favourite writer, sylvia plath took her own life when she realizes the bleakness of life when ted hughes, her womanizing husband, could not stay faithful to her. she sealed all the rooms with towels and with her children sleeping in one of the rooms, she gassed herself to death. her limp body was found poisoned to its very bones.

little would plath know that 40years later, her son will follow her very decision, ending his own prematurely too. would she have wanted to live to let her son know that suicide is not an option? you see, both has forgotten to see that there is still hope in leading beyond their hopeless life if they had continued living.

i don't ever want to possess this decision simply because i would live such a hope-deprived life. i want to live every day knowing that i can still wake up to see aimee next sunday, or meet lola and dawn at nine-ish every tues and wed.

to be or not to be? is that even a question? God has given us choices on how to live our lives; the one thing we can do for Him is to live it well or at the very least,


continue living.

literature romances me.
i am deeply enraptured.

my heart is seized at every opportune moment of the running words as i sit basking in the orange light, holding jane austen 'pride and prejudice' on my anticipating hands. i flip over and over the last few pages. before i know it, i have fallen deeply and enthusiastically in love with mr. darcy.

i am moved and absolutely hooked.




p.s will my future son hate me if i name him Darcy?

i count my blessings everyday.

my bank account has been facing a drought since i decided to set my foot to the land of india and nepal this coming june. so, i have been saving every single cent miserably these days. even though i haven't resorted to bringing food to school, i have been rationing my money and i mean ration ration. like even buying a drink or having lunch is a threatening situation for my dear silver wallet.

but everyday is a blessing even though it has been quietly melancholic. i realized that God knows my misery and at every opportunity, gives me a little joy here and there. just yesterday, i nearly thirst myself to death (maybe not that bad, maybe it's only at the brink of drinking from the singapore river) because i did not want to buy a drink. $0.50 is very big now.

guess what. when i reached clarke quay to meet my friends, LWS actually bought bubble tea from sengkang and was drinking it reluctantly. the thirsty monster in me was quenched with the refreshing stream of liquid. and when we were walking towards the nepal embassy, i actually felt a sudden craving for sweet desserts because i just had my cheap $2.30 lunch. i was daydreaming of donuts when suddenly, my dear stacey pulled out a packet of sweets and asked "want?". omg, of course.

there, every cent saved but all my needs kindly satisfied by God (through my friends haha). i was thankful for the rest of the day, really!

just today, pastor biyun treated me to dinner (sambal fried rice + refreshing lychee ice) just because we decided to meet earlier to talk. God has been mercifully good to me even though i used my money for travelling (but i wouldn't say it's wasted because it is VERY good experience).

such little blessings here and there really do make my day. it leaves me feeling very blessed. the irony is that i only learn to count my blessings like that when i am in the most needy state.

guess it is only when you have nothing that you see the abundance of God.

2am is the new 1am; it keeps getting better, or not.
since when did i sleep at 2am? well, i cannot exactly pin point a time period. it probably started when i entered university, perhaps 1-2sems ago? but noooo, i am not going to blame it all on the education system or the tumultuous varsity life no matter how jaded i am.

it isn't their fault. because this time, i think it's mine.

these days, when i look at the time, my definition of lateness has shockingly transcended the norm. 130am is early now, 2am well i should be getting ready to sleep, 230am is threading on thin ice but it's still acceptable, 3am okay, now it's late.

why do i stay up, many ask. to be exact, diancong asked (he is extremely fascinated with the time that i hit the sacks don't know why). my answer is a little pathetic.

because if i sleep too early (say, 130am), i will feel i haven't accomplished anything. but seriously, staying up just 1 or 2 more hours to 3am does not make things any better. i still have to rush for assignments till the very last second, heap my literature texts into a big mountain beside my table and in every way possible, be very, very busy in the day. staying up that 1-2 hours more is simply a way of gratifying my insecurities.

it is not that i did not realize it, but i just don't really want to change it despite feeling the side effects of this new definition of lateness. believe me, if you ever see me on the train, you will not want to call out to a girl who is too deeply asleep, with her mouth open and saliva nearly drooling over her shoulders and probably would wake up with a rude jerk if anything were to disturb her sleep. it will be absolutely obscene for you to be associated with me.

it is not good at all and i know i should change. but at this moment, even though i know i am quite worn out, i still feel like typing an entry. don't condemn me, because your source of entertainment in the wee hours of 1.41am comes from me. i guess i will continue to stay up until the day i realize that i have already done all that needs to be done for the day. and maybe to know that i do not have to resort to such physical torture to feel assured that i have achieved something for the day.

wow, so much for just staying up until 2am. maybe i do really become smarter from it huh.

my blog was eaten up by the photobucket advertisement!

for a moment, my heart sank. but then i thought, well now i don't have to face the pressures of writing on my blog (hey, imagine having to blog even with piling assignments waiting to be written). but then, out of a sheer tint of mere little reluctance, i embarked on a quest to fix my blog once again. turns out my blogskin was removed. so, in the midst of my crazy schedule, i found time to repair really-loud (it has become part of my life, really). and boy, did i do a fantabulous job!

what you see on the screen is as simple as i can imagine really-loud to be. she has got to be fuss-free, easy to read and of course, oh-so-ever-witty (don't tell me even if it is not). i think really-loud is really pretty now from all my hard work in piecing it together. it looks effortless eh? it was not. but who cares when Really-Loud Chang looks so cute now.

wow, now she has a name. okay, i am too tired, i need to sleep.

my absolutely terrifying vivacious thai cousin is back and is more potent than ever!

this precious cousin of ours has got to be one of the loudest, most happening and firecracker-bubbly 12yr-old around these days. she is so different from our american-accented-angmoh spouting P6s who probably has 10 classes to attend everyday so all they can talk about is mathematics and algebra and the 345678 ballet classes they have to attend every week. my cousin, lydia is so special, and far from english-spouting (she abhors it).

well, for one, she is very carefree (don't care about her image), interesting (uncouth to the max! yes, she surpasses me haha), endearing (man-handles her cousins) and extremely sociable (talkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkative). i haven't seen such a girl except for those make-believe korean shows that feature "sassy" girls whom every guy falls in love with and every girl wants to become (believe me, you know these shows are farcical when you have a fabuloso cousin like mine). she kind of drives all of us insane; but you know what? i haven't seen such a genuine person for a very, very long time.

my dear cousin is such a real soul. she has no pretence and what she says is what exactly she thinks. well, of course the older she grows, the more tricks she has up her sleeves; but her truthful and honest character really endears her to me (and her 2 other jiejies, angie and est). where can you find such a person who opens up to you with such genuinity these days? hardly. i truly appreciate her presence more and more every time she comes back to singapore. and of course, when i meet more and more fake and superficial people around.

but that is besides all the snoring when she is sleeping, all her crazy antics when i have a 2000-word essay to hand up the next day or even her NUMEROUS phone calls when i am watching a dance concert. yup. haha.

but yes, lydia is still my/our all-time favourite little (regardless her stunning 1.51m height at 12 years of age) cousin. really heart her to the max!

this is a true account of the conversation that happened between nellis and i during prayer meeting when SP (senior pastor) was preaching his sermon.

nellis: what did he just say?
sarah: oh, he said that he is the 主任牧师 of Renewal Christian Church.
nellis: what is 主任牧师?
sarah: it means senior pastor.
nellis: you mean it's not his name? oh, i thought his name is 主任.

sarah: walao HAHAHAHA.

and i continued to explain that 主任 means chairperson, so pastor hock chye is like the head of the church (let's do away with the fact that Christ is the head of the church just for this blog entry). and i demanded an explanation from her what she has doing in renewal christian church all these while thinking that pastor hock chye's chinese name was 主任!

well, i guess it's just nellis. or maybe it's chinese. or maybe we assume too much of cliche words that nobody truly understands or know what it means anymore. maybe we no longer think of what we are actually speaking already.

sometimes such humour draws us back to the fundaments of whether we understand what we are talking about in the very first place or not.

can't deny it was a good joke though, totally spruced up my prayer meeting.

i am 21 this year.
and that is not good.

because if i am 21, almost 75% of the people i know would be 21 too. and that makes me BROKE! i have received truckloads of invitations to 21st birthdays almost on a weekly basis. it is scary how people go to great lengths for this particular age which i find almost unagreeable.

they say "you are only 21 once".

yah, you are also 17 once, 18 once or 20 once. why is 21 so special?

i have a feeling it is a singapore thing; because our nation permits 1) pornography 2) close-to-but-not-underage marriage/pregnancy whatever 3) liberation from parental guidance when you are 21. and yeah, as if you don't do all that before 21.

but well, it would be an overtly subjective manner to look at it like that. i guess being 21 is also another excuse for you to look back and reflect on your life thus far, and probably ruminate on all the friendships, relationships and kinships that has been along those 21 years of your life. it is perhaps, more reasonable to look at it like that.

so, you can probably say that a 21st birthday is like your 1mth-old celebration. like how your parents celebrates you being alive, you are celebrating that fact that you are still alive after 20 years, 11 months of educational torture, societal expectations and most of the time, trying to survive.

well, i think i will be celebrating my 21st birthday as sceptical as i am. simply because i want to celebrate my little achievement of having gotten through 21 years unscathed (i mean not dead), living and breathing. maybe it is also a testimony of how God has tide my little sampan boat through the roaring waves.

or maybe i just want a new camera, wallet and handphone.


you get the hint, right?

i told myself never to be like those bloggers who don't update for like 10 years and then come up with one entry about how busy and how unfree they are to blog. i, for one, am reflective about it. so, i guess i am not like one of those bloggers... in a sense.

alright, alright. i am not going to be delusional. i was busy, so i didn't blog.

my heart has always been thinking about what to write if i were to write a blog entry though. so as of now, i am quite lost for words because i have too much stuffed inside me. well, i guess you can see that given how random and how much i am rambling.

ignore me.

just 2 days ago, something traumatic and tragic happened within the ntu community. a triple-E student stabbed his professor and later, slit his wrists and fell to his death. this, in every way possible, shook me. first of all, i so happened to be around the fateful spot when he did so. i still replay the drama in my head where i saw the countless police cars and ambulance rushing in, the body bag and the horror at seeing the police cordoned area at a place i am so familiar with.

new reports have surfaced and more details given. but i have been quite reluctant to find out what exactly went wrong and what happened. why he will stab his prof and later commit suicide, i don't think anyone will ever be able to read into his head. i just feel that we should just avoid all that speculations and let it heal. it is already painful enough to know that one of our fellow ntu student were in a state so serious he would do such a thing.

but not all is blue. i am especially impressed with ntu's president, Dr Su Guaning for all that he has done this time round. he was the epitome of grace in the turbulence that rocked ntu on monday morning. his tactful and considerate emails was soothing for such a bad time; i am deeply touched by him and has all due respect for him.

well, life goes on. i still have 4 essays and 1 presentation to complete soon. got a GPA to pull up, y'know.