life as a graduand

note: graduand does not equal graduate. it's really strange but so many people have sent me congratulatory messages on graduating. but i havent! i'm just now officially a candidate for graduation!

and i want to savour this state of graduand-ness. this limbo where i am not doing work yet dont have the stigma of being unemployed to contend with. because technically, it IS ok for me to not be doing work! after july 20, i wont have this excuse. on 21 july i am officially unemployed. imagine filling in those arrival cards - Occupation: Unemployed. no longer Student.

Bah...

Jools Holland and his Rhythm & Blues Orchestra on tour

2 wednesdays ago (16 May), i had the pleasure of watching Jools Holland at the Warwick Arts Centre and WOW IT WAS AN AMAZING GIG! great music, great vibe, great musicians! and at the end everyone was up on their feet dancing!managed to sneak some photos even though one of the stewards was sitting right behind me! hehehe... the audience loved Jools Holland SO MUCH that he got 2 encores....

in my first few hours of freedom

i sat in bed under a warm duvet and watched movies. ironic, isnt it? after 3 years as a film student i marked freedom with a celebratory movie marathon. i watched The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (i still cry EVERYTIME i watch it! amazing!), Carry On Camping (not that good), Carry On Up The Jungle (much better) and Shall We Dance (possibly my favourite Astaire-Rogers film).

i have a list of things i need to do but seriously, i cant be bothered at the moment. Tomorrow i'll watch The Ladykillers and maybe The Producers. wheeee!

i am a graduand!

TODAY IS A HISTORIC DAY! it marks the end of academic life - no more essays, no more exams. EVER.

and strangely enough (though not entirely surprising), i feel a bit lost with what to do now...

the bad thing about climate change

is that it feels like early winter now even though it is supposed to be summer. today's lowest temperature according to weather reports is 3 degrees celsius.

and now it seems that it is going to be cloudy in Stockholm next week, when only a few days ago the report was sunny.

on the bright side, i get to wear my furry red boots to exams today (and probably tomorrow) because they are nice and warm and very waterproof! in this case, it isnt a silver lining but a woolly one! hur hur hur...

today's cooking bonanza

i was out of the house for most of the afternoon today, helping josh to pack and move a load of stuff to his new place in Birmingham so i didnt see much of Lynn since i was busy revising in my room when she left the house for church this morning, and she hadnt come back when i had left for Birmingham. thus it was a pleasant surprise to walk into the house at 5pm and smell chocolate cake. i shrieked "CAKE!" and she and Michael popped their heads out of the kitchen and she replied, "i also made curry puffs. come have one."

now these are not conventional curry puffs (because she did baked them rather than fry them, and the casing is made of puff pastry instead of dough) but they are soooooo delicious! the spicy filling is a mixture of potatoes, onions and chicken sauteed in curry powder and cumin, and a slice of boiled egg, and because it isnt fried, it tastes nice and fluffy and not saturated in oil. mmmmmmm...on to the cake - last monday she made a chocolate ganache cake which i didnt get to try even though i helped to make it because she took it to the weekly church student cell meeting (and i didnt go) and she has been promising she would make another cake for me to devour. this cake is really rich but not the sort that makes you feel like you've had enough after 2 bites.as you can see, the cake is very moist on the inside and the layers have a chewy, brownie-like texture. the ganache is also flavoured with coffee which adds another layer of flavour to the cake and breaks up the chocolate-y-ness of an otherwise overwhelming cake. today's cake is also a lot more decorative (like Lynn pointed out, it looks similar to what Marcus Wareing did for his crab and tea-smoked mackerel tarts with duck egg mayonnaise starter on the Northern Heats of the Great British Menu) because she was going to drizzle white chocolate across the top (to make a grid-like decoration) but she ended up burning the chocolate because the fire was too strong when she was melting it in a steam bath.
she must have worked herself into a baking frenzy because after i came back from the evening church service she announced that she had made peanut cookies as well but wasnt very satisfied with them because she was testing a recipe sans green bean flour so she used ASDA peanut butter instead of Skippy.
i really like them though - very crumbly (the type that melt in your mouth!) and had a nice peanut aroma that burst in your mouth. but definitely the sort you can only have about 5 before you cant have any more for an hour. i cant wait to try the Skippy ones she's making tomorrow!

isn't it great that at University level

you can still find Sparknotes for texts you are studying AND actually find that they are intellectual enough to provide a solid foundation for revision?

bored housemates who have finished exams cook and cathartically throw out things

ever since Lynn and Michael finished their exams 2 Fridays ago, they have been finding things to amuse themselves - Lynn went on a massive baking spree, roping in Michael to drive her to the supermarket to buy ingredients and to help her with filling pastry with pineapple jam, while Michael (for a short while) tried to create dishes from an Asian Cookbook he had brought (according to Lynn, his Seabass with Chilli and Garlic sauce was really good).Lynn's really good (first batch) of closed pineapple tarts - we tried making open ones but the lack of cookie cutters AND an incorrect dough texture meant they werent as great...and her individual-serving-sized Pear and Almond tarts.

then they both started to go on a cleaning spree (though strangely enough, only of their rooms and not of the common areas -hahaha...). now they each have a huge trash bag sitting outside their rooms (and Lynn has a box of papers sitting by the front door waiting for recycling day to be thrown out) because they've decided to start clearing out "rubbish" from their rooms - i.e. clothes that dont fit, books and papers they dont want and general what-is-this-for stuff lying around their rooms in addition to actual rubbish...

and i'm actually looking forward to joining them next week when i can start throwing out things and saying goodbye to everything...it's funny how we are doing housemate-bonding stuff now when we only have a month left as housemates...

Paranoia?

am i being absolutely paranoid by still thinking about my exam that i did on thurs afternoon? the exam didnt go that well - i'd revised Tony Harrison, Seamus Heaney and Philip Larkin for politics and Ted Hughes, James K Baxter and Allen Curnow for religion and none of the questions came out so for 10mins at the beginning of the mammoth 3 hr paper i was panicking, trying to figure out what questions i could do with what i had revised. all in all, when i think back, i managed to cough out some decent stuff (especially since i brought in theorists Fredric Jameson and Pierre Bordieu into my last question - thank goodness I had already covered that in my Film Aesthetics revision!) but i keep having this feeling that it isnt good enough, especially since the paper turned out pretty well in terms of combinations of poets for many of my classmates.

then the other night as i was falling asleep i suddenly had an image of me writing the question numbers on the cover sheet of my exam script and i wrote 8, 13, 11 when i actually did questions 8, 17 and 11. then i started to panic that i DID write the wrong numbers and was trying to remember if i even wrote the right number at the top of my second question. and i was paranoid enough to email my tutor to ask if i can do anything about it just in case. but this bank holiday coming up on monday means he'll only get back to me on tuesday so until then...

i'm praying for a miracle. and for God's peace now since i'm feeling really flustered.

having someone who loves you

is like having a perfect haircut every single day...

beautiful...

Revision and Finals

a quote from Gilmore Girls:

Marty: Okay i remember something about Rome. Rome. Rome. Rooo-mans lived there. Err... Audrey Hepburn took a holiday there. It's the name of a B52 song!

Rory: Different Rome.

Marty: Okay that's it.I can't remember. College is breaking my spirit, every single day telling me things I don't know, it's making me feel stupid.

1 day to my first paper! i'm feeling jittery - can't decide whether it's because i'm nervous or just really excited about exams...

Ode to Gilmore Girls

on saturday i watched the last 2 episodes of the series. i was utterly depressed at the end of the 90mins or so. it felt like the end of an era - because it seems as if i grew up together with Rory and i could identify so much with her experiences. it really was an amazing series with fantastic characters, funny and very witty lines, and gorgeous clothes (very chic!)
the end of the series was very tastefully done - none of that conveniently tied up endings but very true to the series and the characters.
funny how things work out but it seems again that just as i grew up with Rory, she and i will embark on the great unknown after graduation...

Public Service Announcement

The University wishes to bring to students' attention information received from Travel Coventry, operators of the No. 12 bus service through Earsldon to the University campus.

We have been informed that from week commencing 21st May 2007 for a period of 8 weeks, the No. 12 service shall not be calling at bus stops along Earlsdon Avenue North, Hearsall Common and Tile Hill Lane (by the Village hotel) due to major road works. The diversion will be along Earsldon High Street, Beechwood Avenue, Dolomite Avenue, re-connecting with its normal route near Sainsburys.

The University has issued a full announcement on insite at the following web address:
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/insite/newsandevents/notices/travel_coventry_12/

Students travelling to the University for exams should ensure that they allow sufficient extra time for their arrival as the exam sessions cannot be delayed.


URGH...

Homage to a Government

by Philip Larkin
10 January 1969

Next year we are to bring all the soldiers home
For lack of money, and it is all right.
Places they guarded, or kept orderly,
We want the money for ourselves at home
Instead of working. And this is all right.

It's hard to say who wanted it to happen,
But now it's been decided nobody minds.
The places are a long way off, not here,
Which is all right, and from what we hear
The soldiers there only made trouble happen.
Next year we shall be easier in our minds.

Next year we shall be living in a country
That brought its soldiers home for lack of money.
The statues will be standing in the same
Tree-muffled squares, and look nearly the same.
Our children will not know it's a different country.
All we can hope to leave them now is money.


i was doing revision and chanced upon this poem of Larkin's written way back in 1969 - funny how a poem written 38 years ago is still so relevant today, considering the anti-war debates in the UK and how we should "bring the soldiers home"...

a self-imposed seige

the food situation got to a point yesterday when i had nothing left, as in nothing FRESH left, in my fridge and/or freezer. see, i have been so eager/happy/overjoyed that at every meal we (me and josh - i hardly cook for 1) finished all the food i cooked or we finished the leftovers during the next meal. but the downside of this is that i have nothing to eat during lunch/dinners alone.

so the predicament before me yesterday was what to eat for lunch AND dinner (because josh had to attend a company-paid working dinner) when i had nothing left in my fridge. and with nether garlic nor onions. thankfully i had some chorizo lying around, a bottle of sun-dried tomato antipesto and 2 chillies (1 green and 1 red) plus a bottle of chilli and garlic infused olive oil that i got from Tesco (no no, i'm not THAT decadent - i had a voucher that gave me 100 extra points when i bought the dipping oil because they were promoting some Tesco Finest products). i did a spin on the usual alio oglio by first frying some chorizo in a hot pan to release the oils (and flavour), then adding olive oil and the chopped chillis. after frying the ingredients for a minute, i added the infused oil and some chopped sun-dried tomatoes before tipping in the al dente spaghetti and seasoning with pepper. and since i was too lazy/not in possession of cash, i even repeated that for dinner rather than call for takeaway as i had originally thought to do. sigh.

and because i ABSOLUTELY needed to go to the supermarket this morning - risking a slow and painful death of starvation (because no food = no energy to go out and buy food nor cook nor dial for takeaway which isnt even viable since i'd need to go to the ATM = no food), i decided to do a trip to the library as well to get out some books on poetry that i'm revising. to compound that, i had trouble falling asleep last night (the mind was going back and forth wondering if i was being overly anxious about exams or overly confident), i worked out what i was going to cook all the way from today till saturday so that i would have a precise shopping list to whizz into Tesco on my way home from the library and be out within 15mins (given the time taken at the checkout).

not the wisest of ideas (good intentions though) because even though i had only planned to get 3 books from the library i left with 5. and at Tesco i filled one of those smaller-sized trolleys with so much food - whole chickens, 1 tray of pork belly strips, 2 trays of braising beef, 1 tray of pork mince, 1 pack of 3 mixed capsicums, 1 large pack of cheery tomatoes, 5 tomatoes, 2 lemons, 2 aubergines, 1 big bag of spinach, 1 cucumber, 1 bunch of spring onions, 4 heads of garlic, 1 head of iceberg lettuce, 1 bag of onions - that it looked as if i was shopping for an entire family! ever prepared, i had brought 2 large plastic bags and my huge backpack (already half filled with books) and JUST managed to fit all the food in. may i say i was very impressed with myself until i realised that i needed to get eggs from Iceland and would have to get an extra plastic bag anyway because there was no way the eggs would arrive home intact if i didnt.

ever notice how distances seem longer when you are carrying heavy bags? and oh-so-clever me had thrown my keys into my backpack when i left the house so it was buried at the bottom under EVERYTHING. which meant calling lynn on her mobile phone to get her to open the door.

but now, all is well and i have food for every meal until Sunday. and the emptiness of the fridge and freezer has been filled up (my housemates did a big shop approximately 3 weeks ago and have not been out to buy any fresh meat since then because they have been studying and have been slowly but surely clearing their frozen food - their fresh-food-buying will commence next week after they have finished their exams) and i will not need to go to the supermarket nor to university (except tomorrow for some dance stuff) until next week. which leaves time for me to catch up on my study schedule that i'm behind on. oh joy.

when i was at the bus stop waiting for the bus back home, a chav couple arrived at the bus stop pushing a stroller each, one with a 1-year-old girl and another with a 3-year-old boy. the mother was (i'd say) about 19 and the father looked 16. now the shocking thing isnt that but the fact that they had let their 3-year-old son HOLD A BAG OF CRISPS AND EAT FROM THE ENTIRE BAG. he was practically stuffing his face with the crisps (at 10am, mind you). first of all, if you give the kid some crisps, it's fine if it's a handful but to let him eat FROM the bag (which wasnt even a single-serving one) is really very bad parenting. next, the mom opened the kid's sippy cup and poored a bottle of Fruit Shoot (drink made from cordial = artificial sweeteners) that she had just bought into (i saw a price tag) and gave it to the dad to hold. and after a while, the child was bored of eating the bag of crisps and poured the remaining contents AND THE BAG onto the pavement. all this while, the mom was on her mobile calling her friend to find out where this other friend they were supposed to meet was and apparently the guy they were meeting had to go back afterwards for probation.

poor children...

i need to write all this down before i forget...

i want to visit the following places in the next few months:

In the UK -
William Curley Patissier in Richmond, London. it looks DIVINE.

Blueprint Cafe in London. Being an avid fan of Great British Menu on BBC Two, i found out about Jeremy Lee and really liked what he cooked and thus am interested to try his food.

Petrus in London, opened by Gordon Ramsay and run by Marcus Wareing. Actually, any of Gordon Ramsay's restaurants will be amazing...

Bentley's Oyster Bar & Grill in London, run by Richard Corrigan who won big on Great British Menu last year (for the Queen's Birthday as well as for the Christmas special).

In Singapore -
Morton's The Steakhouse Restaurant in The Oriental Hotel, Singapore, where during Happy Hour you get free steak sandwiches when you order drinks from the bar (and apparently their martinis are AMAZING)

The Fullerton Courtyard for High Tea (because I've never set foot in Fullerton Hotel before - shocking!). My mom and I used to be fanatic about High Tea Buffets and we'd go round to the various hotels to see which was best. We havent gone anywhere else since we discovered the Shangri-La one...

an excerpt from Earle Birney's Introduction to 'Twentieth Century Canadian Poetry'

'A poem, like any other work of art, is created to be enjoyed, and the ability to enjoy it is to some extent an acquired one. We are not born with a mature appreciation of Beethoven or Shakespeare; and we can fail even to acquire it if we limit our listening to the tunes of Tin Pan Allen and our reading to nursery jingles. And yet, if we recall the joys we once got from Hickory-Dickory-Dock, we have a guide to the adult pleasure of poetry-reading. When we were young we did not need to be urged to let our imaginations work; we saw the cow jump over the moon, and we laughed, with the little dog, seeing it happen; we tasted the sounds of Humpty-Dumpty and we beat our hands tothe fun of its rhythm. Much adult poetry is still inviting us to do the same, to take a holiday from our grown up world of sober readon, making-a-living, worry, routine, mechanized entertainment and spectator-sports, and to let the colour and thythm and cadence of words, those most magical of all human inventions, unloose our imaginations to run where they will.'

apparently the world is not as we know it! GASP!

i caught the first few minutes of Wife Swap on TV just as i was going to get back to revision and the theme was about the role of women in the home. One was really about the empowerment of women (she teaches pole-dancing in her house and says it helps women bring out their inner sexuality and help them understand what it means to be a woman) and the other believes that women have to treat their husbands/men in their life like kings and serve them/be submissive/never let them lift a finger. the second woman said that she believes that is the key to a good marriage and that is the reason why so many young couples break up because the woman expects too much from the man.

and all this time i was thinking, wait a miniute, according to the reading i just did on gender theory by Judith Butler, all this is complete rubbish because gender is a cultural construct and therefore is not absolute. neither is it linked to one's sex and therefore it is possible for man, masculine, woman and feminine to be interchangable. gender is a performance and therefore because gender is an act, the various ways in which a body shows/produces its cultural significance are performantive and thus there is no preexisting identity by which an act can be measured. which means there is no such thing as a true or false gender identity!

i think learning causes you to question everything (it is a post-modern condition!) and thus everything you grew up with inevitably gets questioned...

my conversation with my mom last night...

Me: how is the renovation going?

Mom: the construction workers have knocked down the wall in your toilet, so now the house is very windy. will take a photograph for you. your brother says it is a safety hazard because people can now come into the house from the big hole.

Me: yea but who will actually be able to? the neighbours? (we live in a terrace house)

Mom: well, you know your brother...

Me: just tell him you'll lock the door to my room.

Mom: we can't because the construction workers laid down some plastic on the floor and now the door won't shut properly. it's ok, if anything they will come in and take the dog away. he's the only valuable thing left in the house while the renovation is going on.

any psychiatrist will have a field day with me

i had a series of very weird dreams last night, most of which i dont remember but i'll just recall what i can...

i dreamt that i i had been sent on a task to pick up 10 rabbits (or maybe it was hamsters) and 10 babies. except that i went to a farm/laboratory/pet-shop-looking thing to pick them up. the person who was running this place was Justin Lee Collins (the guy with the wild hair from 'The Friday Night Project' who also did 'Bring Back... The A Team'). so i walked into his facility, telling him my requirements and he gave me a cardboard box which he and i then proceeded to the enclosure (which to get there, we walked through some concreted area of a farm and to the end where there was a huge fenced up area) pick out 10 rabbits and placed them in the box. then i said, ok now i just need to get the babies and then i can go on and get the rest of my chores sorted. he took another box, and we went to another place on this farm (which by now had turned into a laboratory) where he had some rooms with huge glass windows on the side that looked into the place where the babies were being kept. there were some women cuddling the babies but Justin told me that we wont have problem getting 10 babies. it looked like there were babies lying on some hay (very much like what the rabbits i had seen earlier were on). but then i realised that his box wont be able to hold all the babies (because a cardboard box OBVIOUSLY cannot carry 60 kg of babies, and also that it will be too difficult carrying a box of rabbits and a box of babies and continue running errands (not forgetting that 1 box will require 2 hands to carry). so Justin said that it wasnt a problem for him to look after my boxes for me while i ran my other errands as long as i dont forget to pick them up on the way home.

fast forward to the next section of the dream...

i was with my chinese tutor (i cant remember which one - it seems like she was a combination of my private tutor and my primary 6 teacher) and some of my secondary school friends and we had applied to go on a weekend trip to Russia. i was really looking forward to it, and so sure that i had got a place so i packed all my stuff and got ready my bags. i even packed some chinese snacks (a wheatgrass milkshake and some mochi) which i had nearly forgotten as i got into a car/bus that took us all to the airport (i ran back in to get the plastic bag). on the bus my tutor reminded us that we had to hand in a book review on the Monday and i panicked because i thought that if i went on the trip it meant that i didnt need to do the report. and i had to finish reading 'Things Fall Apart' over the weekend as well (it IS actually a book i wanted to finish reading for my exam revision). one of my friends who wasnt applying for the trip asked me if i was going to be able to finish and i smugly said, yeah i'll manage, this trip will so totally be worth it. then the bus pulled up at the airport and they made an announcement saying that applicants from the following groups had been selected for the trip and if you had applied and were part of a group that was not called, it meant you were unsuccessful. and thought i heard them say that my group had not been selected (even though there had been applicants from the group). i thought they had made a mistake and went up to collect my ticket only to be told that i hadnt been selected. one of my friends tried to console me that it was a good thing because now i could concentrate on my book review and finishing my other work while those people that got selected would have to work their asses off during and after the trip to finish it. so we walked back to the bus interchange where one of my friends ran off saying that her bus (no. 7 to Tampines) was at the bay and she needed to get on. my two other friends went to queue at the no. 14 stand and i stood around waiting with them for their bus since i didnt want to go be alone just yet. i suddenly realised that i didnt have my plastic bag of goodies anymore and that my friend in the queue had carried it for me. i remember thinking, i'm going to enjoy the snacks even if i am not on that flight! so i asked if she could hand it back to me. she opened her backpack and started taking out bits that had been in the bag ("this is yours... and i think this as well... anything else...?"). i said, i gave you the entire bag, not just bits of the stuff. then she went, "oh yeah! sorry, i forgot". so i finally got all my stuff just as her bus arrived and we said goodbye and i walked away. i found myself walking past a swimming pool where an even was going on and people were cheering in the stands. i remember hearing one of my friends' voice saying 'oh i really hope i can get into AC JC' and all i could think was, great but havent we already finish JC? and to get in/even talk about getting into JC cant be a good thing because it means we've regressed? i found myself walking alone out of the sports stadium and seeing a police car parked on my left across the road. i couldnt find a zebra crossing so decided that i couldnt get in trouble for crossing the road so i did. and just as i did, two cars came from opposite directions (on this single lane road) and came to a stop just in time. the driver of the car on my right yelled at the driver on my left saying that it was a one-way street and he had turned onto the wrong section of the road. in all this time, no one came out of the police car so i figured it was just parked there and the policement probably went to watch the swim meet. as i crossed the road, i suddenly found myself along Siglap Road because i recognised the sign of one of the dentists but the area looked strange because the roads forked instead of going straight.

then i woke up.

i spent the morning trying to figure out my dream and here is my conclusion -

the rabbits: came from the episode of 'The Apprentice' (UK) that i watched last night
the genetically-modified babies: i had seen a tralier for a TV program called 'Animal Farm' which talked about genetically-modified animals
the book review: anxieties about work/revision
the whole trip to Russia fiasco + possibly the JC thing as well: me not getting a job
the mochi: probably because the day before i had gone to the chinese store in Cannon Park and the guy in front of me at the till opened the fridge and took out a packet of some chinese pastries. and i remember thinking, oh i didnt know that that glass panel was actually a door to the fridge!
wheatgrass: i opened my bag of spinach yesterday and some had gotten a bit mushy from the water vapour and thus there was a strong chlorophyll smell in the bag - reminded me of green tea which reminded me of a conversation i had with some Brit friends about green tea and wheatgrass

still, when i told josh my dream (and also because he has heard of my other weird dreams in the past few days), he said i needed help...

in true form

i am writing my last ever assessed essay the night before it is due.

i used to always seemed to write my essays the night before until the past few where i finished them at least a day before. and a few hours ago i was panicking that i was not even half done (oh the irony!).

the punishment for being lazy on sat and sun = me doing an all-nighter (which i thought i'd NEVER have to do again since last year).

crap.

on another note, i think the reason why people put on weight in university is because we do work last minute and therefore feel the urge to snack to keep going through the night. i just had a whiff of pepperoni (because my housemate Michael had put a pizza in the oven) and now i have the urge to have supper of leftover fried chicken. and it's not like sitting here in front of my computer is going to burn any of the calories...

busy dreams

the other night i had a weird dream and the fact that i actually remember it attests to how weird it was (i havent had weird dreams in a reasonably long time - like since Poland so ivy, dont't start giving me weird looks again!)

i dreamt that i was on some Amazing Race thing where moon, beng and i were on a team. and i remember thinking, why the heck are we in a team of 3? that will just slow us down! (sorry moon and beng!) anyway we were doing a Detour that involved folk art (i think it was somewhere in China/Tibet) and we had to string some beads onto bracelets in the right order according to a sample. i was getting very frustrated with moon because she was taking really long to string them (i remember we had 4 to string and i was thinking, 'that's ok we will be faster than the other groups because we are a group of 3 and some of the other teams are groups of 4') and even though we had arrived at the task 2nd, we were 5th when we left. then we arrived at the next Road Block which was at some huge aquarium and the moment i saw it i screamed 'shotgun not doing it!' and i made moon and beng decide among themselves who would do it (and then i felt really bad because it ended up being moon doing it AGAIN). the Road Block ended up being having to swim with a whale in a huge aquarium.

then while moon was getting ready, my dream suddenly became a thriller story where there were some suspicious men in suits that i decided to follow out the door... after that bit i dont remember what happened...

i also remember somewhere in my dream that i had to get into a car and drive. and all the time i was concentrating on putting my foot on the clutch when i had to change gear. at the end i kept thinking to myself, 'crap! i've never driven beyond 2nd gear and now i am driving in Amazing Race? WHAT?!?' (note: that's because moon and beng cant drive so i ended up driving)

if anyone can tell me what my dream means, please enlighten me! but then again, i told lynn my dream and found out that these Amazing Race dreams arent that uncommon because she had one too (it was rather funny to hear her dream as well! haha...).

:

The Johann Collective

this is a plug for The Johann Collective, who play amazing original music. this song is GREAT! they've got a few more songs on their website that you can listen to on the music player.

(btw johann, i really liked your most recent song that you recorded, the one about the couple who have drifted apart but are still together even though they both know that the relationship isn't going anywhere...)

i'm a hoarder

my mom called me at 9am yesterday to ask a very important question: in a frazzled voice, she said, "can i throw away your collection of Seventeen magazines? i've already filled up 10 boxes of your stuff and we only have space for 100 boxes in the storage place. you also still have all your files and books from secondary school."

crap.

so now i feel bad - because last year when i went home in summer i was supposed to throw out stuff that i didnt want (or sell the magazines second-hand). and a few years ago i would have said i wanted to keep all this stuff for "nostalgia" but then who am i kidding? i'll never read all that again (like maths and science stuff... maybe the literature...) so it probably is time to throw them all out.

and i'm wondering if i should bother to keep my notes from university as well... maybe if i bring them back, Harris might want them since he wanted some of my literature notes last year...

being shameless is good on the wallet

i just came back from doing something utterly shameless! and the guy was really nice about it but i'm wondering if he was shaking his head as i walked out of Topshop.

see, lynn had gone in yesterday to try on that pinafore that i bought (because she really just wanted to buy something - again i reiterate, it isnt about the shopping experience... it is about how spending money relaxes all that pent-up frustration) and found out that they were having a Buy 1 Get 1 Free on all sale items. i.e. my pinafore.

at the same time, moon sent me a message saying she wanted that exact pinafore from Topshop as well (which she had seen in Topshop Singapore but the price was more than what she was willing to pay).

so after thinking really hard how to go about getting it (kind of) free, i decided that it was no point buying something then returning it to exchange for what i had bought last week blah blah blah and just go up and be shameless and return the pinafore and repurchase it with the offer (i usually keep receipts for a month and not cut off tags until a week after in case i change my mind - esp for impulsive buys).

and i did it. this morning. i walked in, searched frantically for that last pinafore in the right size (nearly didnt find it!) and went to the counter and got it sorted.

so instead of paying £9 for my pinafore, i have now only spent £4.50. which is like paying 22.5% of the original price! wheeeeeeee....

work work work

(this is me mid-essay last week- those are my handwritten notes just for that essay!) we have a countdown on the wall in the hallway between my room and lynn's - and we have actually been rather dilligent in our work which is amazing because the week before term started we couldnt get down to studying (which is why i went to the library to do work but now that place has become so uncondusive).
one more essay and 3 more exams and i am done with university life. which is scary. but rather nice a feeling...