go get your shovel

i've never gotten dressed for school in broad daylight in the middle of the day before. at least, not in the past ten years or so. having exams in the afternoon is a bad bad idea. i woke up feeling so nervous that i gave myself diarrhea. and while i saw last minute cramming in the morning, my stomach felt like it was melting and my feet got cold and i felt like vomiting. exams prove again to not be beneficial to your overall health and wellbeing.

i have exam fingers from all the frantic scribbling essays on thin sheets of paper. i think i will develop severe arthritis in the future. from where i sit, there is no draft from the fan and i hate the feeling of still air, but there was some good wind today so that was all good. it's always a struggle between writing out great answers with all the great facts for one powerful essay and not having enough time to make the rest of your essays equally powerful.

i didn't feel a huge weight lifting off my shoulders after the papers end. i still carry that weight around in my heart. maybe when all the papers are done with then that weight will dissipate too. i need to stop thinking my answers in english because i get stuck and waste time trying to translate them. i don't know what dissipate is in malay.

and for the paper yesterday, which included some graph drawing and colouring, i realized that i didn't have time and my hands started shaking and i wanted to burst out in tears right there and then in the exam hall because never in my life have i screwed this paper up before and now of all times, i am failing to do what i previously had no problem doing. sigh. misconceptions.

i've always imagined having someone to come pick me up after exams and letting me complain about how i have just screwed up one part of the most important paper of the biggest exam of my life so far and take me home and feed me chicken soup and ice-cream. and write me cute little post it notes on my mirror wishing me all the best for my next paper. anywayyy....

anyhoo, on to the next papers. 15 days to go til the beginning of my freedom. that is the best news i have ever heard. countdown with me!


and oh, this does not mean that my exams have ended. this is a transitional period!

you came into my life and I thought hey, you know this could be something

okay i lied. i said i wouldn't be coming back here until after my major exams are done, but i am feeling reflective and contented at this very minute.

was looking back at a few other people's and my old blogposts, going through old pictures, and looking at the more recent pictures on facebook. and it has come to a sudden appreciation for the many people who have been in my life all these years. maybe it had something to do with our MPT 5&6, or prom last night but it did certainly make me think about how far we've come from where we were.

like with pearly and nat, we used to be little kids tottering around in children's church and look at where we are now. one of us is halfway across the world pursuing her lifelong course of study, one of us is going to move into her first year of uni (very) soon and the other one has gotten legal.

and with the ss gang, how we were just good ol' friends back in youth, all of fifteen and sixteen years old back then. fast forward a few years, and we've all grown into positions of responsibility and leadership together, doing the things we had been bred to do.

and omg high school friends and teachers. walking back into USJ 12, it has a strange sense of nostalgia and unfamiliarity at the same time. it's like i knew this place and its people like the back of my hand, but now things have changed but i still get the same feeling walking down those halls.

and even to my form 6 friends. it's only been a year and a half and i'm glad it's coming to an end, but i think i would really miss seeing all of us in the same class everyday. our boob and shit stories, making fun of teachers, trying to stay awake during PP lessons. i will miss (a part of) it all.


hey, we've grown much haven't we? one only wonders where we'll be headed for in the next 5 years of our lives. whether we'll be in the same place, with the same friends, with the same responsibilities, with the same expectations. the stuff we believed in back then isn't the stuff we believe in now, and the things we said we would never do, we end up doing with utmost enthusiasm. and how we often get caught up and distracted by the plans rather than the people in our lives.

yes i'm turning lovey-dovey and sentimental now.
back to my hiatus. i love (most of) you people.

i'll be on my way

i think i'm not gonna update this space for a while.
alot of stupid stuff's been happening and this is the birthplace of many negative emotions.
til maybe the big exams are over.

i was just waiting for your answer

I have come to realize that, right now I am thinking about
how i almost met my first car accident. but i say almost because i didn't. you know the traffic light when you come FROM church? the new one outside my house? yeah i needed to turn left to get home. there was a stationary car parked right at a blind spot in the corner as i turned left and i was rubbing my eyes sumore as i turned. if it weren't for my quick reflexes :D i would have hit that car.

i'm also thinking about
exams. hello STPM. did you realise it's only 5 weeks away now? in 5 church services, in 5 weekends, in 5 sundays of badminton or climbing bukit kiara, i'll be sitting for the mother of all exams. my macroeconomics paper for my trials came back worse than expected and yeah it's unleashed a whole new wave of feeling unprepared and paranoia. how did we brace ourselves for SPM back then? yeeeee.

i'm currently also thinking about
what Lucille Lau said just now. yeah, William Lau's wife came up to me and said she enjoyed my playing and that really encouraged me. sometimes i get very sick of playing the piano, prolly cos i have to do it so often and sometimes people become very unappreciative. but what she said just now gave me an affirmation with the prophetic word that Abel had for the worship team.

it never really dawned on me that who you put together in the worship team had such a great spiritual impact in matters that go beyond music and the congregation.


aiyoh i can't wait for camp. but for camp to come, i have to sit for stpm first. ergh. and mengyoe's wedding coming up!

if you fall i will catch you, i will be waiting

i think what i would really like to do now, for the next few weeks at least, is to be alone. just so that i can leave a lot a lot of things behind and lock myself in the library to really sit down and prepare for the upcoming exams. or, go away to some place for a while where i don't have to worry about other things besides exams and all i ever need to do is to sleep, eat dinner and study. at least until my big exams are over.

seeing that it's already mid-October now, it's somewhat daunting to think that in a few weeks, another phase of my life will be over. it will be like leaving high school all over again, only this time i'm two years older than i was when i thought i could leave high school behind forever. i'm going to burn my school uniforms after the last day of exams. or give them away or something.

i had a dinner date with sara yesterday and we both agreed that the next 5 years of our lives would pretty much decide how the rest of our lives would turn out to be. in the next five years i'd be making a whole lot of decisions and come to a whole lot of crossroads in life and have to make the most transitions. i think my parents are somewhat unprepared for the next five years of my life. they've never mentioned it and i don't think they really want to acknowledge the fact that i can make my own decisions and still be right. not that i ever really know what they think anyway.

which brings me to another point. i think my privacy is being violated. i'm weird okay, and i don't like people talking about my blog to me. i know, it's stupid and if i wanted privacy i shouldn't have started blogging but it's like talking to Peter Parker about him being Spiderman. don't give me the -.- face, i know what i'm talking about. not that my blog is an alter ego or secret identity or anything, but still. it's like talking about your feelings with strangers. when i blog, i'm talking to myself about my feelings. maybe i should just stop blogging anyway. i always felt that people make their own stupid pre-concieved and often wrong judgments about me through what i blog about anyway. stupid people.

and you know what? i don't really like being girly, or playing barbie with myself, as nat calls it. i've never been the kind of person who likes putting product in their hair or worries about not being able to rub my eyes because i might smudge my eyeliner. don't really know who or what i'm growing into anyway. that whole overdressed, over-manufactured and pre-planned look is not me. here's to shorts and flipflops any day.

which then also reminds me that maybe in certain ways, i've been making excuses for my sorry self way too much. i think i've been blaming my circumstances for my shortfalls and assessing my self-worth through the opinions of others much more than i should have. need to feel more secure in the person that i am instead of the person i would like other people to think of when they think of me.



p/s: much to my dismay, i haven't been studying as much as i like recently. which is the reason for me wanting to run away and do nothing but sleep and study.

pp/s: recently discovered an obsession with shoes. i admit i am pretty girly in this arena.

ppp/s: i want to go check out the new mpsj library in that big colourful building next to sunway pyramid. anybody want to make a study date?

suitcase of memories

post-script: ah i love this realize series. it makes such great fillers whenever i feel so blank.

I have come to realize that, when I wake up in the morning
that i really hate waking up in the morning. i really really do. maybe even more so than the average person. proof?

1. i have purposely set my alarm at a time where i can have 5 snooze buttons on the typical weekday morning. yup. 5. i wake up at 6.15am, and my first alarm rings at 5.30 and i snooze it continually til it reaches 6.15. yeh i'm awesome.

2. when i do get around to waking up, i hope and wish with all my might that my sister is still in the bathroom so that i can sleep some more while waiting for her to get out.

3. finally, when i actually have to really really get up, i bemoan and whine and grumble at the ridiculousness of the hour and try to not sleep when i'm peeing.

everybody in the house knows not to touch me in the morning, any morning. because i will bite.
you can tell i'm not a morning person.


anyways, i'm so addicted to fmylife.com. it's real stories happening to real people. on a bad day, this makes for a really good read because after reading, i realize my life is not that bad after all. hey! i have come to realize something new!

and i have a wedding to attend to this saturday. ah i love weddings.

and i'm going to cut hair tomorrow! (:



p/s: can you believe STPM is a mere one and a half months away? 7 weeks at the most. that thought scares me, but it doesn't scare me enough to start studying seriously. something is wrong with me.

pp/s: RunNat this saturday too!

lying in my bed, i hear the clock tick and think of you

I have come to realize that, the last time I cried was

it's such a coincidence that we have come to this 'i have come to realize' question.

i was in my grandma's house that day, and i saw a calendar hanging on the back of the bathroom door. it's one of those cheap, cina calendars with the squares and the bold blue numbers and after the month has passed, you tear off that page, that you get in indian sundry shops. my grandparents have lots of those. what was so particular about this calendar was not the fact that it was hanging behind the bathroom door, but that the page was still on April 2009.

it made me wonder why mama didn't continue tearing off the pages of the months as they passed, it may be because it was hanging behind the bathroom door. but it also could be the fact that mama could have been too occupied with looking after yehyeh when he got sick.

April 2009. he was still around back then, made me think of how it was like to still have yehyeh around. sometimes when i send mama home after prayer meeting, i automatically think that he'd be inside, watching tv, waiting up for mama. i remember in his last few weeks, he wanted to come for prayer meeting so much, he didn't mind coming in a wheelchair.

sometimes i wish i had done more when he was around. gave him more hugs, took him out for dinner more often, watched tennis and badminton on tv with him whenever there were tournaments, bought him more heong paeng and hap tou sou, accompanied him to his check ups in the hospital, appreciated his cooking.

somedays i feel a little angry at how quickly the disease got the better of him, how everyday i lost more and more of the only grandfather i knew. some nights i dream of him and i don't know whether to feel happy or sad. my granduncle recently passed away two weeks ago at fourteen years my grandfather's senior and somedays i can't help but wish that God had given an extra fourteen years of life to my grandfather. i would have been 35 and he would have seen me graduate and start working, perhaps even attended my wedding and became a great grandfather.

my grandmother has cleared out some of the things in my grandfather's closet. i kept two of his famous short sleeved collared shirts in my cupboard because my grandfather had this smell of neatness and i didn't want to forget it.

it's been close to three months now since he left, but time hasn't made anything all that better. in fact, sometimes it feels worse because it keeps reinforcing repeatedly how he really isn't around anymore. i guess i saw him close enough to everyday to validate me saying i saw him everyday, and a visit to my grandma's house is always a trip down sentimentalism.

i wish my kids had the chance to see for themselves how great a grandfather he was. they would have loved him as much as i do.

missing you in many different small ways.