(de)fragments of life
mood: grouchy
First and foremost, i have to vent my frustration. AHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! there, all better now. My dearest computer, which i decided to defragment yesterday, has decided to take the chance to go for a holiday....argh. I started at 330pm yesterday and at 1030am today, the screen cheerfully read "56% complete". In 19 hours (!!!!!), my computer happilly shuffled and rearranged only half the files on my computer. *sniff* but i'd have to admit it's most probably my fault. My fault for having so much crap on my computer, for not defragging it more often, for force feeding it hundreds upon thousands of files, folders and applications. Guess i'll just have to grin and bear it for another 15 hours or so. Hmm...defragging is strangely addictive. There's something alluring about seeing blue squares, aqua squares and red squares disappear and appear on the screen. Something hypnotic about the rythmn and the systemic movement down the rows of squares. And there's some satisfaction at the thought of your computer accomplishing perfect order and structure, like a utopian library, after this tedious process. Like how your computer is now the perfect zen machine, having purged itself of any mess and attained a higher order. okay...too much crap here.
[hits defrag button]

*rumble*
mood: hungry + tired=blah
just finished running my experiment at the flow cytometry lab in school. Not too good results. need more cells. need mroe experiments. need more practice. =( and tired from rushing to and fro from RFS lab to school. i wonder if research is something that i want to do as a career. I pretty much enjoy tending to cells, 'feeding' them, passaging them, staining them, etc,,,feel like a cell babysitter. plus i get to work with all these cool machines and chemicals the i read about in my readers and textbooks. A major drawback however, is the severe lack of outdoor labs. Wouldn't it be great to have sunshine pouring in while u work? oh well, who cares about sterility and contamination issues? =P seriously, going hours without fresh air and natural light is too much, and all i see after a while is white, white and more white...and my hands smell of rubber gloves. I shouldn't be complaining so much lah...my professor is a really nice guy, i get to eat pizza every Monday, i've made new friends. hmm...talking about pizza, i'm starving. gotta go munch and crunch. this blog most probably seems ultra-boring to u, oh well, go back and watch your toenails grow then. bleah.

of angelfishes and condensed milk
mood: woohoo!
what am i doing awake at 630am? oh boy, today will be a long day....alot of things to do, and alot of things i'd rather be doing. woke up coz i fell asleep with contacts on (orrh... infection then u know). been doing that for a few days liao...i just feel so unmotivated to take off contacts. Can u imagine...if i'm unmotivated to care for my eyes, how motivated can i be to study hard? Oh well, i've been pretty bo chup (euphemism for lazy) for as long as i can remember. In primary school i was always doing ERP the night before...and it only got worse in rgs. As jq can attest, i hardly stayed home and studied. No wonder JC was not a mug-fest to me, hardly any studying done except promos and prelims. I had a blast in RJ, keeping up with old friends, making many new ones, meeting 5 firm-as-a-rock friends, and finding one special forever friend. yay. especially the last bit. =)
Mebbe that's why i'm awake so early....excited about the day ahead. How i wish i was elsewhere on this day, and spend it more meaningfully. Was sorry to bother pang n rui, hope it wasn't too awkward. hope i didn't take up too much of your time. Hope he was happy...and how i wish that i could have been there. it was nice talking to you again..and listening to your voices. paths have diverged, especially with secondary sch friends, yet it's so easy to fall back into the conversations we had more than 4 years ago. Perhaps that is the sign of a lasting friendship, where words come sincerely and freely. Good luck for your exams, study hard! A summer attachment at NUS is in the works, and that means....three whole months in S'pore! Plus, working at NUS would mean being able to meet up with old friends...that's something that makes me really, really excited. And hopefully the research will give me alot more flexibility wrt working hours.
About research, i'd better get going...need to go down soon to the research lab i'm working in, and prepare some samples for an experiment later. this means skipskipskip school. which hopefully doesn't translate to failfailfail classes. bleah. let's just hope all goes well, and i get a nobel prize... =P The worst thing that could happen is i fall asleep. which is quite possible considering the wooziness in my head and heaviness on my eyelids. *smack self* there, all better already....
i will write more later..possibly at the lab. how can i not, on such a day?

Glad i woke up early, managed to catch your email just after u sent it. I like knowing that both of us are online and thinking of each other at the same time. makes me feel alot closer to home, and you. It's always nice waking up to some silliness and mushiness. *grin* keep it coming! =P It's a special day...can't stop thinking abt u.

random tidbits
what would u do with $50, $500 and $5000?
hrm...i dunno. just never really thought that i'd suddenly come across free money (ie. no need to return).
$50-put it in my wallet and see where it goes from there
$500-have a great meal with friends, buy a pair of jeans
$5000-travel in Europe/central america, buy him a guitar.
what about you?
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smells you like
what they say:
~ cucumber oil. And gasoline. And the way my cat smells like an animal.
~ the desert just before rain, hot chocolate, fresh baked goods, peanut butter.
~ lemons....cow manure...baseball gloves, baseball dugout...
~ Tennis balls and isopropyl alcohol (?!)
~ my kitty's nose air. When he sniffs me I can smell the air coming out of his nose and its smells good, a little weird, but good.
~ really clean, warm summer night air. it's that ionized air smell. you smell it after lightning too.
~ freshly brewed coffee. freshly cut grass. the nape of a cute guy's neck.
~ clean laundry and manymany others..
what i say:
rain, clean laundry, fried garlic and onions, money, my mom's little pillow, my blanket, talcum powder, a baby's skin, oranges, fresh air

me and my silly questions
mood: relieved
i mugged and mugged so hard in the last 24 hours that i feel absolutely burnt out right now. *snapcracklepop* can't wait to go back home and rest. It was torturous ploughing through all that boring EE40 stuff. It's a evil class..now i know why Rob n ilyas warned not to take it. MOSFETS, CMOS, NMOS, op-amps, rectifiers, fabrication, pn junctions, logic blahblahblah....add cardiac protheses, artificial heart vessels, gene delivery and growth factor delivery...and add ~40 german words and learn how to change them to the perfect tense...and u know what's floating around in my brain right now. A whole lot of jumbled mishmash. And fried neurons. but i have no one to blame but myself...really, i should be doing more consistent work, rather than stressing myself out the day before exams, and force the poor him to listen to my incoherent grumblings.
Even though i told myself to focus wholly on work, i managed to sneak in trading spaces, 2 blind dates, 2 makeover stories, the amazing race AND gone in 60 seconds. talk about lack of discipline. I dunno leh. i think like some shows i'll just never get the chance to watch again, so i do. Especially these shove-a-camera-in-your-face kind of reality TV. Although i do think them stupid sometimes (like the Bachelor), i still can't help but watch. Probably i'm a closet voyeur...so beware of me and don't let me get too close...if you've got something to hide that is. =P I just think it's so interesting to watch people. Their reactions, their body language, their thoughts....i suppose reading blogs has a similar attractiveness to it. The online journal is like a camera that broadcasts to the world everything and anything- from the mundane happenings of life to the deep emotional frenzies one sometimes lapses into. but perhaps we are not as brave as we might think, choosing to hide in the shadow of anonymity, and only revealing emotions freely in our words.
Do u read random blogs? it's amazing how different each and every person is, and how reading through every blog one never fails to be pleasantly surprised. by a thought, a picture, a quote, an idea. If the world were powered by these, we'll never run out of resouces, not ever. Every person has something so unique about them, and i think it's wonderful that we have the opportunity to peek into the lives of all kinds of people. Not only do we learn all sorts of things, often we are reminded of our own thoughts and memories that we have overlooked, hidden away, or have simply forgotten.
One site asked: what did u want to be when u grew up? And i thought of the days when i wanted to be a teacher, days when i just wanted to stay with my grandparents forever, and days where i just wondered how it would feel being 21. Sometimes we just lose sight of our very own special dreams and in their place chase after the more practical and more acceptable ones. I suppose then we can safely say that we haven't failed, and haven't done anything silly with our lives. but then, this way we would never know the feeling of having done something truly meaningful, or having explored beyond our boundaries, would we? I must admit that i have not yet fulfilled some of these dreams within me, but i know that i want to, and that one day i will. I suppose many people think the same way...but eventually fall into the trappings of everyday life....i can't say i won't, but as long as i still keep these dreams close to me, i know half the battle is won. I don't know how my life will turn out from here, just as i didn't know my life now when i thought about it as a child. But i can still hope, and i sure hope i'll have some great stories to share.

ack!
mood: stressed
pretty unsettled feeling about my schoolwork right now. have a midterm and 2 quizzes on thursday...plus neverending homework. my brain thinks about all the impending deadlines and just shuts off. Seriously, i haven't been doing very much work at all this semester (except the days before exams and quizzes that is)...and i'm thankful my grades haven't suffered too much because of it. Yet i know i'm not learning as much as i should. I just cram in as much crap as i can into my head the day before and spit it all out on the exam. Oh, and i'm lucky i suppose...for quite a few classes this sem allow cheat sheets. At least i don't shrink all the lecture slides and squish them into 2 sides...that's what i saw someone doing. 15 lectures worth of black lightning notes shrunk into teeny little blocks and pasted on 2 sheets of paper. damn zai. he was even using a magnifying glass. ack. nevermind. so, if u should see me these couple of days with panda eyes and i snap at u...you know why.

boo!
hey...another surprise. did u notice, faith, that we had the same header for our entry today?

oh well, time to head back to my books, back to the world of ancient greece and china...to herodotus, han fei zi, mo zi and the like.

spring forward
mood: lazy
i've been a bad girl. Nope, i'm not gonna confess my deep, dark secrets. It's just that i haven't been blogging. boring right? Well, this inertia that i've been feeling has been affecting other aspects of life as well. I haven't done any work the past 3 days..*sighz* Today was yet another wake-up-late and chill-on-my-bed day. Highlights? Cooking lunch, cooking dinner and er..checking email. Also, eating really sweet mango, drinking a yummy cup of hot chocolate lovingly prepared by Yoekie, and melt-in-your-mouth-delicious egg tart from faith. mmmm...u must be training to be a good housewife rite? =) sadly, i am no where to be seen enthusiastically taking up pots and pans and indulging in domestic homey affairs. hey, c'mon...why can't he do all that?
Almost forgot about daylight savings today. Woke up and my computer cheerily reminded me of the time. How could it, when a whole hour has been stolen from a precious sunday? *grumble* So instead of 11am, i woke up at 12pm. which officially makes me a pig (poor misunderstood creatures). oh well, at least i like pigs. It was so weird looking out to a bluish sky at 8pm...it will take a little getting used to. Now the time difference between here and singapore is only 15 hours. So my mornings aren't your late nights anymore...no excuses liaoz.. *grinz* i wouldn't mind more wake-up calls.
Yesterday was Rob's birthday. A special day for a special person. The skies cleared for the first time in days....leaving clear blue skies and balmy breezes...a perfect day for paintball. Yep, glad we tried paintball. It was....interesting. Certainly not as great as i thought it would be, but nevertheless, an enjoyable experience. It was a day where the girls finally got to fire 'real' guns with live human targets to aim at (and 'ammo' to boot). I sucked, but in between hiding behind metal cylinders and inflatable shapes, and mis-aiming at the enemies, i strangely enjoyed rolling in the dirt. (okay, no more pig analogies please) Yesh, and washing up involved some water splishplashing...that was fun. If there's one thing i didn't like, it was getting hit by paintballs. OUCH. they hurt man. luckily, i was really hit by only two paintballs...my gun got most of it...but the one that got my arm left a large bowl-shaped (yes, BOWL-shaped) bruise while the others had roundish red welts. the bruise looks so interesting that i took three pictures of it. It's my first paintball battle scar. Ask me, and i might show it to u. =P I suppose it would have been much more fun if the game involved just us. The others were somewhat expert (or they just seemed so) with shinier, cheemer guns with sights and were mostly semi-automatic. no wonder we were trashed! nah..think we need more practice. One day a larger group of us should go down and reserve the entire field. I'll most probably go again. (And definitely...if the hits didn't sting so) Had a nice post-paintballing meal of dim sum in oakland...it's always nice to eat that in a bigger group..then can try manymany things. finally cut rob's bday cake...and smashed some cream in his face. (bleah, u deserve that rob, for alwez 'zipping' me.)
But that was not the end of our adventure. We chanced upon the Berkeley flea market on the way home, and walked into a treasure trove of african, mongolian and other ethnic goodies. I love flea markets, night markets and the like. i must admit i'm cheapskate...but it's also the thrill of stumbling across non-massproduced treasures and trinkets. I left with a lovely dreamy skirt, and some books. After much deliberation I bought The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. To me it was a magical tale of omens, dreams and hopes woven together and shaped by destiny.

"Why don't people's hearts tell them to continue to follow their dreams?
Because that's what makes a heart suffer most, and hearts don't like to suffer."

It was a wonderful read. but by buying the book, i am afraid that it will no longer seem so special ...and by rereading take away some of its magic. i'll only find out when i get down to reading it again.
Finally, to top off an exceptional saturday, we drove past an extraordinary garden with multitudes of multicoloured tulips....it was a garden right out from a picture book. Yoek n i hopped out of the car and snapped manymany happy pictures. Poor hk had to put up with our estatic squeals and sudden photo-posing frenzy. It was great. Totally spontaneous and totally a surprise, which made it a thousand times better. Makes one wonder about life, and the simple pleasures it holds. sometimes, the greatest treasures are found in the most unlikely places, aren't they?

humdrum
mood: productive
sitting in one of the libraries in school....feeling very tired and hungry. But i don't feel like returning home just yet. there's something about being in a totally quiet(at this time it is) space...with only the low hum of the computers, occasional typing of the person next to me, oh..and of course my own very unquiet typing on the nice bouncy keyboard for company. It seems as though the absence of conversation, or any spoken words at all, allows my own inner thoughts to emerge from the deep recesses of my mind and come out to play. Perhaps that is why i seldom study in a library. Often i get even more distracted in the library...someone walking in just disrupts my train of thought as i start wondering who this person is, what this person is doing and so on...or like i pick up a word from a nearby conversation and my mind immediately races off making its own connections until the word blue triggers off memories of eating omelettes or something to that effect. Maybe i should start having conversations with people strictly over the internet. No need to worry about where to put my hands or what to say or finding the most comfortable position to stand. Just good 'ol words, nothing to distract one from a conversation. Yet, i know i would never be content with words flashing on the screen...Nothing beats the look of surprise when someone is surprised, or the sight of a real smile slowly spreading across the face causing your eyes to go all crinklywrinkly. who wants just this -----> =) ? so is a good conversation all we look for? I suppose not. sometimes i worry whether people get too sian of what i'm saying to them....or find me interesting and engaging enough...oh well, i suppose i don't really judge people that way....so...should i worry at all? haiyah..i don't even know what i'm talking about anymore. better change subject..not good to go on about this when the library is closing in 14 minutes. *beeeeeeepbeeeeeeeep* went the buzzer.
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sidenote: weirded out....just stared at the comp screen to reading something for 2 minutes...then when i look back at the keyboard it's gone all greenish yellow. HELP!
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That reminds me of the SF exploratorium (sniff... just last thursday). sometimes when u look at a bright light and space out, u may see these little specks moving in a certain direction...those are the blood cells moving through bld vessels in your eye. We had a whole lot of fun there....felt like little primary school kids running through the singapore science center again..but better coz now we can actually appreciate how amazing some things are. go and visit someday if u have the time...pretty cool. I'm glad i had the company too....it was nice sharing this experience with someone just as excited and into it as i was. We were just rushing from one exhibit to another trying to take it all in (but we missed out some on the upper level) in between all our "oohs" and "aahs"....while trying to avoid the manymany kids and "chope" a certain interesting exhibit. yesh...we were big kids that day. =) And a nice place for "grown-up" us was just a stone's throw away at the Palace of Fine Arts... what a beautiful day. (i kept on singing about it which i admit must be quite irritating..hehz)

still wishing
mood: feeling blue
haven't published in a while...now that he's come and gone...i'm kinda feeling out of it. Knowing that he's safely back home takes a load off my mind....but what's left behind is an emptiness, a void that will not be filled, not until summer that is. And occasionally the loneliness rises up and overwhelms me. I step into my room, and i long to hear the strumming of the guitar. I brush my teeth, and i miss the green toothbrush. I get into bed, and i shiver at the cold. I wake from a nightmare, and no one is there to comfort me. *sigh* i sure had a wonderful two weeks, and i hope he did too. The scenic drives we went on, the buffets we ate, the blustery winds we faced, the longlonglong walks we shared, the daunting slopes we conquered, the funny photos we took, the boggle sessions we had...all the memories of these two weeks will stay close to me. We did nothing really exciting nor see anything spectacular (save for the grandeur of Whistler). And yet i had the time of my life.... just being, and existing together once again.

Last night I had a crazy dream
A wish was granted just for me
It could be for anything
I didn't ask for money
Or a mansion in Malibu
I simply wished, for one more day with you
One more day
One more time
One more sunset, maybe I'd be satisfied
But then again
I know what it would do
Leave me wishing still, for one more day with you