Ten

That's the number of days to the last day of exams. I have two final tests, and two final papers; three of which I'd be done with in 7 days.

Hang in there little tomato.

Friday!

Met up with the poly girls for a sumptuous dinner at Simpang and it was awesome! <3

Jaded.

The last assignment of the semester's finally submitted. I procrastinated (like how I'd predicted), and I paid for it with a night's worth of sweet slumber, a great deal of last-minute rushing and some heart-stopping moments when my darned thumbdrive refused to work. It was horrible; having to down two bottles of chicken essence and a cup of coffee (my tummy felt weird after) just to keep myself awake, and repeatedly go through the incoherent paragraphs that I'd written, keeping my mind in a perpetual boggle. It was so very horrible but I totally deserved it. At times like that, I don't know if I should be marveling at my ability to conjure a superfluous 2,000-word essay in a night or be ashamed that I was only trying to briefly touch on a module that I've raved so much on by merely lumping lexical sets together to make up the word-count. I'd bet your gut's telling you to go with the latter. Mine too.

Guilt was the only thing that filled my mind when my tutor spotted me in the staff corridor during submission this afternoon and said Hi. I've really enjoyed his lessons and I even thought I'd been well-prepared by completing the readings weekly; seems like that's not going to be nearly enough, I'll never be one of the ones to come up with the model answers and I'm truly apologetic if I've been a disappointment.

Despite the horrible post-submission feelings that I'm experiencing right now, I must say that I'm glad to be finally able to focus on exams' revision!

Oh. Lack of a night's worth of sleep results in what you see above; I can sleep just about anywhere as long as there is a resting place for my head. Xinrong snapped this some few weeks back and I think moments later, I was lying on the study bench on my back taking a quick snoozeeeee.

tired and bruised

I can't seem to make up my mind on which bruise is more painful; the bruise on my left shin, the one on my right shin, the one on my left thigh or the one on my right index finger (yeah I know, how did it even get there?). There are another 34734389302 abrasion marks and tiny nicks all over my legs (even the sole), and together with the few mozzie bites that have been scratched to become bloodied scabs by me... I am annoyed. By all these little nicks that have been causing me mild irritation to severe discomfort. But I should really be annoyed with myself actually, for even allowing them to get onto me and complaining about them now.

I really don't want to end up with dented shins. Wish I'd be a little less clumsy. Blah.

People like to ask for 'honest feedback' so often that I can't help but wonder if they are prepared to handle the cruel and disheartening truth (most of the time), me included. Some people just enjoy receiving positive affirmation from the rest on their work/themselves (don't deny), while others want 'truthful opinions' so that they can make adjustments/enhancements to their work/themselves. In most polite 'face-saving societies' or used by some as a strategy to avoid bruising a friend's self-confidence, the cold, hard 'truth' is sometimes sugar-coated with a layer of social niceties and something truly unpleasant can end up sounding acceptable or even great.

I think that's the way Singapore functions, or among my friends and acquaintances at least. We have become so used to and dependent on the sugar-coated feedback that we are no longer able to accept constructive criticisms that don't sound half as lovely as all that fructose-candy goodness; instead, we see critics as rude, fault-finding individuals who just love directly challenging us (yeah right, why are they even bothered in the first place) and then we start getting all defensive and worked up. Sometimes, things gets so bad that people don't even look at things in a clear-headed and objective manner anymore, not realizing that they sound like complete idiots who have no clue about what they are defending anymore. I do this pretty often admittedly; even though I like to constantly remind myself that 忠言逆耳. It doesn't matter if your friends are trying to protect you, or be nice or encouraging by avoiding negative truths, because we learn to settle for something lesser in the end by leaving them as they are even though you know it can turn out much better.

If things happen according to the way I want them to, then I'd be probably be producing the most awesome of assignments/proposals/lesson plans, and I will be the perfect person that I've always dreamt of being naturally effortlessly. There will be no need for feedback, because things are just going to unfold in the ways they are supposed to be, and nothing will go wrong because Murphy's Law doesn't exist. But no matter how hard we desire, we all know things are never like this in real life, that's why there's always stories of successes and failures.

When I think aloud to myself and my friends hear my thoughts (that sometimes do not necessitate replies), they will be super nice about it.

Example:
Me: Why am I so fat? :(
Friend A: You are not fat dearie! I am fatter than you lah, look... (totally not true okay)

I'm never ever going to lose weight if they keep telling me that because the truth is, I am fat because I am so depressingly unmotivated in exercising (and you should really look at all the crap *don't take it literally tyvm* I eat) and nobody tells me that instead, but I cannot help and be thankful that my friends usually keep the nasty comments to themselves, because I might just die from embarrassment if they replied like that:

"Are you sure you really want to know why you are so fat? I'm going to say it even though you don't want to know. Look at all that crap you eat without even exercising. You so deserve to be fat lah."

I will confirm burst into tears. 

It doesn't just apply to my physical appearance, but the most funny thing about all this? It's okay if I am the one saying it instead; I probably won't feel half as depressed if I were the one to saying it to myself, not that it'll actually work (tested but not yet proven, I REALLY WANT TO LOSE WEIGHT).

I'm lazy to raise more examples or elaborate any further. My point of writing these blocks of text? I definitely want to do better at the things I do and not be constantly stuck in a rut just because people are trying to be polite. And people who have been awfully nice to me, I really appreciate your positive words of encouragement so don't stop being awfully nice to me! Don't know bout you but I can see myself saying a whole lot more of nasty (but truthful) stuff to myself in the near future, good to hear the awful truths from myself first before hearing it from somebody else. Or even better, work on the awful things you tell yourself about you before people have anything bad to say.

So, nasty-sounding but honest thing that I want to tell myself today: Stop procrastinating and saying you don't have time to do your essays when you have all the time in the world to Facebook-stalk people, visit www.cuteoverload.com, www.tastefullyoffensive.com and www.lamebook.com. You will totally deserve your shitty grade for Multicultural Research Paper if you don't pull your damned act together. Like now. 

By the way, it's totally alright if I'm the one saying it to myself but it's not if you are the one telling me that.

Okay kidding. You can continue telling me what a lazy ass I am, but be gentle k.

#13 - Someone you wish could forgive you

Here are some class photos taken during my CCHS days that I've just dug out from a dusty stash. I like to see how much we've all grown over the past 9-10 years; both on Facebook and in real life. Like how the super tomboyish Ah Long's transformed into such a lady now, or how ZL's lost so much weight after secondary school, or how much Boss' not called Xiao Pang any longer... hehe good times. I hope everyone's doing well these days...

sec one - all so cute and innocent *ahem*

No secondary two picture, didn't buy it because I wasn't in the photo; even though we had a really good-looking relief teacher in it instead of everyone's favourite Mr D.

sec three - fiercest teacher I've ever had; kept me on my toes during chemistry lab sessions. i hate to say this, but she might've been the reason why i was so scared of chemistry!

sec four - someone heard my pleas, and gave our class a much friendlier chemistry teacher this time round!

I'm not sure if anyone else's noticed, but the skirts (at the front row) got noticeably shorter as we progressed from secondary one to four. Hur hur hur. Vanity and girls... Oh and the shoes too; they 'legalized' track shoes after secondary one, I think.

If you were from one of my classes back then, I hope you had as much joy looking and groaning at these photos as I did.

Anyhow, #13 - Someone I wish could forgive me, can be seen in all 3 pictures that I've posted up there. To the people who were in my classes, I'm not going to point out exactly who it is though, I'm damned sure you can infer from what I'm going to say next. To everyone else, you probably don't need to know who it is.

#13 is a girl in my classes, who was ostracized and picked on by nearly everybody else merely because of some bodily issues that she faced. We didn't say it in her face that we had problems with her, but talked about them behind her back, even at the expense of making her look really bad. Everyone was just nasty, and whenever we were assigned to work in a same group with this poor girl, people condemned her right from the start even before she was able to do anything.

Sad to say, but such is the effect of peer pressure and conformance in schools back then, and most probably these days too. There wasn't a need to question whether what I did was right or wrong, I went ahead blindly with what everyone else usually did - because it was accepted as a norm, and since everybody does that, there's no harm in me doing it either, right? Nobody tried to put themselves in her shoes to think about what it felt like, being ostracized and mocked at constantly, day in and day out. And even when she does something that you feel is awfully nice, you keep it to yourself and not say a thing about it to your friends because everyone else feels that nothing she does will be enough to redeem herself, even when she was never at fault to begin with.

It was plain unjustness (such an irony that I was in the classes 1/2 Justice) and we really ought to have known better back then, but we didn't, and we never thought about the consequences of our actions - basically, ruining her secondary school years that were supposed to have some of the greatest moments in her life. I feel like a moron/awful and terribly ashamed of myself as I'm typing this, but I am truly apologetic and sorry for being such a shitty person back then. I understand that no amount of Sorrys will ever right this wrong, and even though we really don't deserve her forgiveness, I hope she's got a much bigger heart than us (I know I'll never forgive someone if they did this to me) and is not too mad at us anymore.

It might be too early to say/conclude, but I hope to do my best to prevent such things from happening to my students in future.

Mozzie-magnet

The title doesn't sound all that sexy, but people sure love me for that! Audrey and Rongster can attest to that. In the short 15 minutes that we spent at the wooden benches outside one of the art-rooms on the basement level, I got 5 (and counting) stings all over my arms and legs. Just by me sitting around and not doing anything (oh right, maybe that's the problem), the girls managed to effectively deflect all the damned mosquitoes - because they all came for me instead. The girls were really sweet to me after; Audrey helped me draw circles around the bites; took pictures of my *ahem* trotters and posted them onto Facebook, and Rongster offered me her medicated oil to stop the itching. Everybody say 'awww...' 

On an ending note, I really hate how much of a mosquito-magnet I am.

guilt

It's not my fault, but I feel bad for having a horrible dream about a new friend. Dear scary, don't get into a car accident anytime soon.

new favourite site: lamebook

Because they're all so much more fun to read these than your actual facebook friends' updates. 

自恋

so boyish to so girly, in a year.

#thingsiusedtodoasakid

When I was much younger, I used to feign sleep on the sofa in the living room (whenever Dad was in Singapore) so that he would carry me back into my room and I could sleep on my bed proper late at night. I don't know if he ever realized, but I was always smiling to myself whenever he did that; I loved being carried and I loved feeling so safe and secure in his arms. Even though I'm far too heavy and he's far too old to carry me anymore these days, it's kind of nice to think of these little things that took place in the past. I miss the old days.

好马不吃回头草

DEAR AIJIA. PLEASE REMEMBER THAT. DON'T LET THE DREAM LAST NIGHT COME TRUE.

15 things to do before I turn 30

Just because I love coming up with lists (and since I'm incredibly free right now), here's my very own list of things to do before I hit the great Thirty. In no particular order, here goes...

1. Ride a horse
2. Skydive
3. Go skinny-dipping
4. Backpack in Asia
5. Dive with Molas
6. Dive with Manta Rays and whalesharks
7. Swim with dolphins
8. Bring my parents (& maybe didi too) on an all-sponsored holiday
9. Backpack in Europe
10. Taking a year off from life just to travel around
11. Volunteer - Maybe teach?
12. Shrooms and Happy grass
13. Take an awesome picture that I'd be super proud of
14. Make a difference in at least one of my students' lives
15. Win a competition

*ahem*Now if you'll excuse me I'll go work on turning 30.