Like a drug.

It all started with a dream.

Since that dream, I've been on a high for about a week now, and I've behaved in the most ridiculous manner in front of my closest friends (please don't let it out guys!), had them laugh at me for being the joker I haven't been in the longest time ever.

But I know all about withdrawal symptoms and I know I'll probably be going through it soon, like now. I don't want!

TOO.BUSY.TO.BLOG

will continue once I'm done with all that I have to be done with for the week.

breathe aijia, breathe!

Week 3 Presentation

I'm kinda worried, that my ang moh tutor thinks our presentation is not controversial enough. And I'm kinda worried too, that everyone walks away from the class feeling bitter because of all the controversial issues raised. And I finally realized what stress from people around me will do to me, it makes me talk really fast. When it came to my part from the rehearsal yesterday, my group mates were like "woah, slow down". I didn't even realize how quickly I was going through things at. Don't remember when I became such a worry-wart but I'm not enjoying a moment of it.

Windsurf recruitment's finally been settled, meetings have been held every week for the past 3 weeks and will continue to be held for the upcoming few. Booze, snacks and... making fun of each other has been fun. But responsibility, big responsibility? I'm finally feeling it. And at times like this, I feel really relieved that I'm doing something that I enjoy doing. I love windsurfing and all my windsurf friends!

The past 3 weeks have been great; great room, great roomie, great hall-friends and tutorials are getting done. I'm totally loving school, and I wish time will pass slower, just a little slower sometimes.

:)

I wouldn't be surprised...

if ... ....,

or if ... ...

I'm accurate like that. ra.

Speed Demon.... NOT.

Just got back from WJ's not-too-surprising surprise celebration at Sheare's Hall not too long ago, and it was great fun. A few more to go, and all of us will be 21... how time flies, to think we were only 13 when we first met.

The roads were pretty empty as I made our ways back to NTU; empty enough for some speed but I didn't want to step any harder on the accelerator pedal once we hit 110 klicks/hr. For some strange reason, 90 klicks/hr seems to be much faster in the night as compared to the day, at least to me. Call me a wuss or whatever you deem fit, but, I just don't feel safe driving anything more than 110klicks/hr; no prizes for guessing who'll probably be getting honked at a great deal if she goes up the Malaysia highways hur.

Anyway, it seems to me like everything's happening altogether all of a sudden and unsurprisingly, I feel so overwhelmed and swarmed with events ongoing, and events that are going to happen. Whoaaaaa! Let's pick things up slowly, and have a blast doing it guys!

Oh, and I had the sweetest dream last night. It was so sweet that I woke up smiling to myself, diabetic, I tell you. I don't want to jinx anything, so please, nothing funny from you girls okay :p

A bunch of whiners.

I hate to say this but I think majority of us are just that.

I've observed that we can be complaining about anything and everything you can think of; oh, the weather's too hot, my boyfriend or girlfriend's not sweet enough, all my lectures are so boring, my timetable sucks, the canteen food sucks, why am I so fat (guilty as hell), why are the lecture theatres so far away, why doesn't anyone understand me and so on and so forth.

There seems to be no end to all that you can nitpick on in life, our own lives specifically. I want to believe that it's something that we've all come to do naturally in a subconcious manner (as a matter of influence from the people around you) rather than something that we're doing because we actually enjoy doing that; having nothing good to say about everything that's happening.

When we do whine a lot, I realized that's when we're just being really self-centred. We expect the world to revolve around us, people to understand what we're complaining about (same thing over again), things to happen according to our standards and when things don't go our way, what happens? We start doing the whole damned thing all over again.

When we do whine a lot, I also realized (only lately) that it's a form of releaasing the little pent-up frustration we have in us and it actually feels good. But what I don't think we realize is that, sometimes, it's kind of annoying for the people who listen to us yabber on and on. I mean, come to think of it, you had a long and tiring day, having someone to grouse about their day too can only makes you feel more miserable than you already are, no?

So... instead of focusing on things that aren't really to our liking since you'll only find more of them in time to come, why don't we start focusing and acknowledging the good stuff too? As for the things that you don't really like, well, do something about it instead of complaining all the time! I honestly think our lives will be much happier this way, and the world will be a nicer place to wake up to if we just give that a try.

But if you choose to insist that your life will still be sad/miserable/sucky/emo/shitty even after you've done something about it (when you really haven't), then too bad for you, I guess you're probably better off living your sad/miserable/sucky/emo/shitty life.

Mum's Birthday Present for Me

It was an all-expenses-paid dive trip to Redang the weekend just before school started! After about 10-odd bumpy hours on the coach and a 30-minute puke-inducing boat ride (not me), I finally arrived at Redang Kalong Resort.

For this trip, I brought along the new underwater housing for my G10 that the Ktowy gang got for my birthday. Just to play safe, I placed tissue paper in the interior of the housing instead of the camera itself for my first dive. Once we surfaced and the tissue paper looked dry enough, I replaced it with the G10 and brought it down with me for my second dive.

Descending with the housing was a problem at first. I didn't know what to do with all that extra air in my hands, and let it hang loose and allowing it to pull me up towards the surface when I (later learnt that I) really should have kept a tight grip on it.

let's go diving!

The visibility of the waters at Redang is the best that I've had in all three locations in Malaysia that I've been to; 15-odd metres when it was good. Anyway, we spotted quite a few bumphead parrot-fishes around; one or two smaller ones when we first descended, and a group of twelve really huge (!) ones for the third or fourth dives. They were chomping on coral when we spotted them, and looking at how they feed made me wonder how scary it'd be for one of them to suddenly come charging at us. Anyway, I had a really nice dream of them (and some sawsharks) two days back... it was beautiful.

in b/w so that it shows clearer

Another big creature that was seen was this big, brown ray lying on the sandy sea-bed. The usual rays that I've seen are the blue-spotted ones so this was really a first for me. I think they have a really bad reputation after the Steve Irwin accident, but seriously, they're pretty harmless if you leave them alone and just observe them from a distance.

can you spot the blue-spot?

Another first for me was the porcupine fish. I think it's one of the cutest fishes that I've ever seen, and I'm sure it'll be too when it blows itself up. My dive-mates and me were trying to decide if it was a pufferfish, or a really big boxfish (they're all in the same family)... until I saw the spines on its body while taking a look at the pictures. Stare hard enough and you'll see the spines too.

I spotted my first spanish dancer (a little pink one with yellow feelers) for the trip right after this shy, spiny fellow decided to hide under a coral plate. The porcupinefish must be my lucky fish or something!

Some of the smaller creatures that were spotted...

not too unfamiliar?

This is probably the one species that everyone is more or less familiar with, but they have cousins who look a little different from them too. Anyway, I think clownfishes are a beginner's favourite photography subjects. Reason being, they never wander off too far from their homes (the anemones) and they always look at divers so inquisitively and adorably that you cannot help but want to take a picture of them. Hur.

it retracts into its hole when it senses danger.

I think this is a tube-worm; the feather-like looking creature, correct me if I'm wrong. They remind me a lot of christmas tree decorations; I guess its christmas tree worm cousins gave me that idea.

And presenting to you....

the fattest starfish that you'd probably have never seen before! I didn't even realize it was a starfish until I saw there were actually 5 sides to it. This is the Pincushion Star, and it is usually mistaken for a rock of some sort (who is to blame though, really). One of our divemasters picked it up and there were tiny shrimps scooting around on it; cute.

And when there weren't any big interesting creatures around, I was busy looking for smaller creatures... like this nudibranch!

one of the more common ones around

People seem to like taking pictures of these sea slugs, and that's probably because they make really interesting photography subjects, especially the spanish dancers. They're quite fun to look for; it becomes something like a treasure hunt sort of thing.

angels.

Moorish Idols used to be one of my favourite fishes when I was 10 or 11; I used to think they look really elegant and graceful, with their long fins trailing above them as they swim about, like angels.

I had really nice dives there, though the variety of fishes and creatures spotted were more or less the same as what you can get at Dayang/Tioman, the visibility was much better, and I'm looking forward to heading back soon! If there's any way to arrive in Redang without the long bus ride, that'll be perfect.

underwater playground.

Till the next dive trip!

夏日嬷嬷茶

First time I'm watching this; and I can't believe the movie got me both teary-eyed and chuckling to myself at times. How come no one told me to watch this earlier?

Not a freshie anymore!

Walking down the long NIE corridors feels great; a sense of familiarity greets me with every step I take... and I'm just still very happy that school's started. But the weather's been nothing but terrible for the past few days; it's so humid and I start perspiring 10 minutes after I get out of the room.

For the semester, I finally got into one same tutorial group as Gladys and Rhyssie. This spells w-h-e-e! Was just telling Gladys about the G10 after tutorial today and she took a test-shot of Rhyssie & me. See! I'm THAT happy to be back in school!

my favourite lecture mates!

Headed down to Zouk with the same two guys and Shiqi (& friend) again last night; it was really an ex-co meeting in disguise. Hur. We are meeting up so much for the past few days; almost seeing each other everyday ever since school started. I didn't enjoy the music; most of what was being played anyway... but I had fun with the drink-guessing games! Let's keep fingers crossed that the music will be much, much better the next time we hit the club again.

On a totally random note, here's something nice to share:

Is it pretty or pretty?

That's Dad and Mum's comforter hanging out to dry at the balcony sometime last week. It looked so colourful and it was in some sort of glow with the sunlight permeating through it, and I couldn't help but take second and third glances at it. That totally brightened up my day.

Back to school

The long-awaited day is finally here; can't tell you how glad I am that school has finally started, I've more or less had enough of the idling about. First English lecture that I've been to was rather interesting; our lecturer let us watch the audition clip of Susan Boyle on America's Got Talent during the last few minutes of the lecture and we tried to make out the underlying meanings of Simon Cowell's parts of speech.

For Math lecture, we were given a brief introduction to the ancient Hindu-Arabic, Mayan and Babylonian counting systems. It was quite fun too. First time I'm taking a Math module in more than a year; let's hope I'll be able to enjoy the subject as much as I used to!

It was great meeting up with so many school-mates; we sat in our usual lecture theatre seats and caught up little by little over the lectures, joined the long queues to get our textbooks from the bookshop.

My new room is great, so is my new roomie. After a round of tedious cleaning-up, the room's finally fit for living. The last occupant of the room was filthy, leaving the remnants of her meals all over the table; and I was really scared shitless that she'd be my roomie. Anyhow, I'm bent on keeping the room clean and conducive for studying.

Zouk tonight with Shiqi and SX... speaking of which, I CAN'T FIND MY NEW DANCING HEELS! So annoyed with myself for not remembering where I last placed it urgh. WHY I SO LIKE THAT?

Okay, enough ranting, I need to go get some tutorials done now!

Older... and feeling it.

In the most impromptu fashion on Tuesday night, Chaihong asked some of the surfers out go Zouk for ladies' night the next day. In the name of fun and spontaneity, SX, Titus and me agreed. I haven't been to the club in the longest time; and with the re-opening of Butter Factory, people have been saying that there'd be much of a lesser queue for Phuture. What rubbish. People turned up by the orientation groups; and you'd see one/two persons queueing up, only to be joined by a dozen more people later.

I spotted a BIG group of people from the NTU Sports Camp, and the rest of the gang spotted various classmates and schoolmates from their faculties. There were just university students everywhere in there. I couldn't identify with more than half the music being played all the way till 1.15a.m.; and that pretty much sucked because I had to leave one hour later. SX let me have the Flaming Lambo that was supposedly Shiqi's (she wasn't able to join us), and a few apple shooters later, I could feel my heart thump to the unfamiliar music played.

It was a lot of fun; I can't dance to R&B for nuts but I think SX's "dance like no one's watching" helped, hur. I must've made a great fool out of myself, but seriously, who is going to give a shit? What happens in the club, stays in the club.

We left just as the music picked up at two-ish, because I had to drive Little Red for it's thousand klick servicing next morning at 9.30 a.m. Really sorry I made you guys leave with me; hope we won't have to leave so early the next time round.

Anyway, my legs were sore by the time I reached home last night. I can't remember them aching so much the last time I clubbed so... I guess age must really be catching up with me! I seriously wonder how people are able to take it, hitting the clubs Wednesdays after Wednesdays and going to work/school early morning the next day.

Missing.

Night at the museum with the family.

Presentation of scholarships and sponsorships by the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA) tonight at the National Museum; we were there because YF's one of the recipients. It's the first time in quite a long while since all four of us got together for anything; Mum & Dad must've been extremely proud of YF to take time off for this.

mumsy and dad; dad smiles funny and the both of us smile like him.

Dad bumped into a few of his ex-colleagues, ex-mentors, etc there and was chatting away happily with them. I asked Mumsy in a mock-surprise tone, "oh wow, Dad actually has friends?" I'm not trying to be mean, but if you know my Dad, you'll know that he hardly hangs out with his friends because all he does is work all-day long... and when he's not working, he "talks" to the plants at home. On the car, he was explaining the rationale behind looking after the plants; luck will come when the plants flower... yeah yeah.

proud of you, little bro. study hard, hope it'll be a meaningful journey for you.

Right. So there you have it, night out for the family of seafarers!

ps. I'm looking forward to the new semester!