Thankful.

I'm sitting here in a rather empty internet cafe on Gili Trawangan, an island that's 40 minutes away from mainland Lombok. The experience so far has been nothing less than gratifying; I'm so thankful for all the nice people that I've met, and all the beautiful things that I'm seeing.

Just had a local lunch that cost me 15,000 rupiah, I guess I'm going to take a walk along the beach now... maybe take a short nap before my next dive that's going to happen at 2.30 p.m. I love island life, thank god for holidays.

Driving.

I'm not exactly the most confident driver around but I've come to develop a love-hate relationship with driving ever since I got my license some 10 months back. I can't deny that it's brought about so much new-found convenience, but... at the same time, there are also so many things that I can't stand about driving (and, drivers in Singapore).

My top 5 driving peeves:

1) Drivers who don't signal when they're changing lanes.

What, you waiting for your signal lights to turn on by themselves?

2) People who can't park properly in the designated lots.

Do you really have to take up 2 lots?

3) Drivers who speed up to keep you from changing lanes.

I've missed a couple of expressway exits because of people like these; I swear like crazy when this happens.

4) Lane-hogs

Keep to the left if you're going slow please.

5) ERP gantries and expensive parking

I'm sure I'm not alone on this; my heart sinks a little every time I hear the beep from the reader when I have to go through one of the gantries. Most expensive parking fee paid? $12 at SMU; my jaw dropped because it was supposed to be a per entry fee of $3 after 8 p.m. Something must have gone wrong somewhere!

The list is non-exhaustive for sure, you probably can't wait to add things like "people who talk on their mobile phones or text while driving", "rude drivers", "pedestrians who cross the roads as though they're walking on their grandfathers' roads", and something not entirely really related to driving like "people who say females make bad drivers"... and so on.

Speaking of which, I think it's also really unfair to say that all cabbies are bad drivers. The reckless ones, they just happened to give a bad name to cabbies on the whole.

my new driving companion.

And while there are so many things I do not like about driving, there are also many that I do enjoy. I like to sing along to the songs that are playing while I'm on a drive, because no one will hear how horrible I sound. I like cruising along empty and long stretches of roads in the middle of the night because it takes my mind off issues that may be making me sad/moody. I like being able to get that extra 30 minutes of snooze-time because of a much shorter travelling time. I feel independent when I'm out alone on the road. There are also actually plenty of nice drivers on the roads too.

Anyhow, all this wonderful and frustrating experiences would not have been possible if Mumsy had not asked me to go get my driving license a year ago. I'd never, for once, stopped counting myself lucky because Mumsy decided to let me use the family car most of the time, even though I'm staying in hall.

Pretty Bun and photos of lunch today

After the Math paper that G and Bun had today, Bun dropped by our room... hid behind the cupboard and jumped out with roomie when I came back from a quick hair-flattening shower and gave me a good wake-up scare; I screamed like mad, again. Our neighbours are probably damned annoyed with us for always making such ruckuses at odd times of the day.

I've got shaky hands...

We settled our hotel accommodation in Bali online, after it started raining heavily and we couldn't leave the hall for lunch. The place looks good from the online pictures, beach-front with an awesome pool, but then again, don't they all usually look so fabulous in pictures? Let's just keep fingers crossed that we're getting our money worth for what we're paying.

After the rain has stopped, and Bun's got her brows plucked, we left for JP.

Best roomie in NTU! She brings orange, she peels orange, and I eat orange haha

Popped a Britney CD into the player and we all started to sing to her really old songs, and talked about how slutty she sounded. While I got lost on the way to JP. Anyhow, we ended up at the teppanyaki version of Ichiban - only to realize, we ALWAYS end up at some Jap restaurant, when we do meet up for lunch.

Okay, here's what we had!

Part of the sets that were ordered. G shot this and I tweaked the contrast a little.

Can't remember if it was grilled or what. They both ordered the same thing.

Any idea why they placed them on a piece of bread?

Chawanmushi, served in an onion.

Saba; I've been eating a lot of mackerel without realizing it's mackerel recently...

anything is yummy with a lot mayo and fish flakes.

Spent the entire afternoon relaxing, but I'm catching up on revision now. Mum's called twice to ask when I'll be back home, but I don't really feel like heading back (because I know I won't study for sure!) now. I think what we're studying is really (like really really!) interesting; learning about language changes around the world, between the two sexes, etc... but trying to squeeze all that information into our minds, can result in an overload..

ps. I love my G10!

I haven't been exercising for the past 2 weeks at least; the barely visible line down the middle of my non-existent abs has disappeared.

Very sad now :(

move on dot com

After the longest period of Facebook abstinence, I conclude that Facebook is inversely proportionate to levels of productivity - please tell me I'm not the last to realize this. I've just deleted a handful of people on my friends' list that I don't know on Facebook earlier on in the evening (don't ask me how they got onto the list), and I'm actually thinking of deactivating my account; because I've come to realize that I'm not that dependent on it! Not too sure if it's going to be a good idea though (might get in the way of keeping touch), so I'm just going to hold that idea for a little while longer.

And as you probably know, I'm quite upset about the 2 papers I've had earlier in the day simply because... I think I haven't done well! My fingers were dreadfully painful by the end of each paper, I can't remember the last time it hurt so much from rush-writing bit chunks of paragraphs, and I was breaking out intermittently in cold sweat throughout the papers' duration. Not looking forward to getting back the results, but oh well, 2 out of 3 papers cleared for the semester, and less than a week to my big, Bali break, I shall just try to get over it... and move on to the last paper.

Killed, twice in a day.

link

I don't know what I'm feeling right now and it's horrible. I hope I did not screw up badly enough for the two papers that just happened. I'm going to take a nap now and clear all the work that I'm supposed to when I wake up later. -big, fat sigh

7.

This is not really the best time to blog, but really, is there anyone else who is not sick of revision yet? I've been staying away from Facebook as much as I could, and it went relatively well until Siaos asked me to go check out Doug's new relationship status Saturday evening. I told Mumsy the news next day, and she was like, "Why, you jealous is it?" "Ya, very." She just doesn't understand that I'm happy to spend time on my own, for now at least.

Saturday was packed. I helped out backstage at some kindergarten's concert that was held at Grassroots Club. Backstage, the children's teachers were extremely generous with the stage makeup; the kids' faces were blushing with the most unnatural shade of red as the teachers plied their faces with all sorts of powder, and sprinkled heaps of shimmery glitter onto their heavily-gelled heads. The air was thick with the smell of all their excitement to perform for their parents, and hair-gel.

Got out of the place as soon as all of them got dressed up and made my way down to Waterloo Street for Siao's concert. Finally saw her play after numerous turns by children on the piano in the auditorium. Some of the children were really cute; this little girl read the title of one of the piece as "Tyran...norus Rex" when it should've been "Tyrannosaurus Rex", and another in a duet whispered "Oi... bow ah!" (rather loudly) to her partner when he forgot to do so before they started playing.

Swensens for dessert. I was really happy and smiling a lot as we were eating our Earthquake, just because we are having ice cream. Can't remember the last time I had ice cream!

okay, 14 more hours to the first paper. I'm going for dinner with G now; she's getting impatient while waiting for me to finish typing.

Examunchies.

5 more days before the first and second paper, 11 more to the last. The past 2 nights have been horrible; I'd spent them doing last minute revision for the tests I've had on Tuesday and today. The math test didn't turn out as difficult as I'd imagined it would, I'm hoping that I'd be able to do a little better than just okay. I wasn't as prepared for the science multiple-choice test today though, keeping fingers crossed about securing a pass.

I've barely started on revision for Pragmatics; can't help but still worry even though Benny said we can bring any notes that we may have into the examination hall for the paper next Wednesday.

Anyway, I've been snacking as hard as I've been revising. I've started to crave for food all night, and here's a glimpse of what I've (and G too) been eating tonight:

Cheese cubes, the tomato-flavoured one (red) tastes like pizza.

The original digestive.

the exact same mint-centred cookies that my girl-guide friends used to sell. Khong Guan.

I feel like I've been eating way too much, and exercising too little. After the menstrual cramps, tonight, I finally dragged my ass out for a slow jog around school. I've missed out on jogging ever since the cough that took forever to recover, and the two deadlines for school assignments that were due somewhere in between.

not bad for the view from my window.

Heading back home much later in the day, though I'm not really looking forward to doing any revision at home; I'll probably get too comfy or something. Yes I'm one of the weird ones who actually enjoy hall life more than home.

Time to get back to revision, study hard everyone!

From across.

Minutes after we arrived at the usual roadside loklok stall, we heard some men shouting from across the street. A couple of them walked out from the club and started throwing forceful punches at each other, shouting mouthfuls of obscenities as they did. They fell to the ground admist all that flying punches, and more joined in. A few other guys came over to restrain those who were in the brawl. It looked like everyone was hitting the same guy; two of them got out of the fight, one with his face covered in blood (running all over his forehead, and down his cheeks), and the other pulling the bloodied-face guy away from the rest of the group. Someone picked a plastic stool up from the loklok stall from the road across and threw it at the two of them. Some girls from the group screamed when they saw what happened, tried to stop the fight by screaming some more. Clean-faced guy whipped out his mobile phone, called the cops (or backup, but I believe it's the cops cause they came down 5 minutes later).

Scariest 10 minutes of my day; there were no sound effects like when people throw punches on telly, but I think that's what made the real-life fighting scary. I stood there and watched in horror as the first 'live' fight in my life happened. We decided to have our loklok dose at the next stall, further down the street, just in case a big bunch of bloodied-face guy's friends turn up.

Really scared

update: I didn't flunk it, and did quite well on the contrary. Thank goodness.

Maths used to be fun (okay that was at least 4 years ago), what happened? I'm so scared that I'm going to flunk the test later I'm going crazy.

:(

Old, or mature?

Today, a 31 year old friend told me (and other friends who were around) that I am one of the few younger people that he can hang out with and yet, not feel that I am any younger than him. How will you look at it, will you take it as a compliment that your friend is telling you that you are more mature than your peers in your thinking, or will you take it as an insult, that s/he thinks that you are chao lao?

Could it be neither, and that he's just plain childish for his age?

Fear.

It's 2 days to Math Test, 4 to Science and just a little over a week to the final papers. I'm really scared that I won't be able to finish studying for the papers and I'm really scared that I won't be able to maintain my grades and lose the remote possibility of going for exchange in the next few semesters.

siao, I guess you should like this little boy.

Nice house

Had the chance to come across this while surfing the net this afternoon (while I was still awake), and I saw this very cool house.

Maison NW, the home and work studio of architect Nathalie Wolberg, is treated as a laboratory to test out new devices and new environments on a daily basis.

via

I'm totally digging those steps and that big hammock in the middle of nowhere. Can my future place be fun and cool like that, please?

Heartspeak

link

It's happened so many times before that I can't keep track of the number of times I've had you in my dreams now; I don't find it particularly surprising when we meet in dreamland anymore. The infatuation phase is ending and I know I'm getting over everything in a bit more. Sometime soon, maybe I'd find it okay to tell all of you reading who the latest object of my infatuation is (it'd have become 'was', when the time comes). Sometime soon, and not now. When I decide that it's not that a biggie to have a crush on anyone.

I became single a year ago because I saw the need to enjoy singlehood; I still see the need to, and even more, because I'm so sure of my uncertainty in love and relationships so... I should just stop the whole infatuation thing.

At times, I can't believe it's been more than a year since I turned single. Maybe it's because I still keep in contact with him, meeting up for tauhuay (and other what-not) every now and then, unlike the previous ex-boyfriends where we sort of like totally stopped all forms of contact. One year didn't feel that long after all; and I realized I really enjoy a singleton's life. I can be single for a few more years, I guess.

Updates.

Mum walked into my bedroom with a new bag again, but this time, the bag's for me (if you remember me telling you, she brought her LV bag to haolian the last time round). I don't like it that much, but I'm guessing it'll be good for formal use, practicum maybe?

Roomie and I've been religiously taking cough syrup (off-the-shelf kinds) for the past week but we're still coughing. We've tried Woods, the two different Robitussin ones, and G's Pei Pa Gou... and they all don't taste any good. Our coughs did not really worsen, but they just refuse to get any better. I can't take the coughing any more, so I'm going to see a doctor tomorrow. Finally. So much for the stubbornness.

Am almost done and over with all the assignments for the semester, but not quite done with the windsurfing stuff. It got so crazily busy at one point in time that I had 20-over active windows opened on my start-bar. Things are more or less falling into place though, so I guess I'll just need a little more time!

Just photos.

Everything will get better.

I know, for sure.

:)

Be back soon.

Yuck.