All Blacks All Banned

Joanne Wilson. Stephen Wilson. Danny Tauroa. Monica Tauroa. Nicole Wilson. Sarah Reeves. Tanya Chee.

To most (if not all) people, the following names make no sense to you. My heartiest congrats to you if that is the case.

If anyone, however, finds these names familiar, its probably cos like me you've been on SBS buses quite a fair bit this past week and have had the misfortune of catching the endless reruns of the "Down Under" episode of this show with Andrea De Cruz in it (i forget the title) whereby she and her co-host visit expats from different cultures each week. Needless to say, this week featured expats from Australia and New Zealand; and i've somehow possessed the bad timing of always seeming to kena the second half of the show (which is when the Kiwis come on) just about every single day on the bus at least once. Which in turn means that i'm now very well acquainted with the above people, and can for all intents and purposes dictate to you each and every word from the Haka (and that kamate kamate kaura kaura means to live, to live, to die, to die), and know that Maori women dance this thanksgiving dance with these swingy thingies called poi which look like giant white onions attached to a string, and that The Cellar Door is the only place that serves New Zealand food in Singapore.

I've nothing against New Zealand, please don't get me wrong. It's just the @#$% tv mobile that i'm annoyed at.

So, the bottom line is, if anyone out there even remotely able to influence the programming of tv mobile is reading this, please, for the sake of my sanity, at least make the effort to have more variety in your variety programming (cos at the moment the irony is that from the rate at which you repeat your shows, it might as well be labeled monotony rather than variety programming...). If not, one day - mark my words, you will read a news report headlined "NUS Student Goes Berzerk, Frightens Passengers Off SBS Bus". I'd have finally made headlines...

Good news for most people...

volatility

Was typing my essay in my secret place earlier today when i happened to notice (cos the desks there are angled in such a way that when you sit you'll be semi-facing the neighboring screen) that the guy next to me was playing some kind of Chinese war computer game (Romance of the Three Kingdoms?). Ok fair enough, i thought, anyways the place still had some empty coms around at that time so if he wanted to go ahead with that then so be it.

Happened to catch a glimpse of his screen some time later. I was truly sickened to realize that the guy had switched to viewing a whole host of pictures of a quasi-erotic nature (i shall not elaborate further). Eek! I'd have liked to, to put it lightly, strongly advise him to stop that at once, but i didn't know how to go about doing that so i settled on trying to shift my monitor screen in such a way that his own screen wasn't in my line of vision and strategically holding up my notes right in front of my face whenever i could to block those disturbing images from my sight once and for all...

Well, that aside, the remainder of the process of typing my essay was rather uneventful. I'm really not one for conciseness so i ended up writing too much. During the editing process, i always feel so sayang to let words/sentences go so i try and keep that to a minimum. In fact in the editing process i often end up adding more fluff rather than getting rid of it. Yup so it did get a bit long, but still within reasonable limits i hope...

I do find it weird that i seemingly have little work to do (not many deadlines left really) but i've been feeling more tired than i've ever been this sem. Today it all started to get to me so i was back in my tactical, retreatist, loner mode and tried to avoid people as far as i could. Just as well i had an essay to finish. And that doesn't seem to be going away as of yet. Maybe God is telling me that i need to spend more time alone, as in time with Him (Ok so i know that for a fact). A lot of stuff continues to bother me, and whatever talking to God about all of these has been piecemeal at best. And the slightest thing seems to trigger more "me against the world" sentiment (and going along these lines in the unlikely event that the Tar Heels lose their Sweet 16 match to the Trojans tom that would so do it for me methinks) Yeah so the point of the story: need to spend time with God. Productive time, that won't reach a premature anti-climax with me falling asleep or having my thoughts drift to totally unrelated and far less important matters.

My current earworm over the past few days when i get up in the (very early) morning: And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going. Random thought but maybe that's what i've been subconsciously telling God as of late. "Going" as in going to genuinely want to do things His way. Hmm...

pumpkins and mice reappear

So for the past two nights (i.e. yesterday and today) my aim of sleeping by midnight each weeknight has not been successful. Yesterday i forgot why already, but today it's quite clearly cos i've work to do and i'm trying (in vain) to convince myself to get more of it done now so that tom when i'm in school i can spend more time just hanging.

Anyways, after more than a week's worth of trying to eliminate the six other question choices before finally settling on the chosen topic, and practically another week's worth of (sparingly) researching on the topic, i finally got cracking on the essay itself yesterday afternoon in school. Got a decent bit of it done, though got distracted as i usually do. This time it was cos i was seated in the library fourth floor com cluster directly on the other side of the glass from the video room, and the girl directly behind me on the other side of the glass was watching, for some strange reason, Toy Story 2. She also was using subtitles, so i was able to watch and figure out what was going on even though i couldn't hear the audio of the dvd. It was the scene when the cowgirl doll was singing the Sarah McLachlan song "When She Loved Me" cos she kena abandoned by her original owner. For some strange reason i started to feel really sad for the poor doll. Yup. oh but i digress, basically i got distracted by that.

Felt that i had enough time to take some of it off doing the essay to play tennis for the first time in more than a year methinks. Went with Evan and Junwen and William. Was a good break from studying and up till now my muscles aren't aching so maybe that's a good sign i dunno. Oh and btw, is it really so amazing that i can eat a footlong Subway and still be hungry?

With all the com-related stuff that i've been doing as of late and my laziness to bring my laptop along (not to mention the trouble of trying to find a powerpoint), i've been spending a lot of time in various com clusters. Would like to think of myself as someone who's a seasoned enough nus student to know where to go to find an available com which is not packed to the hilt no matter what time of the day it is. So today i found (ok, not really found, more like finally visited after knowing of its existence for a little while now) another good place to go (the exact place shall be kept a secret hee) to use a com, particularly if it's for stuff like essay writing. Managed to spend almost four (relatively) productive hours there writing the essay, which is now waiting for around 400 words in order to be completed. Only problem is that all the staring at the screen left me feeling really tired, and so have not really been myself since then and have gotten all contemplative again. Ah maybe i need some of that...

Later

cinderella man

Nice clouds that greeted me as i was leaving school on bus 10...

No i've not got a penchant for dancing at fancy balls while looking for my Prince Charming while wearing glass slippers, nor am i even remotely interested in boxing (what kind of a wimpy nickname for a boxer is "Cinderella Man" anyways?).

What i'm alluding to rather is my sleep patterns over the past week. After week upon week of struggling to get up by 6-ish on Mon and Tue so as to make it in time for a bit of prep before morning class, only to have the lack of sleep be redeemed over the rest of the week when i end up getting up around 8-ish or later (and subsequently only reach school between 10-12)cos i can't get myself to get up any earlier; i decided to revamp my sleep sched and see how things would go.

So to that end i spontaneously decided to sleep by midnight before every school day this past week (and "spontaneously" because it just so happened that i was so tired last Sunday night anyways so slept early to begin with...). The flipside of this though is that i had to wake up at 6am each morning so as to get a ride from my father halfway and eventually reach school by 7:45 latest. But in any case, an ensured 6 hours of sleep every single night for even five days in a row has been a rare occurrence as of late so i can't complain really... Furthermore, forcing myself to sleep by midnight means that i don't waste unnecessary time online each night till 2am or later, which is what i'd previously been doing a lot of, and the early mornings at school have meant more chance to quieten down in prep for the day ahead, not to mention to get to go for morning prayer again, which is something i've not been able to do (cos either have classes or am not in school yet) since week 4 methinks... Yup so hopefully i can continue at least somewhat along those lines for the rest of the sem to come...

In other random news i had the misfortune of sitting one of those 'new-generation' sbs buses when i took bus 30 back the other day. I sat myself upstairs and was enjoying the peace of a tv mobile-free cabin (btw the new ones all seem to not have tv mobile - could this be an acknowledgement from sbs transit that it fundementally sucks so they're not installing it on any more buses?) when suddenly i heard what i thought was some toot that was sampling every single ringtone that his/her cellphone had to often. I distinctly remember hearing at least two national anthems (God Save the Queen and Das Lied der Deutschland), not to mention, bizarrely enough, Silent Night, among other tunes that are best left forgotten. After a while, however, i realized that the timbre of the 'ringtone' matched that of the stop bell, then i put two and two together and figured out that annoying music would play whenever the rear passenger door was open. Can't figure out why they'd want to do such a stupid thing, but anyway all the more reason to use earplugs from now on i guess...

We had some kind of reunion thingy for
the S'pore people who were at NUS last sem...

Corny sia...
And the freaky thing is that i was actually the
first one to spot this sign and laugh at it...

still lost in transition

Today for church i went to SAC again, but this time to check out the later and more contemporary service. The rest of the family went for the earlier service, so i was more or less alone this time. While the service itself went well (it was the church missions Sunday which was nice, felt reminded of MEET), i couldn't help but feel irked to a certain extent, because there i was having to try and get used to yet another church environment (which is the main reason why i'm somewhat reluctant to say i'm really leaving SHC just yet) - after like five or six church moves one tends to get somewhat weary of it... It takes so much to settle down, to get to know people and to find one's place within the whole structure of things; and yup, assuming at the end of the day the Lord wants me to move on to SAC (which i feel is more and more the case), this will mean a grossly long integration process for me i fear...

So you know when people ask me if one feels pressure being a pk, while the answer to a certain extent is yes, at least for me it's relatively easy enough to keep a low enough profile, so in my opinion the far greater problem is getting used to (at least within the Anglican context) having to be shuffled around so very often and the difficulties that arise with each move.

And speaking of moving, i also had my first look at the new house - oops, i mean apartment. Yes after 23 years i no longer will be staying in a house with a garden, and probably not for the forseeable future either. Actually the place itself exceeded my expectations (which were set very low anyways cos i was, and still am, dreading the move away from the east to some funny knoll in the far boondocks of town...), it's bigger than i thought, and after a decent renovation it shouldn't be too bad... That being said i still wish i could stay put...

Was a tad overambitious just now with the run, and was trailing far behind for much of it. Predict aching calf muscles for tomorrow when i wake up... And ate so much for dinner that whatever was burnt has probably already been replaced. Bah.

How bizarre, no bazaar?

Come and see,
Come look around,
There are now no more sights and sounds.
'Twas here to stay for endless days,
Now it has finally gone away!

Bizarre bazaar,
Wondrously unfleeting,
What studying and meetings will you be disrupting?
Bizarre bazaar,
Full of noise - off-key singing,
You bring to us the pain of cringing.

Ok this is coming pretty late i must admit, but hopefully the point is made nonetheless. The amended lyrics to this little ditty came to mind when i arrived at the forum come Monday morning, wondered what was strangely peaceful about the place, looked around, then realized that it was the lack of furniture - the @#$%-ing bazaars had finally gone.

Actually the bazaars themselves have not been the problem, but rather the frighteningly high noise level that they contribute to the forum - in my opinion the only feasible place left in the vicinity for people to study without feeling obliged to speak in anything within the volume of a whisper with the temporary lack of an arts canteen. Why they have to invite bad bands (with singers who sing so flat that engineers should probably take reference from their voices if they're checking if a plane surface is really 180 degrees) down and amplify them with an already overbearing yet misguided sound system that does nothing but make their mediocrity even more audible, or replay the same substandard techno or whatever-nonsense-have-you cd over and over again is really beyond me.

Since i'm in a ranting mood, can someone please do something about the smokers who never fail to light up at the dungeon level (or as one prof calls it, "cancer row") of as1, no matter what hour of day it is? I had classes there the other day, and the psi in that particular corridor area must have at the least been at the unhealthy, if not hazardous level. I do however understand that they need a place to smoke - if i were a smoker, i would hardly want to find my way till i'm safely out of sight from the "NUS is a smoke-free campus" before lighting up. So just get them a room for goodness' sake... Like they do in airports - think that they deserve a room, if not for themselves to smoke themselves to death with, then at least for the health for the rest of us who still have to inhale nicotine, tar, carbon monoxide and i dunno what else on a regular basis thanks to this...

lost in transition

Well over the past week or so my father has officially moved church over to SAC from SHC, and accompanying it has been a flurry of activity including a range of farewells from the latter, culminating in a pseudo welcome dinner yesterday and church service today at the former. Really neat that they've planned all these stuffies, yup and i must say i could really feel an atmosphere of agape love all around (i feel it in my fingers, i feel it in my toes...)

Not that this is anything new (for me this is my 5th time moving church and subsequently house, my family has done it a couple of times before i was born too), but i definitely feel that as one gets older one feels the change more. I mean, last time i was still like totally blur cos i didn't know any better, but the move over to SHC and now this one have been harder cos i guess now i've more of a life of my own now than, say when i was in p6. I can honestly say that after so many times, having to uproot oneself and find one's own way into a new church setting still isn't any easier, which is why i'm not really 100% confirmed on making the church move along with the family (nor the house move, for that matter, but that one bo pian one...) so am gonna take these next couple of weeks to try and feel my way around the new church and see how things are. Of course, to complicate matters even more, my family was in this church from 1986-1991, so there's a significant number who do know who i am and hence have approached me to say hi (and given me the expected "last time" remarks like "last time you were so small, now so big already!" or "remember my son/daughter? last time you used to always play/fight with each other!"), even if i myself have little if any clue who many of them are cos i was only like 7ish when i left.

Ah well, have to get used to it i suppose. I'll find it expecially difficult to get used to the fact that my church is no longer to be found next door to my house, which has been a happy reality for like close to eighty percent of my life including the past 12 years. Today my mother woke me up at 7am or so reminding me that we had to leave soon in order to reach church by 8am - that's when this hit me... I've been pampered man...

Rain stop already leh can - need to run...

looking back on the weeks of work

Aiyah actually this is supposed to be the last pic but me and tech... well...
And i used to say that i wouldn't be caught dead in a soccer jersey -
well in my defence that was borrowed cos my short was too dirty already...

Ah you have no idea how happy i am to be able to even have time to just post this cos at the end of a week where i had to type 5500 words in 3 essays and answer 80 questions for two tests (okok mostly mcq lah...) any form of relaxation is really more than welcome. *whee* So anyways i'll try to recall things in chronological order...

Ok this is really totally irrelevant
but just to note that there's one "dollar" too many there
- talk about doubling your $...

Well the above pic was taken in school on the mon of our dear term break which really was anything but a break. Ok, i take it back, it also was not a holiday, a time of relaxation, an opportunity to finally sit down and reflect fully upon sep, a time to spend with friends and family... Hmm i guess i'll say instead that it was anything but fun...

Why was i in school on mon? Cos i needed to watch a video and only could do so on campus, but the silly library was closed so i had to be content with finding some obscure corner in the forum with a powerpoint. Super annoying ah...

That night had dinner at a family friend's place. One of the guests there was a guy from VS (not there anymore so can reveal the name of the school liao), where of course i was attached to previously and had a very interesting time in the process. Was quite funny cos we got talking about school stuff and i realized that in the future i'll be at the receiving end of such talk... Hmmm...

Ah well, moving right along...

Ha? Sure or not?

Well wed had a project meeting in Chiam territory of all places cos we've to do a survey of the area. Pretty ironic that i used to stay just across the road in Sennett Estate for like five years but almost never ventured across to the hdb area. Anyways, have never seen such a quiet hdb estate in my life - the 'lunchtime crowd', if you can call it that, at McD's consisted of a handful of people plus one group of SAJC folk and that was it. But actually come to think of it i actually do like the place. I treasure my peace and quiet and Potong Pasir is definitely a good place where one can treasure one's peace and quiet very well... Chiam actually has done a good job considering the cards he's dealt with... I just wonder how the poor folk there can cope with just one measly bus service going through the town and not having a reasonably-sized supermarket in sight within the estate...

Thu it was arts cf cny visiting day and thoughthere were only a small group of us at both Florence's and Jocelyn's places, it still was fun nevertheless. Pit is actually quite a fun game to play despite its rather simple premise. For me too it was a good break from doing my essay (though in actual fact i hadn't technically started on that essay yet - nope, i only started typing that one on sun morn, the day before it was due...). Anyways, this was definitely hands down the most fun cny visiting experience i've had this year (and i didn't even get any $ that day either, so there...)

And with regards to this week, well, i'm just glad the workload, which is as far as i can remember the most work i've had to do within a one week timeframe; was bearable by God's grace. Throughout the whole week i kept on harboring grand visions of how i'd keep sleep to a minimum and hence maximize time spent on typing essays, such that i'd be able to end sooner. Well suffice to say that after the first day when i slept for all of two hours, it went downhill all the way from there, with me constantly oversleeping in spite of alarms and also constantly deciding in the middle of typing an essay that i needed a nap, which would inevitably upgrade itself into an full-fledged snooze fest. As a result, i was late for tutorial for the first time i can remember in my university career cos i woke up late and also was left doing each essay till mere hours before the deadline came. In the midst of all that, however, i really do recognize God's hand in all of this, cos He knew that i needed sleep and grandted it to me in spite of my lofty desires to the contrary, and at the same time never let me oversleep to an extent that i did not have enough time to finish any piece of work. Well, now that my so-called hell week is all but over, the postponements to the other things that i've been delaying considering and praying about have to finally reach an end. And boy is there a lot of stuff now that i think of it... And people have been (albeit understandably) swarming around me for various reasons - sheesh... Guess it's the right moment to just take time and really just listen...