baked egg tarts yest! cos i wanted to eat. now hav leftover cream cheese, so was trying to search for jap cheese cake recipes... and why do they lead me to porn sites?! gross. drove to emeryville today and got hangers from ikea... then watched I, Robot with Jacqui... then came back to further unpack my luggage.. i am doing it so slowly that even after 3 days here i havn'et fuly unpacked haha... still get jitters driving, but am glad that it didn't deteriorate too badly... i haven't thrown away all my skills overnight! yay. but still get paranoid sometimes. like i was at ranch, parked... then suddenly felt the car kept going forward!! to my horror. then realized the car adjacent to me was reversing out at the same time.... scary...!

finally up to something after an 11-hour recovery sleep! i meant i slept from early last night till this morning.... cos didn't really catcch any sleep on plane, nor the day before. but despite feeling really tired i had to wash my toilet yesterday cos got gross things like on toilet bowl and like dirt... still pretty unpacked and all... too many things in my room i realize. and it done'st help that i brought back near 64 kg of luggage this time round... this is random, but grad student staying living room is suddenly shouting at tv. think cos watching olympics. i am slacking in my room listening to matchbox twenty. haha ok. my room feels nice and cool. decorations still unchanged... will do it some other day; pictures half falling off haha. made failed broccoli and cheese tortilla just now haha. washed car with jacqui today. washed gross oily sink.... attempted to clean stove but became too lazy and backachy and stopped halfway haha.. feels good to have a slacky life here, feels good to drive myself around again..... =) bought a child's bike lock at target today but then was sorely disappointed just now when informed by mark that i cna't cycle on sidewalks and i would need a helmet to bike on the roads.... oh well.

this is really amusing. 3 days of trying to access blogger from home have been futile and here i am at changi airport terminal one, trying out their free internet service 15 min before i board my plane.... and blogger actually works...
been wanting to say that my stay in singapore has been really enjoyable. getting the chance to be a spoilt kid all over again, meeting up with almost every single person i wanted to see... eating all yummy food here (though at the expense of a tummy..) making new friends at work...being happy somewhat for my whole time here...
now it's back to sch... back to my independent life... back to new housemates... to dealing with everything by myself. i return with a positive mindset.... and i hope this semester will be fulfilling and extra- fun for me... =)

am getting hopelessly fat!!! cos for the past few days i have just been eating and eating... meeting ppl for the sole purpose of eating ha. and have been ingesting a lot of unhealthy food. like bowl of huge mango ice kachang thing in one afternoon after a whole seafood platter at fish and co like 3 hrs before, then dinner plus dessert at crystal jade...
sigh so much stuff to pack... so many things to settle... and no time cos i keep going out... feel terribly disorganized but not really motivated to do all the things i hav to do...

one week left in sg; depressing thoughts of leaving and not coming back for a long time are starting to set in.... it's not that i dun look forward to starting sch again in berkeley; but have grown a little accustomed to my relatively stress-free and cheap-food-available-everywhere type of 'lifestyle' here.... plus have been a spoilt child for the past two months, with mum doing laundry and religiously and voluntarily preparing breakfast for me every morning... now it wil be back to days of getting troubled over what to cook for dinner everyday; resorting to cereal meals when i am lazy, having to fend for myself and taking care of every aspect of my life again.. haha not that it's that undesirable lah. just a lil tiring at times. but good for me in general. who will fend for me next time if i myself dun? =)
spent 3 hours carving a tiny linoleum block on sat evening after discovering that i had supplies of lino blocks and block paint hidden in my cupboard and that half of them have spoilt or expired after two years of lying in the cupboard... and yest morning created 10 prints of the same thing and felt immensely accomplished.....ha! sigh. sometimes i think that i dun like art that much anymore, but when i do it again i feel that my love for it never really did diminish. but the prob with me i guess is that i like art but i am not like super good at it. like i always dream of all these things i want to draw.... but i can never draw them as well and as realistically as all those artists out there and therein lies my dilemma... and it will take a long long time for me to come up with something good then sometiems halfway through i get a bit put off cos it really takes up so so much time!! and then when i am schooling i can never hav the luxury of hours and hours just working on a small piece of linoleum block and coming up wiht a decent design.... haha so i guess it will for the moment still remain as a retirement leisure activity... =P

end of my two day SIF symposium at Raffles City Convention centre.... today's session was surprisingly not bad, perhaps due to the speakers they invited...took away some lessons from Ho Kwon Ping's talk about challenges facing youths.... in particular something that struck me as very true was that many of us are still somewhat 'parochial'; even ppl like us studying overseas.... we may think that having travelled to many major cities in US and Europe, we have seen a lot of the world, when in actual fact we might just have merely come into contact witih some of the many diverse cultures in the Western world... and many of us dun really look to the less developed world at all... many issues ppl face in the developing world, i believe i am unable to imagine or really emphatise with... hmm actually even after having gone to Europe, i think all i have done is more like i hav stayed at those places, been to major attractions.... the amount of knowledge of each place i took back with me was like really minimal...
haha and of course at the symposium we managed to find some traces of not-too-subtle messages to the young ones that singapore is facing a declining population and it is our responsibility to do something to alleviate this problem...

today i suddenly became aware that I am actually quite privileged to be given the chance to study at Berkeley. was with two HDB scholars, one overseas one local and was talking to the overseas one about soem travelling experiences and the local scholar expressed some mild form of envy that we get to do so much travelling.... then bumped into one of those Prudential agents lurking at MRT stations trying to get passers-by to fill up their survey forms and upon hearing that i was studying at Berkeley, he just blurted out, "Wah, so zai!"... and dunno felt kinda embarrassed cos it really isn't that zai... but dunno... i guess from my point of view it isn't, cos at Berkeley and more prestigious unis there are a lot of really really zai ppl... and i am just nothing.. but i guess as compared to many ppl studying locally or who dun even get the chance to go to uni, it really is some remarkable academic achievement... sigh so dun really know what to think. but what i do know at this point in time is that i really want to go back to Berkeley and really make good use of my remaining 2 years there....=)

been spending so much money the past few days but it isnt exactly my fault... haha ok shifting blame to other ppl. the gift section in taka is simply irresistable... well stocked with all sorts of cute stuff and paraphernalia (hmm did i spell it correctly).... saw this cute jap wind chime but it's ten bucks for a tiny wind chime...but still went home with some buys and gifts for ppl! =)
house of flying daggers is actually surprisingly hilarious. with flying daggers that can aim so accurately at their targets even when these ppl aren't rooted to the ground.... ppl jumping from bamboos too bamboos and using bamboos as weapons... and bamboos so nicely lodged into the ground in such a perfect formation that allows the two protagonists to be 'caged in' nicely together without any injury...but still i enjoyed the scenery and the cinematography... i liked how when the characters are in action, the background just fades into a blurry image...
had the most zuobo day of my attachment today! spent the morning wrapping sweets and chocs for my colleagues... then in the afternoon i spent half the time at HDB book sale fishing for cheap good titles... i was really happy when i found the lovely bones for 5 bucks! =) randomly bought samuel huntington's clash of civilizations cos it was going for only 6 dollars... haha but wonder if it will just end up as a cheem title on my bookshelf.... last day of work tomorrow.... time really really flies.

haha my mum and sis commented that i look like 'bu liang shao nu'.... while i think that i look like i am trying to be 'pai' but not really succeeding.... oh well in any case i had fun and i guess it's worth looking a bit different, regardless of whether i really screwed up and look really strange haha. at least i can look back and say at least at some point in time i tried it.. =P
went back to hwa chong yesterday for the carnival and i feel really sad that hwa chong junior college is going to disappear altogether... i will feel really strange telling someone erm i studied at this junior college... but it merged with chinese high and became something else instead... sigh. think the education system here is getting a little too messy for me.. and seriously if someone asks me what the high sch system in sg is like i dun think i can give a very accurate answer...
taking leave tmr =) kinda finished my project, wrote a final draft for my paper, emailed it to my supervisor who would be back tmr but i foresee her catching up with 2 weeks' worth of work so i will prob be catching flies if i go to work tmr.... just hope that she would hav read my draft by tues.... have to go down to twinhead tmr (hopefully) to repair my problematic laptop, maybe will catch a movie or something.... getting a tummy from eating so much food here in sg.. and sitting all day at my cubicle and being too weak-willed and lazy to exercise regularly...

nearing end of attachment and i have no results!! aargh. feeling doomed. at the same time feel pretty sick of my whole project. and isolated. today very unproductive.... skived for first half an hour reading my novel... then stoned around tried to add stuff to my paper... then peeled a kiwi they distributed to us yesterday... then awaited my free lunch at crystal jade with other scholars and the 'head'.....afternoon asked colleague to give me some suggestions... then got gdp data sent to me by kind person from MND... at 440pm went for my free health checkup and to my horror found out that i have shrunk yet put on weight!! infuriating. i am super heavy now. and i have borderline high cholesterol! felt somewhat embarrassed in front of staff who gave me a mini lecture on how i should avoid deep fried foods, exercise more regularly..... haha. sigh now i am tempted to spend money to find out if i have more good or bad cholesterols.

many ppl take leave for good reasons but i took a day off today purely to slack.  cos staring more at my regression data for another consecutive day would not be very productive i figured.
watched brotherhood today and it was really good! i was really very touched by many of the scenes and somehow i felt that the film was very 'human'... and i thought it had a pretty good portrayal of the sufferings that plague civilians during wartime... the pain of parting... many many human emotions all in one film. at some point in the movie i was actually feeling rather appalled by how ppl just blindly kill fellow human beings just because their affiliations were different... like does loyalty to ur party/country really matter that much that we overlook everything else and look upon fellow human beings/friends with hostility or even plain vengefulness... like what caused ppl to regard one another with so much hatred... so chilling. Other than that it wasn't exactly very convincing to cast a 27-year old actor as a 18-yr old going-to-college boy... and the war was a little bit too draggy.... and little gory at times....  on the whole i really liked the movie... oh and i think won bin has really nice eyes haha. but guess he's the more boy boy type of shuai guy..
oh and i got a really cute black bear soft toy from joyce... =P and i thought it was really cute how its tag had 'love instructions' for the bear.. another addition to my soft toy collection on my bed! =)

getting increasingly disillusioned at work whole day staring at excel worksheets and regression software... and also getting rather worried that i will not end up with anything 'solid' in the end to submit to my supervisor.... and i also got confused cos was looking at the workings of this previous staff who did regressions... and she had like p values that were super high and yet she did not rule them out as insignificant and used all these regressors to make projections all the same..... hmmm.... was she just 'bo chap' or is there something more i should know? 

was sent the pictures of my colleague's new born son; one of them showed him lying on the table in the operating theatre! never got a glimpse of what i looked like then haha. i feel rather disturbed recently with this whole idea of ppl getting attached and couples setting up families... like during lunch one day this week my colleague suddenly leaned forth and asked expectantly, "so you really dun hav a boyfriend?" then went on to give me advice on how if u start working you prob wun hav time for such things blah... and then last week was on my way home i bumped into my rgs schoolmate behaving slightly intimately with her boyfriend on the streets and i felt really awkward that i had to 'disturb' them cos i really wanted to say hi to her... and once my colleagues were discussing which bridal shop has good wedding pics... can't be that ppl working in stat boards feel more inclined towards starting families right... haha maybe for like 3 seconds i understand someone who whole day complains she jia bu chu qu.... hmm but i am a little surprised by how most ppl really sincerely want to get married and have kids. more than 2 frens within span of one week said something like that. and one was rather shocking- she made a pact with fren that if they are both not married by 30, they would marry each other...

shall create two posts for today... went out with our da pai yest night and had yummy dessert at fullerton... but our pleasure was short-lived, with 5 ppl feasting on two tiny plates of 1) tiramisu and 2)pandan creme brulee with coconut ice cream.... da pai has long hair now! but she insists that it's to prevent her hair from scratching patients or something... seems like everyone is getting so womanly etc.... =P
went out with jeannice just now, who just came back from her yellowstone working stint... and her experience sounds really cool! and she happened to be with many nice ppl... for a while her two months there made me feel like she had done more than my 2 years in US... rediscovered far east plaza.. goodness knows when was the last time i frequented that place.. and stumbling onto sunny bookshop just brought back memories of my RGS days... they seem to have a lot of 'funky' stuff there now... haha perhaps can go shopping there after my attachment ends...
then proceeded to TAKA and they happened to have a food fest event there... cannot help but conclude that eating is kinda a national pastime... there were long lines of people everywhere, ppl squeezing past one another to get samples of free food; looking up at the second storey, i spotted this angmoh aiming his video cam at the crowd... he must have been really amused..

who said what?
 
was scrolling through my 100 over smses in my inbox and decided to 'publish' some memorable smses that I have kept in there....
 
an unexpected compliment.... Eh I think u are v cool u're my idol now yeah!
wedding bells ringing?......Pinnacle at duxton is so cool! I want! HDB not gonna build anymore this kind?
an unflattering but amusing insult..... Thats why its interesting. When u cant fit into anything. Then u have nothing to wear tmr how.
secret complaints.... Screamsss. My mum shoopping for swim suits! lucky that din last long. 

I am feeling more comfortable with the bunch of colleagues i lunch with everyday... and i am starting to think that I will grow to miss them.. they are a very different bunch of ppl, chinese-speaking, very shuang kuai and though i don't really have any common topic to talk about with them, I do feel that they do try to make an effort to include me and I am really touched. Some people conveniently forget you when u dun say anything... well I am not saying in such cases it's their fault, because i mean if i myself want to be heard I should take the initiative to speak up as well... I am just touched by ppl who make that extra effort =P and in turn I also tried to share some stuff... like how i got unclassified for maths c haha. cos we somehow started talking about hwa chong and jc and courses we took..
am also pleasantly surprised by the niceness of some ppl. and it's rare that some ppl, even though u dunno them very well, u can tell that they kinda treat everyone with the same kind of sincerity and kindness and u just feel like u should really emulate them...

announcement!
haha actually it's nothing- i just turned on my comment option so now ppl can leave comments... but i think ppl cannot see them and they just get directed to my email add.... not sure though =P will try to look for a tagboard some time later...
got a new laptop on thursday.. so have been trying to transfer files to my new laptop the whole of this weekend. was pretty domestic today too.... made green tea ice cream using jap mix this morning, then cooked dinner for my family for the first time since I came back... haha but very very simple dishes.. my usual sweet and sour tofu plus fried vege... mum cooked lian ou tang. went to pasir ris library and found a cookbook on eggs and learnt an interesting and simple fact about how to tell if eggs are fresh... haha it's probably common sense, just that it never really came across my mind. according to the book, just place your egg in a glass of water or something and if it sinks it's fresh but if it's stale it will rise or float in middle. cos eggshells are porous and if it has been out for a while, there would be more air in the air sac... i shall try that some day... =P
I will have a new colleague moving in beside me tmr...transferred from some other unit.. and app she is familiar with housing demand stuff! yay finally have someone to ask... but also means that I will feel pressured to be more sociable, instead of just slacking away with no worries about socializing with ppl as i have done for the past 4 weeks cos no one used to sit near me... but perhaps it's a good thing =)

I have grown increasingly piggish at work. stuck with my regression and ppl i appealed to for help didn't get back to me... so skived and chatted on the internet for half an hour... then went back to desk and stoned around and tried to look at data i asked from my colleague but nothing productive came out of it... also slightly embarrassing that every single day i never fail to have twix wrappers in my dustbin and there was a strawberry jap yam yam addition to the bin today... cleaners must be thinking this girl does nothing all day but eat... =P
had lunch with a female colleague who to my surprise told me that she had her 1-month anniversary with her bf yesterday and then proceeded to show me his picture... was a little taken aback by this type of 'intimacy'... but then it did create some lunch conversation... felt a little strange... ppl seem to be really open about their ling yi bans huh... shu also mentioned how ppl at her lab all like rave about their bfs, and one 23-yr old girl got upset with her bf cos he wants to study and doesn't want to get married in the near future.... seems that everyone seems very concerned about their impending 'fates'... or is it just at this age ppl think about such stuff...

very girlish for the moment and went shopping with mum and tried on like many many dresses.. haha. but sadly the one i like are too small and those i dun are too big. so came home with none... and disappointed my mum by rejecting those that she thought looked nice on me... =P
this week i did something that mustered so much courage... and i dun regret... and hopefully i will be happier and more confident in future... am trying really hard to not care about what other ppl think of me... i really really hope i will be happy next sem and not get depressed over little things once again.
i got pretty inspired by my attachment project to learn applied econometrics... just that it really is pretty difficult to learn it on my own. looked up spring schedule of classes for 04(by mistake actually) and realized that there was c142, which i would definitely sign up for if it were available next sem.. sadly no. so regretful that i dind't take econometrics earlier... realize that it really is an essential tool for doing research in econ... wonder also if i should go take h195a this year instead of next, and try to write two honors theses?? but might be too ambitious. hmmm dunno, still kinda confused. but somehow, i am beginning to understand how so many ppl can do research in econ....
oh and the amazing race is returning to channel 5 next week!! yay.

Pelagia's Lament

am a little crazy over Captain Corelli's Mandolin still.... haven't come across any author who can produce such a hilarious, witty yet at times really sad and touching stories for a while... Louis De Bernieres is my fav author for the month! haha not that i read novels... prob like once a year.
anyway, would like to share part of a beautiful yet heartbreaking passage i read today... when Pelagia's father got killed by an earthquake

...I (Pelagia) cradled his bloodied head in my hands and saw that his eyes were empty. His old eyes, looking not on me but on the hidden world beyond. And I thought then for the first time how small and frail he was, how beaten and betrayed, and I realised that without his soul he was so light and thin that even I could lift him. And I raised up his body and clasped his head in my breast, and a great cry came out that must have been mine, and I saw as clearly as one sees a mountain that he was the only man I've loved who loved me to the end, and never bruised my heart, and never for a single moment failed me.

but i guess one must read the book to really appreciate the passage... but nonetheless, this is my weak attempt to justify my liking for this book, in case some ppl are really bewildered why i keep ranting on and on about it... =P
on other hand, i felt rather neglected today that my 'mentor' is so busy and doen'st even have time to look through what i drafted and as the moment i am kinda stuck

today i actually felt a little productive at work. drew up some framework for my project, but really have no idea if it will work out. shall type it out nicely tomorrow and show it to my supervisor and see what she says. my email (only source of communication) was down today and so i was totally disconnected. hope the technicians will be kind enough to repair or fix whatever went wrong... else i can't even send emails to my colleagues.. =(
went to toa payoh ntuc after lunch and got myself some jap titbits! haha so as to prevent myself from marching over to HDB nexus to get m & ms... bought this star-shaped rice cracker snack.... so all these crackers are individually packaged, two crackers in one and the transparent packaging has like different faces and expressions printed on them so the star crackers inside get different expressions. really cute. then my colleague gave me some wasabe (how to spell?) peas/nuts and some other rice cracker... haha i have a corner for snacks now. and adjacent to my snacks is this tissue box cover in the form of some white dog character from sanrio... ppl who drop by must think i am still reminiscent of sec sch or something.
and i and still enjoying my captain corelli's mandolin. on page 350 something today. and on the mrt this morning i read the most touching and heartwrenching parts and tears really welled in my eyes. this will definitely come under my list of favorite books though i havn'et finished it... and i bought the vcd yest from HMV! sale so it was only $9.95... shall savour it during the weekend when i hav the time...

i was really really upset last night... but good thing had dear jacqui and jing to talk to so i am fine now =) terrible me always gets too emotional.
spent an unproductive day at office this morning... and it is really unhealthy that i sit at my desk all day long usually, 5 days a week... even unhealthier that when i feel myself falling asleep i look for my wallet and march to the HDB nexus to get snacks to munch on!! decided that M and Ms are efficient image-destroying, fat-generating snacks so switched to pocky... haha not that they are veyr healthy. shall quit this habit altogether...
been trying to look for a new laptop.. and i fell in love with the hp pavilion zt3000 series... nice silver with bluish tinge and very thin sleek design... just dunno if it is that reliable. toshiba is too ex and not very pretty. fujitsu is pretty but out of budget...everyone recommends IBM for performance but sadly they need a lot more work on their design. ok me getting carried away, not that i know how to design exteriors of laptops. maybe when i get a new laptop i can stop using my sis's laptop and connect to the internet using my own laptop and transfer all my pictures... i want to add a new tagboard on my blog... but tagboard page i used to frequent seems to have disappeared.. =( maybe some other time...