i do not understand why there are people who cannot resist running around on their own (in a place obviously not meant for peeking and prying tourists), poking their fingers into everything, and spying around for 'freebies' which one would get in a few hours anyway. sigh.

Engineers are freaking amazing people. Some of them anyway :p

It seems that everyone whom i happen to meet are immensely curious about what kind of life i'm leading now that we're all released from the evil clutches of school temporarily, and they are also equally happy to label it is 'So you're slacking now la'. How convenient. Just because i'm not working, it doesn't mean i'm not doing anything. i know i'm not earning any money but i have my whole life to do that. So there.

Damn. Anyway. since there apparently -are- tech geeks who read this page... please help me resolve this technical issue: my wireless router is losing heat on me :/ it registers only one bar for reception directly from the source! and frequently, i don't even get any bars. (heh. this sounds like a discussion on army ranks. but anyway..) therefore my internet access fails me more often than not :/ let's see. i have restarted the router many times, doesn't help. have connected and reconnected the wires a couple of times, nothing works :( is he overworked and therefore going on strike? please help :/

Oh well. maybe the slacking theory isn't so wrong afterall. but i hate that that's the very first conclusion people come to. Ah. anyway. it's not like i haven't been doing anything! i have been making friends with the Clutch. He's very friendly now :)

Maybe it's my proximity to my sister nowadays. I'm beginning to get a phobia of getting married! Nothing to do with the 'Till death do us part' thing (i'm perfectly fine with that), it's the endless gown fittings, calling up hotels and restaurants, deciding how many people you're going to allow to come for your dinner, neverending negotiations with the in-laws about the number of tables you're going to have at the dinner.. The joy and excitement of a wedding is inevitably drowned out in the administrative details. like EEK. Those and the lack of money, and the worry of making a complete loss when your guests underestimate your costs. sigh.

Anyway. That's a long time away! Now all i have to worry about is my piano and my driving. Both in not so good states... :( the driving is touch and go (or more like touch-and-stall) heeee. my instructor thinks i'm quite slow. which i admittedly am. my car is such a jerk :P But. It's a lovely car la. i mean. it puts up with me throwing the clutch all the time :)

Oh yeah. for people getting married (don't think there're any here) unless you're absolutely certain your designer and seamstress are any good, get an off-the-rack dress please.

So embarrassing.

The closest i've ever been to going clubbing was some camp in secondary school where they dimmed all the lights in the school hall, blasted corny music and we went berserk.

I do believe i never want to spend 6 hours picking out my wedding dress.

Remind me never -ever- to go for so-called formal dinner events. unless the food's guaranteed good, and the entertainment comprehensible. Not that the night was without reward in the form of intriguing questions.
1. Is it just me or are a lot of officers fairly cute :) as in. quite good looking, not -all- of them... but so far heh :) (don't want to sound too desperate so i shall halt this train of thought.
2. There was this girl flashing her cleavage in my general direction. very disturbing. not one of them lookers and not anyone i know. Somehow, the sight of pale wobbly cleavage put me off my food. i was told however, that firm cleavages are a result of plastic surgery and therefore, i might be subconsciously in favour of breast enhancement as being more aesthetic. But, yikes. the constant replaying of the cleavage-in-question is making me woozy.

Bah. a royal waste of my time! had to crawl out of bed for driving this morning too.. sigh. And in case any of you reading this now turns out to be my dorm mate in london, please avoid me like the plague in the morning. Very unsociable, likely to deliver cranky admonitions before breakfast.

Anyway. I need expert advice! i want a good digital camera with good image colour saturation (i.e i want blue stuff to remain blue under most light conditions! and stuff like that. don't like the sony one we've got.) and plus i want a good fast flash (nothing irritating like the sony one. takes like 4 seconds to finish flashing! :P how :/ oh. plus it shouldn't be too expensive. and i'm not particular about how many megapix. just not too few i guess.
[sigh. am fairly certain that very few tech geeks/photo geeks visit my page. so i'll just leave this in as a desperate call for help. :( ]

So embarrassing. Me and the Clutch are mortal enemies.

Bleargh. I'm so lazy I don't even want to go out :( Except when absolutely necessary. Doesn't help that i have no money = un-fun outings :/ If I were rich I probably could contribute to singapore's economy by.. a lot! :) Shopping-wise that is. I'm not very entrepreneurial. Tho of course if i had money i probably wouldn't mind financing people like kahli! you know, the creative/business type who actually want to start up :D

Btw. look out for kahli's webbie! don't know when it's coming out. but very cool. she was wearing a self-decorated top that looked very professionally done :)

hmmmm. since zsing just passed his test, he's going to be away for about 2 more weeks :/ sigh.

Shall try to be upbeat! But very difficult. Cos i lack exercise and apparently only well-exercised people can be happy.

Sigh. It's only been a week and a half! i have more than a month and a half more to go before i'll finally have him back :( ah well. in the mean time i shall keep myself occupied with piano, driving, movies and shopping. work and play :) nice balance.
and once i find the other half of my swimsuit or a nice one on sale, i'll go swimming!

i've built my life around his for 3 months and now he's gone i'm a bit disoriented :/ i hope i haven't neglected any of you! i try v hard not to k! (if i have, register your complaint thru msging or emailing)

oh. suddenly struck by the thought of the idea that bloggers are supposed to have huge influence over their readers and here i'm thinking, no way. 98% of blogs probably languish in obscurity, and in truth, how many singaporeans really do care about politics anyway (what there is to care about probably has more to do with rising fares (boohoo!) and erm. whether we'll have more than one presidential candidate this time around :P)

okok. i hope it doesn't rain.

Well. I finally did watch Madagascar yesterday, but it wasn't as good as i thought it'd be :( In the end, i laughed more for the sake of trying to assuage my loss of 7 dollars than that it was really hilarious. Damn. It was OTT and painful sometimes but it was quite funny in fits and bursts i guess...

anyway. have decided i'm a boring stick in a mud too dull to perceive humour in many situations (SOS being one.) and too lazy to care. haha. except maybe in the most cynical of situations.

The whole world is going to London! And i mean, if in our year alone there're so many singaporeans going over, it's quite amazing that the city isn't already overrun with us. We could have a Singapore-town over there and it'll probably be very popular.

it's like my social life has come to a complete halt.
there're things i want to do
places i want to go
just that i'll have to go find people to go with me
cos no one really seems to enjoy asking me out
so if anyone reads this
and has time to spare and doesn't mind trudging around with poor old me
msg or call me
i'm desperate
sigh.

And so I begin the first day of a loooooooong 2 months. sigh.

And Star Wars wasn't worth that 9.50. (bloody ex i tell you)
And pilates is pretty cool but all those gym rat exhibitionists are quite scary.

Whenever they make me quote an 'inspiring quote' I am very tempted to put this one in:

"All great minds have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds."

But. It -is- a little too arrogant for someone like me to say :( Only people like Einstein i suppose! But it is so very true! So i settled for a humble quote from Socrates instead. To sound intellectual and modest at the same time :) damn. i'm so very image conscious! Not very good. It's like the person who says: I'm very modest and humble.

millions is a very sweet movie. very fantastical, and sugar coated with delish irish accents :) the little kid acting as damien is so innocent looking and he thought the money bag came from god :) [note to self: never be a movie reviewer no matter how much desire one has to gain practically unlimited access to the cineplex]

anyhow. i wonder what london will be like. i don't want it to become exactly as if we've transplanted a singapore community of scholars and plopped it into the heart of london, but i don't exactly want to become homesick either :( which, the wimp that i am, i already know i am going to suffer from right about 1 week into the situation. plus. what if i don't get enough hot water to take my lovely super hot showers? what if i constantly feel damp and cold and miserable? what if i forget to bring loads of little stuff that i absolutely cannot live without? what if i get *gasp* mugged on the streets? hmmmm. what if i can't find nice enough clothes to wear and end up looking like i'd picked up stuff from the trash? :(

reading my diary (a very badly written one, not unlike this blog), i've come to the belated realisation that i am a very anxious, easily depressed yet as easily cheered up, worrisome, chicken little kind of person.

i've hit a new low in my level of physical fitness (if it can even be called that anymore). I visited the gym on saturday, cycled for 10 minutes, puked, did 5 inclined situps and now my abdominal area hurts when i sneeze/cough/sit up. sigh.

anyway. watched les ballets jazz de montreal in the evening, and it didn't leave much of an impression on me, except the part where the rubber chickens were dancing most gorgeously :) i want a rubber chicken. does anyone know where i can get one?

instead of advancing my career, i'm staying at home becoming domesticated. I now mop, wash and generally do the housework i can't get out of doing; I play with the little 2 year old kid next door with that oh-so-mischievous smile and i am (trying to) make my own dress! heeee. it's quite fun. especially when i hear that little eth. has been asking for me at the door while i was out :) he's really fun! he's got slightly wavy hair, a smile that lights up his face, and seemingly unbreakable bones :) wheeee!

Reading aman/everybody's blogs is making me mope! i have nothing going on in my life (that's exciting) and i only have myself to blame. grrr. Everything's on hold because of NUMBER 1 and NUMBER 2, incidents i'm not inclined to reveal on a blog. even if it's just a blog that no one reads :)

It's a terrible feeling when I feel like blogging and i realise there's nothing worth blogging cos nothing of note has occurred and it's really tragic when I blog about things like: I woke up, I went out for breakfast, I bought a couple of bones for soup.

ah well. things on hold currently that -have- to be done before i go to the uni:
1. driving. (a big plus being that i'll actually have someone's car to drive when i pass)
2. pilates.
3. salsa (of second priority in pilates because i'm scared of people like p******. sorry crys :P)
4. erm. anything interesting.

well well. so now the whiny person shall go do something else.

Why are there always stings in my packages of joy?

I get jealous very easily. it's very horrible.

U is a VERY ugly alphabet.i hate U. U is evil and gobbles up all happiness. U jumps on my joy and sullies it.

have got the picture of the ranch in melbourne on my desktop. just the plain field, and the gathering of clouds above it, and the subtle glowing of the setting sun. it's gorgeous, not done justice by the 12 inch screen because in reality the lovely sky extends for miles around. on the top of the hill, all you can see is grass and trees, grazing horses in the distance, and the couple of dots that were our cabins. And of course, being on the top of a hill, it meant that we could sort of ignore the little mounds of horse dung dotting the area, and try deluding ourselves that the faint trace of fragrance was really just something in the air. What i love about melbourne spring/summer was that the air was so crisp and clean and wake-up-ey. very nice. except for the fact that the mild cold jolted me awake everyday early in the morning. and i would start shivering uncontrollably in the washroom cos my body hadn't warmed up yet and it was cold. I do not see how i will survive in a winter anywhere. tho of course, i figure it'd be nice to see snow at least once in my life.

sigh. it's the job. i'm getting more talkative. actually, i'm only on a higher level of 'talkative' immediately after work. cannot imagine working from 2.30-10.30 tmr :( i hate getting home at 11 plus just cos of sthg like work. bleargh. and it's freaky how the words 'RE NER GIE MOR PHO LIFT' keep appearing in my head for no reason. (anyway. am spacing it out to prevent possibility of people running a search for it and getting my site. i hope so.) very strange anyway. and i find myself very tempted to introduce new products to people all the tim. v v strange. as in by people i mean non-customer people.

btw. the whole smoking issue right, don't see why people enjoy smoking so much. because i (suddenly) now know 2 smokers, and they both look incredibly unhealthy (red rimmed eyes, watery, ill-looking, skin-and-bones kinda look) and they just smell of smoke a lot. sigh. just based on that alone i'm nv going to go into smoking.

i'm in reading mode again :) so i've got murakami (sadly enough, a lot of his books are oddly similar: guy in middle age, guy obsessed with girl from youngish days, out of reach/impossible, loads of classical music references; somehow, japanese translated books have a very matter-of-fact style that's very readable. dunno lah. not like i read a lot of jap translated anyway), and ondaatje (no i haven't read english patient. no i haven't watched the movie. yes i am very out of date.)

but it's very irritating. it's like they had JE library 4th floor cordoned off (sort of) for teen readers right? (very obvious in the very trying-to-be-hip signage over the entrance that proclaims 'vergingallteens' or sthg like that) and so when it was first opened it was very cool. beanbags strewn around, veryfunky design (concrete floors plus band space) stuff like that. tho of course the books that are there tend to look as if teens are very stupid and read like kids. heh. anyway. when i recently went there, there actually were a lot of people there and it was pretty disgusting. the place smelt of stale sweat. there were all these sec school kids hanging around (yeah. just hanging. nthg to do with the books. more like to do with homework and gossip) and i was like whatever. all these people are just like sitting around talking. very loudly. in the very crass way. not the yes-it's-good-conversation kinda way. and the thing that really got to me was that there were people sitting in every nook and cranny and i wanted to get a book from one of the shelves and there were 2 students parked in front of them doing homework and basically that meant that to look at any book i had to strain and reach over them and try to get the books. grrr. and they weren't a bit embarrassed taht they were being obstacle-y and irritating. and not at all bothered by the fact that noyou'renotsupposedtobedoingworkonthefloorandbotheringlibraryusers. GRRR. so irritating. i think it was the stale sweat fragrance that got me on. they need better ventilation.

and so after another bout of verbal diarrhoea i shall stop and lose all coherence in my next few weeks and decline to blog any further.

(yes, mascara is 40 bucks, lip glosses are 29. please please if anyone sees this blog before 4 tmr, please come down in bugis and lunch/break with me. i am very lonely.call me)

well. even though my job is a VERY different experience from anything i'll ever expect to do, i keep having this sneaky feeling that i could be spending my time doing more... useful stuff. it's just this salesgirl thing getting to me. I AM NEVER BECOMING A FULL TIME SALESGIRL. it's too stressfully inane and painful. grrr. (esp when i hear of people's way-more-meaningful jobs.) sigh.

anyway. heads up you lot who actually wanna buy expensive stuff from where i work... prices are hiking next month!

sigh. SIGH. well. at least i know that i'm not the only one who finds this girl at work irritating :D that's always sthg happy to find out.

argh. there's nothing interesting happening now!!!! esxcept. who wants to go salsa/pilates/whatever... please please please contact me! but we have to go find someone to teach obviously. i need something to make me feel better :/ my days are so lifeless. especially the part where i wake up, make up and go to work. i don't really like to make up cos i don't look any better in make up and that's really really sad. well. except the part where i got my eyebrows shaped for six bucks and they look decent and i quite like them until i think about how sad it is that we don't think natural eyebrows are any good looking unless they are natural eyebrows that look plucked.

anyway. i'm going to popping into hc regularly i think. so people who're still there and want to meet up call me! :D cos the books at the library are the good ones and they aren't very popular and easier to find than the public library ones. hee.

love yall :)
( and i was going to do the same thing as lam and sign off: Love, shan)

First Day at Work

My feet hurt like hell. My ego is beyond bruised. I sold a thousand bucks (around there) of stuff but I get 1.5% in commission (only). I am very tired. I cannot remember the price of a lot of products. I don't know where the stocks are put. I'm not sure what's what and I have perfected the art of telling the customer--- Please wait for a while. I'll go check. --- and then bug my senior.

What a first day at work. but of course, the part where yingling came to visit me and waited for me to go for a break was the best part :) yay. i love yingling. oh yeah. if any of you want to come visit my next gig is at tangs next friday :) look for the girl with average makeup. oh and a v bad part of the job was where i had to keep checking my makeup and realising i was shining all over (bad) and my dark circles were showing. a lot. heh. v demoralising. but at least i get to touch up at the counter :) i still feel sneaky doing that tho.

sigh. call me before you visit la. otherwise i might be on break or sthg. oh wait. i leave my phone in the store. so you know, i might not pick up unless i just -happen- to be in the store room getting those expensive products.