A purposeless mess

A new week's just begun, and life's cruel, like always. To be honest, no amount of rest will ever make up for a school day. Realised that despite a generous and well-deserved break, I still can't stand the suppression I'll always feel the moment I step into the campus. I'll always find myself moving from lecture to lecture and class to class feeling like a hollow, empty shell, and as if that wasn't enough, circumstances will always try their best to drain out the very little bit of life left inside me. It feels terrible. Really, if I don't find a reason to love what I'm doing now, a way to cope, I don't think I'll make it through the year as gloriously as I want, and am expected, to. And frankly, I don't think I'll find a direction anytime soon.

Right now, I'm trying to cram for a ridiculously demanding Economics test... obviously to no avail. And I guess you can say that I gave up completely on revising for it the moment I decided to update this space. I mean, is it even humanly possible to cover a year's worth of topics in a single night? :/

But on a brighter note, my GP tutor e-mailed me over the weekend, and she encouraged me to participate in this competition called the Stanford Book Prize. Initially I was interested, but after realising how packed this week was... I started having second thoughts. There's only 2 more days left to the deadline, and I haven't really drafted anything yet... but I think it's still possible for me to think of something within the time frame. Guess I'll see how things go for now. But regardless of whether I manage to participate in the end, I'm still very grateful for the opportunity.

Guess tomorrow'll be yet another crazy day. But at the very least, there's something to look forward to — dinner with a couple of friends at NEX. Hope the rest of the week will give me something to anticipate as well.

Some leftover pictures from last week finish off this entry:

Birthday highs (and lows)

The past few days have been really tiring for me; I barely had the time to even catch my breath. But hopefully tomorrow will mark an unofficial end to a really long week. Training this week's pushed forward from Friday, and after taking a quick look at my timetable, I also realised that school ends early that day. :) So I'm really grateful for this (although extremely rare) plan-free, leisurely (hopefully!) Friday that I'll soon be enjoying.

So, today was Rashid's birthday, and I'm really honoured to be part of the celebrations for his special day, which I thought went pretty well; better than I expected it to, at least. :) Along with a group of friends from secondary school, we had a delightfully sumptuous, but extremely sinful dinner at East Coast Lagoon Food Village. Pigged out on a lot of barbecued and grilled food, of which included satay, barbecued chicken wings, oyster omelette and the grilled sambal stingray. It truly was a feast to die for! Caught up quite a bit with the ex-schoolmates I haven't met up for a while as well, so all was great. And I really have them to thank for coming down despite their immense workload from school, and the fact that they haven't really finished studying for their various class tests.

Planning for this day did stretch me quite a bit, but I guess in the end it was all worthwhile. Furthermore, it was also my fault for assuming tasks only when deadlines started drawing really near. But I guess the whole experience was a blessing in disguise; managed to really talk to a couple of friends whom I would usually not hold conversations with. Met up with Liting & Edenuis at MOS Burger Bedok Point yesterday, after which I engaged Yiren, Junjie & Kristine at the McDonald's opposite our secondary school. Also, though there were some things that didn't exactly work out quite right, with the help of people who care, I managed to let unpleasant issues go surprisingly quickly. And I'm really grateful for that! Feeling so blessed right now. :)

Apart from my miscellaneous plans, school has also been doing great at keeping me really busy. For one, I now know the importance of really leaving holiday homework for the holidays, though I still can't see myself rectifying my "vice" of procrastinating homework till after school reopens. But school is, after all, still a bitch. And nothing will ever change that fact, at least not until the day I graduate.

As mentioned earlier, hopefully tomorrow will be the final busy day of this week. Really need some time to take a breather and really just rest. It's just crazy, how I've been coming home after dark every day the past few days and all. After training tomorrow, I shall burn the midnight oil in preparation for Friday's "much anticipated" Chemistry test. And that should be all for the hellish week already. No, actually, it must be all.

Penultimate

So today's been a really long day, and just the thought of blogging about today makes me feel really lazy. But after some consideration, I figured that if I just let the tomorrows pile up, I'll have to write even longer entries in the future, and waste even more time trying to recall what happened for each day I put off writing (come to think of it, this might just be the next motivation for me to blog regularly).

Yesterday night, or more aptly, this morning, I turned in at the usual ungodly hour of 4am, despite being perfectly aware that I would have to wake up at 9am in time for TJCarnival 2012 (my school's open house). I woke up half an hour late in the end, and although it was very demoralising, I still dragged myself to school in the end — a result of an extremely difficult struggle against my bed.

Another reason why I would so rather stay in bed then was because my school's notorious for its mediocre open house programmes, and before anyone starts pointing fingers, I'm sure that at least a dozen other TJC Year 1 students from 2011 will agree. But in hindsight, I guess my trip to Bedok's hellhole today wasn't really a wasted one. This year's TJCarnival adopted a similar format to last year's, but I saw some improvements here and there, which was great. :) For one, the stage performances this year were much better (really enjoyed the rendition of 'Pumped Up Kicks'), and I think this year's open house was the first to see cheerleading performances... if I'm not ignorant at least.

But the irony was that I was supposed to promote the swim team at the open house, not to watch the performances. I did contribute something, though — I took up the job of the TJ Ambassador, which was to show the visitors around the school (it's such a pity I don't have the shirt, just sayin'). But being an 'ambassador', at the very least, enriched my sense of (twisted) humour. Seeing how all those students, fresh from secondary school, didn't have a single clue whatsoever of the hell which awaited them if they chose to enroll into a JC... I just couldn't help but find entertainment out of that. But karma's already bitten me long ago, for I already know that ahead of me lies a predicament that's much worse (sigh).

During the open house, Atika dropped by to pay us (more specifically, Rashid) a visit as well, and when we brought her to Janet, she went nuts... literally. But actually, what really happened was that she started exclaiming and jumping in joy. But before she could do anything else, the kacang putih cones she held toppled and the nuts sprawled all over the floor. It was an embarrassing scene, but well, it's not like she had any shame to begin with, HAHA.

Got off my duties at 2pm anyway, after which I headed to the hawker centre opposite school to have lunch with Rashid & Janet. Headed home immediately after lunch, only to go out again shortly after taking a shower. Initially I was just gonna head straight to church, but I made an impromptu decision to meet Rashid & Janet yet again, this time at Old Airport Road. Wanted to be there to witness their "Lao Ban moment", hahaha. Singaporeans will get what I mean perfectly. :)

Was half an hour late for church in the end, but the service was a long one, so I guess I didn't miss out on a lot. Got really drowsy halfway through, but for some weird reason, I became wide awake all of a sudden after a period of time, lol. I'm guessing it's probably due to a burst of energy.

And admittedly, service today wasn't a very fruitful one. And to make things worse, I'm starting to harbour some doubts... but I guess it's still better if I hung on for a while more so as to catch a clearer picture of the entire situation.

Oh well, guess that's all for my day today. Tomorrow's gonna be the last day of the November/December holidays (LE SIGH)... I'd better treasure it while it lasts.

Simple days

Went to Tampines Regional Library again today to hit the books with Rashid & Yiren. Only managed to cover Cellular Respiration though, so my time there wasn't very productive. But well, at least that's better than nothing.

Left the place at around 7.30pm with Rashid for the Popeyes at Tampines Mall, where I satiated my craving for fast food (or more specifically, fried chicken). Thoroughly enjoyed the meal (well definitely!) and of course, the company. :)

And I guess that was all for my day today. Will be up for dinner with E391 tomorrow at the Just Acia at Dhoby Ghaut Xchange; hope it'll end the break on a high note!

Mundane beginnings

On New Year's Day, I spent time with my classmates in a chalet at Aloha Changi. Practically, it was a failure, because less than half the class showed up, leaving the organisers unable to cover the expenses. But the good thing was that since the costs were too huge to be completely absorbed by the people who went, the class will be claiming payments even from those who decided to give the chalet a miss once school reopens. Though I can't help but feel that it was such a pity everyone checked out by the second day because there just weren't enough people willing/able to stay over. To make things worse, the chalet was really spacious! Bigger than my flat, at the very least.

Thankfully, the chalet only remained a logistical failure. Genuinely enjoyed everyone's company during the time I was there, and the fact that we got just enough food for the barbecue's really comforting... at least for a person like me who simply loathes wasting food. The food was good too, and the best part was that they were spicy! There was sambal... everything, including stingray & sotong, of course. Although I had sambal stingray and chicken satay earlier that day for lunch with my family at the Changi Village food centre nearby (très delicious, by the way!), I still claimed my share of the barbecue food. Heheheh

The next day, Michelle, Cally, Amira, Hannah & I had a meeting for our Economics project at my place, but we didn't actually get much work done. Cally brought along the souvenirs she bought for us from the Taiwan though, including the I♥TW shirt I asked for:

Personally I find it weird to take pictures of a shirt and even weirder — to make the pictures look deep & artistic lol, but the urge to snap some photos just hit me when I took it out of the closet. Which is still weird, but since when have I been normal, really.

Lol anyway, the following day was yet another mundane whirl of events; the only difference was the company. Went to Tampines Regional Library to catch up on my work with Rashid & Atika, though I didn't get much done lol. That day was also a bad one for me. I was already late in setting off to start with, and the weather that afternoon was terribly hot. Despite that, I just had to make a trip all the way to the IKEA bus stop only to realise that I left my file at home. And the best part was that I didn't even touch that file the whole time I was at the library.

Stopped studying earlier than usual because all of us acknowledged that it wasn't a productive session at all, after which I had dinner with Rashid before hopping on a bus home from the interchange.

In hindsight, I guess the first few days of 2012 played out rather mundanely for me. Though I shouldn't say it's a bad thing. Once school starts in 4 days (gasp), I'd probably do anything to get my mundane life back.

A day documented with Instagram

As mentioned in the previous post, today was supposed to be a hectic day, and it definitely was, though I woke up in the morning feeling really lazy — swear all I wanted to do then was just camp in my room and watch episode after episode of 'Heartstrings' until I was done with it, hahaha. And I did indeed watch 'Heartstrings', though what I actually did was halfway between being a punctual boy and turning up at Paya Lebar station at 1.20pm sharp and being an utterly lazy pig and not leaving the house at all — I watched one more episode of the drama series and told the rest I'd be going down with Rashid & Li Ting, the two people who already planned to turn up late beforehand. The ones who went ahead first are so going to kill me once they read this, lol...

Met Rashid & Li Ting at Tampines station at around 2pm anyway, after which we went to the food court upon Li Ting's request to have her lunch. Because I took my lunch before I left home, I spent the time there fooling around with the Instagram app on my iPod touch, which later became brutally abused (will be made apparent by the upcoming picspams). While I was busy snapping away, Rashid & Li Ting had their lunch — two kaya toast & egg breakfast sets. If their appetites aren't weird, then I don't know what is.

After lunch, we went down to Bras Basah station in search of The Mind Cafe along Prinsep Street, where the rest were. Was a little bewildered initially, but with a little dose of common sense, we managed to get to the place pretty quickly in the end.

The Mind Cafe wasn't exactly what I envisioned it to be; the place was noisy and cramped, but of course, there was a generous selection of games. But shortly after we met the rest at the cafe, Rashid, Li Ting & I decided to leave the place, as since we reached so late, it'd be unprofitable if we were to stay and be charged the same rates as everyone else. And so we headed to the public area in LaSalle College of the Arts to... well, lepak.

We then caught up with the rest shortly after they left the cafe to walk to Liang Seah Street together.

Once we got there, we scouted around for a suitable steamboat restaurant, and quickly landed on our final decision. While waiting for more friends to arrive, we went to prepare the food and got the soup bases ready.

After I had my fill, I rushed off to Marine Parade for the E391 thanksgiving party at Faith's place, but by the time I got there, most of the activities were already over; but well, at least I didn't give it a complete miss, hahaha.

The journey home today was a rather different, or should I say special, one. For one, it made me realise my stupidity in all its glory, lol. Hui Yen & I hopped on a bus from the Mandarin Gardens stop which took us to Little India station via the city, i.e. Bugis. So that means I could've just boarded the same bus to Faith's place when I was leaving Liang Seah Street earlier, instead of hopping on a packed, half-hour train ride to Bedok... LE SIGH.

It was also special in the sense that today, Hui Yen made her maiden trip to Little India station. It's hard to believe, and especially so because she's Singaporean! But that's not really the point — when we were at the platform waiting for the train, she completely lost it, and it was hilarious. Made a fool of ourselves by taking some retarded photos, and we even documented it on Twitter, hahaha.

Also realised that nowadays, whenever it comes to going home with her, we'll stop at Punggol station. And I don't mind it at all actually; I really enjoy bus rides along expressways at night. And I'm guessing it's also a form of payback for all the times she was the last one to leave the bus when the few of us went home together after school. :P

Well, to sum it all up, I had a surprisingly blissful & enjoyable day. And it's definitely a good way to end the year. :)

An idle festive season

Lately my life's been a mess, but it's a good season for my life to be in the state it is now, thankfully. Sleeping at 4am every single night and waking up dizzy and lightheaded the next day definitely isn't something that should happen during the middle of a school semester.

Other than being like a person with no direction in life whatsoever (still contemplating if I should remove the 'like'), Christmas week was spent on brief meetings with different groups of friends, and well, rotting away at home.

On Boxing Day, I headed to Orchard Road with Rashid, Jasper & Jun Jie to accompany Rashid to get a gift for his parents' anniversary. He got his gift faster than we thought he would, and so for the next 3 hours or so we walked around the area leisurely and at our own pace. It was a good day to spend in town, because the weather was clear and the Christmas crowds have more or less cleared. Got the book that I've always wanted to get at the huge Kinokuniya there (favourite haunt forever), as well as accompanied Jasper to Fourum at Ngee Ann City and waited for him to get his art supplies, and he took a really long time deciding on the colours for his origami papers. Though it's not like we didn't have time to waste.

For the last leg of the roam around Orchard Road, we went to TANGS, where I bought my maiden cup of Chatime milk tea. Tried 日出紅豆奶茶, and I thought it was really good! But well, bubble tea in Singapore'll continue to be awesome (at the expense of thick wallets) so long as the Taiwanese chains continue to run. Went upstairs to the department store as well to check out the daypacks they had on the shelves, and man, were they expensive or what? I just can't fathom how daypacks with plain designs can cost up to S$150 these days. Things just keep getting more expensive. :/ I'll still have to get one with a plain design in neutral/monochrome colours though, I just find daypacks with fancy/elaborate/colourful designs or graphic prints... excessively ugly. Haha, the pains of a thrifty person with an expensive taste.

Before we left the place, we dropped by the Toys "R" Us at Paragon to find Atika. She's currently there on a holiday job as a gift wrapper, and I have to say, that job's anything but relaxing. Personally I wouldn't work as one, especially during the Christmas season... the pressure's just way too huge for me to handle, hahaha.

The next 2 days or so (including today) were, well, spent at home, and whenever I spent the day at home this week, I would be staring squarely into the laptop screen... coding. I sound like such a geek here, but I can't deny that I enjoy coding, especially when it's from scratch. Gives me a sense of control, and it kinda enables me to express my inner... sophistication. Not kidding, hahaha. So far I've cleaned up my Tumblr blog as well as submitted a couple of designs to the BlogSkins portal; there's most probably more works to come.

If I'm not outside, coding, reading, stalking people on Facebook, listening to music on YouTube or spamming Tumblr with pictures & text, then I'm either doing my homework (WHOA) or, more probably, watching a drama series on the computer. Just last night, I downloaded an episode of 'Heartstrings', a Korean drama featuring Park Shin Hye & Jung Yong Hwa (from CNBlue):

And so far, it's good! I really, really like the setting of the series, it makes me feel as if I jumped right into a school life manga. Let's hope it won't disappoint; will be starting on Episode 2 later.

Yesterday was also spent outside, but this time, at my usual haunt during the exam period — the National Library at Bugis. :/ Because school's gonna reopen real soon and I have a whole shitload to do, I figured it'd only be right to hit the books now, lol. But definitely, I will not get everything done by the 9th of Jan.

Left the library a little earlier than usual for Braddell. After Michelle got off work at SPH, her, Sheryl & I went down to Toa Payoh to catch up over dinner. Had roast duck noodle at the Food Alley there, and I have to say, Toa Payoh's preserved its charm so well! Haven't been there in ages yet the homely atmosphere's still as strong as ever. :) It's hard to believe 12 years just flew by like that, that place gave my childhood so much to remember.

Decided to go to Junction 8 at Bishan afterwards because there wasn't really anything there anyway, besides food and KOI, lol. Walked around aimlessly for a bit, and I also spent the time checking out daypacks. Still haven't decided on which brand to get though.

Headed home early because Sheryl had to meet her curfew (as usual). Got home via the bus from Hougang Interchange; a routine whenever I go home from a night out with my JC friends, I realised. And then I didn't sleep until the it's-4am-and-it's-not-natural-for-me-to-not-already-be-in-bed feeling struck, like all the other days this week.

On another note, LE SIGH. Tomorrow, I'll be busy, busy, busy all over again. It's like some sort of cycle; with every day of rest comes a day of jam-packed madness. But you know, I'd really rather my life be like this. Compared to the daily madness school brings, my life now's a bed of roses.