An eleven year old on the trip with me to Malaysia just celebrated her birthday today. Her mother planned a short celebration, complete with cake. My mother and another mother collaborated to get her a 4GB thumbdrive.

She's slightly spoilt, since her only other sibling is a sister ten years older.

I suppose, (considering only items from the parents), an early dinner with alcoholic ice cream for dessert and a pair of court shoes are just as good.

Hmm...
Arrived, finally: at Clearwater Sanctuary Golf Resort!

Of course, that's in Ipoh, Malaysia. The news that the room had Internet was the a piece of really good news for me!
Finally! I have the use of my beloved Internet after a certain someone banned me from it!

Oh, Internet, I thought without you I would die~

- theatrical sob -
Okay, so it's around 0030 in the morning now, and I'm wide awake with my parents in the living room. They're watching telly while I while away time on my mother's laptop (since I shut mine down already).

Anyway, lately, if you keep up with my fb status updates (the older ones of a few days, last week I think), you'll find out that I've been watching Hana Yori Dango. I'll refer to it as HYD here.

HYD really seems perfect. Sure, so the main couple (Domyouji Tsukasa and Makino Tsukushi) have their own problems, both in season one and two, but a friend who's finished the series informs me that they get together happily in the end.

Looking at the television screen, it's some drama called Story of Time. It's of village life roughly how many decades? Ago? I don't know.

But everything there seems perfect too. Like sure they have problems but they don't need to worry about what happens, it gets solved in the end.

Why do us people watch such stuff anyway? It's just an illusory utopia that's on the big screen, and it's not going to happen in real life.

Maybe we watch it because we think that it's a good way to escape.

You know, a good source for our imaginations. For mine and for every single fangirl out there, that is. Fanboys too. It just makes me think, maybe these dramas/idol dramas are actually good for us.

It gives us a break from our normal life, let's us believe that such a utopia actually exists, it allows us to dream, to daydream, of better futures. I bet that's where the phrase 'tomorrow will be better' comes from.

Anyway, to end off with some nice pictures:




Look at the front page of the Straits Times today. The entire stretch of Bukit Timah road was flooded!

And I was in it.

I was on 171 going to school for debate from calligraphy class, and as we neared Bukit Timah road, I was thinking that I was never going to get there on time. I mean, some bus stops were inaccessible, the bus couldn't turn in because the rain had already caused the water level to rise to where the bus stop seat was. The seats that I saw were those that were on 'stilts', as in they were risen up from the ground by some poles. And the water level was such that if you sat normally on it, everything that dangled off the seat would be soaked.

As we neared the MG bus stop, I was wondering whether I should get off, because every single bus stop was flooded. It was knee high at several parts, and ankle high at others. I saw the canal overflow onto the road, and I was stunned. In six years of schooling at RGPS (down the road, near the canal) and two at MG, I'd never seen the canal overflow.

There were HwaCh and NJ students on the buses and fortunately their stops were accessible, and it wasn't flooded. The bus driver managed to go right up to the stop so they didn't really get wet. But as for my stop? No way.

Then some guy walked past me on the way to the door on the bus, and I didn't think anything of it, until Amaris (my senior) walked past and said 'Hi Ka Onn'. So now I had two comrades to get to school with! Ah well, the more the merrier!

So now the bus driver decided that it was impossible to stay in the normal section of the road (the MG side) and turned out onto the road section on the right. It was just a slight turn, and the interesting thing was that we ended up right opposite the MG bus stop.

So we (our party of three) decided to get off the bus. So we took off our shoes (I had a plastic bag!) and waded out into the water. At first the water was ankle high when we got out of the bus. Then as we crossed the road to get to MG bus stop, it became shin high for me. At certain parts it became almost knee high.

And the odd thing was that since Amaris had longer legs and managed to walk faster (something about wading through water faster in longer steps), the guy (turned out to be Avery, an AC rep) was second, and then there you have me, safely and slowly plodding through the almost knee high water. And at points Avery looks back to ask if I'm alright since I'm not just behind him, I'm two metres away, and I was trying to convince him to look after Amaris instead.

Like, I'm fine... And I will be anyway...
(even if I fall into a pool of muddy water)

So we get to MG. Amaris is surprisingly dry. (She's wearing a dress.) Avery is half wet. His jeans are half wet, and his shirt is somewhat in the same state.

And as for me, I'm around half wet. My skirt is wet. Like, wet. Front and back. Then the shirt isn't really wet at all.

-_-"

Ah well. If I'm caught in that kind of situation again...I'M ALL FOR IT!

:DD
I decided to open my letterbox today when I got home from school early (because illegal training was cancelled and I didn't know).

I found TWENTY-ONE pieces of mail.

Yep, that's right, TWENTY-ONE bills, advertising postcards and magazines. For once, there were no junk flyers or leaflets.

The post man doesn't deliver that much over one or two days, or so I believe. I can only wonder about the length of time that the mail had festered in my letterbox.

I really must open my letterbox more often.
A Taste of Heaven:

Sitting in Pacific Coffee in Vivo in a nice wicker cushioned chair, with a cup of Caramel Latte, this book will save your life by a.m. homes), a brownie and a blueberry muffin. Don't forget the mother sitting next to you with a copy of this week's i-magazine and a grande cup of hazelnut cappucino.

Don't forget the rain around.

P.S. Minus the people around and it would be the real heaven. What I had was a heavenly taste.

:DD
WHAM. TOTALLY NEW PERSPECTIVE, MAN.

So I go to the camp, and the chief tormentor smiles sweetly at me and climbs up on my lap. And one of her friends leans against me as she watches the video. With a 23 kilogram 7-year old student (who's BONY, mind you) on my lap and a 30 kilogram weight against my left shoulder, I'm pressed slightly uncomfortably against the hard seat back of the chapel pew (no cushion, just a hard wood slab!). With two warm bodies against me, it's heaven in hell (that damned wooden pew. it's gonna be the death of me.)

Anyway, so they totally love me when I give out stickers. They totally love me when I accompany them to the toilet and hold their barang-barang for them (you marvel at the stuff they bring in their bags), and you get loved even more when you run after them in a game of cat-and-mouse, jacket flapping in the wind.

Anyway, I've already told the Camp Commandant Mrs Chua 'See you next year'.

Guess I've just signed off my happy fate. Ooh, lil' kids, your student leader's coming!

:))
While I surf blogs on the Net it usually makes me jealous.

Some usual thoughts:

- Some are talking about how they should have bought their DSLR on the ROCs trip and I'm thinking to myself, I don't even have a camera, and they're complaining because they brought their digicam instead of their DSLR?

- People who are bitching about their heavy workload next year when they got into Triple Science, and here I am wondering how much more of my brain I should have exploded to get into Triple Science, instead of missing the fricking 70 average by 4 points. Which means my entire dream of dissecting bodies ten or fifteen years down the road is, well, down the fricking drain.

Okay so that's two. And it's damned tiring trying to please every single person in some damned primary school Christian camp, when the kids in your group are busy flicking you with their fingers and taunting you for being short (148 cm!) and when you tell them off or grab their hands to stop them from flicking you, they start punching and hitting you.

It's also damned tiring when you're trying to read your Asian Geog Taboo edition in peace before all activities start, and some little bitch-in-training Primary One student grabs it out of your hands to look at the slightly gruesome pictures. It's also pissing me off when she bugs me for stuff I'm not obliged to do, like supply her with piece of paper after paper and pen after pen. I'm not obliged to play bloody Hangman with her either.

Forget 'being with the kids'. I'm not signing up for the suicide camp next year. They can do without me. I don't care anymore.

On a brighter note, tomorrow's the last bloody day of that hell. Whoop-de-doo. Now if only I could just not turn up.