You know it's a commercial Christmas when...

You see clashing coloured lights strung from lampposts, you hear carols massacred by techno electric beats and people running from place to place buying presents just for the sake of. How warped and misconstrued Christmas can get.
Was a bit puzzled when I saw a fishing boat outside PS. Erm. I thought Christmas was about Jesus' birth?

Abused

My toes really have to be the most unsightly part of my body. The nails are cracked and brittle, i have dry skin and my last toe's utterly mangled, no thanks to the china shoes last night. Oh well. Moisturize moisturize moisturize.

Baby baby!

On sunday the KC girls could finally meet to celebrate birthdays and christmas, but star of the show had to be baby Janielle! From a wee bundle she's grown to be able to sit up, shriek, grab things and pop them into her mouth. And she's quite easy-going with who can carry her too! A friendly baby is a happy baby. Yay!

Happy birthday cheer!

My first of two birthday balloons! :D the familee celebrated my birthday 5 days in advance, with van around before she flies off for shanghai. :) and we played a fun game not unlike whose line! I love surprises and Suzy's zoo!

Flights

Ariel's art class at Bukit Timah is at an old shophouse looking HDB place, which reminds me of one of the social space films we saw. I like the liminal space of the staircases, so many stories it can tell. (Pun intended) It's a pitch dark night tonight, with a light breeze blowing. How condusive for study or sleep.

Bedtime stories

Found my stash of childhood books today, huge wave of nostalgia came over me! This book got me fascinated by Greek stories, love Enid Blyton, she's a classic. The weather's lovely for some sleep tonight.

Suicidal?

Woke up to a weirdly blank sky with rumbling thunder, then the rain clouds came to darken the day. Now i'm freezing my fingers and legs off cos i refuse to wear jeans in rainy weather. I kinda am starting to like rain, just not the inconveniences it brings.

Is it over?

Pomo essay's done, i'm left with editing my two films, but we're really quite a long way off from the final product. Anyhows i'm feeling a whole lot less stressed, thank God for the multiplying of my time. Heh. NUS people on the bus talk like they're deaf and extremely stupid. I wonder if i'm like that when i'm with my friends.

Steal

Went to a flea market today, was awfully crowded! Everyone loves a bargain. This pair of gorgeous heels cost me 8bucks. When i'll ever wear them i wouldn't know, but looking at them makes me happy already. Heehee.

Stop and stare

I don't quite know why people keep staring- is it me being over-sensitive or is there something on my face/are my shorts too short/am i dressed too sloppily/do i know you? Very rude people, very rude. I wish people would be more discreet if they'd like to look.

City skyline

Everything looks beautiful against the blue backdrop littered with billowing clouds. I just wished i had a better camera besides my phone. Oh wells.

Buah keluak

Popped by the Peranakan museum today after a bit of filming at the archives, what lovely exhibits! The sterile smell of the museums excite me for some strange reason. We also went to the armenian church to visit baby Sarkie's tomb and take some photos. I love exploring new places and feeling touristy. But today's the mother of all burning hot days. Eek.

Nooks

A little plant could go a long way, especially this tiny shoot growing out from a window gap on the bus. The interesting concept of being rooted yet moving at the same time. :)

Books i'll never get to read

It's so saddening. Just when i thought i should give up shopping for clothes because of the lack of time this sem, i decided to book-shop, in the hope of getting to read them sometime soon. So instead of investing in compulsory lit books that are never in stock, i rebelliously spent my book money on 3 vintage cover books. But boo. I have no time to even finish my school readings, what more leisure ones. Sei shonagon's pillow book i borrowed from the sch library is still waiting to be consumed as well.

A week ago

Last tuesday morning some sleepyheads roused before the sun came up to send a dear friend off on an adventure in Canada. The five sleepyheads, in hysteria before and during breakfast, went into the zone while on the train. The stone zone i mean.

Fairydust

So i got a present today, very random, but a nice gesture! A tinkerbell watch from mustafa, when me friends probably went crazy buying too much tape and had to indulge in something nonsensical. So it's a doraemon, a cooking rat, the kitty with no mouth and a suspicious looking fairy. Haha all in the name of fun. I like!

Up yours!

Spotted a rabbit doing something that looks like a rude hand sign. Heheh. Quite an innocent looking bunny eh!

Jehovah Jireh

I've been living as frugal a life as i can be, surviving on 10bucks a day, cos that's what my parents have been tucking under my wallet for the past month or so. I've not wanted to ask for more, cos it's not my own money, and they have tons to pay for, but tomorrow's a special birthday celebration for a friend and it's definitely going to cost more than 10. So i had to ask for more. And all the worries about my money issues, not working this holiday and the crazy amount of debts i will face after uni life threw themselves onto me and i started tearing while talking to my mum. Yea. So i am carrying more burdens than i thought i was. I opened up the 40-day fast booklet, and there it was. God's assurance and comfort, in matthew 6. Thanks daddy God, for being Jehovah Shamma, you are always with me. And i know He'll be Jehovah Jireh too. :) i choose Him to be my focus and best friend!

Being a Blessing

Today after rehearsal, some of us went down to help dear Nana rig sets at ACS with its sprawling hugeass grounds. Much fun it was with all the nuts, bolts, good old screwing and tying of wires. My hands smell of metal now, and i feel capable of changing a lightbulb without any help. :D

Barney bag

I'm on my way for rehearsal hoping that I won't be late, and since i found a direct bus route there i'm really happy and giving thanks for it! Taking the train is tedious and time consuming really. The best part is i get to nibble at my packed breakfast, to last me for the 3 hours of rehearsal. :D

Lost

'We all get lost once in a while, sometimes by choice, sometimes due to forces beyond our control. When we learn what it is our soul needs to learn, the path presents itself. Sometimes we see the way out but wander further and deeper despite ourselves; the fear, the anger or the sadness prevents us returning. Sometimes we prefer to be lost and wandering, sometimes it's easier. Sometimes we find our own way out. But regardless, always, we are found.'
Cecelia Ahern- A Place Called Here

Why can't I

We all have a tendency to get caught up in doing things and forget how beautiful God's creation is. Today's sky is blue with white bright clouds, so gorgeous! :D it's going to be a busy weekend. Oh, it's MPE today too. Hmm. The modules this semester are so sucky, by faith i'll get good lecturers n classmates. :D

Beginners' luck

Back after a long hiatus, and presenting to you dawn's homecooked fried rice, done last monday. Pretty good for my first attempt i'd say. :) the brother's cooking fried rice tonight too. Should be of better standards as long as he doesn't muck around and put strange stuff in it.

Story of milo

Went in to JB last thursday to visit my uncle, and while waiting for my mum at the Queen st interchange, i decided to get a nice cold can of milo. So i popped in $1.20 and pushed the button, and tadaah! Can of milo pops out. When i reach in to pick it up i was a bit stunned that the can was super hot. I thought the machine was screwed up, till rachel pointed out the stupid red stripe under my milo button that read 'HOT'. :( anyway hot canned milo tastes like metal. Remember folks, read the fine print, even on vending machines.

The perfect pair

After much seeking, i found IT- the perfect pair of sneakers, a design that i actually like, but unfortunately one size too small. Got the salesman to expand the shoes, hopefully they don't bite. :D dee has just spent the last bit of her money on something she really wants, Yay!

It's all about You

The retreat thus far has been a testament of God's love, from the beautiful sunset to the psalm 23 walk, where God put the song 'heart of worship' into my heart. The Lord has been faithful, and i enjoyed the Lord's presence.

Meowrr

Just woke up at the a ungodly hour since God-knows-when, no thanks to Manic Mambo night yesterday. It was a riot of people, crazy dancing n grinding, and strangely enough no drinks for me at least. Jazz@south bridge before that was awesome la, music n ambience was perfect for chilling. Heh. I miss the west wing hangouts already. :(

Late night at the West Wing

Exactly 12midnight and i just got off the bus. Thank God for His perfect timing, just when some stranger on the bus came up to me and introduced himself. Not too safe when both of us are alone on the upper deck! I only got as far as telling him my name and where i lived. I didn't even shake his hand. Eep.

BK breakfast

Strangest song lyrics i've ever heard in a techno song-
'i don't want anybody else
When i think about you i touch myself'
Wth.

Of fatality

The home PC can be the death of me. Taking a mother long time to load, and there are random bubbles popping up telling me to click to remove spyware. I'm sure that is spyware in itself.
The PC is dying a slow cruel death. A scan revealed 25 different trojans and injections(never heard of them before), but i couldn't remove them cos i had to pay. Bah. Therefore the Quek household only has 1 functional computer, my laptop. Which Claire has to bring to school on certain days. Sigh. I hope something works out. Now i see 5 windows of the same app opening cos i clicked it one too many times out of frustration. The woes of technology. DIE YOU STUPID HACKERS.

Nightmares in the morning

I just woke up from an awful exam nightmare on my last day of my papers. It was so real i woke up and my heart was thumping. :( that's what heavy meals before sleep can do you to you man.
I dreamt that i woke up (and that itself is damn real alr) and i didn't even realise i was late till i was in my mum's car, when i saw that it was like 1325, and i was in total panic, cos i was late for my 20th century playwrights module paper. I asked my mum to hurry and drive me to sch, then dr loon calls when it's past half an hr of the start of the exam and noone's allowed in. I say that i might just drop the module, cos i did too many level 2s anyway, and he says i have to speak to him n dr yong cos it might affect my groupmates who did the presentations with me. Subsequently, i remember telling my mum to alight me at the ECP-bedok flyover cos i needed to talk on the phone and she drove off.(the horror!) I don't know what was more scary, dr loon's cold voice over the phone or being late for an exam and getting abandoned. :( now i can't get back to sleep, and it's 5am. I haven't had nightmares in the longest time, and getting one super real nightmare on the last day of your papers really takes the ball. Or maybe God needed to wake me up so i'm not late for my morning paper anyway. Anyhows. It's the last day of my papers! *whoops and runs around*

Sa-nook

2 down, 3 more to go. Waiting for marcus and rachel to grace us with their presence, i am bored and i counted elephants on the menu of thai express, there are 609 elephants in total. Can someone verify that? Heheh. I'm tired and it's free cone day but vivo's queue stretched outside and around the kids playground so we boycotted bnj and had haagen dazs instead. So ariel n i are sitting here playing with our phones still waiting for royalty to arrive while the queue for thai express grows longer n longer. How inconsiderate can we get.

This is Love.

Today we christened Love, and here she is reading her psalm to her pet dog Praise. :) We choose the fear of the Lord!
Jokes aside, God is such a great God. I woke up thinking about what i wanted to give thanks for this week, and thought that nothing significant happened. Then i got an email saying that the production might be touring Australia. I was floored man! My rational hopes of it happening are 50-50 (and i'm being quite rational about the status of things, eg. Theatre spaces, band and set transportation), but God is such an immediate prayer-answering God. Hello daddy God, you rock my stripey socks!

Who clears up after we've gone?

Another rainy day spent studying in familiar ground, yet i'm surrounded by unfamiliar faces. It seems poly kids have gotten better looking, but their dressing's more or less the same all round, thoroughly nondescript. 20th Century Playwrights has taught me to love Samuel Beckett. :) Chekov comes a close second. Heheh.

Past tenses

NATASHA.(to Solyony) infants understand everything perfectly. "Hel-lo darling," I said to him. And he gave me one of those looks. I suppose you think that's just a mother talking? I assure you he's an exceptional child, he is.
SOLYONY. If that child were mine, I would roast him and eat him.

Of duck commiting suicide

Monday afternoon was spent taking a nap,cos my dear acting for screen partner fell back to sleep after i called her at 1. A strange day this is, some kid downstairs is screaming hokkien vulgarities just after he said 'hallelujah! God bless you!' may God strike him dead, for being so rude.

Stop

Isn't it time to stop for God? Not just to slow down but to really stop and talk to daddy God. Strangely enough i wanted to blog about something else, but i felt quite prompted to snap the red light. Haha God speaks to me in the strangest ways, but it's all perfect in His time. And i need to keep assuring myself of that too. Good things are worth waiting for, right? :)

Knock your peanuts off

We had our last class for the west wing module today, most part of it left us confused (peer evaluation's gonna be a tricky process) but the later half was much fun, with an artistic exercise with props, and dinner at Dadi's- the WW's favourite indian restaurant. The picture above was from one of our rehearsals, when stef invented a game involving knocking off monks' hats from your opponent's head. The things we indulged in to pass time. Heh. I will miss my friends a fair bit really, but not much of the process. A long tedious one it was, and not very well-planned at all.

I wanna go home.

Late night in school again, by God's grace we finished everything in a day, a one-take, 7-min film. And God is awesome, i wanted to eat pocky crush yest cos i saw it at the john little fair, but didn't feel like spending money on it. Today as part of our props, a pocky crush appeared! The littlest things God does to make me happy. :) people are getting their energy back after the West Wing stint too! Nadia was noticeably chirpier while filming, something that made me quite joyful. Heh.

Someone's coming to town

And it's not Santa and his sleigh. Sir Elton, how i adore your songs! But why is your concert gonna be held at SIS? The sound system will totally discredit your singing abilities. And is there a student discount? Not everyone who likes Elton is gay or as old as he is. Don't go breaking my heart sir Elton!

3 out of 6

The west wing is halfway thru its run, and i'm feeling like a total zombie after the 2 maddest days ever. Of course the deal was sweeter with a bouquet of tulips and a box of chocs, plus the audience too, of dear dear friends. I'm so glad that i did my best when most of them were present. :) thanks be to God, He really always finds a way to cheer me up.

Colours of the wheel

So the flyer does have different colour besides the usual blue it's dressed in! Tonight it's just white, one night it was red with running lights around the carriages. I think it's quite difficult to make singaporeans happy, cos i'm sure not everyone has the same taste. I don't even know what i prefer, red's too loud, i'm used to blue tho i thought it was quite ugly at first, and white just blended in with the construction sites around. Ah well.

Chicken Rice and Chocolate Tarts

First monday off with no work and no morning rehearsals! I'm so thankful for today, i could catch up on my work and i managed to order a pair of contacts. Now i just have to reach sch before 5 to get my assignment submitted. That was my lunch, nothing too fantastic, but dessert will be lip smacking. It's a moderate monday.

Effeminate blocks

The residents have spoken: they like their blocks purple and pink, which is fine by me. It's pretty pleasant to look at. I heard the other colour schemes were really bad. And looking at most of the hdbs around our island, i seriously think our architects (or whoever decides the colour schemes before residents had a say) were colourblind.

Sneak preview

Quotable blooper of the day: 'Madam has promised me her daughter's arm in marriage.'

In this crazy time, and in this crazy life.

It's you it's you, you make me sing, you're every line, you're every word, you're everything.

Of aspirations.

This sem i took a writing module to push my CAP score up, and things were looking pretty fine until i completely missed the deadline for my second assignment. Got it back today not expecting a brilliant score given that i'd rushed it out under 2 hours.
True enough i only got 70, which was the average. I asked my tutor if the 70 included the late penalty and she said yes. After class she encouraged me (i must have looked quite disappointed when i got my grade) and told me that she enjoyed reading my writing and that i had a flair, and that i should try the advanced writing modules.
I don't quite know whether to take her comment with a pinch of salt cos i heard there was someone who got 100 for the previous assignment and i saw her comment on my classmate that read, 'you write well'.
Anyhow, the whole incident got me thinking about my choice of major, and whether i'm in the wrong place. As much as i enjoy myself in theatre, i don't think i'm doing as well as i would in new media. :( hmm. Oh well, that short conversation was kinda like the highlight of the day.

EDIT:
I'm sitting in LT13 now waiting for CNA to get on with their filming, and it's past 9 already. :( Most miserable, didn't do much except folding fans. zz.

Cringeworthy

Heartlanders is awful. I dread Tv Mobile's programming. There was dubbing, retarded storyline about an escaped snake and worse still, sound effects that were dubbed over. What is the impetus for a female police officer to go into an abandoned house alone, and even more ridiculous, a pack of men whom she doesn't know surrounding her, beating her up and cutting her hair with a knife? I think there was 3min of haircutting with dubbed sfx of her supposedly whimpering, but it sounded like she was having a lewd act performed on her. Ugh. I'd much rather have the local sitcoms, at least they have the comedic element to cover their arse.

A day in the life of.

This is what happens during rehearsal. Dee runs out with her friend cindy to get toasted sandwiches at the vending machine in the library, the only machine that accepts notes. And yes, that's our dinner! :( it's almost 10 and we're only halfway thru. Oh wells.