I have no idea why, but I'm starting to think about cooking and baking stuff a lot these days. I think I'm just bored and I wanna do something.

Oh, but I watched Jamie's Kitchen today; I'm starting to agree with Pam-- Jamie Oliver is lovely. Haha.

He and those trainees that he was training to work in his restaurant went to cook for the Prime Minister in today's ep; and the Irish Premier was over too.

And there was this part before a commercial break where the phone was ringing and he was walking past the camera to answer it, while saying: "This isn't our kitchen, and we've had to bring all our stuff, and if we've forgotten to bring anything, we'll really be in shit."

Then he picks up the phone, and grinning away, he says: "Hello, Number Ten kitchen."

I just found that part rather adorable, lol.

Oh, and Number Ten is really posh; the rooms are huge and have high ceilings and everything; looking at it from the outside, you'd NEVER imagine that it was that big!!

There was this other cooking show on after Jamie's Kitchen; there was this nice dessert that the guy was making; Coffee Creme Brulee. The "Creme Brulee" is supposed to have accents on some of the letters, but I dunno how to do it, so well, heck. :P

It looks gorgeous anyway, but I've forgotten what it was that he mixed the coffee powder with before he poured it into the cream! Dang.

Shall have to go try and find the recipe.

And I still need to get strawberries and blueberries for my cheesecake!

"Home is behind, the world ahead,
And there are many paths to tread
Through shadows to the edge of night,
Until the stars are all alight.
Then world behind and home ahead,
We'll wander back to home and bed.
Mist and twilight, cloud and shade,
Away shall fade! Away shall fade!"

--Pippin's song in "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" movie; "The Steward of Gondor"
--originally the third verse of "A Walking Song" in JRR Tolkien's "The Fellowship of the Ring"

First off, MERRY CHRISTMAS!! :D

Went with John to see Lord of the Rings: Return of the King yesterday, and MY GOD-

It should be a bloody CRIME for any man to look as beautiful as Orlando Bloom did in his last shot. Or last two shots, really. :D

Firstly:
When Frodo was back in Rivendell and the hobbits were all jumping around on his bed (Oh, btw, isn't Pippin the most adorable little hobbit alive, haha. Well, I mean Billy Boyd, of course. :P) and then Legolas shows up in the doorway wearing his silvery-purple tunic, I SWEAR, right then, I knew what the phrase "to have your jaw hit the floor" meant!! O.O

Then secondly:
At Aragorn's coronation.... that circlet, so simple yet so elegant, and he looked ALL the MORE GORGEOUS- oh GOOD GRIEF....

What have we done to deserve a sight as breathtaking as thee?

No one's life is complete without watching the LOTR Trilogy; I mean all three movies.

And of course, we should all watch it and worship the perfection that is Orlando Bloom, and stand in awe of the diversity of Viggo Mortensen's many talents. :P

I swear, I'm letting my girlishness take over in this post, but heck, I don't care. :P

Oh, and Billy Boyd's voice is wonderful.

It's not as broad or polished as an accomplished singer's would be, but it doesn't matter; for that song that he sang, it's simply heartbreaking.

".... All shall fade..."

Yes, and that coupled with the shots of Faramir's company riding to their certain doom.... That was the first time in the movie that the tears started up in my eyes.

Oh, and speaking of hobbits; YES, Samwise Gamgee is THE bravest little hobbit of all!!! Whatever would poor helpless little Frodo do without him?!?

GO SAM!!! And Pippin too, haha. Scratch one for Pippin when he stabbed that orc sneaking up on Gandalf.

"No place for a hobbit" eh, Mithrandir? :P

I need to buy the soundtrack.... I love the music.

And I need to go watch it again!!! I HAVE TO!!! :P

Woohoo! Alumni performance was fun! Fun fun fun fun fun. :P

Seriously, it was pretty cool; people were gathering around before we even started playing and there were cute little kids crawling around all over the place, mostly around Alvin's feet, haha. :P There were more people than I expected, that's for sure. And people took pictures. Probably tourists.

Y'know, this means that I'll be on someone's photos halfway across the world, and I won't even know who these people are and they won't know who I am either! Now that I think of it like that, that's sorta weird. :P

Oh, and when we played Feliz Navidad for the second time at the end, people were clapping along; man, I was even more surprised. :D

Dawn and Soon Aik came to watch; Kwan Chin and Pam's flute senior came too. I think his name's Kenneth. Can't really remember. :P There were lots of other seniors there too... people from like, Matthew's batch or something, all older than me and I've never seen 'em before! :P

And afterwards, when we got back to CJ, we all sang Alvin "Happy Birthday" (in advance, tho, coz his bday's really next week) and Thye Ann and someone else came up to him towards the end of the song and sprayed him with foam..... LOL...

And the foam smelt of "toilet air freshener". :P Well, that's what Alvin said, haha. But I thought that the foam smelt nice! :P

Pamela loved the Jamie Oliver book that Sylvia and I bought her too!

Oh, and yesterday I bought my first alcoholic drink. Haha.

It was just so cool. I placed the bottle on the counter, and the cashier said that she needed to see some ID, so I showed her my IC and she went, "Ok," and started cashing the transaction. So cool. I felt so important right then, LOL. It was all "I'm eighteen and I can buy alcohol!!!" Haha........

It was a bottle of Blackcurrant Hooch, anyway. Actually wanted to buy the Peach Bacardi Breezer that was sitting next to it on the bottom shelf of the cooler, but the Bacardi Breezer was 70 cents more expensive.

And I didn't want the first alcoholic drink that I ever bought to be some pansy-ass fruit flavoured thing like a peach flavoured drink, so I bought the Hooch instead. LOL.

I know, the Hooch is fruit-flavoured too, but it doesn't seem as pansy-assed as the peach-flavoured thing does, haha. :P

I'm just weird. :P

Need to go see "Lord of the Rings: Return of the King". Must go and watch by some time next week... and I have... 12 Christmas cards to send out by Monday. And the bad thing is that I think we've run out of Christmas cards in the house.

I have found my new idol. :P

Viggo Mortensen.

The guy's a poet, a photographer, a painter, and the fact that he can act and sing is just a plus. Apart from acting and singing though, the guy is everything that I could ever want to be!!

One of these days, when I have enough money, I'll buy myself a good, proper camera, and maybe I'll go find some open field or something and take pictures of clouds. And when I get older, I'll move to New Zealand or Australia and take pictures of the scenery there.

And when I become a retiree, I want to live on a quiet street, and on cloudy afternoons, sit on my front porch in a rocking chair with a pot of coffee and a portable CD player on a table nearby, and I'll just sit there with my coffee and soft cafe music playing and watch the day go by.

I want to live on a quiet small town street where everyday, at around noon, you can hear children running past, laughing and playing. I want to live in a town where nothing is ever in a hurry, except perhaps when there's a fire, which of course, I hope, never happens. I want to live in a town where the streets are quiet, where you hear the birds more often than the cars, and even when the cars do come past, they're never in a hurry to get anywhere and they cruise past in an unhurried fashion, so quietly that they hardly make any distrubance at all. Or of course, in the future, they may have been able to make cars that don't make any noise at all or they might be able to float or something. :P

I think I'm too much of an idealist, but I don't think it hurts to dream. Let's just hope that New Zealand stays pretty much the way that it is now. So that I'll have some hope of fulfilling that dream.

But first, there's the rest of my life to live. To get there, I'm going to have to get through a teenage identity crisis, working life, and a mid-life crisis.

Well, Life seems awfully fun. :P

Woohoo.... found a whole LOT of excellent brushes and pictures yesterday.

Something tells me that I'm about to go on a Photoshop editing spree soon. :P

Meanwhile, in another shocking news (well, all right, not all that shocking, haha) I have found out that Ben Adams has an official site and well, a strong solo career. For that matter, so does Mark Read. And actually, both sites look kinda similar. Except for the fact that Ben's is black & white.

Like I said... the things that go on in this world when you're not looking or paying attention. Geez.

I swear, I live under a rock. Or in a shell. I might even be a tortoise and not know it. :P

Lalala.... what else to type?

Oh, yes, well, me's currently obsessed with the Pirates of the Caribbean Theme. It's fantastic, especially one part in the middle; the best part of the piece. It starts at 2.01 minutes. :P Also, combining the electric guitar solo with the orchestra is very cool. :D

Geez..... it's amazing and scary, the way that things can go on in the world while you don't know anything.

I mean, I just decided to go read some seaQuest fics today; I do miss that show and Lucas was such a lovable character. :P And then I came upon this story whose summary started with "In memory of Jonathan Brandis".

I was like, "wtf?!?"

Anyway, after a little sourcing around, it's sad to say that yeah.... he's dead. Suicide on 12th Nov this year. What makes it even more... well, horrible is that it was just recently.

And all that comes to mind is his performance as Lucas in seaQuest and how he was such a lovable character. Jonathan Brandis himself was great; I just can't see how he could possibly have it in his mind to off himself.

But well, we don't know anything, right?

Sigh.

... seaQuest ended in 1996, so it's about 7 years later that he's gone. Man. It's just... kinda weird.

Strange how much Life can f*** you up enough to drive you to suicide; to make you go from a young person pretty satisfied with his life to someone who couldn't see any other way out.

But I guess no one said that Life was all that nice, anyway.

Lookie, new template!! :D

Isn't it pretty. There was actually another one which was pretty cool coz it had a phoenix and fire (Yes, I have pyromaniacal tendencies) on it, but the code was somewhat screwed, so... sigh.

This one's still nice, anyway. :)

Meh... yesterday's alumni band was pretty okay...

I have nice seniors! Matthew (yeah, another Matthew) and Pei Hsia. Two years older than me, but they're pretty fun. :) I was afraid that my seniors were gonna be really smart, musical people who would probably get annoyed at me coz I suck at playing, haha. :P

I tend to get terrified of people older than me... especially when I'm expected to mingle with them. It's a silly notion, but I'm a silly person, see. :P

Surprisingly, I still remember some of my clarinet stuff! In fact, I actually remembered some of the fingering without realising it. Weird.

I guess it is true when they say that you never really forget anything. Everything must just be floating around in our subconscious somewhere. :P

And get this, Alvin actually won't allow me to call him "sir". I called him "sir" twice yesterday, and both times he told me to stop calling him that. He actually sounded kinda annoyed.

I don't get it. If someone wanted to call me "sir", I wouldn't mind! :P

He told me it was all that crap about having graduated from school and everything already and I was alumni, so I didn't have to address him as "sir"... meh. Whatever. I'm used to calling him "sir", anyway; I've done it for two years!

If I suddenly started calling him Alvin to his face, that'd just be flat-out weird. I mean, all the band people call him Alvin under the table, but (if we remember :P) we call him "sir" to his face. He's older than me, anyway, so "sir" sounds right...

Ah, whatever. He's weird. Haha. :P

We're playing nice songs for some performance, I think. All Christmassy songs, and Les Miserables.

Finally! Always wanted to play Les Miz! :D

Well, maybe not always, haha, but ever since I heard a band play it. I think that was at RJ's concert earlier this year.

Lalala..... nothing else to say. Or type. Meh. I seem to be using that word a lot. Actually, I don't even think it's a real word. Ah well, who cares. :P

The prom post (",)

Lalala.... just got back from prom about an hour ago.

Everyone looked really nice, and I won $44! :D See, there was this scavenger hunt among the tables (a table game) and my table won, so everyone got a Cashcard. Then later, during the table draw, my table number got drawn and everyone got another Cashcard. Then some teacher came over and told us that there was $22 in the card.

$22 x 2 =$44

Boy was everyone at my table happy then. :D

Pam looked nice in her dark red sari, and Ivy was wearing this pretty blue dress which looked kinda like mine, only blue. :D Which reminds me.... I wore the highest pair of heel that I have ever worn in my life: 2 and a half inches high! Ten cm! Man, they were tiring.

Whenever you walk, it's like walking on your toes. But they were really pretty; silver and all. Giselle commented that she and I were probably two of the few people wearing silver footwear. Most other people were wearing black.

My Gerri twin went and dyed all her hair light brown! Almost didn't recognise her at first! :P And Laura was wearing this really short, tight, one piece dress with a slit all the way up to her thigh!

The dress itself only came about halfway down her upper leg, and the slit itself went up to the top of her thigh, seriously. As Giselle said; very few people can carry off a dress like that, (and I agree) but given her figure, Laura could probably carry off anything!

Edison looked absolutely gorgeous. In a male sense, of course. :D He spiked up his hair like he used to in school, then he dyed the spikes brown. Looked even MORE like Clay Aiken than ever!! Then later, Giselle and I agreed that he looked even better than Clay Aiken. :D Seriously, the suit he was wearing even reminded me of Clay in his American Idol performances... speaking of his suit, he said it cost over $400. That's a BOMB, but hey, he turned out gorgeous. :D

Saw Wai Lun, Khai Yee, Felita, Soon Aik, Airine and Erlinda when I stepped out of the ballroom for a while. Wei Seng and Dawn too.

Wai Lun looked so cute in his suit, haha. I think it had a brown shirt, and the usual black trousers. If I remember right, he had a light yellow tie with it too. So cute. :P No matter what he does, he'll always look cute to me, I think; he just has that little 5-year-old boy kinda face! :P

Khai Yee was wearing a green dress, and Soon Aik looked really beautiful; I loved her necklace! And her hair. :D She liked my shoes, but they hurt. Haha. :P I liked Airine's shawl too; was white and had a bit of blue in it... I can remember what it looked like, but can't describe it! :P

Felita and Erlinda appeared while Khai Yee, Soon Aik, Airine and I were taking a picture. Erlinda had the same dress as me! :P But her hair was really nice. And I think her heels were probably the same height as mine, haha. :D Can't remember what Felita was wearing, but she looked pretty, and she said I looked sweet. :D

Dawn had this brown dress on, and she had a choker around her forehead, I think. It was sparkling a lot from where I could see her. :P She looked like one of those princesses out of the Arabian nights stories... :D

Managed to spot John pretty late into the whole event. He had this brown jacket on and I think it was a black shirt underneath with a light yellow tie. Looked really spiffy. :D

Saw Wei Jian when I came out of the ballroom when the whole thing was over. He was wearing the normal black trousers and a white shirt.... you know, one of those shirts with, um... like pleats on the lower half on either side? Yeah, he was wearing one of those.

I saw Mark too! Haha. He looked really smart too; another brown jacket and suit combi. Looked suspiciously like John's, but Mark's jacket was darker. Lol. :P

Oh, and it was Genevieve's birthday! I couldn't really see properly in the light, but her dress was either pale yellow or white. It was very matching with Zahid's white suit!

People just look so different when they're out of uniform!! :D

Woo... 2 am.

Should go to sleep now.

Gonna go for alumni band this Saturday, but I'm wondering if there are any other clarinetists from my batch there. Not very close to my seniors.... :P