Wednesday, May 31, 2006

For all those who just can't keep their hands off stationery: notebook sale!

No, I don't mean laptops, I mean good old-fashioned notebooks that you scribble in. And these are lovely ones too. :)


Moleskine notebooks @ BooksActually Posted by Picasa

"Moleskine notebooks have been around for more than 200 years.
Originating from French artisans, these are the preferred notebooks of legendary Ernest Hemingway, Bruce Chatwin, Pablo Picasso and Vincent Van Gogh.
For the first time in Singapore, BooksActually has brought in various notebooks belonging to current artists and design creatives from around the world. These delicate works of art are here for the public to experience. Gloves provided.
New Moleskine notebooks are also available for purchase at the bookstore."


This exhibition will be on from 2nd - 30th June at BooksActually (125A Telok Ayer Street; see the BooksActually link in my sidebar for more contact information), so everyone, help spread the word and the notebook-love! :D

Friday, May 26, 2006

Exams, exams. Everyone's blogging about exams and what shitty or crappy or totally unexpected results they got.

So I shall be different. :D

I shall blog about something that absolutely no one else will understand, unless you who are reading this happens to be that other person who commiserates with me.


So you have 7 + 15 days. 22. I like that number. Haha. XD

I have 43. Both for the most opposite reasons.

Gerri meets world. Yes, indeedy. There's suddenly a world out there which is bigger than I'd like it to be. "Halfway round the world" never felt so real.

I feel so unprepared to meet the world that's out there.

I feel like there's a mountain of things to be done, and I'm too busy to even start. Where does Time go when we're not looking?

Where does Time go when we don't have the time to spend it?

Phonecalls and good mornings, goodbyes and "how's it goings".

Learning and relearning the questions not to ask because there are no answers. At least, not now. We can't all be happy with how our lives are.

Thinking and rethinking the things that want to be said. Because lines are thin. Don't cross them. Or break them.

Funny that we'll be leaving home come this July. But I'm not moving as far away.

Packing and unpacking and wondering what to buy and wondering what to take. What shall we leave behind? We can't take everything.


Can I ask you a question, please?
Promise you won't laugh at me?
Honestly, I'm standing here,
Afraid I'll be betrayed.

As twisted as it seems,
I only fear love when it's in my dreams.
So let in the morning light
And let the darkness fade away.

Can you turn my black roses red?
Can you turn my black roses red...?


-"Black Roses Red", Alana Grace

Sunday, May 14, 2006

People's behaviour can be strange. I still don't understand why people like to buy Toto or 4D whenever something bad happens, instead of something good. Do they figure that there has to be a balance in the universe, and some extremely bad luck has to be balanced by some extremely good luck or something?


I've got back my old promoter job from last year; Reckitt Benckiser actually pays pretty well. :) Figure they should. This is the company that owns and sells Dettol, you know.

But anyway. Working in Clementi this week. And the strangest thing happened this morning while I was coming in to work.

There's a little coffeeshop literally just round the corner from the supermarket where I'm working. This morning, there was a sizable crowd of people all gathered around the outside of that coffeeshop, all gazing upwards and talking loudly, accompanied by the sound of a siren blaring.

I thought, what, is someone gonna jump? and I glanced up as I was walking, but I didn't see anything except an open window and white curtains billowing out of it. So I just carried on my way. Some of the other aunties working as promoters would later tell me that it was a fire on the eighth floor.

But for now, as I walked along; there was a Singapore Pools right next to the coffeeshop, and right then, there was a long line of people queueing to buy Toto/4D. And I thought, are they buying just coz they think something bad is going to happen?

And almost as if on cue, as I squeezed through the line, a woman in the queue turned to shout to her husband: "Ji lou ah?" ("What floor is it?")


People are strange.

Sunday, May 07, 2006

Holidays can be damn boring.

Thank goodness for people to spend it with.

Spent half the day out with kor; first things first, after lunch, we frittered away about four hours at the NLB's Reference Library, my newly-found love (haha).

Bumped into Mary while we were downstairs in the borrowing section of the library, then later, when we were on the seventh floor, we spent about half an hour just gazing at all the books and ooh-ing and ah-ing over various authors and works that we recognised.

But we eventually settled on a few to take aside and read:


Some light reading for the afternoon. XD


The top four books are kor's picks; all from the Political Science section. Mine come from the Sociology and Philosophy shelves.

Kor started on Hobbes' "Leviathan" first, but because it was written entirely in Old English, it was kinda difficult for him to read; he finally gave up when he couldn't make sense of a particular sentence. Until I informed him that "chayre" was "chair". Lol.

I was contented with Bertrand Russell's "In Praise of Idleness" for the better part of the afternoon; it made me smile at times. And in view of the post-election mood, it's somewhat fitting that Russell gave the most succinct definition of politics that I've ever come across:

"Usually two opposite kinds of advice are given simultaneously by two organised bodies of men; this is called politics. The skill required for this kind of work is not knowledge of the subjects as to which advice is given, but knowledge of the art of persuasive speaking and writing, i.e. of advertising."

Around the time kor abandoned "Leviathan" and started on Marcuse's "One-Dimensional Man", a minor camera war broke out. I scored a few victories. XD


No, he's not sleeping. It's just that the shot's taken from above, and he's looking down.







A church just across the road from the library; at least, this is just one of the many in the area. From where we were sitting, we could see three others in walking distance of this one.

After leaving the library at about 6-plus pm, we stopped by Candy Empire, which we'd passed by on our Wednesday trip with Edward. But at that time, it'd already been closed. This time, it was open.


Oh no. People like me shouldn't be allowed in a place like this.


Lots of stuff you don't usually find around Singapore in this store. Such as these adorable chocolate liqeurs in the shape of bottles...


.... and our very own spoils from the "raid". XD Dove Peppermint Affair chocolate, Mint Kit Kat, two fingers of mint chocolate of a brand named Echo-- they turned out to be chocolate biscuits with a layer of crisp bubbly mint on top, coated in chocolate-- and dark chocolate Bounty.
Notice how almost everything is either mint chocolate or dark chocolate. Lol.


The Kit Kat was our first victim...

.... followed by the two fingers of mint chocolate.


Our original plan was to eat the rest of the chocolate after dinner, but dinner proved to be... really too filling.


Carl's Jr. Before...

.... and after.


After that, was some mindless wandering, venturing into some of the shops in Marina Square to look at clothes and shoes and more books. We stopped by Borders on the way home (only because Kino was closed by that time), and after some more title-ogling, decided that next weekend, we shall go book-shopping!

Kenny, if you're reading this, expect us sometime next Saturday or Sunday, heehee. XD
Who knew that elections in Singapore could even be mildly exciting?

Personally, I just wanted to see who won Potong Pasir, since that's one of the most closely contested areas, with really big issues hinging on who the residents vote for. *cough*upgrading*cough*

My mum and I started cheering when the results for Hougang were announced; the WP won it, and shortly after that, kor called and thus ensued another short cheering/ bitching about other parties session.

Throughout the course of the call, our conversation drifted intermittently onto the topic of who would win Potong Pasir; we started panicking when one of kor's friends messaged him to say that she'd heard that Chiam See Tong had lost by 60 votes. 0_o

Followed by another message later which informed us that the Elections Dept folks were recounting Potong Pasir's votes.

So it was with bated breath and crossed fingers that we waited for the official results.

Turns out there was nothing to worry about after all. Chiam See Tong won it, and by an even larger margin than in the last election.

Kor and I were so happy that we were screaming down the phone. A spate of Hokkien curses directed at, ahem, the losing party, drifted over the phone in his enthusiasm. Lol.

And the silliest thing is, we don't even live in Potong Pasir. The two of us live on the other side of the island and both our GRCs are uncontested; mine is Holland-Bukit Timah (not that I can vote anyway), and his is Hong Kah.

I've felt all along that this would be the greatest irony and lesson to some people: you can't just buy people over. Who cares about the 80 million bucks? It's the people's money to begin with, isn't it? ;D

Wednesday, May 03, 2006

Oh man... damn tired but damn happy. Haha.

I've never had this much fun after exams before. And then again, I've never been this tired before either. :P My phone is chock-full of pictures, but probably not as full as it could have been, considering that it only occurred to me to take a lot of pictures halfway through the day.

With that, you should be warned. This is a massive, damn long blogpost-cum-picspam.

So here's where the day started: in bed. Of course. Unless you wake up on the floor.

Heehee.

Had NM1101E paper at 9 am. I haven't done a level-1000 module in what feels like bloody ages. Well, actually it was just two sems ago, but it feels longer. Anyway, NM1101. 35 MCQ and 5 short answer questions. And the short answer questions really are meant to be short. They give us lined space to answer in the question paper itself and make sure we don't exceed it; and for good reason-- Arts students tend to define "short answer" as "not more than 3 pages".

The question paper for NM had to be the funniest exam paper I'd ever seen in my whole life. Mainly because of two questions: no. 26 and 27, to be exact.

26 ran something like this:

After graduating from CNM (Communications and New Media; that's what the programme is called), you get called up for a job interview! The interview goes very well, and towards the end, your prospective employer asks, "Would you happen to know anything about copyright law?" You reply, "Oh yes, I took this fantastic course in University called NM1101E-- New Media and Society, and we got a nice overview of copyright law." Your employer then smiles and asks, "When does a copyright law go into effect?"

There were five options for this question. The first four sounded completely feasible, running along the lines of "When it is put down on paper/ registered/ thought up, etc."

But the fifth one. I really wonder if anyone dared to be cheeky enough to put down their answer as the fifth option:

"Oops! I think I was SMSing my friend when the professor covered this!"


And no. 27 was a follow-up:

Your employer's a nice guy; he understands that you can't possibly expect someone to stay awake for two hours in a lecture, so he decides to let it slide. So instead, he asks, "What do you know about Intellectual Commons?"

Again, the first four options were completely feasible. And this was the fifth:

"I think I was replying to my friend's SMS when the lecturer covered this! Please ask me something else!"

Maybe what was even more amusing than those two questions was seeing the occasional quiet sniggering on the side of the hall that was taking the NM paper.


Walked out of the exam hall at 10.15 am; lazed around in the archery lounge till about 10.30, reading the copy of Archery Focus magazine that someone had left on the table, then finally decided to go shoot, as was planned.

Didn't end up shooting for very long; no bloody strength at all. Looks like it's back to doing push-ups every day and night...

And I finally took a picture of my new bow and arrows..!


My new bow, my baby, Fidelis.



My old aluminium Jazz arrows with orange and white plasti-fletches. These are 3 of the remaining 6. There were originally 12 when I bought them two years ago.



And these are my new ones: Beman Carbon Flash arrows. The fletches are blue spin-vanes; they're curled, as you can see, to increase spin as the arrows fly.


My arrows, old and new; the large black thing you see behind the carbon arrows is my main stabiliser.


Next stop: Orchard. To meet kor and Edward for lunch and pool. At least, that was all we'd planned in the beginning. In fact, all it started with was kor's and my idea to play pool after my last paper. Little did we know how much more was to come of that. :D


For all that Eugene was saying about how he sucked at pool, we still certainly didn't expect this: he started the first set that we played, he broke, and the cue ball *bounced* AND THEN rolled into the corner left pocket.

Edward and I were stunned. For all of three seconds before bursting into laughter.


Kor. Also known as Eugene. :P This shot missed, by the way. XD

Kor won that set anyway; I had three balls left on the table. And to prove a point, he poked in the 8-ball with the *back* of the cue. -_- In later sets, he'd frequently start chalking his cue, then stop and say, "Eh, why I chalk this side ah?" and then proceed to flip it around and chalk the butt of the cue.

-_-... *bashes kor over the head with cue*


Edward played a couple of sets too. But if I remember right, he lost both to Eugene.

It was only after about four sets that we sort of "warmed up" and kor and me had a pretty evenly-matched set; we each had about 4 shots at the 8-ball before I finally put it in. :P

But that was the score for the day though. Me, 1; Ed, 0; and Eugene got all the rest. Like, 5. I think.


Played for two and a half hours, then proceeded to walk aimlessly down Orchard road. Kor brought us to eat Rochor road tau huay which really is damn nice; and then we wandered further on to the newly renovated Cathay cinema.

It looked like a white version of Cineleisure from the outside; the same almost-completely-glass facade and bright lights and shopping mall-cum-cinema concept.

But the shops weren't open yet; all that was open was the 5th and 6th floors, where the cinemas were. The shops were still undergoing renovation, and some of the graphics on the boarded-up shop spaces just cracked us up.

I love this one because the dinosaur in it is just too adorable for words:


If you can't see the caption: "Oh, for heaven's sake-- it was on 50% discount. And besides, size does matter."

And next was this one, which each of us took a picture of. Click on it to see the text.


The "Buyability Scale".


We laughed over that one for quite some time. And then kor told us about a lesser-known part of the "got boyfriend can still break up" saying that guys seem to be fond of.

"Got boyfriend, can break;
Got husband, can divorce;
Got children, can sell."

-_-... Kor, I don't envy your kids in future.

Went up to the fourth and fifth floors, and on the fourth floor, the walls are covered with huge floor-to-ceiling spreads of all the movies that're opening during the holidays; : X-Men 3, Da Vinci Code, MI-3...

I couldn't resist taking a shot of a *part* of the X-Men 3 spread:


My favourite character in the movies. But in the entire X-Men universe, my fave is still Quicksilver; his sister, Scarlet Witch, comes a close second. I was so disappointed when I found out that the Maximoff twins wouldn't be in X-Men 3.


After that, went to see the NLB's new reference library. It really doesn't look like a library. And the inside is DAMN nice.

The lifts on the left side of the lift lobby have one wall that's completely glass, so as you ride the lift up, you can see all the surrounding area; and at night, with all the street lights on, it looks even more lovely. And me being the easily excitable little nut I am, was gushing so much over the view that it didn't occur to me to take a picture of it. Sigh.

And on the 7th floor is where all the books for the social sciences are. I swear, I've never been this in love with a library ever since I first stepped into NUS' Central Library.


Next stop: 301-- Sociology and Anthropology. :D



The Encyclopaedia of Sociology....



The title of this series of books on a top shelf caught my attention: "Mainstream and Critical Social Theory: Classical, Modern and Contemporary". So I took a picture of it as a tribute to my 3101 module: "Social Thought and Social Theory". I hadn't had this much fun in a soci module ever since Sociology of Deviance in my second semester.
Lower down, Mary Douglas' series on anthropological studies had a whole shelf to itself.


The three White Dead Men who make the lives of soci students everywhere hell. Nah, just kidding. :P
If you're not a soci student, then you might not know that we call the founding fathers of our discipline White Dead Men because well, they're all white, all men, and they're all dead-- the first two qualities are of greater significance obviously, since that creates room for criticism of their theories as being androcentric and Eurocentric. Coincidentally, the first letters of the words "White Dead Men" are also all their initials.
When I took Sociology of Deviance, my tutor, Lloyd, then called them Weapons of Mass Destruction. Lol.


In particular, Emile Durkheim, without whom Sociology wouldn't have become recognised as a discipline of its own. Personally, I'm glad for that particular outcome of his life's work. :)

I'm a nerd, I know. Some people in NUS haven't even finished their exams yet, and I'm here gushing over books. :P At one point, I sat down on the floor and announced that I didn't want to leave. I got up when Eugene proceeded to start dragging me across the floor though. -_-

We hung around till it was almost closing time, then headed down to Suntec for dinner. At least, kor and I had dinner; Edward had dinner waiting for him at home. Ate at Pastamania and I buried my Creamy Chicken pasta in cheese. Quite literally. :D On our way out, we passed by the Fountain of Wealth, and after some laughing and joking, we figured it wouldn't hurt to go stick our hands in the water and reap its rumoured benefits. :D


Obviously I'm not going to tell you what we wished for. But hey, we'd all just finished our exams; what else do you think we wished for...??


Crossed the road to get to the Esplanade, from where we'd be taking our bus home; despite the fact that we'd just eaten, kor insisted on getting kaya fondue. Which is what is sounds like. Instead of the famous kaya toast, it's kaya fondue.


Ta-da. Toast, butter in the right tub, and "really liquefied" kaya in the left tub. You dip it in the butter before the kaya; kaya alone isn't bad, but it tastes better with the butter. :)




And well, this is us on the bus home:


It was kinda difficult to fit three people into the picture, but hey, we managed it! Haha...

Which would bring me to where I am now, sitting here and typing this and almost dozing off. I'm damn tired but damn happy, haha.

Tuesday, May 02, 2006

Couple more pictures. From kor's phone.

Here's that view of the sunset from the central library rooftop again...

...only in better resolution. Coz kor's phone is the Nokia N70 with a 2 megapix camera, while mine's only a VGA. Posted by Picasa


Written on the wall of the fourth floor stairwell of the Old Admin Block:

Yeah. Like we give a flying crap. :P Posted by Picasa

Monday, May 01, 2006

You meet all kinds of people in Uni.

And maybe I couldn't have picked a better time to stop being anti-social. Up till now, after two years, I still firmly believe that I'm making up for lost time, taking part in so many student activities at a time when half the population here are more interested in studies than anything else.

But yeah. Like I was saying. You meet all kinds of people here.



The people who managed to make it this far through sheer grit and determination.

The people who're here after thinking long and hard and finally deciding to pursue what they really love after all those years of listening.

The people who're different from everyone else.

The people who scraped through and are still scraping through.

The people who just made it and are so thankful. And maybe, just maybe... ironically, you sometimes start to see that the system in here is a little more forgiving than the one out there.

The people who're sort of just drifting through, living in the moment more than anything else, and loving it. Although when they stop to think about the future, their smile crumbles just a little when you can't see.



The people whose lives are like stories out of soap operas and movies; family troubles and the like. Estranged kin and bad decisions and loved ones who've left this world.

The people who seem to have it made, with their almost picture-perfect families and smiling faces and relatively less worries than everyone else.

The people whose lives would make interesting research fodder for the Psychology department, if only you knew. And if only they were willing to tell.

The people whom lots of others wish they were.



Someone who can't make up their mind, can't decide whether or not they want to move on or say no; there's a thin line between love and hate, but the line between love and like is far narrower. Like the line between "yes" and "maybe". And sometimes in-between is the worst place to be.

Someone with something like the perfect kind of life. It's all too easy to imagine. But what would life be without a little drama?-- and maybe for that reason, there's a little piece of that life, somewhere out there dancing.

Someone with a strange kind of Electra complex-- looking everywhere for the people that they lost in the people that they know.

Someone who's a better actor than they thought-- they've managed to fool themselves as well. And trying to find out how they've managed to do so after so long hurts the most.

Someone who drifts through life-- places and faces like so much that's only used, abused, discarded. And one can only hope that they're happy with what they've chosen.

Someone who seems really happy. And one can only hope that Life shall always love them this way.



These are the people that make up my life.