Just found out the best thing ever (well, at this point in time, anyway); "Everwood" is back!! YAY!!! :D

Have been waiting FOREVER to see the second season since middle of last year, and now that stupid Channel 5 has finally brought it back, guess what; they're airing it at 1 am on Friday mornings. (-_-)...

And this is a good, clean family drama that we're talking about here. Whose first season they used to air at 7 pm on Sundays. And which my sisters and I just loved. Not a lot of people whom we knew watched it or had heard of it, but heck if we cared.

All we cared about was that it was heartwarming, funny stuff and that Gregory Smith was cute, and I loved that the characters were just so perfectly flawed.

If my sister hadn't mentioned it offhandedly tonight while I was eating my dinner, I probably would never have known that they were showing it now, man.

Another reason why I loved "Everwood" (and still do) is coz it's set in a small town. Always wanted to live in a small town. And here you have a small town that's hidden away in the Rockies, and the nearest city is Denver, a couple of miles away.

Always wanted to live somewhere quiet, isolated, where it'd be just me and my writing and I could watch the day go by, living in a place that was empty and mostly untouched and where the town was small and everyone knew each other. I've liked the idea of living in a small town for as long as we've been visiting my paternal grandmother every Lunar New Year (coz she lives in a small town in Malaysia), and I completely fell in love with it when I read "To Kill A Mockingbird" for my Literature O Levels.

But, you know, the funny thing is, as I was watching "Everwood" just now, I realised something.

I realised that all the plans and dreams that I've ever made or had for my life and my future involve just me. No one else.

I figure that means that, a) I'm really selfish (which really, I think I am), or b) it's just never crossed my mind that there would ever be anyone else besides just me.

And I wonder if I'll ever start imagining a quiet life with two people in it. And I wonder if I want to imagine that, or if I just want to leave it in the future, just leaving it to happen without giving any thought to it.

Because I dream, yeah, that's true. And sometimes I dream with no intention of letting those dreams come true. Sometimes I dream for the sake of letting my mind wander. And sometimes I dream because I'd like it to happen.

I know; in a time when everybody's planning for their tomorrows and next weeks and next years, my way of pretty much living for the here and now is going to backfire on me.

But I'll appreciate everything more because nothing will ever be the same as it is now. Everyone that I know could be completely changed over the course of one night if something big happened. You could migrate elsewhere and I'd never even know that you'd left.

And I may be almost twenty now, but before the M18 rating came about and when I was upset that I couldn't watch things that were previously rated RA, like "City of God", I was still happy that I could still do all the things that minors could do and really, were expected to do.

I'll see all the things that you miss. I'll watch a chameleon run across the path from LT 11 up to the Old Admin Block and scurry up the nearest tree; I'll watch birds drink out of a puddle of water and remember how the birds around my old house used to wash themselves in the puddle that'd gather behind the gate everytime after it rained. I'll watch the same silly mynah try to hop across the road instead of flying across; I'll watch a little spider catch and cocoon a flying ant the same size as it while sitting in the corner of a bus on the way to school, and I'll watch as those tiny birds build a little nest in my neighbours' rambutan tree.

And one day, maybe I'll imagine watching the rest of the world go by with you.

Because there was line in "Everwood" just now, towards the end, which I found oddly fitting.

"...I heard this laugh. This incredible no-holds-barred laugh like gravel on sandpaper. I had no intention to settle down, but it hit me in that moment that that voice could be opening the door to an adventure as profound as any I could ever have alone. And I chose it."

After watching Shaun play Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty on the PS2 in clubroom on Friday night, I became rather enthralled with the game, so made up my mind to try it sometime, perhaps when the exams are over.

However... I came into clubroom today to study and found, when I first stepped into the room, that I wasn't really in a studying mood.

Long story cut short: MGS2 kept me entertained for the better part of two hours. :D Haven't gotten very far yet, but that doesn't really matter.


Things that playing Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty teaches you:

1. You require a lot of patience.

2. Usually a lot more patience than the amount which you know yourself to possess.

3. Weapons ar good, weapons are handy, but in the end, don't forget that you still have your hands and arms and legs and are still perfectly capable of unarmed combat. Only in really desperate situations, of course.

4. Trying to sneak past an entire room of people makes for a very amusing situation. Especially when you tranquilise people and they fall asleep standing up. That, or you tranq them, they fall over, and no one notices. (Yes, this is the stage where Otacon wants you to take pictures of the Metal Gear.)

5. The little voice in your head telling you to go study can be really annoying. And loud. Or maybe that's just me.

6. Explosives and infra-red sensors are really... quite... annoying. Especially when you can't bloody see the control unit for the sensors.

7. "People" in games are sometimes blind. Really.

8. I need to learn to threaten people properly.

9. Sometimes you'll wish that Snake could run faster.

10. After a while you'll wonder why the hell you started playing but you'll shrug it off and continue playing coz you'll think that it's "really damn fun" despite the fact that you're trying to take out the bloody infra-red sensors (again) that've blown you up about five times already.


Shall return to my work now. :P If I gain any more... enlightening insights, I shall update this list. :D

Oh for goodness' sake.

Does someone up there want the island of Singapore to drown?!?! Enough bleedin' RAIN already!!

Well, okay, if it rained while I was at home and snuggled under the covers, I wouldn't mind. Heehee. But NOT while I'm in school, already half freezing to death with the 24-hours, almost-subzero air-conditioning in clubroom; I don't need the rain to further add to this!! *sniffle*

*Looks around* Ivan's at tutorial now.. hm. Maybe when he gets back, will try convincing him to sit down on the sofa and huddle for a bit. Freezing.

Oh, but he has to go down to Goh Bros. at SRC to get posters printed for Exam Tea. And if he sits down anywhere, he'll probably fall asleep. But he shouldn't be walking around so much, anyway; he's headachey.

Argh. Bleah. Lousy girlfriend I am; can't do anything.

*Frowns, looks around some more and sighs*

Think I'll get back to my revision. Got a B- for my History essay critique, by the way. Pretty good considering I wasn't exactly very sure what I was supposed to do (how do you critique an essay when it isn't a work of literature, but a compilation of facts???) and it was pretty last-minute work too.

Anyway, I think A/P Farrell was pretty lenient; nice of him. He seems to have a pretty fair system of marking, at any rate. So hopefully my field trip report will fare better. Coz I did know what I was doing with that one, and I was quite happy with it.

Sigh. All right. Back to revision. And waiting for Ivan to get back.

My hands are freezing.

“Young son, it argues a distemper'd head
So soon to bid good morrow to thy bed:
Care keeps his watch in every old man's eye,
And where care lodges, sleep will never lie;
But where unbruised youth with unstuff'd brain
Doth couch his limbs, there golden sleep doth reign:
Therefore thy earliness doth me assure
Thou art up-roused by some distemperature;
Or if not so, then here I hit it right,
Our Romeo hath not been in bed to-night.”

-Friar Laurence, Romeo and Juliet, Act 2 Sc. 3


Gerri has not been in bed either. And is now the worse for it.

Stayed up the whole night to write my second Philo paper, or at least to try and think up points to discuss/argue with, but failed miserably. Second paper was a thousand times more difficult and WORSE than the first; Rene Descartes’ work is interesting and easy enough to understand, but damn it, it’s bloody difficult to argue about in an essay.

I’ve never been so tired in all my life; even the day after Rag last year, I still had more energy than this. Right now, it feels like all my individual organs want to go into hibernation somewhere and not reappear for another 3 months or so.

This current state is the result of not sleeping on Friday night and coming to school early on Saturday morning to help with the semi-finals and finals of Futsal Open, and then staying in clubroom till 11.30 pm that same night to finish and send in my History field trip report. After which, I went home and got about 6 hours of sleep. Then, on Sunday I came to school again to start on the stupid Philo essay, but could not formulate any kind of thoughts on it whatsoever. Damn it.

So here I am now, STILL working on it. I think I'm not going to be very happy with this one and I don't think I'm going to do very well for it. But then again, I doubt that many people will. Friggin' Descartes and Mill and Berlin.

So this Philo essay might probably upset my nice record for this sem: to date, every essay that I've received back has been at least a B-something. Unlike how last sem, I got a C+ for two papers. I hope I get an A- at least, for the History field trip report; I was quite happy with that one.

Sigh. Will get back to my Philo essay now.. darned thing. And hopefully I'll be able to come up with something presentable and hand it in before 1.00 pm, so I'll be able to get at least an hour's sleep before E Lang lecture; otherwise, I'll probably just be concussed throughout the whole two hours of lecture. :S

Oh, the joys of uni life.

Funny. It's April Fool's, but everyone's dying.

Terri Schiavo's finally been put to rest, the Pope has been given his last rites, and two more conjoined twins have arrived in Singapore for separation, of course with a high risk of death for both, especially since one of them has a hole in her heart.

Turned on the TV for a short while this morning while I was eating breakfast and saw that Terri Schiavo had finally passed on, and then George Bush came on; they showed an excerpt of his speech about how "today, everyone mourns the death of Terri Schiavo".

No. Not everyone. She should've been allowed to move on a long time ago.

All right, so I understand; to say that it's difficult to deal out "mercy killing" to a family member must be one of the greatest understatements ever made. But if you ask me, her family's just been selfish all this while.

Fifteen years. Isn't that enough to tell you that she isn't coming back? Wasn't the scan showing that her brain was complete mush enough to tell you that she hasn't been in there all along?

Have they just been afraid to let her die because they'd like to convince themselves that as long as her body draws breath, she's still alive, in some sense? Have they refused to let her move on because they want her around?

I wonder what makes you think a person is alive.

If I have a routine that I follow, doing the same things day in and day out, am I alive?

If I lived for the moment and stood in the sunshine and sat by my window and slept and woke as and when I felt like it, am I alive?

And what if I saw the same people everyday, ones that I hate and ones that I love, and ones which are everything in between and I loved and laughed and basked in their companionship; would you think me truly alive?

And what then if I ran from everything and everyone all the time and lived in a world where I never saw the same face twice and my world was full of strangers that I did not wish to talk to, but I walked in sunlight and I breathed fresh air, would I still be alive?

What then if I simply breathed and did nothing more?

Would you tell me that I am an idle daydreamer, taking joy in the world without giving anything in return? Would you think me useless, making nothing of my life? Would you think me "alive" if I watched Life run on and pass me by and never gave thought to give chase?


And Bush said that Americans should value life and treasure it, and treasure the lives of those who live at the mercy of others; how about the Iraqis, then? Do they live at your mercy or at the mercy of your soldiers?

And don't we all live at the mercy of everyone else, then? No one could have everyone else in the world like or love them, and if someone so decided to kill them someday because of this, who could stop them if they'd made up their mind? Discounting the arm of the law, that is.

Funny; when humans first lived on this Earth, we knew that life and death were natural and could let each other go because we could do nothing about it.

Now that we can stave off death and prolong life, we grow tired of it and wage wars and commit suicides; we use more resources than we've ever had to in the past and we leave less and less for those who may or may not come after us, even as we talk of increasing our populations; we fool ourselves into believing that our doctors and their instruments will always be able to keep Death at bay, and we believe that those whom we love will always be here because we don't wish them to go. We won't let them go.

Until everything else in the world reminds us that we don't really have a say in it. It makes for a good wake-up call, and everyone mills around in despondent thought for a while (or not), but in the end, we all still go back to laughing and walking in the sunshine, and back to sleep, waiting for that next rude awakening.

Okay, well, metal bow was just about as difficult as I thought it'd be.

Metal riser already weighs substantially more than a wooden riser; then add to that the two side stabilisers, which probably weigh about only 100 grams together, but when you extend your arm, holding 100 grams at the end of it makes it weigh slightly more than it should.

And then add the centre stabiliser which is the one which extends all the way out in front of the bow. AND which has weights on the end. Which weigh about another 100 grams alone, maybe? And when you consider that this stabiliser extends even further, that 100 grams on the end of the stabiliser weigh about three times more than they should.

Tiring, man...

And the problem that I previously had when I upgraded from a 25-pound wooden bow to a 28-pound one is back again; namely, I couldn't turn in my elbow and my form is all shot to hell. Well, maybe that's exaggerating; not ALL. My T-draw is still um.. half-intact, I think. Haha.

Also played around with Zhan Tao's bow for a bit; he's changed his bow. It's still a 34-pounder, but with a black Hoyt riser (I *think* it's a Gold-Medallist riser??) with Stinger carbon limbs.

Carbon limbs are um... well, simply put, VERY good stuff and hence, very expensive. The thing with carbon limbs that all our seniors have been telling us is that it makes your draw smoother and doesn't require as much strength; hence, 34-poundage carbon limbs, when drawn, feel more like 32-pounds. The same amount of power with less effort, in other words. You could say that carbon limbs are just more "flexible" than wooden ones.

When I was shooting with Zhan Tao's bow today, man, I could feel the difference immediately; Khim Nyang was right: "Once you shoot with carbon limbs, everything else will feel like shit." :D

So, all that aside, currently, my metal bow has a grey-black Samick metal riser, Samick Progress-1 limbs and is a 30-pound bow. Upgrade of two pounds. Heh... I was lazy, and didn't want to upgrade to things like 34 pounds; didn't want to take too long to retrain my form, since indoor competition is in June, and the rest of March and a good part of April are probably going to be spent mugging more than training.

All this is just making me appreciate my old wooden bow a little more; looks like good ol' Bloodsucker's going to be on hiatus till next year's junior comm steps in.

And on a side note, apparently Ivy Singh-Lim, President of the Singapore Netball Association, will be stepping down soon. Quite sad; I always did love how outspoken she was, and all her amusingly-worded insults. :D Enjoyed myself thoroughly that one time when she was on Channel NewsAsia's Primetime Morning and she was arguing with this other guy from the Singapore Sports Council over the subject of women in sports or something of the like. I've forgotten exactly what the subject was, but she was just giving him a hard time, man. I think the two newscasters were pretty amused themselves. :D

But, yeah, she has made a lot of headway for netball in Singapore; I wonder if anyone will ever do the same for archery. Coz currently, the President of the Archery Association of Singapore is this old guy (all right, maybe not old; middle-aged?) whom I don't have a terribly flattering opinion of.

But you didn't hear me say anything about that. ;)

Happy Good Friday; although that doesn't really sound right. Who says "Happy Good Friday", anyway? On hindsight, Good Friday isn't supposed to be "happy", is it? And on further hindsight, what on earth does Saint Patrick's Day celebrate?

Babbling again. Never mind me.

Went off down to Orchard with my family after church this morning; Mum wanted to go shopping for clothes at OG coz they're having 20% discounts in certain departments, and um, I was slightly fascinated by some of the things in the lingerie department. Especially the T-shirt Bra; it looks very... I have no idea how to describe it, but it looks very.. stretchy! And synthetic. Suede-like! Yeah, I think that's how I might describe it; it looks like it'd feel like suede.

It looks like it'd feel like those rubber puzzle mats that they have in playschools, the kind that have letters or things in the middle of them that you can push out and then put back in; y'know what I'm talking about?

Maybe I should stop talking about lingerie. :P

Ended up buying quite a lot of new clothes from Specialist's Shopping Centre later; well, "a lot" by my standards, anyway. :P I think my mum felt generous today.

I now have two sleeveless strappy tops, which I happen to like quite a lot, but unfortunately, my shoulders look very broad in them. The result of my archery training, no doubt... -_-

Oh well. Still looks all right, though. Aside from the tanlines of my shirt sleeves, which look quite hideous if I wear a sleeveless top, I've realised.

Oh, and I forgot to blog yesterday.. Yesterday, while Ivan and I were walking back from the canteen after buying lunch, nearing the end of AS1 Walkway, I noticed a guy who seemed to be trying to open the two high windows up on the wall; the ones that look like they haven't been washed in the last ten years.

But then he moved away and a little sparrow just fell off the ledge of those windows. Poor thing... By then, Ivan and I had stopped to look, out of curiosity; the guy tried to pick it up, but it fluttered away and made a beeline straight for me, haha...

I saw it coming towards me and thought that it'd pass behind me, so I turned to watch it go, but it never appeared on my other side, so it made sense that.. it was clinging to the back of my shirt.

Aww... I couldn't see it, but the very idea of it is just too cute for words. ^_^

The other guy spent about a minute trying to dislodge its little claws (talons??) from my shirt, and I wanted to touch it, but he took it back with him to the bench where he was manning one of the booths with his friends, so I didn't get the chance to. So sad. Oh well.

Today feels like a Sunday, man... Will have to wake up at 7 am tomorrow coz I'm going for training... and I'll be upgrading to a metal bow! YAY!!! :D :D :D