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Category: Campus Capers

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The lack of posts is not without a reason.

Have been crazy busy the past weeks. A destroyed Macbook rendering me helpless, rehearsals thrice a week, assignments due…

BUT NOW I’M FREE(ER).

Chasing Yesterday with NUS Stage on 31st Oct/1st Nov was amazing. Got to work with insanely talented people, had ridiculous costume changes, played around with ingenious set designs. Although i was kinda silly to jump in in my first sem without finding out what the commitment level would be like, on hindsight i would have done it again anyway.

Right now I have a backlog of work to deal with… if you count eating chips while listening to Disney music with my laptop on dealing with it. Promise i’d post more often and more substantially kkk.

November 4, 2012
RC things

some things i didn’t anticipate about living in a residential college.

1.

the very cumbersome need to always have a buck with you for laundry services. sometimes made worse when the coin exchange machine wouldn’t have your note for some reason. also, sometimes when you end up losing your notes. crai.

2.

rooms are a time warp. in one night, the place can gather dustballs the size and intensity of tumbleweeds – the kind you get in mansions destitute for about fifty years.

3.

there is not. enough. meat. in this place. every day it’s cookies and biscuits and bread and pastry. i used to go for carbs all the time, but now even i’m sick of it. currently subsisting on chocolates (which i can’t get sick of) and reluctantly, bread.

i am going to have a steak tonight, i solemnly promise myself.

Edit: GUYS. I TAKE THIS BACK. Whined to my dad about craving meat and he force fed me with marbled beef sukiyaki, Japanese curry chicken, sashimi and soft shell crab oh god oh god that was six hours ago and i can still feel them all the animals going berserk inside me ughhh.

But oh the sukiyaki was brilliant. Broth was diabetically flavorful and wagyu beef cut was full of lovely buttery fats.

LOOK AT THAT BEAUTIFUL DAMN MARBLE.

But for now i’m actually sick of meat and am temporarily vegetarian. Probably until tomorrow afternoon when i start morphing into a carnivore again.

4.

i really love late mornings in this place though. the pretentious green grass, the planes of light on clean wood, the cicadas, the easy space.

5.

i’ve heard horror stories about pantry thieves, but have been very thankfully unharmed (yay!) in fact, i’m the mug thief. i steal mugs every morning from the dining hall. well i do return them.. eventually.

6.

for someone who gets hungry every 1.5 hours (yes, again, the impeccable body clock strikes – the same one that makes me wake at 6:30am every morning), it’s a long miserable trip out to cheers/koufu every time i want snacks.

7.

i still miss home, but now i see RC as another home. getting used to the entire place. walking around with misshapen hair in my embarrassing home shorts.

September 28, 2012
Higher, higher

1.

Still find myself stuck with my old mermaid hair habits – and then hitting blanks when i attempt to flip/ sweep/ adjust now non-existent hair. Although.. am coming to terms with the fact that I look like a (pretty) five-year-old Japanese boy everyone has a secret crush on. Yeah.

2.

PASSION PIT

Wasn’t the best concert, frankly, but still – it’s Passion Pit. And therefore still fantastic. They are geniuses, and I can’t find a song in Gossamer I don’t like. Come to think of it, I can’t find any song of theirs I don’t like.

3.

I’ll tell you something strange about uni.

You can simultaneously spend a lot more time with friends, and yet feel lonely more often. I don’t mean being alone. I like being alone. But living on campus is like being a panopticon of sorts… you feel like you’re always being watched, or held accountable, and so you’re never really alone (which i like to be). Instead, you’re somewhere but by yourself – which makes me feel acutely lonely at times.

4.

I am very busy.

Studying.

Yes I know it’s only the second week… but the workload oh Lord. I’ve never spent so much time on a single piece of homework. I’ve never actually had to think so hard for any assignment, not even math. Because there’s no formula or right way of doing it, I just have to exercise them neuron links which I haven’t for a long time. I may be slighhhhtly over-taxed but k. I CAN DO THIS. My eyes hurt all the time.

5.

Got a role in this year’s EMCC for NUStage! More on it another time.

6.

I love familiar places but am too exhausted to enjoy them fully. And also, shopping is my therapy. Now that I’ve sworn not to buy any clothes (for at least six months after the BKK spree), I’m splurging on books and boooooks why you so lovely and why I so little time to molest y’all properly.

7.

I’m trying my best to make sure I spend some time with everyone I really am!

8.

So tired all the time but reverse insomnia still persists. Every morning at 6:37am sharp I wake up and cannot fall back asleep.

August 26, 2012
Home/ Hairpiness

I’m homesick already.

I miss waking up to the white noise of channel 8 and vehicles, the sticky afternoon heat. Every morning i rise mechanically at 7am sharp and feel a little lost. Now i’m free to leave and go wherever i want without having to account to anyone, but i can’t be bothered to. Single room corridor kid cooped up in a nine meter squared space. I miss dancing in and out of rooms. I miss the ancient out of tune piano and my sister’s violin practices. I used to hate questions in the morning, but now i want my grandma asking me what i’d like for breakfast (without fail) once i emerge from my room (now i queue along with everyone and deal with the tasteless scrambled eggs). I worried about communal showers, that i might have to wait around to get a stall. It’s funny how things work out though – every evening level 12 is a ghost town. It’s like no one visits the toilet – otherwise they’ve worked out a way to visit it when no one else does. Toilets are always for me only, whichever time i choose to use them. Disembodied voices rise up once in awhile, figures float in and out of the doors along my aisle but i never catch their faces before they shut their doors.

I was excited for lessons, and i still am. But i may have overlooked one minor detail.. that WORK. CAN BE CHALLENGING. It’s only the first week and i can tell i have lots of self-studying to do. Lectures have been alright (if not fun) so far, mostly thanks to Rhordonna people around all the time so i don’t feel so small and lost and scared. If there’s one thing that worked out right it’s that i found great friends in my OG. We’re gonna tiong it up and get that 1st class honors.

And yes, everyone. I cut my hair.

I now resemble a) a small boyboy b) a 5 year old Japanese girl c) a Japanese boy in a wig (but a pretty one k)

The regret sunk in almost at once. And by at once i mean the second the hairdresser closed in his scissors on my 500cm hair which has not seen a salon for a good couple of years (i do my own fringe). Nay, i lie. It was before that. While waiting for the dude to get ready i looked at myself in the mirror, still in my mermaid hair glory, and thought ‘i look fabulous. what the hell am i doing here?’

But it had to be done at that point. I needed change to counter the amount of sheer shittyness i felt. Thing is: i don’t cope well to changes. Huge environmental upheavals, whether positive or not, is always a rug yanked from my feet. I need to feel in control of myself and my position, changes don’t go easy on that. And once i feel myself orbiting away from absolute control – i panic and lose all of it. After a week of particular intensity, i managed to grope my way home (haven!) and collapsed.

The next morning i woke up half-dead and with that terrible aftertaste of fatigue in my mouth. Received a text in my daze from the boyfriend, mentioning a haircut. And i knew i had to do it. So before i was fully lucid, and before my morning balls of steel waned, i ran down to a mamashop barber and said: just cut short.

…and you know how it went down from there.

While i’m getting used to it now, there are some regrets (mixed feelings on them though).

a) I feel much less attractive. You can’t deny science, and science says people find girls with long hair more attractive.

b) Swishy hair is good for theatre and dance. Which i plan to try in NUS if i’m not overloaded with work and other life shit. So with this hair i have to work twice as hard on anything that can be achieved with less effort (because hair makes everything look better) (unless they’re growing on your upper lip).

c) This is so wrong, but the primary purpose of mermaid hair is to use as a shield on days you’re too lazy to wear underwear (for me, all the time) (and it’s decent since i’m flat as hell anyway).

At the same time i knew it had to be done, and although i wasn’t immediate conscious of it – short hair serves some purposes.

a) For practical purposes, short hair means less shedding -> less room clean-up angst. And a faster drying time at night so i don’t have to mooch around for hours when i could be sleeping (i don’t use hairdryers).

b) With mermaid hair people tend to see you as bimbo first, and anything else second. Sometimes they get stuck seeing you as a bimbo. But i’m anything but that. I’m intelligent and talented and also incredibly humble. I want people to look at my FACE and what i do or say, not in general: as a long-haired girl. I don’t know why but people do that. I do that too. Hair distracts. And detracts.

c) For the first time in years, i can walk through a crowd of Bangledeshi without them cat-whistling at me and by God, it’s liberating.

I miss everything old terribly, terribly much.. my own room; my hair; my leisure time; my friends. But i’m coming to terms with things and realizing that it might turn out to be something i’d love and would grow to miss very much in the future too.

In the mean time.

August 17, 2012
Things, and other things.

BKK SHOPPING~

Led by the experienced Benita, Cleo and I wandered through five days of PURE SHOPPING. We finished Platinum Mall (BOTH BUILDINGS), went to Chatuchak for a day, and explored a little of the other central malls. Platinum’s still the best through. Like people possessed we combed the entire area for good buys AND BOY DID WE BUY. Here’s my Mountain – and out of us three i bought the least…

The food was pretty good, and amazingly CHEAP it’s insane. Local highlights being the Pad Thai and Som Tam and their OBSCURE MANGO WHICH I CRAVE. Not the orange slimy kind we have here neither was it sour green mango. It was like honeydew with a mango-ey flavor. But mainly – the shopping. BKK’s perfect for that. In total i spent probably only about 500SGD, and just clothes itself i have at least 50 items. So on average every item’s LESS THAN 10 BUCKS HOW CRAY IS DAT. Although i kind of overdid it on the florals, and have a couple of strange blouses that’d make me look like an overenthusiastic tourist in Hawaii. But never mind imma rock it.

Although with camps and all i haven’t been able to dive into my new clothes what a pitzzz.

USP O WEEK~

VALHALLA OVERFLOWING! Because it was O week it was mostly talks and chillz, which was good in a way because i needed some chill after 5 days of consecutive shopping.

CATSY SHMATZY’S SEND-OFF :-(

Broke camp for half a day to send Cathleen Wong off.. Yeap dat bitch gon be away for the first time since we became friends in 2006. The Mugs did up an elaborate and (waaay too) glittery poster, and i presented myself in a frog mask.. all to please her. It’s still kinda surreal and hasn’t quite sunk in. But i will miss her so, so much. We have two more of these send offs to go. Then i’ll be lonely cold and friendless in Singapore. Well not really cold, but everything else.

Had a nice time catching up with Shreen, Shermz and Cel as we headed home. I really, really need more time for my friends wow.

MODULE BIDDING HELL YEA

So this semester i’ll be taking Intro Psych, Psych stats, Intro Political Science, Intro Literature, and Issues around Justice for USP. YES i actually got every module i wanted, mostly out of luck but i’m a hapzgurl. I never did put much thought into module bidding though – only properly understood it’s workings on the day of bidding itself. And even then i just whacked and hoped for the best. With Stats and Justice i’m ~KINDA worried about overloading right on my first sem though.

ARTS O WEEK~

Yesterday was Day 1 of Arts O Week it was funfun seeing all my Rhor bitchezz again waow. Once i’m fully awake i’ll leave for Day 2, and be back to ready all my stuff for TOMORROW. WHEN I LEAVE HOME AND MOVE INTO MY NEW ONE.

MOVING INTO CINNAMON

I’m a freak and also very excited about cleaning up. I’m actually more excited about all the organizing and cleaning than moving in. I love making things clean and putting things into order and organizing and basically all the OCD hygiene shit. It gives me a strange high. So yeah TOMORROW SPRING CLEANING.

Thassal folks.

August 5, 2012
A response to Janelle Lee (‘s fans)

Just read Janelle Lee’s open letter to the education minister.

Frankly, I am not impressed. I’d applaud her for taking the time to comment on an issue that bugs her (especially at a time so close to her Os), and agree that her points are somewhat valid. But other than that?

I was expecting some insight, a fresh perspective, at least a critical suggestion addressing the situation. Instead, I rifted through points that were done to death on TV, in online forums, and across the dinner table. Have we not already explored the rigidity, the textbook-based system, the lack of creativity in Singaporean classrooms?

If I isolate her content and credit style for the apparent effectiveness of the letter, it is similarly disappointing. At best, Janelle is polite. She is fluent and clear. But stylistically, it is empty and somewhat aimless. I know (think?) she feels strongly for the subject, but the passion, the concern, even the interest wasn’t conveyed prettily enough/at all to properly engage a critical reader (and by that I mean one who is thinking not one who is bitchy). Basically she doesn’t have a strong individual voice.

I have nothing against Janelle’s hopes and ideas, but I do have something to say about the uproar surrounding it. If I hadn’t read the comments, I would’ve just gone ‘oh, nice effort!’ and moved on with my life. Everything I’ve said is not a criticism of Janelle per se, because I had no prior expectations of her, and Janelle did not really pride herself for being some sort of great journalistic political matyr or anything. It was the comments that made her seem like so. In this light, should she really be credited for her ‘observations’, ‘maturity’ and ‘ability to question the unquestioned’?

She did make observations – passive ones, and furthermore ones that did not require much analysis of the situation. In fact, they are conventional views – listen and you’ll hear the multitudes, from the elites to the lower rungs, bitching about the system.

Yes she is mature, not in her views and thoughts, but that she channeled her frustrations in a classy manner.

I’d have to disagree that she ‘questions the unquestioned’. That is untrue, because everything she has questioned had been questioned so many damn times they have become a tedium than something of intellectual wonder.

These are my suspicions. Readers continue to laud her brilliant writing and maturity because by themselves, they have
a) No pre-understanding of the discussions on the issue of education. They are probably hermits who’ve newly emerged from deep hibernation since the autocratic times. The presence of dissent, and moreover dissent that they can identify with, sends then into frantic flights of eager admiration.

b) Not given much thought to the issue.
‘WOW. I am impressed!!! So cool! I have never thought about education this way! In fact, I have never thought of education, ever! Actually I’ve never thought, period.’ (okay idk why I’m morphing into such a bitch tart here SRS! I promise this is a friendly benign observation I think I’m just cranky it’s past my bedtime.)

c) The tendency to underestimate youths. Judging from the comments, I think this might be the most pertinent reason of all for the Janelle Lee letter worship. Many are along the line of ‘FOR SUCH A YOUNG AGE, YOU (insert niceties here).’ The temasek review titles it ‘an open letter to the minister BY A SECONDARY FOUR STUDENT.’ Now why the emphasis on her age? If she were a thirty year old businessman, will the letter still be considered ‘impressive’? Would you endorse a kindergarden child’s letter of little sense just because he could spell everything correctly?

People give her more credit than she truly deserves, or may have even exaggerated the true brilliance of her letter because they viewed her age as an intellectual handicap.

The truth: on the Internet, or on any other technological device, youths have a combined intelligence about ten times as powerful as adults (given that the population size of both are equal).

The interwebz are where teenagers and yuppies THRIVE. We’re given a powerful platform that almost forces us to come up with the freshest insights at the fastest speed possible. Most who use the Internet at an impressionable age go through an intellectual rebirth. That is sadly, the privilege of the young. Many competent adults sound like complete retards on the Internet.

My point is, online, youths are the geniuses. Flashes of genius stun adults who otherwise face seeming inert apathy of teens in real life. What may have been the daily online exercise of these teenagers impress them a lot more than it should.

This is what happened, I believe, in the case of Janelle Lee. Now that I’m nearing sleep and on the whole a happier person, I’ll say for a Sec 4 she’s quite a steady thinker. Not the most eloquent, not the most analytical, but still a notch higher than the majority of our youths.

I’m really glad Singaporean teens deposit coherent take on issues that matter, a significant progression from listing what they had for dinner (curry rice and tauhuey jsyk). So yeah. Good for her.

Of all, people should start setting higher standards for the critical skills of students. If you don’t trust us enough to form our own judgement on things – even displaying deep surprise at a simple, somewhat mediocre, show of political judgment – it stifles our ability to think because in return we conform to the expectations you have of us.

THATSALLKTHNXBYE. DON’T HATE I AM SLEEPY AS HELL.

OH YES. For those of you who went through the above without an inkling of what the hell I’m writing about, here’s Janelle Lee’s open letter to the education minister (Mr Heng Swee Keat) where she points out the flaws of the education system:

http://www.temasekreview.com/2011/07/12/an-open-letter-to-the-education-minister-from-a-secondary-4-student/

July 22, 2011
i’nsane.

BLOCKS. ARE. OVER.

it was altogether such a terrifying experience there wasn’t much relief yesterday when it we were finally done with it. events after – lunch at ichiban-boshi, drugged out shopping, and scaling up the orchard central, was BIZARRE. plain bizarre. we saw colored men in bodysuits trying to drink (and failing because, well duh they were wearing FREAKING BODYSUITS). there was also apparently a cosplay fest we were uninformed of in our stint of reclusion, which was frankly quite scary, and then the star wars troopers and chewbacca and for some reason, sharity elephant, were leading a dragon-dance. i have no idea what happened, really. but anyway.

all i’m gonna do now is read. and read. and read. and eat. and watch billy elliot. also i’ll find some time to update more nonsense here.

challenge of the week: read 30 novels. because PRELIMSPRELIMSPRELIMS then As! here soon and i won’t find time anymoar arghswisshawahah i’m going mad.

July 3, 2011
so during the lit paper

Snow

The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was
Spawning snow and pink roses against it
Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:
World is suddener than we fancy it.

World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion
A tangerine and spit the pips and feel
The drunkenness of things being various.

And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world
Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes–
On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of your hands–
There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.

– Louis Macneice

June 27, 2011
a thank you

life had been so amazing to me, it’s kinda hard to settle down and do work. i’ll try, but before anything i need to let you guys know how much i love y’all.

to my class, for being spontaneous and all-accommodating, for all the time we spend together in hell keeping each other alive.

[Here was, for a few hours, a photo so representative of our embarrassing escapades that I have been requested to remove it from the public eye. Sorry bbz!]

to all my crazy friends. i’m sorry for choosing only the really unglam ones. i also regret not being able to meet up with all of you :-( i srsly need more photos to prove that i have not one friend who is truly sane. WHERE ARE Y’ALL AND WHAT HAPPENED TO REDUCING OURSELVES TO USELESS EATING CAMWHORES. Also – why we have no photo of G’s bday.

to my CAP OG, thanks for being lovely and obedient babies despite me being probably only a year older and acting about five years younger. you guys were amazing and my only hope is that y’all had as much fun as i did.

and to cap’11 councillors, i miss you guys so much. :’-( all the nights we spent either wasted away by intense fatigue or watching epic balloon fights or debating over the merits of Justin Bieber’s existence and of course the aCAPella/report chiong-ing. is it possible to start loving people so much after 5 days? hoho anyway all y’all are beautiful.

and most of all my family, who taught me to face life and its challenges with good humour and altruism, and who never fail to practice the same themselves. for never grudging my constant muck-ups or demands.

THIS LIFE IS GREAT. BUT I NEED TO STUDY. D-‘:

June 8, 2011
つけかえた頭で彼らはからかうの

not being thoughtful about life is a tragic excuse for not blogging. :’-(

also, i don’t exactly know where each stands in the causal link. so in a desperate (very) attempt to regain some sort of contemplative ability, i’m here. hi.

1.

i am growing old. and tired. and jaded.

2.

so are my parents, apparently. i sat in the car for a full ten minutes chatting with my mom and bullying my sister, wondering why my dad hasn’t started driving: he didn’t know i was in the car.

3.

i have come to terms with my largely carnivorous and dairy-based diet. everyone’s all like, omg weiqing please eat vegetables you disgusting methane-filled toxic wasteland of a child. so after the week of fried potatoes, i attempted a 40% increase in vegetable intake – including mushrooms, some dubious bits of spinach leaves (which were absolute horrors), and other things that look like they belong to a vegetable patch but i’m not sure what they actually are. also, i ate fruits. FRUITS. instead of chips, i subbed peanut butter into my snack bar. i am now extremely addicted to peanut butter. it’s a kind of vegetable right? nuts are vegetables – so are peanuts? k let’s just leave it as yes.

anyhus, instead of transforming into the supersonic being, it’s made me lethargic and weak-kneed and hungry almost all the time. so i’ve decided, screw this shit. my body is probably wired differently and can only be healthily sustained with preservatives and processed bacteria and stuff. so i’m not going to eat vegetable ever again. that’s all.

4.

you would think that not seeing your closest friends for a long time can reduce friction, but when we pass a level of friendship where you can suspend basic respect without fear of losing one another, it’s difficult to truly enjoy the company. is it because we’re so secure about each other, there’s no urgency to sustain it?

we’re so caught up with ourselves, no one’s bothered to realise that i’m the only one without another one of us where i am, so you just sidestep my need to share about my life, and sidestep my developments with a ‘you’ve changed’. so why am i the one having to listen and advice when there are others right there with you. when do i get my chance to tell you about my experience without your judgement?

it’s getting hard to reconcile both sides of my life, and sometimes i think the current me is better off with those in school who bother to understand and actually care.

5.

most of the time now, i want to be alone.

6.

mugging can no longer get you anywhere. even if you’re as intelligent a being as me. your only salvation now is super-mugging, of which i am not yet capable of but will soon enough.

April 17, 2011