Q

Gee is 21!

one of the few i love and respect most in the whole world, who knows me better than anyone else.

we have spent some SERIOUSLY crazy time together. in secondary school, most of my after-school hours were with you – laughing, crying, talking, scheming, running around being nuts, doing the most insane things, in class… waxing our arm hair with scotch-tape, coming up with code names, showering together in church camp…

with you i have an entire trove of inside jokes and shared memories that can never be exhausted. there are really no proper words for how much we’ve been through together – the good and the bad. you have such a huge part to play in coloring the parts of myself i love best, i’ll never stop thanking you for that.

Gee, you are truly a force to be reckoned with. Even you know this yourself. For all your wilting wit and agitated nosebleeds, you’re one heck of an amazing human being. i’m so proud of you for every thing – not just the tangible achievements (although those are impressive), but most of all for who you are and who you will be. Strong, intense, idiosyncratic, passionate, crazy, and real. G you are the quintessential example of talent meets drive, how rare is that, and holy smokes how potent is that mix!!!

Love you so incredibly much and would definitely date you if i were gay xoxo!

THANK YOU FOR EVERYTHING AND THANK YOU FOR BEING ALIVE! Happy 21st, Gnoryaaa!!

May 31, 2014
Justin’s Talkeritary.

This is basically my boyfriend every time he plays a game.

May 26, 2014
cars

in my lifetime we’ve scrapped three cars.

the first one i have little recollection of. silver, maybe. tinny – all edges and angles. when i was 7 we got a new one. back in those days my parents picked me up after school. i would sit at the bottom of the stairs of our old IJ campus with friends around 5pm. we filled the twenty minutes between home and school with childish entertainment: licking nectar off ixoras, swinging each other by the belts – until the group trickled to a couple. that day i was the only one left. i hadn’t known the new car had arrived. no silver car rolled by.

this one was a gleaming peacock blue, round and pleasing. my family’s faces revealed by wound-down windows, smiling, excitement that reflected mine. my shoes slapping against the dusty concrete as i dived in to soak in the scent and smoothness of new leather. i dubbed it Dark Blue.

Dark Blue to me was rushing backwards into a vortex, knees sinking into seats. i spent most rides peering over the back window, waving at cars behind us. cars and faces, always pleasantly surprised, waving back, timid, bemused, eyes lighting up from the dim of after-work fatigue. rides back Dark Blue became my cradle, amniotic and gently rocking – head against window, the curve into our driveway so familiar i knew it was home before opening my eyes.

in our later years we felt ready for an upgrade. I was too young to understand change as loss. all i knew was that the new one would be champagne gold – partly my choice, and how exciting was that? this time we simply called it ‘car’, because champagne gold was a mouthful (and i was too old for anthropomorphic names [not really, i named my ruler theophilus]).

champagne gold was a haze of mornings to school. this time the seats were spared scuff marks from my knees, its back window didn’t frame my face throwing greetings at others. this car was the half an hour of reprieve before school started: we tossed aside shoes and rubbed bare soles against the warmth of mats, snuck in that few extra minutes of snooze, sticky-ed our fingers with hastily assembled peanut butter toast breakfasts.

we had this car for a long time. earlier this year we had it scrapped. mom, who spent the most time with it, sent me a message: “sad to let it go… after many years of driving it”. my reply was that her new ride was more practical, etc etc. i surprised myself with a dearth of sadness.

perhaps because in recent years i’ve taken fewer rides in the car, or these rides weren’t routine and significant as before. the last time i had been in it, it smells different. that may seem trivial, but i recognize a lot of things by their scents. including people, actually. when they smell incongruent it really throws me off. i think..i’m not sure but i think the car smell i know consists of the combined scent of my family members.

so i guess in the past couple of years we didn’t really sit in the car together, at least not long enough. not enough for the car to recognize us as a family unit. a few episodes of modern family capture the role of car to family very well.

in one, claire dunphy couldn’t let go an old beat up car because of past memories they had with it. phil wanted to reenact those memories for her with the kids, but everything failed miserably. it ended with the car rolling off a cliff, phil trying to stall it, holding on to its bonnet – the rest of the family yelled at him to let it go. to let go…they meant the car, but i think also of memories. they stay as just memories, and that’s ok.

May 20, 2014
Pain again

sometimes i wonder about pepero.. about the person who first thought it was good idea to coat a biscuit stick with chocolate with nuts attached. how do we humans keep coming up with things, and why have we not yet reached a saturation point. although i guess it is cumulative. how many years of pocky did it take for us to bring in the nuts? so much contemplation over an almond pepero.

–

today i discovered the persistent state of defect my leg is in. the familiar spasm of pain taking root at the nightmare spot, spreading again the way it did the first time round. all i did was walk home instead of taking the bus, and already: this. not good at all. this means my nike lunarflys, which i took outside <5 times, shall sit quietly in my cabinet for more weeks to come. sadface.

my body has 2 modes. the state of norm is one of restlessness. i loathe immobility, and one of my insane hobbies would be to just walk and walk and walk and you get the point. unless i’m hungry. then i’m inert. i can lie so still, to pee is a horribly dreaded chore. you do not want to be there when i’m hungry. i’m passive and grumpy and whiny when.

May 14, 2014
Again we stupid.

The picture that started it all.

We forgot that Cat’s presence in Singapore was meant to be kept a secret from Gee (i managed to for weeks until that day. then everything fell apart. sorry.), this photo went on our Whatsapp group chat.

Thus ensued 15 minutes of us desperately trying to distract Gee by flooding the group with irrelevant chatter.

It obviously failed.

Gloria saw, cue typical dramatic Gloria reaction:

“I BURST INTO YEARS!”

We were unrelenting. Feigned shock: What!? You mean Cathleen is back? We just photoshopped her in!

Tried unsuccessfully to pass off actual photos as very well done photoshopped images.

Why do we always find ourselves in situations like this?

I miss us all together so much…

May 14, 2014
note-to-self

to-do-list this holiday.

on my blog because public declarations are harder to breach.

1. find job

2. volunteer at ccf (+ find more places for part-time volunteering)

3. help tutor sis for her Os

4. go out with grandma + attend her concert things

5. food-hops (clear list of all new food places i wanna try)

6. start exercising (cardio AT LEAST ONCE a week. need this my immune system is horrific now)

May 5, 2014
Just a bit more

Just a little bit more (one day and 2 exams) to summer holidays. Wait for me~~~ At this point i’m beyond panicking for finals. All i want is for it TO END. So i can go home and do absolutely nothing before i start doing everything else that matters. And this is something i’d say only this semester because my grades are currently cushioned right in the middle of a class. So no unless i do drastically bad/well, it probably doesn’t make much of a difference lololol.

The fun part about finals is having friends randomly drop by, giving you exam welfare, being able to see them in person after months of busy schedules. I really appreciate every minute i can get with you guys. This holiday i will bug everyone to no end to make up for the lost time.

Today i asked myself, in my Travelling Time of Introspection, what i’m doing all these for. I’m studying psychology for myself, that’s for sure (because if left to my parents they’d want me to be a lawyer or some corporate big shot) – that’s where my interest lies and i cannot envision myself satisfied majoring in anything else. I’m doing this for my parents, for the amount of time effort and cash they have invested in me. It’s part filial piety part guilt, i feel the need to repay them and also to make sure they live a comfortable life once i’m able to provide for them.

Surprisingly there was another motivation that’s always been latent but never explicated until today. I want to do sufficiently well so my future kids can have a great childhood. It’s not about wanting to spoil them with unlimited toys and a huge house (although i’m probably that sort of mom), but sparing them from any financial worries in their formative years. I want them to live as securely as possible as long as they’re under my roof.

So.

SUMMER HERE I AM SO CLOSE ICE-CREAM, THE BEACH, AND HAPPINESS EVERYDAY!

Except not really i want to get a job kthnxbye exam soon.

May 5, 2014
诗

in a stray conversation with a friend recently, i uncovered my ability to recite the 三字经 , 木兰诗, and a large bulk of 唐诗三百首.

in primary school we were made to memorize all these in class. rather ironically the convent school i was in had an excellent panel of mandarin teachers. by excellent i mean by the standards of us chinese: strict, passionate, demanding, unrelenting, and thoroughly intimidating. i say this in the most respectful way possible.

at that time it seemed like sadism – why would they want us to memorize things obviously beyond the scope of our syllabus, and how do they expect us to retain that much? well i’ve proven their foresight right in this regard: young minds are bloody sponges. i haven’t read an entire paragraph of chinese since 2009 and there i was spewing 孟洁然 like it was my life song.

more surprisingly was that i understood these poems. when and how they managed to cram 300 poems into our brains along with their underlying meaning i have no idea, but they did a good job. although… admittedly my memory (especially for conversations) is quite extraordinary; i used to recite commercials verbatim to entertain friends. anyway.

on hindsight, i am rather grateful they’d tortured us that way. torture may sound like a hyperbole but in truth it wasn’t so far from it. we had our ears twisted and collars pulled, had insults yelled at us in front of the class, given impossible amounts of homework. but somehow we got through because we were children from the 90s and we just take this shit.

revisiting these 唐诗 makes me appreciate how beautiful they are, really. i should read more of them.

April 30, 2014
Careless Curation

i’ve always been bad at keeping sentimental gifts.

once i left a note Zephyr gave me – pastel with whimsical animals edged around her curly, purple letters – between pages of a library book. funny story, really: her friend picked up the exact book, saw her name, and passed it to Z — who then gave it to me (a second time) quite amusedly.

i’m the same way with all other memorabilia i receive – letters, postcards, cute doodles – they dissolve into shelves and under my bed. if i had kept them all it would be quite a pile, frankly, given that i’ve spent 10 years in girls’ schools and the next 2 surrounded by girls’ school girls (Nanyang).

sometimes i wonder if my carelessness is callous, but the truth is i do love and appreciate all these little things given to me, as much as i love giving them to others (i do this a lot… spontaneously and with any scrap material i can find).

most of my closest friends and family are sentimental object hoarders. my family has two cabinets full of purely photos, organized in chronology, stashed in event-indexed albums. they date from my mom’s childhood all the way to my late primary school years (after which digital photos took over).

Vanessa amazed me once over at her place, when she dragged out a HUGE box (although chest would be a more appropriate description) of sentimental artifacts she’d collected over the years. i saw many of my own in there – birthday cards, scraps of paper we played hilarious hangmen games on, notes we passed in class (even though we sat together LOL), random quotes encouraging each other for exams.

while i was duly impressed at her diligent, even manic, safekeeping of memories, V’s calmness told me she didn’t go out of her way to collect them, it was simply in her nature to do it.

and for some reason i’m the complete opposite. nothing stays with me for long. spring cleaning is often an archaeological adventure for me: i excavate random bits of yesterday (a technicolored, tassel-ed scrapbook G gave each of us, a series of short stories co-written by C and i). and then they shuttle back into the unknown.

the memories i keep are digital and transcribed into words. i keep moments and quotes on my blog, the precious ones i want to revisit years later. it doesn’t have as much of a sentimental value as physical objects – authentic proof of the time – but they work for me. maybe because reading my own words reinstates the time more concretely for me. i don’t know.

April 28, 2014
Smarts

i’ve always imaged myself dating someone incredibly intelligent.

there was never a time ‘VERY CLEVER’ wasn’t stamped at the top of my criteria list, or when i wasn’t drawn to the most sardonic smart-ass in the room.

my deepest unrequited crush was on a tutor quite a few years older who never had a nice thing to say to me, but had a brilliant mind. that obviously didn’t work out because i was so consistently infatuated/in fear of his wit i couldn’t speak intelligibly (much less intelligently).

ok that was years ago, though. now i’ve nabbed myself a Justin. and god i’m glad i found someone who’s sustainably intelligent… without being romantically apathetic or emotionally abusive. sometimes i’d grab his head and profess my love directly to his brain. ya i’m weird that way. #srynotsry

just this weekend alone he impressed me all over again.

i like to ramble on and on about psychology stuff i’ve learnt in class or read off my extensive psych rss feed, and J – unfortunately for him – is the primary victim of my psych-gushing. there’s a bunch of questions in our lecture notes dealing with errors in human reasoning, etc. that we’re expected to answer incorrectly (and which most of us psych students did during lecture).

i was gleefully trying to watch him fail like the rest of us mortals but he is not fun. at. all. because he gets everything correct and also has the annoying nerve to go: “isn’t it obvious?” if i wasn’t so turned on by smarts i would slap his smug face. how does one just circumvent all the reasoning heuristics that cripple us normal human beings!?

this is also the guy who tried explaining the speed of light as a universal limit and its effects of causality: pretty much the things he enthuses about when forced to talk me to sleep (i like falling asleep to other’s voices). also i make him do my electrodynamics/relativity homework for me (USP science module don’t ask), because what’s the point of having a geeky s/o without a bit of exploitation.

ok but the last straw was when he managed to resolve what had been bothering me for days. THIS:

the diagram claimed to have found a way to maximize a block you have (chocolate, gold, wtv) by literally cutting corners. and then repositioning them to obtain its original state with an additional 1 inch block. HOW CAN THAT BE RIGHT? BUT, SO CONVINCING.

i’m horrifying with spatial problems (mental rotation and navigation impairments as rock solid evidence), so while intuitively i knew it wasn’t possible, i couldn’t figure out why. so i made use of my external brain (Justin) and got my answer in a couple of minutes. was in complete awe of myself. yes myself, because i abducted him and by extension his intellect. it’s now my property i’m holding it ransom.

for every crush and hopes of dating upwards on the IQ scale, though, there’s one thing i didn’t consider but found in J and now appreciate very, very much: interpersonal intelligence. particularly, awareness.

i mean yes, we all do stupid and irrational things at times but it’s always forgivable as long as you aren’t completely oblivious to it. i like that J is constantly aware of the dumb things he does/is doing. Justin i’m sorry for making you sound so bad, i swear this is my attempt at a compliment.

it struck me when he said one day: “you know i can tell when you’re not ok right.”

i hadn’t realized how adept i’d gotten at bottling up my annoyance at other people. there is literally no other person i can’t camouflage my vexation from. it’s such an unhealthy habit, i know, but i’ve gotten so used to it. because i’d given up on other people realizing why and how they’d annoyed me, so i’d rather not show it.

but he knows, every time. whether it’s at him or at something trivial and frankly quite silly (like an over-seasoned, over-priced, unsatisfactory meal), he’s perceptive enough to pick it up.

once in class we were discussing the how much we want our s/o to know what we’re thinking without us having to explicate it — basically relationship mind-reading. maybe it’s selfish of me, but i need it and expect it from people. i loathe explicit confrontation, so whoever it is has to be aware that something’s wrong, figure out what’s wrong, and find a way to fix the wrong.

sometimes the ideal girl/guy we’ve always wished for can fall short and sometimes they come with a nice bonus.

April 27, 2014