Ice cream

Less than a month to the Easter holidays.
Sometimes I wish I wasn't so practical.

Flowers

It's a great feeling to make people important to you happy.

Flag Fighters

Graham Aker is the coolest pilot in Gundam 00. Love him even more now after he used his cool black custom Flag to take on the Throne Eins and sliced its right hand off, and grabbing his beam saber as well in the process. Badass.
Writing this on a strangely boring sunday. Revision has been stop start, and my laptop gave way like 7 times already. Hoping it'll last to the end of the entry. Everyone seems to be out of hall tonight, strangely enough. I think some of them are at the SUKA dinner which I did not go for I guess.
Spent 2 days odd freezing my butt off in Oxford. Went over on friday afternoon and bunked with Andrew along with YQ, and we managed to meet up with Gladys and Crystal. We ate good food throughout the 2 days, and i had this weird craving for the very artery clogging lifespan shortening kebabs sold from vans along the streets. We woke up at 11 on sat, went about to sightsee, ended up covering christ church, st johns' and 3 museums. Managed to get back in time to watch the 4th goal as Man Utd thumped arsenal 4-0. Woohoo!
Tried to con the bus driver to let me go back on sat night when my ticket was for sun morning, but he had none of it. Thus YQ went back first as he bought a sat night ticket and I being a cheapsakte bought a cheaper sun morning ticket. Andrew's room, although big, was darn cold and the first night as I slept on the sofa without any cover I slept fitfully. I ended up sleeping wearing my outer jacket socks and gloves!
Returned to London via the morning bus, only to be greeted with -3 degrees London weather! Weather is taking a turn for the worse now, which isn't a very nice thing.
Spent a very hectic reading week prior to the trip, what with rushing essays and cooking for various people. I had 3 satisfied consumers of my cooking, and glad to say no diarhorrea reports. I must admit I'm still a one trick pony, so hoping to improve on my standards from now on! Hopefully can experiment a bit more with regards to cooking in the days to come.
And I am now a proud owner of a new blue scarf, which was intended to strangle me with if I decide to be an idiot! Well I won't give you a reason to strangle me with it!
Now is really the time to show colour. It's frightening to think that, there's only 5 more weeks of lectures before revision kicks in. And soon the 1st year of university will be over. The clock has to be fought, and I will do my best to do so.

Dionysian Decadence

Change of template was neccessitated by the fact the formating went a bit haywire for some unknown reason.
Reading week now, saddled with 4 essays and a lot of revision to be done. At least am going to oxford this weekend to meet up with a few people and check out the place.
Sunday was the HC CNY carnival, but was feeling lousy for my stomach was always threatening to make me merlion (note to self: alcohol+ ben & jerry's= bad idea) and the bumpy bus ride to imperial college via oxford st was making it worse. It was quite fun though, albeit the stalls were limited. Ate the free yu sheng but failed to win the ipod in the lucky draw.
Monday had a CNY dinner for 5 pounds which was really not filling, and just came back from dinner with W. Not good for the wallet.
As Nick often says, more people read my blog than I know, and I recently found out my hallmate YW reads my blog haha. Say hi on the tagboard please. Good thing I never badmouth people on my blog or I have a whole bunch of secret enemies.
There seems to be a lot to think about or muse about, but I like to believe that whatever that wants to happen will happen.
I wrote the below entry a year back, but never posted it. Since the tyranny of 14th Feb is going to be upon us soon again, I shall let it see the light of day.

The tyranny of 14th Feb is upon us

Brothers in arms, the beast returns again. It descends upon us with its fangs bared, ready to tear our wallets or hearts to shreds. We must rally to counter this threat! Gather all your chocolates, flowers and sweet nothings to help repel the beast!
But in all seriousness, 14th Feb is my brother's birthday, so I reckon I'll be at home celebrating his birthday instead of joining the lovey-dovey crowds out there. I can then drown myself in my self pity by playing soppy love songs and sighing. Right.
I remember spending v day in J1 with Mog, Nick and Mew watching Catch Me If You Can, J2 in school talking cock with the guys, having to book in the day before in 2005, on duty while the others who have girlfriends take off in 2006.
Actually I feel like writing a lot of stuff here, but it doesn't really seem to want to come out in words. It's more like a collage of feelings and emotions, each of them so subtle and nebulous, fleeing away once I try to put them down in writing. But yeah, I won't be moping around come 14th Feb. I guess what I'm feeling now is just the usual backlash of emotions I get when I don't sleep enough and start imagining things in the middle of the night.

Let's just say I don't echo these sentiments anymore this year.

Festive wet blanket

Ok I'm super sleep deprived, after sleeping at 4am the previous night, I should just lie on the bed and conk out, but I'm now waiting for my hair to dry (shit I sound like a girl) for it gets very uncomfortable if I sleep with wet hair. Thus, am here trying pen down some coherent thoughts.
CNY was ok I guess, somehow I didn't really want to get into the festive mood as there was a load of work undone on my part, but nevertheless the potluck dinner we had on wed night was fun, the subsequent late night wasn't, but yeah it brought a little cheer to my life. There really isn't any mood to celebrate when you have a lot of work and doing so makes you lose your momentum. Thankfully, next week is reading week, but there's the shadow of 4 essays to be done over me, so there's a lot of work to be put in as well.
Well, we're reaching the business end of the season soon, where trophies are won or lost, and exam results are achieved. Work is sometimes a real blur to me, and I get very frustrated sometimes that I am now exerting enough control over the direction of my life. But I have confidence in my abilities, and that people are counting on me and believing in me, this is the time to come to the fore.
It's already almost 5 months in London already! Time really flies. It's about 3 months to my final exams then it's back to sunny Singapore for summer. Like I tell my friends, I feel like I'm fighting the clock to see and do more before it's too late. To do so, I must manage my time better. As someone once told me, there is no such thing as not enough time, it just means you're not managing your time properly. And that is what I have to do.
Ok I think my hair is dry already and I really cannot take it anymore. And I profess to blog more.

Judicial review

Went to Chester over the weekend for a homestay with a British family, who were extremely nice and I had a wonderful time as a result. Really became like a part of their family, and made me miss my own family as well. For all their bantering and bickering reminded me that my family would do the same as well during our weekend dinners. Went to the Chester Zoo, had a nice time there, and spent a great day in the Welsh countryside and along the river. Also went along for a birthday party where I danced like a weirdo.
What I felt weird was that despite the fact that I was the only Asian in perhaps the whole town, I didn't feel out of place at all. The people in Chester were very happy and whatever apprehensions I had were gone very quickly.
Many people, when they found out about my trip there, had different reactions. A coursemate wondered why I always seem to be zooming off to some place or doing something else and she said she envied me. I wonder what's there to envy about really. This kind of lifestyle is only enviable if you actually do a good job at balancing your play and studies. I doubt that going off from fri to mon skipping 1 very good tutorial as a result and not doing any work over the weekend as having a good balance.
My host said I was very brave to actually come up to Chester, which was a 4 hour bus ride and stay with strangers. She added with a chuckle, "you know what they say, don't talk to strangers, come and stay with them!" But yeah, I don't really think this is a very brave thing to do. Maybe brave is the wrong adjective to use. But I do think that it was not something that was really very out of my comfort zone, I got the contact of the family from an outside organisation, I have had experiences taking buses in UK (albeit this time was the first time I took megabus, which really lived up to its price tag. Going there the bus was delayed for 20 mins thanks to a joker who went AWOL at the pit stop, and returning I felt very carsick due to the cranked up heater.) so really there's nothing too hard or brave about it.
I think sometimes I don't give myself much credit, and that I tie how I feel to what I do too much. I think that the stuff I have accompolished was too easy, hence there isn't much to congratulate myself over, and the stuff that I don't accompolish I think that I have failed myself. In short, I'm quite harsh on myself at times, which kind of drives me to work harder and not slack so much.
Been frustrated by a lot of stuff ever since I came back. I really wanted to write off this week and start again from the weekend, but somehow I managed to labour through it so far and still alive. The stuff we're learning is getting heavier and heavier, and the need to revise is even more important now. And as the end of the 1st year looms, I have to worry about stuff like my easter plans, summer plans, internship, various commitments like to the MSS etc.
I got to stop this rot. I got to deal with all the $50 problems and not just deal with the simple 5 cent 10 cent stuff. And I will.