Someone always has to cry at my party

euphemistically, edinburgh has never been so clean since summer. but rubbishly speaking, the weather has been a putrid thing. night temperatures dropping below 8 celsius and unstoppable winds howling as if the cold isn't enough to curse and swear till you see a semblance of a radiator. yes, the party is officially over, the resident scottish weather is here and looks to play host for quite awhile. i even had to row, raining, today- wasn't dreadful per se but the cold gets you right through the bones and your hands, even with constant activity, becomes disturbingly a separate entity from yourself.

no exciting news to update really except that i'm going barcelona in dec, before my exams! yes!

alright that was juvenile, so sue me. *sinister laughter*

oh and i made really good seared salmon with herb and butter sauce. the onions charred quicker than i thought but otherwise it was quite delish. and i'm off to my ben & jerry's irish licquor coffee ice cream.

The Epistemology of being (pissed) Drunk

it's hard not to get smashed in edinburgh, what with immense peer pressure and ridiculously cheap pints to go, one is doing oneself a gargantun disservice by just not drinking. and what's fun in being sober your whole freaking life? there goes the epistemology of being drunk- good company and the rationalization of inherent existentialism.

pardon me, i just came back from the rowing initiation and you know what the british initiation is like- plenty of booze without any backtracking of soberness. when comfortist cant (insecere talk, not cannot without the apostrophe) is dispelled to the outer realms of human interaction and everyone is just insanely fun. rowing has been a blast, what with the adrenaline of pushing your legs against the stern and the oars gliding against the waters generating acceleration like none other. today's session was the best so far, because people were executing their balancing task in the utmost fashion, none of the jock attitude of wishing to shine off at the expense of the others on board. appalling behaviour, that: never emulate.

sorry for the lack of update these past few days. the excesses of time has not been occuring and i have been utterly abstemious with the utilisation of it- if you just completely understood what's been happening here. the piling list of readings (an average of a vomitus 22-cases per seminar), rowing trainings on 4 days, 2 at an unearthly hour of 7am and the socialising I have to go for, otherwise i'll be in dire need of friends/company. so there goes my week.

one event deserves worthy mention. the sempiternal praises i've received for my curry evening where 5 harsh judges unanimously gave thumbs up for my singapore curry chicken. it was honestly quite gorgeous and i'm pretty glad i'm turning out to be quite the chef. maybe i should rent some newton-circus stall and start a curry stall or something..haha. that's not gonna happen anytime soon if i'm gonna work towards the slaughter and may offer of £51K a year. but then again this culinary success is going to shed much effulgence on my reputation and a good company to keep. oh yes and i went to rǿyksopp (pronunced as ray-yu-sob) in glasgow and it was pure ecstasy. the beat was grand and the operatic vocals gave a good twist to the otherwise too-trancey feel. glasgow's aesthetically appalling when compared to the long-drawn history of edinburgh. otherwise it was good fun.

read back soon, cos edinburgh's way fun and i'm getting used to my lifestyle here, which is kinda scary if you really think about it.

Trotting upon some rites of passage

i should be finally settling in. my bank account is finally alive, my courses are confirmed and friends are gradually piling along. and the best thing is, hold onto your tiny seats of self-contentment ladies and gentlemen, but i'm going to Paris for 5 days next month over reading week (it's a fantastic thing how not to have your parents knowing you blog). i got a cheap end of the deal but it also means i'm flying into bizarre, out-of-the-way airports and having to coach into the respective cities for a bit.

anyhow the highlands was an amazing trip. i think it's the first time i can say that my mere camera/photography skills do not do justice to the topograhic spectacle that i was presented with. the massive, rolling landscape is so dramatic that you stand amazed at its splendeur and wonder. it is obviously accentuated by the fact that i probably come from one of the most 'exciting' geographical country in the world. i would so immure myself in the landscapes that i saw only that i will probably get bored after 3 days without cyberspace. if u're keen, i actually went north towards this city called Perth from edin and onwards towards the cairngorms national park, which is incidentally the largest national park in britain. and we spent a night in aviemore, a medium-sized town popular with skiiers in the winter. then the next day onwards we went to Inverness after doing a short walk in the Rothiemurchus which has been quoted to be one of the 100 best places in the british isles. it was a wonderful walk around one of the lochs (scottish for a large body of freshwater)- Loch an Eilein. Inverness if the capital of the highlands but we went south instead to the all famous Loch Ness where we circled the loch and was absolutely taken aback by how marvellous it is. i haven't been impressed by pure scenic-ness for a long while now, well maybe given i always head to cosmopolitan areas for holidays. anyhow, we stayed a night at Drummanochit, which is the hottest tourist spot by Loch Ness because that is also where someone caught sight of Nessie, giving rise to loch ness fame. thereafter we headed down to Fort Augustus and Fort William and headed back to Edinburgh after quite a mishap enroute to the car rental site. so that's it. though pictures don't do justice, they still speak volumes of its immense beauty so go check them out if you haven't already done so.

alright i'm back to catching up with my european union law which i'm a complete daft at. check back at this space soon then.

Quick update

yes i'm very much still alive and i just returned unscathed from a trip to the dramatic scottish highland and no, not a trace of that illusive loch ness monster, or nessie as it is so affectionately known as. school officially started today and my courses are still left unconfirmed, plus more frustratingly my internet is still not up yet- expletives censored. the efficiency levels here will be the dearth of any singaporean civil servants who might visit here.

but more of the highlands when i update next, since i'm in the very private mass orgy of computers in the biggest academic library in scotland now. how's everyone doing? updates people!

Don't spray all over the law

overheard:

'sorry ma'am, the size of your tootsies (breasts) grossly violates our human trafficking laws.'

crunch on it.

...

The Rape of the Palates

and i embarked on the rites of passage to be fully assimilated into the scottish way of life- i had my first real meal of haggis. just for shock sake, haggis is actually sheep's intestines, kidneys and liver all meshed up and immaculately wrapped up in the stomach bag of the same beast and served right up after a good broil. i survived through it by consciously blocking out those lovely animals grazing the gentle meadows of the scottish countryside and then abruptly dragged into the abattoir and gutted out from the inside like a scene from house of the dead. but it's really not that bad in the end- i had tatties (scottish for mashed potatoes) and neeps (mashed turnips) to blend the taste in. to top it off the scotch whiskey did mask the taste a little, so i did manage to survive myself. plus i was quaffing on the red wine which aided in the swallowing process. so chew on that, mooncake peddlers (the title only serves to romanticise the experience).

today i had my another first- the scottish cold. the winds were burring, so bad they could blow out one's contact lenses with 15 minutes of it. it was 10 degrees when i went out to get myself registered at the university and the 15 minutes walk there was almost insufferable. it might be the litmus test that brolly-makers use to test the quality and rigidity of their brollys, mine was certainly put to the test, albeit to stunning results. but like a friend quipped, it's only the beginning.

allow me to utilise my whine of the day: I WANT an ipod nano! these apple marketing people are psychological witches, stop them before they come up with more gadgets i would kill to have.

Baile Átha Cliath

Ta me air meisce.

No, not quite the warm irish welcome one should be expecting but it's very close to the heart of the irish spirit though (pun intended)- it just means 'I am drunk' in Irish, or traditionally known as Gaelic.

Before i set foot on the capital of the Celtic Tiger that we call Dublin (or Duh Linn, meaning black pool), i was expecting Dubz to be the farrago of wealth, history, a deep sense of tradition and those left behind by the boom. it was all that but somehow a certain charm was lacking to complete this medley of magic that I feel in Edinburgh. the irish kazaam didn't quite work it for me but i'm afraid anything more would be deemed a sacrilegious cavil of the english/scottish-irish divide that history took so long just to bury or make it fade away. it's a personal thing in the end.

I amaze myself at how much i can conquer as a tourist in a day. a grand total of two days was what i required in the end to gobble up the main sights of the irish capital. i was actually left a little adrift of plans at 3pm on the second day and was relieved to be going home. it wasn't boring me per se but knowing no one and going to bars just in seek of company was just not aiding the entire process of getting to know the place just that little bit better. in a way, being alone has that side of its down. the up was of course, previously mentioned, the efficiency of clearing more attractions than i would want. good lad. for me the highlight was not the physical sights, but more the knowledge amassed that got me more internalised with the crafting of the irish state. in that sense, the visit to the dublin castle carved the deepest impression. it's apparently still the working place for the President (presently a woman, the second one on her second term, equating to ireland have to suffer through 21 consecutive years of women at the helm- imagine the matriarchy the men gets drowned in, ha, i'm only kidding of course). 800 yrs of anglo-norman rule the irish has to go through before attaining its hard-fought independence in 1922. it's also amazing how her language, gaelic, never smoulder away with time like bad mascara. the title of this post is incidentally city of dublin's gaelic name. the original 300-odd years of the guinness storehouse was something interesting and the christ church cathedral whose choir sang the premiere performance of Handel's Messiah Oratorio back in 1700s.

this is europe i guess. you cannot help but get sponged up by history like that. christ church cathedral has been around since william the conqueror invaded england in 1066- it's mind-blowing like that. the sense of national identity and patriotism is still so intact after all these times, it's hard to fathm where i come from, where national identity is awashed in a yellow sense of americanism and western media and the only last struggles to foster it back is the flimsy social glue of national education and silent threats. being chinese/singaporean has probably never been 'in'. but then again it'll be sad to update this sense of identity with a false sense of modernist injection and enforced ideals that almost has to be propoganised to work in some way or another. then again, football is that social glue that seems to be the modernist piece of equipment that works in europe- i was lucky to be amidst the action of this when ireland was against france in their world cup 2006 qualifying match and the fervent reaction to either sides is infectious. then again these things tie back in with this very entrenched gut sense of nationalism that runs way back. the reception at my hostel was slightly appalled to see the french people bringing down their flag and decorating their faces with the trois coleurs that she said, in half-jest, "they sure do bring their football everywhere." this is what i'm talking about, the entrechment of nationalism. so either way, we're all screwed, patriotically-speaking.

but i ramble. dublin is quite an eye-opener. they're really very proud with their literary exports. i've known more about james joyce and ulysses than i ever had in my life. he actually had a full schema to the book and a device to getting the whole thing started, it was almost scientific. scary.

and is it the mid-autumn yet? the closest thing i'm getting to snow skin is its inspiration of the actual climatic snow. so spare me the digs.

Skirting on the rims

if u thought edinburgh was beautiful, the outskirts of her adds light to the beam. i troddled onto the rosslyn chapel in roslin (i have no idea why there must be 2 spellings to a same place) and to stirling. rosslyn chapel is of 'the da vinci code' fame, of which i can't quite recall which part of it it materialises. but the engravings and carvings of the pillars and stained glass were of divine beauty. it stood from 1466 or the likes and again it's just amazing how the preservation just stands intact and one can live side by side with the 15th century in 2005.

stirling was the icing on the cake though. 2 places were of promience- the first has to be stirling castle (castles are like diamonds to women, what they are to scotland) and the second is the willam wallace monument. both were spectacular. william wallace is braveheart, now do i get some connections? yeah it was 246 steps up the tower but you get spectacular views of stirling and firth of forth (the main waterway of edinburgh and its regions). and through it i got to know much more in-depth of scottish history, like the most interesting things i gathered from my trip were scottish inventions- to name some, the photocopying machine, the fax machine, tar (on roads) and penicillin. stirling castle was not too bad as well. i think by the time i'm done with scotland i'll be the castle specialist, though i must get myself acquainted with the terminology and such then i'll truly be in style of a castlist, so to speak.

how's everyone doing back home? i'm starting to feel the itch of hawker cuisine, can u believe? oh well guess i've to get suited to food here. but it's not as bad as everyone's been warning me. at least the thai food here is rather glorious. woohoo.

Endorphines in Tights

this must be my virgin experience to a comedic ballet. and coincidentally my virgin experience to the largest arts festival in the world: the edinburgh one.

i went to one performance by the dutch national ballet and the last segment of it caught my unawares. primarily since it stated that music was going to be by chopin, or rather inspired by him. so one would expect a rendition of pompous, patriotic marches or slow waltzes without any vestige of comedic essence. but it turned out that way, as things might go. it was actually a parody on certain groups of people going to the theatre. some artistic sycophants, the real enthuasiasts that annoy ironically through their enthusiasm and the dense-brains that only act as sideshows. it was stomach-turning funny, so much so it was out of whack of the situp-straight world of classical ballet. it was fun nonetheless and an eye-opener since the only ballets i've attended were those of romantic nonmenclature. oh and there were also pretend-rehearsals where one would be totally out of sync vis-a-vis the others and that was a total comic relief. this is thrown in sharp relief with the previous segment where it was avant-garde ballet where i was constantly trying to rationalize or hyper-interpret what possibly could be the hidden message behind the frantc swerling and leg-gyrations. but it was a carnal and raw concoction of movements and relations. it should have gome down well with the ballet suck-ups.

i have another performance to bestow my presence upon, on saturday- one of the premier orchestras in Germany. that should be good. will tell more once i've gotten wind of it. haha, get the pun?

i think i must make mention of my trip to edinburgh castle. probably the most celebrated of the innumerable castles in scotland. to be honest, i wasn't much impressed with it. there was only probably 2 pieces of crown jewels on showcase when it so mightily proclaimed to be the oldest royal jewels in all of the british isles. the wand doesn't count. there wasn't even an orb to beat. but the view up there was one to beat (yes yes, i'll have pictures in a jiff). all of edinburgh was in view and it was magnificent. although not quite jaw-dropping, it's enough to keep you spaced out for that good 15 minutes, even with the chills of winds plastering your skin. the mound up was quite a climb, not to mention that steep admission ripoff of £9.80, but i guess it's one of its league. one thing's interesting is the latin line adorning its gates: no one shall provoke me without fear of impunity. bite me.

edinburgh is full of charms that one cannot start describing. the history alone can set you back thinking my point i made in my last post: that people die fighting for the land. i'm lucky to be here. so come and visit me once you get the chance. the money's all worth it, trust me on this.

Up the mountain went a Singaporean and down came a Scottish

when one sees what what i saw here, one can only come to fully understand why people of ages past fight to their deaths for the land they call their country.

it's not a romanticised appraisal of edinburgh. what with the rolling hills with ruins of medieval chapels, proudly conserved buildings that reek of victorian, georgian and even renaissance heritage, and largely a deeply embedded sense of staunch nationalism, you have scotland. edinburgh is the epitome and probably the most complete encapsulation of this so-called scottish spirit. i was just walking around the old town and wham, at the end of holyrood palace (QEII's palace whenever she's here on her annual visit to Edinburgh), i chanced upon a mountain surrounded by a series of shorter hills, flourishing with wild flowers and willowing dried grass. and atop it i sighted the ruins of a chapel dating back to pre-renaissance times. i had to climb up and when i did reach the top, i sat there- gawking- at how i sit next to a 1400s relic overlooking a highly modernised city with a facade that doesn't look it. this sharp contrast is unbelieveable. and today as i walked along Princes Street (probably the closest thing edin has to our Orchard Road), i got an unobstructed view of the Edinburgh Castle up on the hill, almost like an eagle looking down damely. i can't do this better than the pictures i took, so take a look at them when they're up. well the camera technology is one thing the renaissance people was seriously missing out on.

and edinburgh has been really kind to me these two days- i literally brought the sunshine up from london. although winds got a little nibby, it was still alright to go out in tees. and this really facilitated sightseeing, a lot. even went to the new Parliament (new in more ways than one since it has been newly reconvened after the union in 1707 and the building cost a massive £400 million to build and only recently opened). and no i haven't tried haggis yet but heard it's not as bad as everyone makes it out to be. and surprisingly i've had little problems with the scottish accent so far.

on an entirely different note, i was wondering if creativity of the arts (of all branches) has anything to do with the geographical beauty (or lack thereof) of a certain terrain or country. singapore has flat as it can get, well, sure has a flourishing arts scene before massive government intervention. scotland, well, you get my point. and also i heard someone saying 'optimism is only for the rich'- i found that vastly amusing and frighteningly true. i hear the proleteriats growl, better shush with that now.

'As long as only one of us remain alive we will never on any conditions be brought under English rule...no good man gives up freedom except with his life.'

Edinburgh

i'm finally in edinburgh after all the anticipation. flight was quick: 50min or so. and just 10min into the airport bus ride into the city centre, one can sip up the charms of Edinburgh pretty fast. the castle is beautiful at night and the hills around it beam with scottish beauty. no tall buildings here at all, it's really living in an archetypal old European city, very un-English or rather un-London. apparently Edinburgh sits on a bed of granite and that also hinders skyscraping developments but really you wouldn't want to taint this medieval aura with modernistic gore. i haven't had horror stories of the incomprehensible and utterly inaudible scottish accent yet but my chances will come in abundance. apparently i live in the old town and the castle is just right behind me, not literally but some distance back, so it's all lovely. and the scottish pound looks like currency Aragorn would use to pay for his beer at the Prancing Pony.

this is all in stark juxtaposition to the rambanctious, over-the-top alive London earlier this afternoon where i braved myself with Gwen down at the Notting Hill Carnival where throngs of people were soaking themselves in bohemian love and proletariat joy. it was fun, until the grime of sweaty Caucasian men gets to you that is.

so yes i'm in Edinburgh, will dish out more when i explore more tomorrow and hopefully catch some fringe events since the Arts Festival is still running. and yes that bank account dread shall be extinguished tomorrow and no more shall it rear its ugly head.

To retrieve what had been lost

some things are just not meant to be gotten back- once lost, forever out of sight. of course it could relate to philosophical lifetalk but i only meant to refer to my ring. it really did not augur well within me that when i finally reach the bohemian sector of London that is Camden Town, the upstart jewellery designer that once offered just refreshing men's jewellery was not there anymore. and thus i'm still left ringless, frodo would have been so disappointed.

the weather here has almost been alternating between dreary rain and bursting sunshine. i stayed home yesterday, believe it or not, in probably the most exciting city in the world, entirely just sponging up bad daytime tv, reruns of Friends and DVDs like house of the flying daggers. today's been beautiful although winds were a tad chilly and i braved it for like an hour in my happy orange sail shorts and cotton tee. i think the passers-by at high kensington street must be so amused at me. today i also revisited my nifty little crepes place near gwen's place which was such a delight, still. i had this thing called crepe complete which had a soft egg layer beneath the crispy crepe layer and smouldering so sultrily atop my ham and cheese stuffing. slurp. but still give me 3 bowls of laksa and i'll gobble them up in a blinking second. you guys must know how lucky we are to be blessed with the most ingenious food concept in the form of hawker centres. you can get nothing filling here below four quid. save the occasional mac specials, how gastronomically exciting.

and get this i have not gotten myself a single piece of garment, accessory or ostentatious item since i stepped foot in london. i must be attaining financial-scringing nirvana. come to me and get healed.

Simmering patience

oxygen doesn't keep one alive here in england, it's patience. without which, you would probably start drowning yourself in your own bath tub or something. or then again i think it's always more fun and sensible (yes no wrong choice of vocabulary here) to take those people responsible for erecting the red tapes and worshipping bureaucracy as a religion, down. and if you're not patient with the weather conditions here and grumble all day like Singaporeans do, be it too much rain or too much sun, you're gonna have one tough time here. it's raining now and on monday but at least i was compensated with a lovely day yesterday, which we aptly spent in the museums and galleries. see, if you're not patient with the weather, you can kiss cheeriness goodbye and say a forever hello to underbreath cursing.

speaking of which, i thought the national portrait gallery that i went to yesterday was a pretty nifty place. as the name suggests, it hangs all portraits and photographs of various people important in the UK. joan collins, greta garbo, the royal family, statesmen of past and present and an impressive collection of queen victoria, of whom one shows her so graciously presenting a tribesmen from Zanzibar a bible and making him much better with the locks of English imperialism. the English sure has a way of euphemising her encapsulating hoods of colonialism. as with the British Museum i suppose- the world's largest publicly-displayed loot warehouse. from egyptian facsimiles to greek doric orders and parthenon parts to Tang porcelain in flawless condition, the English might be the most daring and care-less thieves of all times. hail the glories and might of english imperialism.

coming back to 2005- yesterday was indeed gorgeous for just spreading out on the grasspatch in a park and having a sandwich and orange and carrot cake from Tesco's (it was the cheapest pleasure we could find in london at £1.49!). and slow walks by the Thames where the wind's slightly nibby and the sun's still up.

so how's everyone back home, in the promising vibrant global city-to-be? =)

The archetypal English beginning

and so it begins, my english one year. i'm in London for slightly more than 24 hours now after a crappy flight with seats highly inconsiderate to my legs. so i was left groggy and slightly PMSed when i arrived at heathrow. food was good though, so at least that saved me from shooting everyone on board. of course, i'm kidding, even my subconscious ain't that exciting.

then came the tedious immigration process and the lugging of the 4 pieces of luggage that had me wanting to shoot everyone around me. more so the former- menopausal nurses pretending to have PMS while efficiency levels were clearly reflective of their age. so i waited. waited. and waited. and reached my place of accomodation only 4 hours later. all in the name of world famous english efficiency- how archetypal and cliche.

but at least i'm safe and no major hiccups burped in my face. except for maybe that minor glitch of me forgetting to collect my sharp items from baggage retrieval and thus i effectively said au revoir to my sweden souvenir nail clippers (i never knew someone could kill with a nail clipper, or endeavour to teach me how) and my scissors. and also i realised i forgot to bring my phytomer after-shave solution. but putting these aside, i was blessed with disturbingly good weather by standards of an approaching London fall. there was sun, breeze, all at a comfortable 20 celsius. and i donned the Borough market with my presense with a light breeze on my back. haha. and caught up with a primary school pal, who i haven't seen even in the vaguest form for almost 11 donkey years. how we age.

so for those who don't know, i have an english mobile number so get it fgrom me via email or hsien has it as well. miss all you guys already and i'm temporarily striking out Buble's 'Home' from my playlist, just in case.

It's a Goodbye

Farewells are never easy. especially when one wants to package it as a surprise (haha).

but all went well- simple, cosy and nice. so much for my grand entrance and to-death rehearsals of feigning surprise. i guess everyone thought it was out of the bag, there wasn't much else to, well, surprise. the tables were turned on me when i was actually one of the earlier ones to arrive, so another time perhaps. food was great though, a galore of localities, enough to make me miss them even more as i embark to a land of culinary obliqueness. my taste buds are going to have such a tough time over there. and when the silence arrived after the food settled, i became more lucid, for better or worse. i was thinking of the new excitements that will beface me, and how this is the first time i'm absolutely going over the safe bounds of my comfort zone. it's a collage of fear, adrenaline-rush and worry. as i see my friends before me, it's a mish-mesh of emotions colliding with rationality. how i will get new friends, new experiences but yet apprehensive of what's to come and uncertain how i might deal with new circumstances. i understand that it's probably pre-departure jitters, thus i'll still manage and embrace with open arms.

then today i'm awakened from my jitters and startled into reality when my packing came up to nearly 40kg. i need someone to cast some semblance of weightlessness spell on the check-in weighing belt, fast.

p.s. pictures, not too many since photographer du jour was fired midway the party, are at photos.yahoo.com/platoianz- 'Farewell' Album

Reluctant awakening from a misty dream of reality

As the title goes, i am still officially cocooned in the hong kong dream of 'shopping-eating-shopping-eating-and then more shopping'. for the first time i gladly submit myself to the harangues of modern day bureaucratic-advertising: hong kong tourism board should be so proud, they should crown me the foreign mascot or the likes. and for the record, before i get serious flak from people bitten most unguardedly by the green monster from the relating of such events, i'm only here to record for the souvenir of my memory and dare not serve any other purpose otherwise. thus i have been absolve of all liabilities and responsibilities arising forthwith.

shopping.

divine doesn't even start to describe it. and since i have to cut down on the usage of 'gorgeous', i'll just leave it as that it was great. i might have cleared out half of adidas' storage in hong kong and it has definitely found a new spokesperson for its vintage line. along with my decadence with gagdets, which was unbelivably cheap over there, i singlehandedly engineered the crater hole in my wallet. the exercise of shopping had never set my mind so settled on spending and the resolve to keep going is something i've probably rarely felt, where spending is concerned. it was an out-of-body experience but definitely one to remember and revisit. if i shall proceed with this, it might rescind into histrionics so let the goods do the talking. and they sure spoke volumes, as some would attest. curb my enthusiasm, someone.

gastronomy.

came in little packages of delight and generous servings of ala-carte heaven in posh restaurants i can almost not afford. it was a good balance though and it was good that even right up to my last meal at the airport food court (which was a butt-slapping delicious serving of roast goose noodle with some hell of a gravy) there was hardly a whine of a complaint. i had the flakiest warm egg-tarts, char siew which could not be compared with here, dim sum which i do not think it wise to start describing in fear of an intestinal riot and other miscellanous foodstuff that i just wanna eat NOW. so much for that. curb your saliva flow, everyone.

and plus the business class arrangement, it was a nice icing on the cake to the entire trip. i am left satisfied but now have to resort to rationing for food back home. of course i'm exagerrating but in the event one reads this and sympathy compels him/her to contribute to the 'repair-GJ's-bank account-fund', your kindness would not go unappreciated. london's gonna hate an impoverished student, sigh.

back to reality, visa application is finally completed, just hope that things proceed well and they nip-picking of documents will not get onto my application. God forbid.

Monkeys on Aerobics

there is a concept known as shame, or more affectionately known as self-awareness. yet this concept, as tonight would and did showcase, seemed to be quantum physics to some. what with the exhibitionist flower-power-hand-movements dancing extravagance on the platform and glorification of the ego, when let's just say not everyone takes to your kind of display and narcissistic exuberance, the net effect is just undesirable. this is not about to degenerate into some zoo-display categorizing but i shall just leave it as that clubbing should be left to the beautiful. then again i was informed by some close company that the beautiful have no reason to come out anyhow since they have enough ego-boosters in the day to set them for life. but then again, it's about the company that you have while you're boozing and trancing so it's still worth a trip in the end.

as the day draws closer for my protracted length of absence from the sandy shores of safe-haven Singapore, it seems the logistical bonanza is taking shape. i just received my official acceptance letter, which leaves my entry clearance into the UK status much to be desired for. and the rice cooker my mum bought together with five thousand and one packets of sauces, instant food-thingys, etc, packing doesn't seem too fun anymore. the addendum to this nightmare is my trip to Hong Kong which is right round the corner. i need my last taste of Asia before i go so no one's gonna deprive me of that. but anyone who wants to be deigned as the official packer is most welcome.

and they called it 'London: Strike 2'. seriously, when will it all end? it's mind-numbingly senseless and language becomes so inadequately overhyped, in this case.

till then, i have my Edinburgh address out. just drop me a line should you require it.

Monsters Inc.

definitely not as adorable and cheek-pinching worthy as the title suggests, what i'm about to relate, on this, indeed, fateful day.

London has been assaulted, like what happened to NYC 9/11, this is a literal stab in the back. even with all the precautions in place and necessary emergency plans installed, it doesn't seem to be enough in the face of blindless hate and staunch revenge. it will never be enough. the human nature is contorted and bent beyond recognition. this is of course an extreme, that i'm speaking of. there are most certainly glimpses of human light shining upon this shadow of our times. but when this simple organ of the human heart becomes so complex and contains much more than the brain can come up with, we can never be too prepared against it. this is why i always believe that the human heart is always stronger than the human mind. when the heart is set forth on an agenda, ever so furtively, the mind has no power over it- it is conditioned by the heart to gallop on that agenda and kill all opposing thoughts. the mind is indeed a dangerous place, that's why the smartest people tread and make these their playgrounds whenever they need to hover power over the simple plebians.

that aside, it's still meanderingly depressing that this had to happen. when the sense of abhorrence is so entrenched, the only probable solution is perhaps a thorough brainwashing or an entire brain transplant altogether. i hope i'm making sense. these atrocities make me verbally spurt in torrents.

until these roots of nameless hate and susceptible psychological indignance is utterly eradicated, it almost seems like pain is going to be limitless.

And Henry stole Christmas and refused to give it back

july's here, almost creepingly did. i don't like the feeling of time creeping up onto you like this, so unannounced. then again the heralding of each month's end would be ridiculous and we already do have enough drama around us. God forbid more.

this is especially a creep i all the more want to avoid because it's drawing nearer to my going away. it's the first time yesterday i realised i could say that i'm leaving next month. somehow still so many things dangle and are in flux, it seems weird to go. then again, i reckon a change of environment and way of living would be a good thing for me. this drone of comfort and helpless routine can be quite that strangle on that excitability of life we are all dying to have while we can. then again the human nature is paradoxical and insatiable. when life gets too exciting, one yearns to head home to comfort. it's the same with people, maybe. you can never ask for too much from someone close to you. and with techonology advancing at speed of light the personal bubble becomes invariably smaller and distance becomes a non-issue. by the rate i'm going, without need of elaborating too far, i'm doomed to the oblivions of singledom and happy doing remixes to 'all by myself'. then again when i do get that someone, in this blurry and ever misty tunnel of love, i will read back in retrospect and hopefully laugh at the follies of youth and that i was so ever frequently its undying mouthpiece.

i had a good last week though, it has to be noted. go to The Line for jets of gastronomic delight, that is the fountain of chocolate, tasting suspiciously like the divine Godiva. and of course the impossible spread of cuisines that would have your stomach screaming for leniency. there were those conversations that left me exhausted and sad but happy that i have someone to understand what all these crafty concepts of human interaction do to me. empathy is a powerful tool- it is that rope that saves you from falling down the endless spirals of gut-wrenching pain. so to this person, i'm gonna miss you, you cunt.=)

july's here. best enjoy it before august comes along, steals it and refuses to give it back.

Women with Men's Ego

what's more to say regarding this? almost guarantees lifetime torment leading to post-menopausal PMS, and a sure way to say bye-gone to men- brand new mutated form of social suicide.

honey, do tone it down. unless of course you're all geared to play for the other team.