last day of 2007 = time to reflect for the whole year and make new year resolutions?
every year, every occasion i only have one wish, simple as it may be but hard to realise, that is to be happy. this year, i wish for the same, the only difference being announcing to the whole world this little wish of mine.
2007 was full of ups and downs. i can only say in life, you gain some you lose some. people especially, some just come and go, some stay, in memories perhaps.
life is short, so make everyday count.

counting down to 2008 and the start of the new semester. had quite enough of bumming around and getting sick of it. i'm in fact looking forward to going to school again, and definitely looking forward to getting my allowance cos my bank account is dropping by the number of digits. better start spending less unnecessarily if not i'll have to sleep by the roadside and eat grass for the next two years haha. and even more looking forward to my next holiday trip, which will take place soon enough if everything goes according to plan...
things in my mind right now:
- what boat to take for canoe marathon? k1? k2? t1? or even t2??haha
- do lasiks next year?
- aim for the impossible?

authority does not equal to power and power does not equal to respect.
respect is earned and don't expect others to respect you if you don't respect them.
you call that responsibility? commitment? you call that passion? enthusiasm?
Do prove me wrong, do prove your worth. do get down to the root cause of the problem.
if you can't do what you like, then like what you do...

if imperfection is beauty,
i think i'm perfect

it's christmas eve already and as a true blue and loyal freethinker, the only reason i'm looking forward to christmas now is because it brings 2007 a day nearer to the end. 2007 seems like a year of tragedy, of losses, i just hope 2008 will be a better year, it is my anxiously anticipated new year of new experiences.
celebrated christmas with the progs and canoeists last week, and sort of christmas holiday with family yesterday, more like a must-have school holidays overseas trip, though it was just a last minute planned one-day tour to malaysia.

highlight of wed's bbq: big fish!! see how humongous it is, and it was thoroughly cooked after spending about an hour on the pit. and i devoured most of it.

the only group of people who makes me look fair. hahaha

went for a one-day tour to desaru yesterday with a little pre-trip drama of getting my passport, which i must say a big 'thank you' to the rusty and lousy padlock at macritchie which we spent close to an hour in total trying to open it. and i had to miss the bus and the traffic just had to be bad. hence, after a series of bad luck on a saturday morning, i managed to rush down to ICA at 12.30pm sharp, and they are so punctual in closing the counter. the officers just stood there and told me 'sorry we're closed, you can come back on monday' with a straight face. oh yeah, i need my passport for sunday and you're telling me to come back on monday. and so the queen of last-minuteness, queue-cutting and 'just don't follow law' had to do what i do best. and the trick of getting things your way is to be polite, sound apologetic yet desperate. and things will be done. wanted to go there to enquire whether my application for bio-passport is being processed and ready for collection, cos it has been more than a week already. in the end, the officer just told me to just extend my current passport since it's still usuable, yup, and i got everything settled in about half an hour.

the main highlight of the trip was the farm visit and seeing fireflies, i feel like a kid again.. let photos do the talking...

the fruits (the long thing in the bottom centre are bananas!)

the animals

and the sea

漆黑的夜晚飘下了白白的雪花，
你说：“下雪了，黑黑的夜让白雪更美丽。”
我说：“下雪了，白白的雪让黑夜更寂寞。”

雾茫茫的远方一片黑，什么也看不清，
你说：“那是黎明前的黑暗。”
我说：“那是黄昏后的黑暗。”

大雨后天边出现了七彩的彩虹，
你说：“那是雨后的第一线光芒。”
我说：“那是短暂又抓不住的希望。”

finally went down to the service centre yesterday to get my crazy phone serviced after discovering the whole messaging part wasn't working. could not send or receive messages and couldn't even open my inbox, outbox, sent messages or any other folder. so forgive me if i didn't reply messages. it went mad last week switching on and off by itself before it hang and i had to take out the battery to switch the phone off. now i'm seriously considering trading it in and getting another more trustworthy phone, especially when it is still a new model, so hopefully i can make some profit in the process.
and i thought orchard on a friday afternoon was bad, saturday afternoon is a total different story! gosh, remind me not to squeeze through the crowd again. looks like the population is really on the rise and walking around in slippers and not having to carry things by hand makes the whole process much more bearable.
other than that, had quite a good time treating myself to a good laugh watching goodluck chuck and walked down the whole orchard unknowingly from lunch at far east to dinner at the cathay.
maybe that's why my legs are aching a bit today....

i think my deteriorating fitness level is starting to show in my inability to shop. only conquered taka this afternoon after running around getting passport and stuff in the morning and my toes feel like they are breaking! now i really wonder how i could shop the whole day from one end of orchard to the other last time and i really admire those ladies who can shop in those killer heels. no wonder they are called killers. ouch my poor toes. managed to accomplish quite a bit of my christmas shopping for the family and made the most of my taka vouchers and the gift wrapping service to wrap the HUGE present for my dad. i wonder how much the gift wrapping girls are paid but it does require some skills, especially when they meet people like me giving them huge and odd shaped things to wrap. and i am not the worst, a few days ago i saw this auntie putting at least 10 boxes of biscuits at the counter asking them to wrap one by one! i think those wrappers and ribbons cost more than those biscuits! almost wanted to cab back cos it was raining and i was carrying 2 big bags of stuff, but decided not to make the hole in my wallet bigger. now i understand why guys find shopping a chore, especially when they have to lug the shopping bags around.

i wear shades not to shield my eyes from the sun, i wear colored contacts not for aesthetic purposes. i wear them so that you can't see through my eyes, can't read my mind.

officially lost my motivation to train, to run, to exercise, my interest to shop
found my ability to nua, to slack at home and do nothing, to sleep the number of hours a normal person should, to eat double the amount a normal person should and it is reeeaaallly starting to show. in short, i'm turning into a pig.
and my stupid phone which is less than 2 months old died on me today! and in my history of owning a handphone, i have never gone to any service centre before! arghhh irritated!

我是天空里的一片云，
偶尔投影在你的波心
你不必惊讶
更无须欢喜
在转瞬间消灭了踪影。
　　
你我相逢在黑夜的海上，
你有你的，我有我的，方向；　
你记得也好，
最好你忘掉，
在这交会互放的光亮！
——徐志摩《偶然》

(not emo-ish or what, just thought of this while rowing just now..)

“雨滴妹妹总在大雨后神秘消失，
大家都浪漫地想象她是住在喷泉环绕的别墅里，
但真相往往令人心酸，”

the whole day of incessant rain left the lazy me at home watching movies, doing cross-stitch, eat, sleep, read, watch tv. as of now i am still enjoying the feeling of waking up knowing i have nothing to do for the rest of the day, but i think i will get sick of it soon. why is it that we can never be satisfied? just a few weeks ago i was looking forward to this slack life of "eat until full and wait to get hungry" as what my mom very nicely summarized my day

ran my 4th and last (for the time being) marathon. and i did as planned, just enjoy the run. in the middle of it, i contemplated whether to run off on my own, but i didn't see the point because it was quite impossible to beat last year's timing already, and i didn't think i could go much faster and that even if i finish early i still had to stone and wait for everyone to finish.
the night before the run, i was reading my previous entries on the past few marathons, the first will always be the most memorable, and training to achieve your target is sure rewarding. with the imcreasing regi fees and the lack of creativity of t-shirt and singlet designs, plus the fact that every year the route remains 90 percent the same, i think i should really take a break before it gets too boring.
other than the fact that my toes feel a bit squashed, everything else feels fine. but before i praise my lousy knees for not aching through the night and still being able to walk up and down stairs normally, they just had to prove me wrong. as i was walking down the steps away from the mrt station, i sprained my knees. again. although it has been a long time, at least a year i think, since i last sprained my kness for no particular reason, i think my lousy joint is so seasoned that it just took me 1 second for the bones to go out of alignment and back again, and 10 seconds to recover from the shock and about a minute to make sure legs can move normally. 3 minutes later the pain was almost compltely non-existent.
acupuncture looks so easy, like the needle just goes in painless, can poke into any parts, even come out from the other end, but it is not easy!! mom bought me a set of acu needles and the ambitious me decided to me my own guinea pig. so i tried the most common and (i think) relatively safe zusanli (if i did manage to locate it accurately. it's somewhere on the side of the legs below the knees, and i don't think my skin is that thick, but it was damn painful and i can't poke the needle in! i think i was too ambitious, haha, so till i learn the proper way to get it into body, i shall practise poking packets of tissues first, if i do practise. and i will make sure i succeed on myself first before poking other people.
i'm a suaku but i bought and tried my first box of donuts on sat. not a big fan of donuts although it is nice and sweet and looks very pretty, especially the double choc one cos i'm a chocoholic! but i don't think it's worth the hours of queuing. and i should thank them for opening their new outlet at the most obscure corner in the so inaccessible shopping centre, plus the fact that i was there at 11am, there was no queue! only 2 person in front of me and i manage to get my first box of donuts in 2 minutes! (and i took a longer time to find it with some help of the sc map and sense of directions). i still prefer my mom's homemade bread and i'm still craving for a buffet...

so glad that mom is back and put an end to my 'housewife crash course'. but i must say a big thank you to her for letting me learn how to take care of myself and look after the house and to train up for my next 2 years of surviving on my own. in the past 2 weeks, i've swept and mopped the floor, and washed and ironed clothes FOR THE FIRST TIME in the new house (which i've already stayed for 2 years), and i am thankful for the fact that the house is quite small. indeed, there is a sense of satisfaction when the floor felt so clean and everything is so orderly. and i must comment that the designer of the house needs a bit of common sense and understanding than to put the bamboo pole holder for hanging clothes sooooo high up on the ceiling that i have to stand on the stool, extend the fork-like thingie for taking the poles all the way and even have to catch the falling pole as it slides down from the ceiling holder (if you can imagine). ok blame the fact that i am not vertically-advantaged, but who on earth puts lights right in the middle of where the poles go across such that pegs have to be slanted to the side so as not to smash and break the lights. ok, enough housewife rambling, i wonder why mom never complained.
cliche as it may sound, but i finally realised how simple things are always taken for granted. and i finally understand why mom keeps nagging. the reason is simple, we never appreciated her work, for daily tasks like cleaning and cooking, and take it for granted that i can leave everything in a mess knowing that somehow it will get cleaned up cos mom can't stand the untidiness. yes, probably i'll never get to tell her this personally, that i really appreciate what she's been doing.
是啊，失去的才是最值得珍惜的，得不到的总是最美的。
life's a joke
today is the last day of sem 1, though mine ended more than a week ago, and it's only 1 more semester left before saying a big farewell to singapore and ntu. unbelievably fast isn't it? a big discovery after stoning at home for the past one week plus is my ability to sleep and watch tv. that's what's keeping me occupied when everyone else is still busy mugging. like last night when finally everyone's at home and sis was hogging the tv, dad hogging the internet so i had nothing better to do than to sleep, before 10pm for the first time in ages.
42km on sunday. not hoping for much, not trying to beat any timings, just finish it and enjoy it.