hakuna matata

friends. after hk said something about how people stop making friends after a while. and how there needs to be a higher threshold before new friends become more than acquaintances... anyway that gave me something to think about on bus rides, and to ask people.

i guess that's a question that has always plagued me, especially since you know, i'm overseas and supposed to be making american friends and not singaporean (or so the logic goes, if i was going to make friends w singaporeans anyway i might as well stay home). i suppose that's not exactly logical, and it's not wrong if i still like hanging out w singaporeans. but i still need to convince myself sometimes. still bothers me sometimes but anyway that wasn't the point of this post.

i've always been surprised by how God has brought me friends in the places i least expect. like, my poor choir buddy i never talked to before going to italy, my colleague at the learning lab whom i at first didn't think was particularly nice (sorry rachel :p you know i love you :)), colleagues at citibank whom i actually got along with (as compared to my internship at MOF, didn't know anyone etc), ... okay i guess the citibank folks are people i just met and we aren't crazy close, but i think i hung out with them enough to be comfortable and have fun with. and i say God provided them because the first two are christians and there were another two christians in the citibank crowd, and i totally did not expect to be meeting christians (or finding out that they are) in my jobs, at least. i don't quite know why.

anyway yeah... so about different thresholds. i don't really know, it really seems to depend on how well i click with someone plus how much effort is put into the relationship. i mean, for one, i was actually quite surprised at how well i clicked w jackie. not that i really remember how we met, even though she describes it to me so often and i'm like really? i don't quite remember that.. but yeah. and i'm actually quite lazy/can go on days without seeing people so i think the poor girl is usually the one calling me up. oops. and then my fellow singaporeans@stanford, i've gone on trips with them, hung out during the year (sometimes), complained about school and life to them. gonna miss the graduating ones awfully:( and there're the sealnet folks..

isn't it more like some old friends fall off your radar as you keep meeting new people? i think i've heard that before too... two schools of thought huh. either moving on while keeping the best old friends or staying with the old friends and not really making very close new ones. actually no, i think i've heard more of the latter... how confusing.

it's really been a while! what with starting work and SEALNet people coming for the ASEAN celebrations to present our circle paintings and get the PM to paint on it.. That was definitely a crazy week. Entertaining SEALNet pple until 11+ everyday and taking a cab home. and then Top (from project thailand last year) randomly came to Singapore and I got his email on Friday night asking if I was free for Saturday lunch. I'm like.. well done. But anyway I managed to get a couple of people to come down. and then sean's bday dinner on Sunday.. which was quite fun even though i was the youngest. honored to be invited though. haha :)

yeah, lunch with yingheng and then dinner with lyd n pam on monday. i don't think i was very good company somehow. dinner with aud n changmou n shaun n hongking yesterday. reminiscing about rj days was rather enjoyable. and somehow all my conversations include an element of animal! maybe i only notice it now cos tuan kept telling me i was obsessed with animals. ohwell. anyway, it also struck me what a GEP group it was.. i don't know why only today though. maybe cos we really haven't met up in that group so it was a little different.

today was a rather eventful day i guess. meaning most of my time wasn't spent at the desk which made me very happy:) it felt a little like being in school and doing PWR research again though, haha. cos i was trying to find books on trusts to help me understand. rather than random googling. i'm glad my boss let me go though.. hopefully he didn't think i was slacking or something.

so i went to NLB from 11:30 to 3:30 and had lunch w jon in btwn.. that was nice too. rather amusing and i got to see his van! apparently one of his ex-gfs or something was very averse to him picking her up in a van. and he was like "why couldn't she see past the van!" which was just hilarious cos normally it's like see past the money or something.. oh i don't know, it was just funny.

and then my boss forwarded me this email about RM (relationship manager) training.. so I got to sit in on this session where the RMs were taught about citi's house view, investing for long term, etc. and i found out that one of the guys i met was quite an important person. i THINK. anyway i shall go ask him what he actually does.. hopefully tmr. yeah, so that took up the rest of the day and i wasn't deskbound! ahaha. victory.

i'm also actually home for dinner, which hasn't happened since i don't know when.. oh wait it was last fri or something. and fireworks tmr! yay

anyway, i think that guy made such a big impression on me cos he was the only one to answer me at that first team huddle thing. but again i guess he didn't have much of a choice since after all of them stared at me like i was crazy when i was like "hello! what're you doing? i'm an intern and I heard a lot of noise so i came out to see what was going on" (this was Nat'l Day eve), and went back to doing whatever team activity it was that they were doing, i asked him specifically what was going on.
and later met him when i was going out in search of a hashbrown. haha. oh this reminds me of the French guy at Total in 05. he was so nice! and smiley! i suddenly randomly remember going into his office and finding out that he went to INSEAD.
the weird things i do.

man. it's been almost a month since i've been home and finally.. i see something like a confirmed job in sight. which isn't even by my own work, which is quite pathetic. but i think i've grown to accept the need for connections and using them. and it's not necessarily a bad thing. even though i thought things should be done on pure merit and ... idealistic. and yeah, i suppose colin's right, i don't like people helping me very much. haha. but then it's a reciprocal thing too huh. like if you like offering help people have to accept it. anyway, praise God! yay!

anyway, this sealnet thing is rather exciting. i'm kind of glad i get to be in charge of this thing with ryan cos i'm free and i'm around! yayy. i suppose it carries on my post PV07 euphoria, as JH calls it.

my hair is really getting out of hand. sooo long and annoying! time to cut. hmm. maybe i'll do red streaks again, that was kind of fun.

i'm quite sure i had a lot more to say but somehow i forgot it all! here is my quote of the day. more like quote of yesterday. so colin was trying to find this rooftop place in NUS (the view was pretty cool) but really, it didn't seem like he knew where the place was at first and i was wondering if we were ever going to find it. and then i was also thinking of my various conversations with tuan involving my fascination with animals and duck/swan-feeding. so i was like "where's the wild goose?" [and i did really think it would be quite amusing if there had been a real goose we were chasing] colin turned around, looked at me and started laughing.
anyway, i have since decided it's one of my better lines. haha.

ohh meeting up with sean n jia'en was fun. although i wish joel could've gone!:( i think it'll be even funnier if bert comes along next time.. oh and jon should be back by then. and ruixiong'll be there too! lots of good times. anyway so apparently bert's scholarship officer said sean's resume had 5 pages (and when i heard that i was like uhhh good resumes should be like 1 page? haha) anyway sean was like "wat.. maybe she counted the appendix of "best places to eat in the bay area" and we couldn't stop laughing. man i miss our SLSes! bro wat and bro goh. they are so comic..

and i'm so glad PV07 is having a mini-reunion tmr! hope it'll be fun! miss them lots. miss a lot of pple. where is jackie... sigh. everytime i see tu's msn pic i miss her too! even though she's really good at googlechat haha. its a cute pic. i can't believe chris is going back to cornell 11 aug. it's too soon! humph. and i need to decide what to do for winter break. europe? hm. east coast? (again). now i have more ppl to visit there though:)

really can't believe i'm going to be a junior! ahhh.

ah. somehow i just got to thinking about what kevin said about friends and drifting apart. actually i thought about it on and off after i met him last sat, but i guess i just never got round to posting on it:)

anyway so i realized this time round, coming back, i'm waiting for people to organize outings rather than doing it myself. man, blogger is really slow. anyway.. yeah. i used to be the one always msging pple to meet up and stuff. but i think it's kind of changed now. so far, most of the times i've gone out = someone else organizing it. haha. which is nice, cos it's really tiring to coordinate with like 10 different schedules. but it also makes me wonder.. actually at stanford it's kind of similar. which is bad! maybe i'm getting too lazy. but for sg, i realized i'll just msg the pple i really do want to meet. the last 3 times i came back i was still trying to meet as many pple as possible.. now it's just like. mehh. will see what happens. good and bad i guess. sometimes it's nice to meet up with pple i haven't seen in quite a while.

so kevin was telling me about this friend he used to be really really close to, but somehow they drifted apart and can't really connect anymore. and some people he didn't use to know too well, he connected really well with for some reason or other. i was thinking about it.. can't really think of pple i've drifted away from. unless you count the primary school crowd. used to hang out with jo, steph, michelle, emily, hon a lot. and now i hardly see them at all.. which is kind of sad really.

but at least i do still keep in touch with chris n junwan. n emilyn sometimes. etc. jieying i relief-taught with, which was kind of interesting cos i never was that close to her but we had lunch together sometimes and all.

serene asked me if i found that it was harder to make good friends as we get older. i don't really know, exactly. sometimes you just find friends where you never thought you would. like. haha. this is still one of my prime examples. rachel, whom i worked with at the learning lab (super-enriched tuition center) before going to stanford. my first impression was like hmmmmm i don't know if we could get along. cos the first time i met her was in the library and she was rather unhelpful about where i could find 'the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe' cos i had to write about it for some cloze/compre passage. but somehow along the way i found out she's such a silly squid! haha. and we still have lots of fun when we go out.
she's hilarious la.. she wanted to go to spotlight to get decoration stuff for harry potter day (ie saturday) and she wanted gold and silver ribbon thingys. and at first i didn't think twice about it, then i said she ought to make it red and gold for gryffindor colors (and i actually remembered correctly! i'm amazed:p) and she was like huh? wat's gryffindor.. and i'm like.. win already..

and then of course my dearest jackie:) man i'm going to miss her a lot in storey next year.. boo. it sort of took me a while to get used to the fact that i can't just turn to her and tell her something hilarious/whatever cos she's not rooming with me now! (and she's not even in sg, -_-). oh well. yeah, it was kinda funny cos i somehow found her on facebook before orientation, and we also somehow bonded thru the fact that we were very sick and tired of introducing ourselves at int'l orientation cos nobody remembered anybody's name/hometown after a while.

there you go, my prime two examples i guess. and my batchmates at stanford are always a great source of comfort. all the times we had random dinners during freshman year.. hm should try to do that a lil more often next year huh. this year was all comm meetings, haha kinda sad. random note. i can't believe cs n jon are gonna graduate next year! and daryl's going to be gone after dec! man. at least he should be around in the area i hope. augh. he is so amusing. man.

ooh deb fung's songs are so nice. she's not super well known though. yay for adelene who lent me the cd!:)

spring break! man i can't believe it's over and spring quarter is starting soon.
link to photos are at the side..

anyway, quick recap of spring break:

SAT (Mar 24) got to chicago o'hare int'l airport late, flight was delayed. and then i was still figuring out my housing for that night! oops. i really will make it a point to get stuff like that done earlier next time. seems like i always have problems with housing. anyhow, after many phone calls back and forth to various long-suffering pple (including jiunwen & junwan) i ended up staying with jessica pan.

which is so funny cos when we were in sec 1 we were all like ooh! house capts! and then i end up staying with one of them. but she's really nice and funny and very hospitable, taking in some random kid (i.e. me) for the night.

SUN (Mar 25) umm. slept in (really not such a good idea) cos i was kind of sleep deprived from the two late nights after finals ended.. watching some hilarious korean movie w jackie and then matchpoint w dayoung.

had lunch w jason, he is so funny.. was muttering about how he could still handle taxis (on the road), just cut them off, but buses.. another story altogether. saw his apartment which had a really nice view except for these two high rise buildings which obscured parts of the lake michigan view.. the lake is so pretty!

went down to wai keong's apartment and saw aud! yay. haha. haven't seen her in a while. me & chim agreed the two of them are kinda cute together though:p
then jason dropped me off in campus, i was walking around and met gerald (and fellow frosh) for dinner and saw his dorm.

MON (Mar 26) original pancake house w aud n chim! yumyumyum. i love that place. but it's the sort of place you can visit only so frequently. made fun of exhibits at art institute (i think chim was rather disconcerted by my irreverent attitude at first), walked around downtown chicago and discovered this lovely choc cafe called moonstruck! it is SO cute. ahh. met megan for dinner, she brought us to grand lux cafe, a sister company of cheesecake factory. followed megan home.. i like evanston! i guess its more like stanford than uchicago.. more suburban.

TUES (Mar 27) met jiunwen and her bf at panera bread (haha! the company which i sort of analyzed!) i liked their iced green tea and raisin scone. yumyum. anyway, jiunwen had to rush for class so her bf gave me the tour of northwestern instead (i was so amused, really). northwesstern campus is really pretty.. a little like a park! also visited the baha'i temple (an architectural wonder, so it looks) and then the weather suddenly CHANGED and i froze. boo. i knew i should've worn shoes. but the awesome weather the past few days caught me off guard. played settlers at night w wk & hui leng, it was rather amusing although not as crazy as the monopoly game we had during thanksgiving

WED (Mar 28) wandered into downtown for the morning, did some shopping (YAY! i'm shopping deprived) and then left for UIUC. it's kinda weird cos i was really looking forward to UIUC when i first landed in chicago, but then when it actually came to it, i wasn't so enthusiastic anymore cos i realized it means my break is ending! sigh. but anyway, junwan decided to bring us along to her SSA film festival thing - they were screening 'be with me' which had SO much food - i'm like, you definitely know this is a Singaporean movie. haha.

it was so nice to see everyone again though.. got to see pple's dorms, cars, houses (jon's & zhixiu's apartment is ridiculously clean and neat - it has definitely motivated me to do something about the state of my own room, although how successful that will be is another thing altogether). and junwan's apartment is really so social! although as me & chim decided, there is a price to pay since they can't do work until after midnight. haha. they've such a nice sporean community i'm almost jealous.

THURS (Mar 29) sent chim to amtrak station, she didn't want to get back to chicago late at night.. toured UIUC w junwan & fiona. and met zhixiu on the way. lunch at jon's fav korean restaurant.. i think it's kind of nice that they have a street of restaurants. but i guess that caters to apartment-living pple. um. walked around, i heard about some of their ridiculous stories (they want to buy josh a live chicken or a huge inflatable one for his bday!)

LEX to airport. it came late, and i was wondering if i would have to find another mode of transport to get myself to the airport. not that it mattered in the end, since my flight was delayed. and i got to use the lounge yay star alliance gold:D then my flight was overbooked so i ended up w a free hotel stay, free roundtrip ticket within US, economy plus exit row seat (which probably has as much leg space as first class yeahhh) for the next morning. woohoo!

tahoe trip today was rather screwed up i think. had trouble trying to please everyone yesterday, colin dislocated his shoulder today, slopes were kinda slushy. definitely the last time for this season..

augh. i am in such a weird mood today. i can't even figure myself out! anyway.. it was nice meeting sean n joel again. haven't seen them for so long. haha okay not actually that long but well.. much less often than last (academic) year. i also realized i'm not all that plugged into the christian community there.

we ate SO much though.. the kolo mee was pretty good. and then milo dinosaur! haha. i actually haven't had a milo dinosaur before but well. it was good:) it's so weird to think joel's engaged already! and thinking about marriage and saving up. it's like having to grow up too fast.. i dunno. sort of like mrs cheriyan saying yesterday that she felt so weird when her student came back (years later) pregnant and she had to take a moment to accept that fact heh.

and then island creamery! and sean gave me a lift to orchard, so nice of him. and it was starting to rain so i was v thankful for the lift heh. tea with chris n lyd was fun!! chris got us such nice earrings from HK.. i'm wondering how come i never saw such nice things. i need to find nice shops online to buy stuff for pple man.

oh and we were playing some board game.. was kinda fun haha. poor lyd kept (in her words) 'visiting tourist attractions and having to pay', and it sort of reminded me of that crazy monopoly game we played during thanksgiving where we ended up in two huge alliances wondering who'd go bankrupt first. so ridiculous.

charlotte's web was so cute. but kind of sad at the end when charlotte died. i think i was kinda sad too when reading the book (a looong time ago). and somehow in the middle of the movie i was thinking about how i only have like one day left here. i really thought i'd got over the whole leaving thing already, but i guess when i really realize it after brushing it off for the most part it's worse??

and during dinner lyd was asking me if i thought my ability to make friends was 'handicapped' by the fact that i don't drink. maybe it is.. i dunno. aiyah. some things i just don't really want to think about.

anyway.. oh yes. so i guess all my mixed feelings built up to this point.. and then i ended up taking it out on this random guy who approached lyd (while she was talking to me too, how rude!) and wanted to get to know her. and apparently it's happened before so she's kinda used to it. after she said no, he wanted to either give her his phone no/get hers. and but i think i was kind of at this breaking point and something just snapped in me and i snapped at the guy 'she said no! leave us alone!' actually i guess that wasn't a very nice thing to do, but the guy looked =so= sketchy and i thought he was going to continue pestering us or something. i still don't really know what got into me but lyd was like ok u're really in quite a bad mood, that was so unclar.

notable event of the evening haha. nice spending time w lyd though, pity didn't have as much time to hang out w chris. sigh.. i will get one-suite or something so i can call people. oh daryl recommends futurephone.com, must go check it out too.

pretty long day again! man it's been so long since i stayed out that late last night.. (thurs night that is) so on thurs: went out at 1ish to shop. attempt to shop would be more accurate, since i didn't find the low-priced long-sleeved shirts i was hoping to find, so not a very successful trip.

and i was very tired of walking by the time i met lyd so i was like !! time for food! haha. we had a very nice late-lunch-tea meal at tcc though:D i think i spend too much money :| and then it proceeded to rain!!! so heavily! :( ah well.

meeting jm and eunice was interesting.. one from uk one from australia and me from us! kinda cool. and rather different. i didn't know the NUS bidding system was so annoying.. poor people! very thankful that stanford doesn't really run out of spaces for important classes.

so i got back pretty late and (for once) was quite tired but i stayed up reading seabiscuit (again), one of my fav books:) and then i didn't really feel like going out today but i'm glad i did:)

so much fun! ms tan is hilarious.. never fails to amuse me. really love annoying her haha:p although i felt a bit weird cos i just went back in july (or something) with serene.. but serene talks so much. and i also forgot peiying was in ms tan's form class in sec 1. haha.

and you also don't realize how much teachers gossip (or talk about us) until you're in there listening to them:p but it was interesting anyhow.. and meeting mrs deborah tan was so weird. she told us we must set up an emotional bank account (i.e. build good feeling) so you can ask pple for favours next time. aiyah i think basically it's networking la.

anyway. i am beginning to feel the force of the oncoming quarter.. i think if i don't get into my introsems i'll take 17 units and preserve my sanity and hopefully by God's grace get a good internship. aaahh.

haha this is the 601th post. anyway yay, this shouldn't sound as depressive as the last. and i finally saw shaun after two years (hello shaun! if you happen to read this). i guess he is right though, if you don't see people for a long time you've a lot more things to say. or it could also swing the other way and you'd feel really awkward and have nothing to say. i wonder which happens more often. feels like the latter wouldn't really happen as much but you never know.

yay i finally managed to upload my hongkong photos on facebook. link on the left! thinking about changing my template again but lazy to find a new one.. actually given that i'm so free i shouldn't be, but when i feel like i have to do things i'll procrastinate on them -_- blargh.

oh! so i have a mentor (stanford alum) and then i kept pushing back writing an introductory email to her until tuesday, and then when she replied she said she literally just left singapore. sigh. i could've actually met up with her!! augh. i need to learn from these things. and missing deadlines. blagah.

and on mon/tues night i was clearing out one of my drawers and i found all manner of interesting things.. including this sheet of notepaper where i wrote down a couple of quotes. so i think this was in apr 04, and my dad said to me, "nobody will care if you don't do well in your SATs/can't get into a good university. the choir's not going to come together and sing you a song." i think at that point the issue was that i was spending too much time doing choir stuff. i guess they (parents) just weren't used to me actually spending time on CCAs, given that automation was so slack.

so i met up with candice and fiona today.. so good to see them! and it was easy to talk to them. cos it's like sometimes with other people it's awkward and have to think pretty hard to find stuff to talk about. actually that happens really quite a bit more often then i'd like it to. i'd also like to believe that's cos i'm always meeting new people but that's probably not the case.

really depends on my mindset at the moment i guess. whether i'm in the 'ooh we must meet people today and it's fun!' or 'aw man this is going to be such a chore' mode. anyway.. yeah. i guess it also helped that they're good frens so they can like bounce off each other. if that makes sense. and candice when you read my blog you ought to tag so i can 'talk' to you since you're never online! -sulks-

oh and church was kind of interesting. i've never really felt like part of my church, which is quite tragic. i also like to blame my parents for that but if i'd had my priorities right when i was younger i guess it wouldn't be such an issue. dunno la. i miss chi alpha though. and campbell. so i think i ought to go for thanksgiving service tomorrow but i don't feel like it cos i know i'm going to feel so awkward. yup. that's me. awkward.

okay this is starting to sound slightly depressive. it shouldn't! happy new year! haha. i am so lazy. need to find something better to do with my time. i keep pushing everything to next week (well, this week, already) telling myself i don't want to think about school stuff while it's 2006. procrastinate. ahhh.

yay it was good meeting pam today:) she got me wondering though. whether pri gep was really that influential. i mean i did really like chinese then, we had so many fun games and chinese was really cool:) and a lot of my closer friends now were fr pri gep but maybe that was just a self-perpetuating sort of thing.. we'd already been through 3 years so in sec sch it was pretty normal, just a continuation?

anyway. and she was saying she's not very good at a group friendship sort of thing.. and i totally agree for me too. prefer one-on-one. although sometimes i wonder if pple get bored. but yeah.. the group friendship thing. is kind of like draw groups hanging out.

alright hopefully i'll be back in the shopping mode next week cos i do need to buy stuff. and i hope the sales last oh dear. ahh. anyway tomorrow is stay-at-home day, will potter about and just enjoy being home:)

i think i may be overdependent on the internet. no actually it's just because i was trying to get on the sms website last night. i think. anyway.. so i was rather annoyed yesterday when the taiwan earthquake rendered our internet quite slow and useless! therefore i went to bed. okay la i was tired too.. long day.

haha i always laugh so much when i'm out with rachel. even though at first it's a bit awkward cos i haven't seen her in so long (same with everyone else i guess) after that i always end up laughing really hard cos we're so ridiculous:D yay squishy squid 2! oh i forgot to bug you to do your credit card application.. let me msg you now. haha i can't believe you stored my number under 'squishy squid'! -sulks- and we forgot to take a photo:( nevermind i'll come to TLL and disturb u n christine sometime.

and it was such a pity that we couldn't watch night at the museum at vivocity! but that place is ridiculously crowded.. -_- oh well. lyd's laugh is so happy, i wish i could bottle it up and bring it with me wherever i go. well i would bottle up lyd but since that's not very possible, the laugh goes just as well:)

it was nice to see chris (on tues night now) after so long. need to hang out another time! i can't believe it's been a year. i think i need to be better at calling up people to keep in touch.. new year resolutions:) the only thing being that now the sch year and calendar year don't coincide so it's really weird. new sch year or new calendar year resolution? guess i can have both.

some things are just very confusing. i suppose i think too much cos i'm too free. haha. and now i don't really feel like shopping! shopping overload from hongkong. oh it was so interesting, when it started raining last night 心雨 by jay chou came into my mind. kind of apt huh? even though i guess the 心雨 isn't really literal.

oh yingheng's story about his tuition kid and learning new words was hilarious.. so they're supposed to write down words they don't know and find out the meaning (to expand their vocab). and one day one of the kids came up with this four-letter word which means a small rock with mould on it. and i couldn't stop laughing because for crying out loud, why in the world would you ever use that word so why would you write it down? but it was hilarious:)