i am very alarmed. i come home, check my email and find "stanford - forms overdue!" in my mailbox. it almost gave me a heart-attack, i must admit. my first thought was that their system screwed up. then when chris said something about forms being un-editable after submission, i realised something i forgot earlier on. cos i -ahem- accidentally wrote 12pm instead of 12am and asked them to change my forms, and they probably didn't do the amendment properly. @#$%^&*. i think i shouldn't have bothered, then there wudn't be so much trouble. crap. i hope it didn't compromise my "housing, roommate, advisor and IHUM assignments" which "have already started". well done..
on a happier note, today was a day of coincidences! but i need to go nap before i collapse so i shall blog abt the us embassy and coincidences later
i hate visas. i had better have everything and bring everything tmr if not i'm going to be very very annoyed. and it's just the start of doing everything on my own, like i was telling fiona today when doing the cashier's order. guess that's what the asean/prc scholars have been doing huh. hmm.
anyway, watched madagascar finally! it's quite cute la, though not -that- funny.. love the penguins:D the lemurs are funny too! and it was great catching up w adeline.. haven't seen her in ages. she's still so full of nonsense sometimes, some things never change.
you know it's time to sleep when:
1. you somehow manage to open two browsers of the same visa application form, fill in both while feeling a vague sense of deja vu, and not realise that you filled in the form twice until you've printed one form out.
of course, that might be also due to the fact that you've been filling in wrong things and having to redo the forms tons of times.
2. you fill up the 'city' field for your university as "Singapore", and again vaguely wonder why "Stanford University, Singapore" looks weird
i think my grandma has gone mad, she just asked me to play the piano so that her big sweep tickets will win. it was most alarming. she pointed at the numbers of two of her three tickets, and instructed me to play the piano so those two tickets would win. and there I was, very bemused, wondering what songs she expected me to play to coordinate with her ticket numbers. for a moment a crazy thought came to me, maybe I was supposed to match opus numbers with the numbers. erps.
somehow, what lydia said that day when I asked her why she thought I needed a blessed church camp comes back to me. "coz if u're anything like me, the past 6 months must have been hell". my reply was that it kind of slips off, I tend to forget most things after sleeping. not exactly forget, but the impact is lessened. and I really don't want to go through all that again.. how feasible is it anyway?
and my brother scolded me last night for not starting to find a job.
so this is how it's going to be.
so many things I'd like to say but are better left unsaid.
will I live up to expectations? how can I when I'm so directionless?
haha.. this is so funny.. came home from midweek service and found a dog at the lift.. it was actually quite scary, huge eyes and rather thin with black floppy ears.. mom's conjecture was that it was our neighbour's dog so she called "gypsy!" and it wagged its tail somemore and looked at up her.. didn't know if it was our neighbour's dog or if it was a stray.. i mean, if it had been a stray i wouldn't want to be touching it, nor would i want it to come anywhere near me.
so rang the neighbour's doorbell, neighbour opened the door and said oops! she didn't realise the dog escaped outside.. must have run out when they came back from swimming. most hilarious.. can misplace a dog and not realise. so my bro said, maybe cos the dog does its own thing (haha sounds like randy jackson) in the house quietly so they don't know when it's in the house or not.
haha darn, i was just going to say if anyone doesn't know what to get me for bday present i want a josh groban cd but now i realise i won't even be here for my bday. how depressing.
hmm. i had the queerest dream.. i think i must watched too many action movies lately. i vaguely remember escaping from somewhere or other and this nifty little vehicle that could fly. okay there's no use describing it, i realise. it's an image in my mind. it's really cute and small and can take off and stop quite fast.
and i can't decide whether i should get a laptop or not! since i'm going to get a desktop. nyam.
oh i finally went back to sch to get cert today.. heh raphael n shaun haven't gotten their certs yet. anyway, so coincidental, met mr chan ty and sara ho. pleasant surprises!
hmm mr and mrs smith was quite cool haha. but ending is anticlimatic. i like the way angelina jolie's more pro than brad pitt.. girl power! 312 pple vs 50/60 pple; "are u ready?" "yeah" she yanks the driving wheel, the car swerves, he goes off balance n she does all the shooting. and when he's trying to get the hostage to talk and she uses the phone to hit him n he talks straight away. haha. very action-packed. in fact, mainly action. with a plot like having 2 assasins who're in fact a couple, it's rather to be expected. but anyway it was quite fun/funny:)
journeys are good for thinking/sleeping. even though they're vastly different activities.
my favourite part of carly fiorina's commencement address to North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University this year:
"Never sell your soul - because no one can ever pay you back.What I mean by not selling your soul is don't be someone you're not, don't be less than you are, don't give up what you believe, because whatever the consequences that may seem scary or bad -- whatever the consequences of staying true to yourself are -- they are much better than the consequences of selling your soul.
What you are today is God's gift to you. What you make of yourself is your gift to God."
actually i like her whole speech, saw it on xuwen's blog, but it's actually on the businessweek online website too.
anyway, although the selling your soul part sounds super idealistic (that's probably why it appeals to me haha) maybe it is idealism that earns satisfaction.
wow was really so tired last night. but it felt good! at least i can sleep in peace. from 11.30pm to 9.30am haha and then i fell asleep again from 11am to 1pm . clar has returned to being the queen of sleep. yeahh.. haha. oops.
oh and serene said my reading taste is very british. i.e. i read all the british authors' books while she reads american. i guess that's kind of true. i like brit humour! haha. like oscar wilde.
i think i had more to say but it's slipped my mind. hmm. another time then
a walk down memory lane. went ghim moh w mom n bro to eat lunch today.. drove past old rj. it broke my heart to see "NUS High School" there. okay i'm being melodramatic but i wish rj was still there. remembered all the trips to school in the car, worrying about whether i could remember my stuff for prelims/a's, the saturdays i had to drag myself out of bed to go for choir, the saturday afternoons we walked to ghim moh for lunch (and i'll terrorise poor candice by walking nxt to the drain so she'd keep worrying i'll fall in and try to drag me away but i'll obstinately walk even closer to the edge of the drain just to annoy her:p), the food at ghim moh, and then choir pracs, ...
okay i don't know why these reminiscences revolve around choir so much, i guess it made a very big part of jc life for me. guess it's the same for everyone who spent so much time with their cca-mates. and it reminds me of how my parents thought i needed to spend more time studying and not going for choir/joining choir wasn't a good choice. but i'm glad i joined anyway:) i think there is something in what ting said about how one would tend to regret things one didn't do more than those one did. but even then there probably was a purpose for choosing not to do the things one didn't do.
i'm kind of tired. it was a good meet-up though:) i haven't laughed so much in a long while.. i miss my laughing fits. which earned me one of my nicknames. happily, a semblance of my fits returned today, which is quite rare nowadays. wonder why. forgotten how to laugh? forgotten how to be silly and not care and just enjoy it? i'll miss them loads in sept and in the months to come.. it's easier to be jaded than to be happy. haha oh dear i realised how bad that sounds. reminds me of the sloth at the biodome.. fungus grows on it cos it moves so slowly. i think it's just my current mood. i certainly hope so, if not there is a huge problem.
Favourite quotes from Oscar Wilde
Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.
I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.
If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.
Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.
Of course I have played outdoor games. I once played dominoes in an open air cafe in Paris.
Fashion is merely a form of ugliness so unbearable that we are compelled to alter it every six months.
Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
Society produces rogues, and education makes one rogue cleverer than another.
I never put off till tomorrow what I can do the day after.
Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.
Ordinary riches can be stolen, real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.
alright, so i'm not going to get my visa done just yet.. have to wait till it's 90 days before 26 sept. so crappy. oh well. means i'll have to do it nxt nxt week.
haiyah i have to go and look for a job again. hence starts the ranting once again. wat job? ugh. and i don't know if pple will employ me for less than 3 months unless i lie to them haha. or unless i do relief teaching. bah.
and i have lots of pple to meet up with! shall see lyd chris n hopefully kahli tonight, ser sometime nxt week, pam sometime on a friday night when i'm finally free.. lijia n joon n peiying sometime soon too. i really think i havent' seen peiying since dance night. and even then we didn't even eat together. and lijia too. okay my memory is quite bad but well. oh yes i'm also supposed to meet aud when she comes back. can get jiahui along too! lala. at least pple will start being jobless and more free now heh.
if anyone has any bright ideas on my next job please tell me:)
wow, this is the first time in many many days i've slept so much:) very satisfied, albeit a little woozy. fell asleep at 8pm yest, woke up at 6+, went back to sleep till 10. yay!:p
and i have discovered the quotes from the first month of j1.. they're hilarious! here's my all-time favourite..
context:
Ms Eva Hor was lecturing us on water, and giving an example of how water is incompressible (and therefore able to support large aquatic animals) "The whale is the largest mammal and it lives in water."
Raphael (who had obviously taken a dislike to her) "She wins the whale because she lives on land and she's the largest mammal"
I think it's the way he said it that's so funny.. "she wins the whale" I really think all his future patients will love going to him..
anyway church camp.. the girls rather surprised me a little. as in, they had a lot to say about other people. and i helped with the children's class! haha. some of them have perfected the ability to drive pple mad.. guys who don't stop talking (esp at the top of their voices), girls who are petty and don't stop complaining.. but there're nice cute kids too of course.
i'm quite glad i went, except for the fact that i got cornered by the visiting preacher.. who so coincidentally happens to be based in california. i got introduced to him because pple found out i'm going stanford so i'm quite obliged to go to that congregation unless he miraculously forgets about me. dunno whether that's good or bad also.. it takes like 1.5h to get there from stanford. i guess we'll see what happens.. luckily the girls rescued me the second time i got cornered cos they wanted to take photos. haha.
yeah! finished all my forms! woohoo~ haha i was quite high after that. anyway i still haven't finished packing oops. nevermind.. off i go.. first time to msia (hahaha yes i noe i'm the champion) be back on thurs afternoon.. hope i don't forget to pack anyth!
haha. lunch at this restaurant near my old house was funny. the waitress brought the bill, my dad was holding his credit card, getting ready to look at the bill and then place it in the black thingy (whatever it's called). and then the waitress (old lady) just took the card and the bill away before my dad looked at the bill. i've never seen pple do things like that.
and just now i took a nap (had to, given the 3 hours in the morning. and i finally fell asleep and had quite a gd nap!) and my mom woke me up at 7. i opened my eyes, looked at the time, couldn't figure out whether it was night/morning (it was semi-dark), started panicking because my first thought was that it was morning and i was supposed to go for camp and i hadn't finished my forms. "is it morning or night?" mom was very amused "night" clar heaves a huge sigh of relief. k i don't know why i immediately thought it was morning. maybe cos it felt like a gd long sleep. but it was sufficiently alarming to wake me up.
yay i shall get this done fast so i can sleep more later haha
sigh. so I slept at 3am and woke up at 6.20am. and was unable to return to dreamland. someone tell me I won't fall asleep in church later.. I think I'm going to be a walking zombie.
augh. there is something severely wrong with me. i'm tired yet i can't sleep. okay i managed to after quite a long while, but still. so i ended up sleeping frm 3 - 9.30am then 3 - 8pm. really really weird huh.. it so does not help that i have 14 forms to fill online by tmr (sorry to those i've been whining to) and being as indecisive as I am, you get the idea. Plus I've to write one essay to get into the dorm I want to stay in, and another one so that they can assign me a nice roommate. and answer the advisor's questionnaire which has questions like "please write a brief statement telling us how/when/under what circumstances you feel you came of age, intellectually." now isn't that fantastic?
i'm halfway through the dorm essay, hardly started the roommate/advisor ones and i have to finish all this stuff by tomorrow plus i have to pack for church camp. ugh. i think my holiday wasn't at a very good timing? or maybe i've just been wasting too much time as usual.. feeling very impatient at the moment grr.
oh my whole family has been sleeping at weird times. yesterday they all fell asleep by 9pm and I was the only one awake until ~3am then they all woke up and I went to sleep. crazy huh. okay brother has woken up haha it's time for dinner.
touched down at 5.30am.. i think i slept maybe 3 hours at most haha. watched 6 shows. okay watched 2 of them halfway cos i didn't like them.. robots is actually quite good! bigweld is so cute and round haha. and the express train is crazy.. throwing the passengers all over the place. but the whole concept is quite cool. watched million dollar baby which was quite tragic.. didn't really expect the ending. but can see why it's an oscar winner, even though i hated hilary swank's accent. and i didn't really like hitch/wedding date, their plots are rather unbelievable and undevelopped.
right. oh i visited yale n princeton! so i've seen all the powerhouse unis haha. anyway, i think princeton is really pretty! a lot of greenery and it's separate from the city/town area unlike yale/mit/harvard. but it has some ugly buildings too. yale has an old-world charm. the architecture. i must go find out which period the architecture was from.
i can't remember what else i wanted to say. oh i came back n slept 7 hours, not enough. i must go fill up my numerous forms. can you believe i have to write 2 more essays.. okay the roommate one isn't really but still. and find 7 photos! argh.
hijacked my bro's comp while he's off delivering presents/cards. hmm. imagine living in spore for 18 years, pulling up your roots (not totally, but in a sense) going to usa for 4 years (and putting down new roots) and then plucking them out again to return to spore. a little unsettling maybe? i have no idea. and lousy dbs has just sent me their rejection email after dunno how long.. totally wu liao.
i think i'm going mad. while i was in j1/j2 i couldn't see myself attending college anywhere but in US, and now that i'm going i don't want to go anymore. this is like reverse psychology. and my bro told me i'd better learn to embrace everything different (cos i said i didn't like mexican food/eating sandwiches for lunch all the time). okay this is really disjointed. random thoughts. it must be because i haven't fillen out those approaching stanford forms and will have to immediately get down to it when i get back. fedex package! argh.
anyway we're watching a boston pops concert tonight! should be good:) the weather is quite hot now.. albeit kinda windy esp towards evening. it's practically singapore temperature thanks to the sun.. (and no clouds)
somehow i don't think i'm enjoying this holiday as much as i should be. kinda weird. maybe it's cos i know i'm leaving in sept so i want to make the most of the time at home. maybe it's cos we didn't really plan for this hol so it's rather aimless sometimes. yet i don't think i'm going to enjoy going back to work haha:p or searching for work, for that matter. church camp should be fun though.. nonsense-talking time:)
all sorts of mixed feelings.
am leaving for lake george/saratoga in a few minutes i think. haha. anyway, i'm so sad! i checked the cirque du soleil website the night before leaving and still didnt realise corteo was showing here.. it's their newest show. i guess cos i intended to watch it in san francisco in nov or dec.. ah well. so didn't get to watch it here. tragic:(
weather's improving! yay. there was this little girl who tried to shoot me with a balloon-gun.. was quite funny. and another one was holding her little dog out of the window so its head stuck out at all the pple who walked by.
right i think i'm supposed to go eat breakfast