i hate old english with every fibre of my body.

i'm in an absolutely rotten mood now, because i have two tests tomorrow and i am prepared for none of them. i don't understand my lacklustreness, and utter lack of interest in anything other than sleeping. perhaps i'm trying to find my footing in this not-so-new-environment, and i'm constantly slipping and hitting brick walls, and all this is causing me to lose interest in what i used to love. Old English is absolutely killing my love for anything English, and i am starting to think it is in my best interests to drop the stupid class and stop worrying over it. what is stopping me, however, is my pride - because i don't want to feel like i'm dropping it cos i can't do it. i hate feeling inadequate in anything, but this retarded class which requires me to memorize stupid nouns in their stupid genders is really killing me because my brain hasn't been forced to memorize anything in such detail since A-levels, which was 3 fricking years ago. i keep telling myself that i don't have to prove anything to anybody, so just drop the stupid class if it's killing me. but something's stopping me from doing it, and i wish i just had the guts to say enough's enough. i am thoroughly unprepared for the test tomorrow though, so i think if i fail that one spectacularly, i might be forced to drop it anyway, because it's not worth the effort.

omg i've wasted an hour whining abt all this, and i haven't even touched my nouns to memorize. shootmenow, please. ugh. :(

Old English is bad.

omg i'm so failing Old English. i dunno how on earth i'm going to pull through this one. i'm doing so bloody badly! it's ridiculous. my brain hasn't memorized things since i left JC. and in this class, i'm memorizing tables of nouns, pronouns and whatnots, in Old English, it's absolutely ridiculous. i don't know how i'm gonna pass this class, i'm gonna need a huge miracle. 

and, i'm so unmotivated to go for classes. they just don't really interest me that much anymore. i dunno whether it's the classes, or whether it's me. but whatever it is, i think i need to get my act together pronto, because unfortunately, i'm just not the smartass kinda person who pulls rabbits out of the hat at the end of every sem.

i am a sad goldfish. :(

it just hit me, 

that i might possibly miss you even more today than i did yesterday.

nominative, accusative, genitive and dative.

i am so tired. i have a quiz tomorrow (the second one of this class for this semester already, believe it or not), which requires me to remember Old English personal pronouns, demonstrative pronouns, and nouns. which are all subdivided into nominative, accusative, genitive and dative cases, of which there are 1st, 2nd and 3rd persons, and also masculine, neuter and feminine genders.

WTF RIGHT.

i have only managed to memorize the personal pronouns, and my head is currently swimming with weird alphabet. i have two more tables to memorize by tomorrow, and i have no idea how the crap i'm gonna do that, considering the fact that i am intending to check out the house party at no. 48 tonight. i don't know what's gotten into me, going for all these parties and stuff. it's not like i like to drink that much. i think i'm just trying to make sure i don't come here and fall into studying like i do back home.

i'm tired though. cos last night was a packed night, what with the Canadian Cultural Night thing at 7pm, then Brass Taps with some of the exchange students after that til 11pm, then coming home to find a monopoly drinking party in full swing. i finally came up to my room at 1230 and had to force myself to shower and attempt to do some readings. which, admittedly, was a failure. and to top it off, i got up this morning with a mighty headache, since the alcohol kept me from sleeping well last night.

i do know that i can cut myself some slack, but at the same time, i'm not sure how much slack is too much.

remember, every new beginning is some beginning's end.

only heaven knows

is it ever right to fight to keep the one you love? cos if true love sets free, trying to keep someone you love by your side mayn't be the best thing for him/her.

so maybe, when you truly love someone, you just gotta let him go. or her, whichever is applicable.

only heaven knows.

:)

there's that rush of happiness everytime i see your name pop up on my screen. 

love me, love me not.

i am slothy.

i woke up at 10am, read Wacousta for a bit to do my Canadian lit assignment due Wednesday, called Clem, spoke to him til 12pm, then went straight back to bed. i'm so tired, i don't even feel like getting lunch for myself. i think this is the effects of sleep debt. and i thought i'd escaped the sleep debt thing since leaving Singapore for here. who knew that night owl habits would be so hard to break?

so what do i see myself as? 

a whirlpool of ripples, breaking up any whole image you might try to see. 

a flash of pink on the horizon when i feel good; a smudge of brown in the green grass when i'm sad.

fluffy baby pink socks that feel so good when you slip them on in bed at night. 

the scent of jasmine body butter that permeates the room when i unscrew the tub.

gloomy thunderclouds and the splattering rain.

you love me, - you love me not.

but, so you know; i do love you.

winter sonata.

so left with too much time on my hands, my sleeping thoughts are stirred once more, and i find myself thinking too much about the most inane things more than ever. waste-time thoughts. my mind is an archive of my life - dig deep enough and you'll find memories that record every event that's worth remembering. and some that perhaps aren't, too. but they're just there. everything just tumbles down over my head and overwhelms me sometimes. and with all the images in your mind crystallizing before you, you begin to see paths leading out of all of them into dark unknowns. all the alternatives to the choices that have made me who i am today. as tough as it sounds, the choices i've made in my life are unretractable. life isn't linear, it doesn't just have a simple cause-effect relationship. life's an immense tangle of points that are all intertwined somehow, like a web.

if i had to take just one lesson home from reality and life as i know it with me when i die, it'll have to be that everybody lies. it's a sad fact of well, life. i've lied a gazillion times in the 21 years i've lived on this earth, i've been lied to probably twice as many times as that. it hurts at first to think that everyone lies to some degree, to have someone lie to your face without blinking an eyelid. but when you realise that you do it too, it seems less heinous. 

musing aside, things have been improving dramatically for me. perhaps it's the proper sleep i'm actually getting every night now - i'm not so homesick and mopey anymore, not to the extent that i was last week, anyway. it's been snowing practically everyday here though, and my boots have been getting all icky and stuff, with the salt stains from the slush splashing up as i walk. it's gross. but i'd rather that than to have the bottoms of my jeans get dirty, anytime. 

i've bought tonne of clothes here, most of which can't be worn here. this is what i call foresight on my part. :D and Old Navy has the cutest slippers ever. i feel like going back to get one in every colour! i just might do that. heh. i've been deprived of summer-type clothes for too long already. give me back my slippers, shorts, tank tops and dresses!

so i was also thinking as i watched Winter Sonata, that there's more than one way to die. there's death, and then, - there's death.

words fail me.

it's been almost two weeks since term began here at Guelph for me, and i still don't know where to begin. while in some ways it's been by far the most exhilirating two weeks of my life thus far, the effects of being so far away from all i love is beginning to take its toll on me and oftentime, i wake up in the morning just a gigantic ball of tangled up emotions. here, i have all the time in the world to do things, and yet, i just don't have the desire or ability to do anything else other than contact my loved ones back home daily and while my hours away with them - either online, or on the phone. i do realise that this attachment to home could be hampering my exchange experience - after all, if being so homesick is such a big thing, why come all the way here to mope and moan? i am bereft of words, and even if i had them, i'd be unable to wield them to form some sort of coherent explanation for my bizarre behaviour here. perhaps i miss both the figurative and literal warmth of Singapore and my home too much. here, it's figuratively AND literally freezing all day, with temperatures dipping to negative double-digits daily now and people being together sometimes i suspect merely out of necessity. i yearn for warmth of any kind, i really want to make something out of this and not be a pathetic victim of circumstance. i should have more desire to do stuff, and at the same time, i should have less desire to do stuff too. i expect, and am disappointed. i cling on to every shred of news about things going on at home as if it were a life raft, all the while knowing that with every passing day, the memory of me in my friends' minds back home fades a little more. i wonder if people miss me as much as i miss them, knowing that perhaps it's just not a fair question to ask because i'm here, all alone, whereas the reverse isn't true. i question myself on a daily, even hourly basis here, wondering if i'm doing things wrong or right. and i try to create warmth in my room by curling up into a ball at night in my bed - but to no avail. it just seems like everything i try to do just doesn't work, and i'm frustrated out of my mind. perhaps all the stories you hear about exchange is really just a myth, because i am NOT having the time of my life here at all. the realization of that just makes me wonder at whether i'm just a freak, or whether everyone else was just embellishing. 

so then, life makes me wonder. half way round the world, when you are in bed and the sun is shining in my face. this is what i was afraid of when i formed attachments to people, and this is what i'll be afraid of forevermore. i love, and it hurts to be away. it hurts so badly sometimes to feel, and i half wish i didn't, because then starting anew wouldn't be so hard. it's when you know you've left something better behind - that's when you're stuck in a stalemate because everything forward just doesn't cut it. and so, i'm stuck here, unable to go back home and unable to move forward as i should. and it hurts. especially knowing that i've spent a substantial amount of my parents' money to come here and mope and be sad and be pathetic. i tell myself everyday to not be sad, to not be homesick - but at night when i'm talking to all back home, my resolve crumbles and it's all i can do to not bawl my eyes out from sheer misery and loneliness.

sigh. what a pathetic picture of me i've painted. i wish i could spin some other story up, something more befitting of an exciting exchange experience. but that, would be a lie. but then again, aren't all stories somewhat untruthful to some extent already? words fail me.

hello guelph!

alright so yesterday's post was positively depressing i'll admit. it's not quite as bad as it seems, really. it's just the lack of proper sleep that has been getting to me. i'm so stressed out, in such an unfamiliar environment, missing everyone at home, and i think it's wrecking havoc on my physical body. but i will do this. this is what i've wanted to do, so i will enjoy every minute of it. 

starting... now. :)

first three days in guelph

so. i am here in Guelph, finally. i don't even know where to begin! so many things i've been feeling, so many things to say. maybe what would sum it all up is that being here is so very different from being back home. while i'm trying to make it all work out the way i intended it to, by the usual tenets of staying positive, be open - blahblahblah, i do think that being away from everyone is taking its toll on me. especially since i'm here all alone, and the friends i do make are well, not very close ones. just hi, bye, see you next week kinda thing. monday and tuesday were actually not too bad, today was just terrible. i spent most of my morning in class, from 930am right up to 220pm, with a one hour break at abt 1220 - and didn't sleep right last night. in fact, i haven't been sleeping well at nights here. my room is right next to the heater and it's on some sort of timer, so it kicks on and off every half hour or so. and when it comes on, it makes this really annoying knocking sound. so everytime it starts up, i suspect i wake up or something. whatever it is, i look like hell right now, with eye bags and all. and i feel like hell too, my body really aches. i feel so alien here so often, almost like an outsider looking in at things through my body. almost like an out-of-body experience, those that people experience at night when they dream and they can feel their soul taking flight and leaving their bodies. i never fully appreciated so many things back home in Singapore, things i've taken for granted, almost. the Asians here are few and far between, and then, they're usually PRCs or those born here. i feel so different, i never thought i could feel so different. i mean, back home, it's like, i thought races were unimportant, that race just didn't matter. i guess that was the idealistic me thinking, cos out here, i realise that the racial card is played so very often, albeit very very subtly. perhaps it's all in my own mind, - i differentiate myself from other people because i think i am different. but i keep telling myself yet, and yet it doesn't make any difference to my interactions. people give me really weird looks when i walk into class, mainly cos i'm a lit major and i suppose there's this preconceived notion of Asians being unable to speak proper English, much less enjoy reading or writing it. it annoys me, i must admit, to be looked at as different - i hate it. i don't like people staring at me cos of the way i look, cos i have black hair, yellow skin, and eyes with epithelial folds. i don't like it how professors look at me and wonder if i'm in the right class or not. i don't like it how i'm expected to struggle to speak the language i grew up speaking, i don't even like it when people tell me how surprised they are at my "perfect English". and some people even ask me what language people speak in Singapore - do you guys speak English, or Cantonese? i find it insulting, almost, how i'm expected to be unable to understand and speak English. and it's frustrating how everyone speaks with this American accent and expect me to speak the same way - and when i don't, i'm treated so differently. i don't like so many things about being here, and yet i do like many things too. i like the independence, i like meeting new people, i like attending my classes even, cos they're so different from those back in NUS, i like having so much time to myself, i like just being here and having the chance to live my life outside my tiny island for a change.

but it doesn't change the fact that i'm starting to feel really homesick, and looking at all the things from home in my room just doesn't help. in fact, it makes me feel worse. i dunno how people do it, those people who do their university overseas. it's mind boggling. i've only been here for all of three days but it feels like i've been here forever and it feels like i've been away from home for such a long time already. i spent a good two hours lying in bed just now just crying my heart out cos i miss home so much, and then tried to think positive but well, sometimes, it's not just in the mind. i need proper rest, and then perhaps i'll be able to take in all this more positively.