i am disappointed with myself. this is, perhaps, affirmation that i am simply not good enough, simply too overreaching. this is probably bordering on the dramatic, but i cannot help but feel that i have somehow let myself down again. i have to believe in that, because the alternative is simply that i am just not good enough, and i cannot believe that. believing that would rob me of every shred of self-belief i possess, and i cannot allow myself to fall apart like that.

the world no longer feels like my oyster.

got my special sem results today. i know it seems like a weird habit, posting about my results every semester. it's like i have some obsessive compulsive disorder. but it's become a habit after so many consecutive semesters of doing the same thing. duh, that's what a habit is. anyway. i am disappointed. a B+ is far from satisfying. :( but i am trying to remind myself that i completely deserve it because 1) i stupidly signed up for FOC - which was two days before my exam. and 2) i was too bloody lazy to participate in any way. and oh 3) i didn't read 4/5 of my readings.

so yes trying hard to be grateful here.

trying, trying.

missing piece

i wonder how long this will all hold out for, this delicate balance that sees me perched precariously on the edge of the precipice. the threads that hold me together are tight with the tension, and i fear that just that wee bit more tension will break everything i've been working so hard to pull together. there is no fat cat in my garden today to distract me, no woodpecker hovering around the tree. it's just me and my thoughts, wishing the tepid breeze would chill itself into something slightly more wintry. shadows still dance on the pink garden wall, though - slipping into each other and changing the fundamental shape of its being. the sun blazes a strange amber today, casting an orange light onto the grass blades. the air is thick with it - can't you just taste it? it's tingling on my tongue, in my nostrils, and i'm awash in it. nothing, nothing you do can take this away from me, my mind is my sanctuary and my haven. even if the world should stop revolving, spinning slowly down to die, i'd spend the end with you, & still choose this over anything else. rainbow-swirled paddlepops and crushed kiwi smoothies make my heart soar, even as i wish that the paddlepop never melts and the smoothie never finishes. but as i said before, the paddlepop must melt, the smoothie must reach the bottom of the cup.

so the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle fit perfectly together, save that one missing piece at its heart that spoils the undeniably perfect fit.

white horses

like the golden leaves of fall giving way to snow sheets of winter; like the rain that has to fall from the sky when black clouds rendevouz; like the passage of time forcing me to become one year older each year - so, the chick must become a chicken, the sweet apples go rotten, the inevitable come. hummingbirds hover around the hibiscus flower, butterflies flit from bloom to bloom, the iridiscent throat of the kingfisher reflecting the sapphire of the water surface. i am surrounded by beauty, and yet i see the infernal inescapable maggots that eventually reaches everything. somehow, somewhere, death has touched me and its grip has changed me, its effects irreversible. death of a loved one, death of a love. many ways to die.

and while i sit here staring out at my garden, watching the boughs of the bingbing tree sway in the sticky breeze, watching the fat white cat with black patches slide sinuously through the gaps in the fence padding its way softly across the wild grass, i am lost in my thoughts, lost at sea. now the cat meows, and i am shaken out of my reverie of pastel shades and angry gashes. i am caught in an infinite second in my mind, it stretches on forever even as the songs on my itunes in the background keep shuffling along their playlist marking the passing of seconds, minutes.

i contemplate what it means, and am unable to come to any agreeable conclusion. everything my mind reaches at, i reject. how disagreeable. i am restless and yet lethargic, i yearn to do something that would poke holes through the safe cellophane that envelopes me - and yet i am held back by the comfort of amniotic fluid, safe and safer. i do know that even as winter comes, spring will come again, the grass will emerge from the frozen ground again. i do know that the rain will eventually stop, the sun will shine again. but what those wise philosophers never point out is that not every spring is the same. every winter is slightly different. every winter leaves different indelible marks on the land it passes through.

not wanting to sound overt today, i shall leave out the mandatory sad song i like to end my posts with. but i do know that i'm not a princess, this ain't a fairytale, i'm not the one you'll sweep off her feet. i do know i was a dreamer before you come and let me down. and i do know that it's too late for you and your stupid white horse to come around.

because i'm now a princess, this is my fairytale. i'm still a dreamer, after you never let me down. and it's never too late for you and your white horse to come around. i've found somebody who actually treats me well. and i do know that this is a big world, not a small town, not hollywood.

it's not too late, catch me now.

my exam is tomorrow.

and i am interested in doing nothing but completely retarded facebook quizzes.

ANYTHING, but studying.

gotta get some healthy motivation here, girl!

there's a song that's inside of my soul, and it ain't sunshine.

sitting in my room during CSS FOC doesn't sound like it's exactly the most social thing to do. i am, however, trying to study for my exam this saturday and hence have to suppress my kaypoh nature just for this next week. i hardly slept a wink last night, tossing and turning til 5 in the morning. it was dreadfully fitful sleep, as i dozed off, woke up, and dozed off again repeatedly til the sun came up. i am going to try to catch a bit of shut eye before i try to study in the afternoon - i am so optimistic, i am the sunshine of my own life.

there's a song that's inside of my soul

it's the one that i've tried to write over and over again.

i'm awake in the infinite cold

yet you sing to me over and over and over again

so i lay my head back down

and i lift my hands and pray

to be only yours i pray

to be only yours, i know now

you're my only hope.

facebook is a time waster.

@%^%&^@#^&@^ 

i have just facebooked 15min of my precious life away in a semi-zombie state - i am very very tired but am forcing myself to finish my reading for tutorial tomorrow.

operation presentation is failing miserably by the way. i have too many things on my mind to focus on turning out a good presentation. by monday. 

best idea i ever had, taking this special sem module when my heart isn't really in it. 

my heart's in my warm bed. i always can't wait to go to bed and i hate getting up in the mornings. 

she's in fashion

after a nearly 2 month hiatus, i'm back! i didn't see a point in posting anything when i didn't feel like it. to be perfectly honest, i am still bordering on uninspired. these days have been filled with afternoon classes (2pm-4pm should be declared official nap time) that have seen me struggling to read enough to keep up. the 4th week of special semester is about to be over and i am entirely unprepared for anything - exams are in 2 weeks (!!!!)

my lack of inspiration is carrying over to my presentation, which beckons to be done by monday. every idea that runs through my head seems closer and closer to retarded, and i must admit i'm getting a little worried. perhaps my brains have truly atrophied from lack of usage and my total brain capacity has shrunk. 

that aside, i am extremely tempted to go shopping. i have not shopped since coming back from Guelph (for good reason, my mother might add), but i am starting to feel restless at my unchanging wardrobe. this has got to be the longest period where i have not bought ANYTHING at all. save for one party dress - i have not bought anything since coming home. my roving eye has seen many pretty things but my paltry allowance has stopped me from procuring any of my objects of desire. i want gladiator heels, lots and lots of them. i want new black skinnies, and black shorts too. i want a new hairstyle, but it's taking forever to grow out. arghhhh. i am having one of those dissatisfied days at the mo, i'm sure it'll all pass eventually.

okay i will perservere in my research for the presentation before picking Carol up for supper.

think fashion!

i've been back in singapore for almost a week and a half already but it seems like i've never really left. canada is receding further and further into the back of my mind already, and i'm trying to remember what it was like there for me when i am now surrounded by the all-too-stifling reality that is the heat of singapore. it seems like all i can remember from my 3 months in guelph was the cold. i miss the weather so much. i know, it seems like such a trivial thing to miss about a country, but it's not just weather. being here now has made me realise that the weather has more influence in our lives than i thought it had. i'm constantly sluggish here in singapore because it's just too hot to do anything, my brain shuts down in the tepid heat. 

i am going to sleep now. i am slightly incoherent.

now we're back to the beginning.

having had a really lovely Easter with my uncle and aunt in oakville, tonight i find myself really sad that i'm leaving canada so soon. i feel like i'm the most confusing person ever cos i was complaining so much in the beginning and now, i'm complaining too - about not wanting to go. but i do not want to sleep tonight cos that would mean that monday's coming, and with the arrival of monda - , tuesday, and then i'm gone from here. (CLEMENT CHUA, DON'T TRY TO CONFUSE ME BY ASKING ME PATHETICALLY WHETHER I PREFER STAYING HERE OVER COMING BACK TO SEE YOU - THIS IS NOT ABOUT THAT AT ALL! haha)

i feel so SAD, i find myself unable to articulate exactly what i feel. going back to reality is never as fun as you thought it'd be. i'm really gonna miss all that i had here, i wish i could have it all. but we always have to choose, we can never have everything we want. if we could, the whole subject of economics can just be shut down now because it's utterly redundant - economics is built on the premise of unlimited wants desiring very limited resources, and opportunity cost.

i'm going home to be an adult.

i feel like i'm going back to a beginning of a circle, somehow. 

FOCUS

I AM HAVING A MASSIVE CASE OF WRITER'S BLOCK NOW.

my essay is just not cooperating with me. i am majorly upset.

i have to get at least SOME of it done tonight, so i can start studying for my classical myth exam on sunday. i am so stressed. sigh. and my packing is going horrendously. aaaaaaahh!!

okay focus focus focus!!

i feel like disabling my facebook for the next two days. it's such a time waster.

it's just the beginning

three exams in three days and an essay right in the middle of it all is driving me absolutely crazy. i am a nervous wreck, and my room is an absolute war zone with scribbled notes and printed lecture slides strewn everywhere. my books are all over the place, like my wits. i am a ball of tension at the moment, and my mind is so tired from having to be so active all the time. i have no time to feel anything at all, which is such a waste actually, cos i'm leaving so soon. i guess this is exactly what i deserve for months of utter abandon where my work is concerned.

and i am leaving in less than a week's time. but that is far away in my mind still, because i have an exam at 830am tomorrow morning, another exam on thursday, and i have managed to beg my lecturer for an extension for my essay - which i happily have to finish by sunday. and, my final paper on monday. i've only barely begun, and my mind is so frazzled already. i fear for my essay. i won't have much time to rally myself on thursday and churn out 12 pages by sunday. that, and the fact that i'm supposed to visit my aunt and uncle the same weekend too. joy! i will be exhausted when i reach Singapore.


i am going back to my Elizabethan lit notes. i am not even attempting to sleep yet because i know that my mind will be too active to rest now, so i will try to memorize quotes from my notes for my essays tomorrow.

this is the first time i have been around people who are so utterly self-absorbed, so feckless in their actions, so self-centred and unconcerned for anyone else around them. i am mightily annoyed. my housemate seems to think it's perfectly nice and wonderful to have study parties all throughout the weekend. it would be absolutely fine if they actually studied in relative silence. it is not fine at all if all they do is talk at levels far surpassing 33 decibels. i know, cos i had to stick ear plugs into my ears this morning and i could hear every single annoying syllable through my 33-decibel ear plugs. for some reason, the north american accent carries much farther. it is so annoying. i am so annoyed. i hate rude people who think the world revolves around themselves. if i can hear you through my ear plugs and music, i do think you are being too fricking loud. heck, i shouldn't even have to wear ear plugs in my own home.

pooh. times like this, i can't wait to go home.

i am listening to final fantasy music now as i attempt to study. 

i miss playing.

so we are all entitled to a little bit of privacy, i wonder if it entitles us all to Lying every once in a while for that bit of life to remain entirely our own. but you know, perhaps that's the folly of my thought, in even thinking that there's any part of my life that belongs entirely to Myself. i feel myself being pulled from twenty different directions simultaneously, every exertion meeting an equal resisting force, supposedly. if i could split myself up into two, maybe three, and each Me could work on something on the 10-foot long to-do list i have pinned up in my too-claustrophobic head - it'd be perfect. 

one more week to go, and i wish the week weren't so filled with too important and at the same time, too unimportant final exams and essays. i love spring time so much, it's the time of year when i feel like the world's my oyster. there's a tingling sense of anticipation in my very fingertips, i feel like something's gonna happen all the time. the air i breathe feels like enchanted air, it's both heavy and light with hope. 

so i start a revolution from my bed 
'cause you said the Brains i had went to my head 
step outside, the summertime's in bloom 
stand up beside the fireplace 
take that look from off your face 
you ain't ever gonna burn my heart out. 

poker face.

the last few days have seen me go to all my classes with surprising determination to see this through with dignity. it might have everything to do with my deplorable 0.5/20 for a recent quiz - or it might have everything to do with the realization that this will all be over in exactly two weeks. whatever it is, i am trying hard to grasp on to every single minute i spend awake, trying to make this time count for something. and it's not difficult, considering how much i have to do. just thinking about it all makes me feel like i'm not getting enough air. 

spring is really and truly here, with spring showers and green grass everywhere. i'm sad that i won't get to see my entire front lawn turn green before i go though, cos i think it'll take at least one more month for all the newly awake shoots to poke their way out from the earth after a winter's sleep. i find it highly highly ironic that i'm wishing i could stop time for just a bit more, because i don't want to go home yet. i find it amusing that i would do anything to slow time down now when just two months ago, i was wishing i could fastforward my life to this point in time. 

going home would mean returning to all things beloved. but that would mean the end of this, and the beginning of one more month in Singapore. at this point in time, being twenty-one and wishing i were sixteen again, wishing i could re-do so many years of my life from my vantage point now - i wonder if i've seen myself in twenty years' time and ruefully wishing i had done things differently when i was twenty-one. and i am convinced that that would be me at forty-one, because i know there'll always be something i regret because of one choice or the other i've made. there's the ideal, and there's the real, and i'm starting to think that never the twain shall meet. 

oh and i stubbed my toe on the door last night, causing the corner of my big toe nail to split from the rest of the nail, and a strange flap of skin to separate itself from my toe. it bled, and it hurt, and oh yes, i'm human and i'm still alive. the only thing i am annoyed about is that my nail is ruined, my ability to wear covered-up shoes is ruined because of the patch of bloody skin, and it hurts. 

cos i'm bluffin' with my muffin,

you can't read my poker face.

i am faced with two more weeks of Guelph, 10 weeks' worth of reading, a wedding powerpoint to whip up, and three bags to be packed. 

how i wish i didn't go through my entire sem spaced out and disinterested.

it's always like that, and i'm always aware that it's too late for regrets. so why don't i just not let myself get to this point where i wish i could have done things differently? i suppose if i actually managed to not do that, i wouldn't be me. 

alright whatever. i want to sleep so badly, but i have to read Homi Bhabha by today.

omg omg omg my essay is totally not coming together. i am slightly panicked because i have no concrete battle plan to save this disastrous paper.

and my cramps are haunting me.

i am pmsing severely.

the hormones are wrecking havoc in my body and i know it, because i am in an incredibly foul mood for the stupidest reasons ever, - and guess what, i know that too. but i can't help it, i'm feeling extremely grouchy, and i think i become more needy this time of the month, too. it's almost inexplicable, how i have no control over my emotions as they just ravage me and leave me feeling awashed in too many un-nameble feelings: anger, disappointment, sadness, misery, just to name a few of the cocktail of emotions that's coursing through me.

all this while, i just want to hear your voice so that maybe, maybe it'll all go away and i'll stop bawling my eyes out for no apparent reason. but because you can't, i'll have to weather this myself for once, and all i know is that i'm unbearably sad. for no apparent reason.

must be the PMS. 

ARGH

i am severely PMSed today. i feel like oscar the grouch who lives in a trash can. i'm so grouchy, i don't even want to be cheered up. i suppose i'm wallowing in my grouchiness. my essays are not cooperating with me. the one i've managed to squeeze out extremely painfully is extremely BAD. i would fail myself for it. unfortunately, i foresee my lecturers wanting to fail them too.

and checking out overweight baggage rates are extremely depressing. 

it is almost inevitable, this overweight thing. i wish i could call nwa up and beg them to let me leave with my two bags - whatever weight they are - because i've been here for four months and am never coming back again. my whole life is supposed to fit into 46kg of luggages? i somehow don't think so.

this baggage allowance thing is totally a pain in the ass. so shoot me for having to bring 4 months' worth of things home. 

which reminds me. i have to check shipping rates out tomorrow.