What's keeping me on my toes?

This apparently...


Eye-catching?

That's a lot of fresh air

I've shut the door, one too many times. Left the world outside and forgot to put up a post-it saying "remember you used to live".

Instead I hibernate in my room, asleep by 8pm, waking at dawn and contemplating an early morning swim.

Then, Kristina (you remember her, my gorgeous blond German roommate in the first year) invited me out for drinks to celebrate her birthday. And that led to a series of most fortunate events.

Firstly, it pulled me away from my Matlab codes and also led to the discovery of a rather charming bar/restaurant right behind South Kensington station.

The Collection boasts comfy turkish-looking wooden furniture and a reliable selection of exotic food. Popular with Chelsea yuppies and the fashion folk, its a nice place for catching up with long lost roommates and even a spot of clubbing on the weekend. If you're alright with the demographics averaging at 28 years. I'm torn between having to grow up and clinging to my university childhood.

The most amazing thing about this place has to be the restrooms where a very nice attendant told me how gorgeous I am (always a winning point) and the assortment of expensive perfumes at the washstand for touch-ups. How thoughtful! Oh and also the entrance, reminiscent of a fashion show runway which helps add to the model-glam of the place.

Meeting Kristina and her brother at Collection, led on to an invitation to join them for a gig at the Blagclub at Notting Hill Gate. Every Wednesday is Warm Wednesday, and features a live acoustic session in a cosy eastern-influenced room (with not enough chairs in my opinion - my poor poor feet in 3 inch heels).



The artist we had come to see was Stephanie Grace, a lovely delicate nymph with a voice that just melts you. Check out her myspace because nothing I say can do her any justice. My favourite song is ticket. I kinda wish I had bought her cd, but regretfully I didn't have more than 5 pounds in my wallet.

I don't remember much about the second artist of the night. Some girl called Danielle who was warbling like Christina Aguilera on coke. Sorry, I prefer poetic lyrics over warblers.


So I'm back to a music listening mood, and I hope no one caught me cooking in the kitchen with my Creative Nano plugged in and singing along to Chantal Kreviazuk while stirring my pot of hong bak. In the meantime, Lionel has me all jealous because he's bought himself an early birthday present - a Creative Xmod. The demo on cmss 3D x-fi is fantastic. Try the 3D headphone demo (with headphones on, of course!). Lionel has now turned his room into a surround-sound music room, just with a laptop, mp3s and two speakers.

And so it's almost the end of another week - with a hectic social schedule ahead. Lunch with B-landing girls, dinner with GS girls, dim sum lunch with Cheng Chun and Aeronautics folk, clubbing on Monday because I have to chaperone my little brother (no not really, but I like making it sound like it is - haha!). Busy, busy, busy.

Alright I'm out of here.

Ladies and Gentlemen, frost yourselves!

When I opened my eyes this morning, everything outside my window was in a hazy blue monochrome. My first thought was, who's gone and played around with the RGB levels, and then I realised...








Winter is finally here. Heap on the frost and wind and snow!

Try rockin' a scarf and hat look indoors

My heater hasn't been working since the start of term. Which was perfectly alright

until the weather decided to plummet into sub-zero temperatures for the first time this year. I can't find enough layers to put on without looking like a polar bear.

Frances, the nice housekeeper, was kind enough to send me a teeny little radiator to keep me company. I've never had one of these before (yea, I'm lucky, I've always had really good heating), and so I plugged it in and let the lovely warm air thaw my icy cold butt. I had a mild scare when it turned itself off after half an hour and I wasn't able to resuscitate it, but as I began to write this post it came back to life again. I am quite tempted to work on my bed now, which is nearer to the little radiator and other warmer things like duvets and pillows and fuzzy teddy bears and zzzzzZZZZZZZ...

The ASEAN scholarship - would you do it all over again?

Yes, I know my posts have been rather personal these past few weeks. So many exciting and bloggable things occurring in local and international news, and yet here I am wallowing in self pity and defining the word boring. I don't know, maybe the controversial stuff will come back after awhile... when I stop feeling guilty about blogging when I should be putting together my final year project.

Anyway, here's a piece that started out as a discussion in a facebook group (naturally called ASEAN scholars). I never actually meant to go on at length, but ended up writing a full piece, and embarrassing my brother at the same time. And here I shall do it again much to his chagrin. I know he reads this blog because he's not careful about hiding his IP address and I don't know all that many people from pmb.ox.ac.uk...

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One common question that always arises when people find out that I've studied in Singapore (besides the "Eh, how ar? Everyone there very kiasu is it?") is whether I'd still choose to take up the ASEAN scholarship, given what I know now, and/or would I send my siblings/kids there.

Everyone has a preconception about studying in Singapore. It's generally centred around how stressful and exam oriented the system is and the academic pressure cooker/survival of the fittest environment that has been carefully engineered by the Lee family.

I can't deny that I went to Singapore clutching several urban legends close to my chest. "The top students will tear the pages out of library books so you won't be able to study", "Failure is not an option in Singapore, they make you do push ups if you fail", "Exams are a way of life, all you do is study".

It's easy to laugh about it now, because there were times I faced horrors far worse than failing exams - but coming back to my initial question. Yes, I would do it all over again. And I did send a sibling to Singapore, if he hates me for it - too bad for him. At least he survived it to get into Oxford.

I wasn't a brilliant student in JC. I was always bottom of the class, I had strings of 'O's for my first common test. I couldn't even speak any mandarin to save my life. But people tend to forget that successes don't always come in the form of academic accolades and olympiad medals. And once in awhile it's humbling to go from top of my little PJ school to bottom of Raffles Junior College. It's perfectly alright as long as I lived life in Singapore to the fullest, because the opportunities in school were limitless.

Back in my little PJ school, teachers were reluctant to answer questions outside the core text, curricular activities were restricted, and PE was... well, I don't know what it was because we never did anything but copied down notes about netball in our exercise books.

The day I stepped into JC was the day I realised some teachers do care about you. My Odac teacher never failed to lead us on camping trips and spur us on to do the impossible even if it meant he had to give up weekends and stay till late in the evening to help us bring down the climbing ropes from the rock wall. My Civics Tutor (or class teacher) never once gave up on me, knowing how little effort I was actually putting into my studies. She was barely 30 and yet had the experience to wield control and gain the adoration of a rowdy class of 18 year olds.

I realised that school facilities made a big impact on my student life. No matter what they say about RJC kids being rich and spoilt, the old RJC was tiny in comparison to many other JCs, old and greying, and yes, the toilets smelt of ammonia. But, coming fresh out of my dilapidated PJ school, RJ was grand! The library had real books and study tables. The track was a real track. There was proper PE equipment, a canteen that wasn't monopolised by one vendor and maybe we didn't have fully air conditioned classrooms or proper desks, but we had AVU equipment and teachers made full use of it!

Sure, it was a struggle to keep afloat in a top JC where everyone was seemingly brilliant. Real life isn't easy, and you have to keep swimming if you don't want to drown. Why should school be any different? But I never saw even a spectre of any Singaporean student who would step on me to get ahead (and even if there were the slightly kiasu ones, they weren't so different from my Malaysian classmates who'd refuse to tell me the name of their tuition teacher for fear of me getting better grades - familiar, yes?) My schoolmates were interesting people. Intelligence aside, they were interesting because they were truly passionate about things - whether it was their sports clubs, or council, or dance or computers. And they didn't do it because they were forced to. They did it because they enjoyed and excelled in it and were encouraged and supported.

Even hall life was fun, if you didn't mind the curfews. Staying together with other people in the same situation surprisingly yielded amazing results. Eating together, studying together, gossipping together, watching tv together, doing laundry together... these people who sat down at my dinner table everyday and complained loudly about the amount of salt the cooks had dumped onto our vegetables are my best friends, even after we parted ways at the end of our JC days.

Deep down, I'm patriotically Malaysian by nature and I still snigger at Singaporean news from time to time, however I can't deny that Singapore gave me a chance to see things from a different perspective, while Malaysia is continuously trying to pull wool over my eyes. Would I do it all over again? Any day, baby, any day!

Soup for one

blogging has been off, of late. anything i write sounds depressing. if it isn't about exams its about the end of them. if it isn't about how boring lectures are, its about how early or late in the day they are held. if it isn't about loneliness, it's about my pathetic grocery list and soup for one.

i have an awful lethargy hanging about me. i don't feel like progressing with my final year project. i don't feel like being the usual obsessive compulsive control freak I am towards any of my societies and responsibilities. i don't even feel like cooking.

i just feel like vegetating in front of my laptop, debating the politics of House (and any other series we happen to be hooked on) with Lionel.

interesting things we've been discussing this week would include
1. how xiaxue on girls out loud is unbearably ah-lian-ish
2. hugh laurie on saturday night life
3. tottenham hotspurs and their terrible run these past 5 weeks
4. and our incredibly low tolerance for Chinese people - and by that we mean abrasive,
rude, inconsiderate, etc. etc.

its really difficult to do things meant for two across thousands of miles. i won't pretend to know how far england and singapore really are, because my geography really is abysmal. i'll just wait till march gets here. it's not that far away is it?

I <3 Hugh Laurie

I take everything back, Sugi. House definitely brings sexy back. And as a bonus, he's acutely funny too!

Sunday talk

It was a lovely Sunday. The weather was great and the freshers even said so themselves. The rain had stop, the sun was shining on our faces, and everything would have been perfect if our groceries from Sainsbury's weren't so heavy. Just the usual Sunday with five Linsteadians dragging orange Sainsbury bags, comparing how much we'd spent and vowing to spend less next week which we knew at the back of our minds is futile.

Midway between Sainsbury's and Linstead, the freshers bumped into another couple of freshers walking towards Linstead. We exchanged the usual pleasantries.

"Went to Sainsbury's?"
"Yeah, you guys?"
"Just finished with church"
"Ah, Holy Trinity Brompton?"
"Yeah, where's your church?"
"Opposite the Natural History Museum. So you went with the Singaporeans?"
"Yeah"
"Are they all Methodists?"
"Oh no various types of Christians"
"I see, well HTB is a nice church"
"Hey they should come to our church"
"Oh, but we go to a Catholic church"
"Oh yeah, Catholics aren't Christians?"
"Excuse me? Catholics are Christians"
"No you're not, you believe in Mother Mary"

The smug look on the kid's face was enough for me, as if it was just usual Sunday banter to exclaim Catholics aren't Christians in the faces of three Catholics. I walked off.

When a non-Catholic says something so baseless, what should you do? I've come across this situation more than once, and no matter how many times you try to explain that yes we are indeed Christians, they politely nod but still give you a disbelieving look. Why? Why in the goodness of your heart and your, no, OUR forgiving religion is it so difficult for you to accept that we are at the crux of it all followers of Christ, and thus we are Christians? Why do unto your neighbour when you would not say "Oh he's not really British, his parents came from China and he still eats with chopsticks."

And ultimately, saying something like that really hurts. Why as a Christian would you be so hurtful to your own kind?

The difference between turning 21 and 24

Last night I said to Sugania:

"You won't believe what I made for dinner. A crispy salad topped with raisins."

And with that I officially resigned from the early twenties club, and joined other mid-twenties in their search for Sainsbury's 'be good to yourself' range, prettier footwear, french skincare and classier cocktails. When I reach my late twenties, I'll start shopping at Waitrose. Because then I will be able to afford it.

The path to reaching 24 has not been easy. Along the way I've had to face up to the reality that sneakers are not for every occasion and running a comb through my hair in the mornings makes a difference because there is an age limit to pulling off the grunge look, and I'm way past expiry. Learning to accessorise has been painful. One, because I've never (before now) spent more than 15 minutes trying to look beautiful. Two, because I'm too indecisive to buy accessories.

It's also taken three years of several beauticians trying to tell me that I have sensitive skin to finally believe it. It's so easy to look fresh-faced at 21. Now I look in the mirror and it's giving me anxiety attacks. I've never followed the 3 step face care ritual (cleanse-tone-mosturise) in my life! 5 months ago, I caved in and bought a toner. And other Laura Mercier skincare products. There go my birthday angpows.

I've dumped my all too precious deuter backpack for pretty handbags. My scrungies for straighteners. My lazing about schedules for three times a week at the gym.

I'm not growing old. I'm growing up. And that's just a teensy bit depressing.

Of cakes and turning 24

Cake count as of now is three.

That's three cakes in three days! So much for my resolution to lose weight this year (stop! before you tell me I'm thin enough, I didn't mean I want to become aneroxic, but fat genes run in my family and one day I might wake up as a size 12 and beyond)

The first cake came courtesy of my freshers here in Linstead Hall. Just as the clock struck midnight on Tuesday, and Lionel's call woke me up, there was a strange muffled commotion outside my door which I clearly recognised as too many Malaysian voices trying to whisper all at once. As I stood behind my door listening to the cacaphony of "Shhh"s outside, I was half tempted to open the door and surprise them instead. After 10 minutes, they knocked on my door, pushed a cake in my face and started singing Happy Birthday while I pulled an Oscar winning look of stunned surprise. Later on in my room, approximately 8 freshers were guzzling strawberry cream sponge cake from Pattiserie Valerie. Very yummy!

The second cake came from my godmother. Usually she bakes me gigantic cakes which take a month to finish (without Yi Shan around), but this year she brought me a chocolate cake from M&S. It was still gigantic and thus I made the freshers gather in the upper gallery for more cake and Haagen Daaz Pralines and Cream. The cake disappeared within minutes. It was very good cake!

The third cake appeared today during my usual prayer group meeting, thanks to Teresa! A lovely little lemon sponge cake. That's three different cakes in three days!

And I still have a dinner to go tomorrow with my EE and ISE friends. I fear the cake count may rise. Is this like the never-ending birthday celebration or what?

On this day in history

And I am getting quite prehistoric. Anything past teenhood tends to make one feel like a stegosaurus.

On this day in 1983, a very tiny baby was born in the sanitised wards of University Hospital. She didn't cry and the doctors feared for the worse. Little did they know she was just enjoying an afternoon nap in the warmth of the humid Malaysian afternoons she'll come to love and was writing poetry in her head.

On this day in 2004, I celebrated my birthday for 31 hours, on a plane back to London. When I arrived in Linstead, Lionel, who had offered "free porter services to ladies in pink", was no where to be found and I had to wake Maomao up to help me drag my bags to my room. Lionel made up for it by sharing his precious 5 grams of Swiss-French Berthaud cheese and the Les Miserables piano score I had been planning to buy for myself. Subsequently while celebrating, the fire alarm managed to set itself off 3 times in one night.

On this day in 2005, Tao brought a huge chocolate cake from Valerie Pattiserie to the JCR for me. And when I said I didn't eat chocolate, he gave a very excited "Oh REALLY?" and proceeded to give me a pair of 'silent slippers' which are really oversized fluffy booties while breaking his low-carb diet, just for me! Lionel in the meantime was close to surrendering after a violent fight with a bout of flu and thus only managed to go out to a nearby restaurant instead of the mussels at Belgo's which were promised earlier. But the spotlight of the day was on my shiny new Tiffany & Co. ring! Jealousy? Envy? Why yes, one of each please!

On this day in 2006, Lionel reserved a table at Nobu and splurged on the best degustation menu I've ever eaten. Not that I frequent 3 Michelin star restaurants on a regular basis of course. And all that after Lionel had convinced me that the furthest he was taking me to was Masala Zone in Earl's Court.

On this day in 2007, I'm sitting for an accounting exam in about 3 hours. And then spending the rest of the day trying to reverse the aging process the last few sleepless nights have been wrecking upon my body.

How anti-climatic.

Quarter Life Crisis and beyond

Overheard on msn today

me: Aiyah... I'm so old, baby
Lionel: hee
me: same age as uuuuuuuuuu!!!
Lionel: wah same age as me very old hor? mid twenties liaoz. haha. jialatz
me: yeah, reaching quarter life crisis. nvm, u'll get there first and tell me how's the view
Lionel: then must buy a Porsche
me: ??? Then mid-life crisis buy what?
Lionel: Jaguar


Isn't it nice when you have all the milestones in your life planned?

6 degrees of winter

I've just watched the morning sky change from velvet hues to a cloudy light grey (you know, #333333 in html) as the construction workers begin their morning ritual of assembling Southside hall. The building works don't look as if they'll end anytime during my stay here in Linstead, so I've already developed an immunity to the cranking of the drills and trucks and loud, brash workers.

It's supposed to be 6 degrees out there. I don't think so, it feels pretty warm in here. Maybe it's just me because my brother says he's shivering on the cold hard floor. Lionel on the other hand will probably say its still raining buckets in Singapore, so don't complain.

In other words. I'm back in London. And not so ready to begin another term of late nights, overdue assignments and procrastination.

Keep an eye on this blog. I have stories to tell.

Back to school

Spring term starts in T-4 days. I'm afraid my laptop is going to die before that. The sounds coming from the cooling fans are not reassuring. This is why you should trust IBM processors above AMD Athlons. Oh well, little Fujitsu, you have served me well for two years. Just live on for another 6 months more, won't you? I promise not to overload you with Matlab simulations. Even if that means staying in the EEE labs for longer hours.

In the meantime, these last 6 months are going to be one long hurdle. Somewhere within me my academic spirit is broken and I feel like I've been studying for a century. My little tasters of the world outside are making me impatient and I know I'll be counting down each and every day till I can take these shackles off and don that black gown.

It doesn't help that almost everyone near and dear to me is done with studying for good (almost!). 6 months. That's all I have to wait for. Although it's probably closer to wait for Easter holidays in 3 months time when Lionel comes to London again to have something to look forward to. Usually I want time to slow down, but now I've never wanted time to go by faster.

Happy New Year

Have a glorious 2007, everybody!

Do all the things you said you'd never do! Go to all the places you said you'd never go! Try everything at least once (except, you know, the kinda stuff that will get you convicted) and live it up in the year 2007!

Maybe I've forgotten the 'never's I said once upon a time... and this year, I'll embark on some of those 'never's I said I'd never do. Thanks for reminding me how much I've contradicted myself, but if it's for the better, I won't hold myself to my own promises and silly things I said as a teenager.

I turn 24 in a few days and quarter-life crisis is looming. Life is creeping up on me so fast.



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And as a side note, I had a great day today with Odac, which was somewhat of a surprise. I've missed you guys, even though I didn't think I did. I met Charme for a bit and that was loads of fun! Even if the boyfriends were feeling tired and grumpy! And after that, being guided around Clarke Quay (while remaining quite sober, thank you) was a lovely treat!

It's back to studying tomorrow. The holiday is over...