cny + photos!

happy chinese new year! i had a great time celebrating the year of the piggies! cny eve was spent pigging out, shopping, watching vcds, pigging out again, playing cards, and a grand pigging out termed the reunion dinner. the day ended with me and my bro failing to shou sui as we dozed off at around 2.30am after watching bits and pieces of some asian beauty pageant. quite lousy that our filial piety actually couldn't even help us last through one night. heh, but sacrificing sleep is really too difficult for me.

the next day we set off for malaysia to visit relatives on my mother's side. as usual, the moment my wai4 gong1 saw me, he got reminded of my hyperactivity when i was a kid and he began some storytelling session of how i used to climb around in my dad's car while behaving like i had innumerable limbs. but seriously i have no recollection of me being so naughty when i was young! my sisters both complained about how i refused to sit still and finish my meals such that they even had to run around with me to feed me. goodness, how could that be possible! it must be some major conspiracy agreed upon by all of them. and there was my brother who kept insisting that i attempted to lead him astray when i was abit older, by instigating him to do funny things like meddling around with my erjie's precious ornaments, then being a tattletale and causing him to get scolded in the end. hahaha, i bet he made up all these stories in his dreams too. :D

then it was all the adult talk. both my sisters got pestered on the subject of marriage, and it's really scary when i think of the day when the two of them get married and live under other roofs. maybe that'll be when i finally learn how not to take them for granted. my dajie actually wants me to play her favourite version of canon in d on the piano for her wedding. i think it's time for me to start practising soon! not too good to screw up your sister's wedding right?

realized how much i miss my grandparents. we haven't seen them in a year! and it's really heartening to see wai gong and wai po still as fit and healthy as ever. but i think the impact of time on a kid is certainly far more visible than that on the elderly. those small little naughty cousins were no longer as they used to be! it was just one year, and all of them just suddenly sprouted so high up it's like planting green bean seeds. and of course my brother's height was one of those at which the adults would gape. as for me, they had nothing much to say apart from the fact that i didn't change much (i.e. never grow taller!) so they asked about studies and results and such.. argh, i better not get myself reminded of the horrible results that await me.

on our way home from malaysia, we began to reminisce about the old times. and it was then that i remembered, with a bit of a startle, that my grandma had already left us for seven years. i was only in p6 when she passed away, and my erjie was like the present me at that time, waiting for the release of A's results. it is only now as my grandma's death anniversary is nearing, that i begin to recall whatever little memories i have had of her. it shouldn't be this case, should it? loved ones should be kept in memory all the time, and not only drift into one's mind from time to time, or only on certain occasions. a few days ago i watched "my girl and i" on vcd. there was this conversation:

female lead who's sick and dying: My birthday...It's a week before yours. Since I was born first, I waited alone in a world without you. In the future, I'll wait for you a long, long time. Take your time. Stall all you like.

male lead: As long as I've been living, there's never been a day without you. And there never will be.

so sweet, but i don't think it's possible for someone to remember the dead forever. it'll take alot alot alot of love i guess, because memories get written and rewritten over and over so many times that they do fade. (or maybe it's just that my brain's too small..) i know that grandma is still watching over all of us from above, and however afraid i am of the fact that memories will disappear someday, i don't know what else i can do, except that i will try to think of her from time to time, and when i look at her photo everyday..

oh anyway, back to cny! haha my family actually went kboxing after we reached singapore! all thanks to my erjie's craziness. bernie kor kor (her boyfriend) joined us too! we sang from 8.30pm till 2.30am! utter madness! my parents left for home at around 11 plus because they were too sleepy, hahaha. and i found out that my dad can sing really well! and he knows so many pop songs he could actually sing the fei yu qing part of qian li zhi wai! i can't believe i only knew that during that kbox session. and my mum has a really really cute voice to complement my dad's! it was so funny to watch them sing yue liang dai biao wo de xin together. my dearest bro (the act cool not cool bro) was only willing to sing mayday songs. basically he was just like another huiwen, just in a much more subtle way haha. huiwen see it's all your fault for converting my bro into a mayday fan! =P by 2.30am, i was sleepy, my bro was a little drunk and giddy because erjie forced him to drink beer, dajie was already in dreamland, bernie kor was trying his best to act like he was fully awake, while erjie was still entirely sober and energetic! who knows how late she'll stay there till if not for our incessant whining. but needless to say, it was real fun!

and the past few days was all about mahjong! didn't play with money though. don't think my bro would be willing to part with his pocket money considering how he lost $1 (=bankrupt) from playing poker with us. we played mahjong using the really small tiles i got from china. it's the really mini portable mahjong set which was so hard to "wash", but we couldn't care less about that as long as we got to play. there was one funny round where juncheng kor couldn't hu although i threw out a tile that made his winning set. simply because he didn't have any tai. right after that, he drew a flower that gave him 1 tai! ultimate suayness! he kept complaining, if only he drew the flower before i threw that tile. hahahaha.

nothing to do now, so shall just post some photos from the past month! :)


who: me grace
what: runaway runaway.. with lots of screaming
where: escape theme park!
when: 27th jan
why: free admission ticket from grace :)
how: grace looks brave, but she's scared of theme park rides! especially the viking ship. haha, and it was the first thing we tried when we reached escape. it was so funny when this brave-looking girl looked scared. looks can be very very deceiving.. heheh, im scared of driving along the daytona tracks though! bad experience of getting bumped into twice by the same lady. and it was a painful experience. godzilla actually made me try the advanced track with her twice! ai yoh, it was so very traumatizing. we tried a water ride too! super exciting! just that i was totally wet in the end. going to escape early in the morning rocks! there's practically no one to fight with you for the rides. no long queues! so we tried whatever we wanted :D oh yes! we sat on this kids' ride, some choo choo train thing, for 8 times that day? kids' rides can be scary too, don't belittle them!

here's the pretty flower that twinnie painted!
who: me huixuan hongzhen guatpei
what: painting a cerebral palsy home cum stayover at huixuan's house
where: jb, malaysia
when: 8th-10th feb
why: huixuan inititated the painting project with guatpei's help.. and i wanted to visit her house!
how: our painting was a success! especially since we had guatpei the artist with us. huixuan send me photos! we painted fruits and vegetables on the walls of their dining area, and added a flower trail along some other pillars within the home! stayover at hx's house was so fun too, with her friendly parents who brought us to have fantastic dinners every night. nice to catch up with hx and hz, and to listen to their stories at night - at the expense of my sleep of course. oh and hx has a karaoke set at home! it can even give you a score after you finish singing the entire song. tsk tsk, to think it only gave me a score of 2/100 with a jia you! grrr.

who: me yiwen xuet yeehwee
what: play play play
where: yiwen's house
when: 10th feb
why: for me to do something else in yw's house apart from playing bbo, hahaha
how: my dear p must have had alot of fun showing off her secret collections to me and yh. but they were really amazing! so the two of us couldn't help going "wah!" non-stop like idiots x_x and she even scared us that she's a drug addict by showing us some ultra large-sized syringes. the sight of that box of printer ink fillers actually freaked us out. haha! oh yes and we were trying to figure out how exactly i came to know yh, when i realized that i knew her through rubbish! she was the girl who offered to help me throw rubbish in nanyang. hahahahaha. rubbishy friend. after yh left, xuet came and we started singing karaoke! yw's karaoke set was actually a little like hx's! just that yw's karaoke set likes me (or rather, my singing) a little more than hx's. i actually managed to get a pass score for the first time!


who: me huixuan tiffany tingfu mak melvin
what: cycling marathon
where: ecp to around ang mo kio then back. 50+km!
when: 11th feb
why: for fun's sake i guess :) certainly not for charity, haha
how: i felt so proud of myself after the cycling trip! the last time i cycled on a single bike was when i was with hi154 mates at weixuan's house, and they all witnessed the disaster. yay i think i've overcome my phobia of cycling! though i still sustained a few injuries this time, it was great fun with nice company around! oh yes, and i've devised a cool way of preventing your bike from getting stolen even if you don't have bike locks! ;)

ying2 and grace at actioncity! brrr.. scary rv-ians.

i don't know why grace hates mushrooms so much. =/

valentine's day

Peanuts - A Charlie Brown Valentine

happy valentine's day! enjoy :)

first tuition session with effie

today's the first time i tutored this p3 girl named effie. hahaha, taught her chinese. our tuition session was supposed to be on saturday but i went today since lowly came down with gastric flu and needed me to take over her slot! was abit unprepared because i just couldn't picture myself speaking chinese for an entire 2 hours after losing touch with the subject for so long. but in the end i didn't really have to speak full chinese to her; she simply refused to reply me whenever i ask her anything in chinese! so naughty right, but i still had a lot of fun just now making sure she knows her ting xie words and hanyu pinyin. effie's such a cute and lovable kid! she's so hyperactive and talkative she just kept running in and out of the room to bring stuff to show me. her file, diary, school diary, uniform.. and her laughter's really contagious. once she started laughing over something, she took at least a few minutes to stop. but once she stopped laughing, i would start laughing! couldn't help it but she really looked hilarious laughing non-stop. oh and today i finally knew what a sea-monkey looked like! i hope effie's last sea-monkey doesn't die. it's quite cute to keep that as a pet, though it's really really minute and pseudo-invisible.

take a look at her handwriting! =P don't ask me why there's a jungle, some scary face, and the couple in love..



and this is the hamster that she drew for me. yes, it's a hamster.

the new 9oclock channel8 show rocks! it's so funny and lame and happy. it's not like other draggy local drama serials with all the baddies who make you feel gek all the time. there's joanne peh and huang jun xiong too! great cast. :D

going off to have an adventure in malaysia tomorrow! hope twinnie and i survive those "terrors"!

babel

went to watch with cihan on sunday. i felt it was a really good movie, though a bit too disturbing for my liking. the scenes were hauntingly vivid (or even vividly haunting), and the characters kept coming back to life in my mind's eye.

i thought the anti-america sentiments were incorporated rather blatantly in the movie. the terrorist accusations, the refusal of a moroccan ambulance, the attitude of the police officers.. and especially the cynical ending, whereby the american family lived happily ever after, while the rest of the other characters in the movie still had their lives in smithereens. it turned out to be quite political actually, and these rants against america did distract me from concentrating on the main themes of the movie - which was already quite a labyrinth on its own to figure out, with the various transitions between vastly different countries and languages.

but other than this, i loved the way the movie was capable of linking the many unique stories together without confusing the viewer, and maintaining its intriguing elements simultaneously. almost every character had a story of his/her own, and the movie had managed to capture the most intricate human emotions very adeptly. there were a couple of touching scenes in the movie, and my favourite scene is definitely the last scene. it was shot so beautifully, and i felt at least the last few seconds of the movie were much more optimistic, comforting and hopeful compared to the first 2 1/2 hours.

so i was just telling my sisters about this movie when it suddenly struck me that i didn't even understand what the title meant. what's babel ar? my erjie's boyfriend told me it's something from the bible, and he said Babel's a tower that God built to punish people by containing them and making them speak various different langauges such that they do not understand each other. hrmm, what he told me did shed some light on the meaning of the show.

and from dictionary.com:

Ba·bel /ˈbeɪbəl, ˈbæbəl/
–noun 1. an ancient city in the land of Shinar in which the building of a tower (Tower of Babel) intended to reach heaven was begun and the confusion of the language of the people took place. Gen. 11:4–9.
2. (usually lowercase) a confused mixture of sounds or voices.
3. (usually lowercase) a scene of noise and confusion.

and then it all began to make perfect sense.
the confusion of language - japanese, english, moroccan language, mexican talk, and even sign languange
the mixture of sounds - the crazy loud rifle shots, happy cheery wedding dance songs, the sound of weeping/crying/sobbing, screams of pain and anguish, the heavy blaring disco music..

even in her very own world of silence, the deaf-mute girl wasn't spared from the babel of the rest of the world.

it is very saddening that this very noise and confusion was the ubiquitous theme that linked up the individual stories and rendered the movie coherent. and it was a rifle that wove all the stories together. a symbol of violence, destruction, damage. it's quite a pessimistic thought, but the movie seems to be saying that no matter where one lives, or what language one speaks, one can never seem to escape from turmoil and chaos. and it is exactly these disasters that give all of us a common identity. furthermore, the ratio of the number of happy, heartwarming scenes : disheartening, tragic scenes is far from balanced. the depiction of japanese girl's sense of alienation is alone sufficient to diminish the human warmth illustrated in the movie - how the moroccan guy refused to take brad pitt's money, the innocence of the american kids, amelia's love for them, how the jap police officer treated the girl, how yussef gave himself in to save his brother. yet this is about it. the inadequacy of love to prevent the worst from happening is apparent. i suppose this is why im still so disturbed by this movie. it's not the 'a beautiful mind' kind of disturbing; it doesn't make me feel as though reality may actually be surreal. neither is it the horror movie kind of disturbing, because i don't get chills up my spine fearing when something may just pop out in front of my eyes or lurk behind my back. it's the kind of disturbing which makes me think and rethink why certain characters did what they did, why things turned out the way they did, if things could have turned out better. and i just end up more confused than ever. -.-

oh well, i do feel better now putting those feelings i had after the show in words. and hurray! tomorrow's the last day of work for me! oh wait. it's today! can't believe it's past midnight already. im going to doze off while operating my beloved machine later. hrmm, the sky seems to be starless tonight.. goodnight world.