Hmm...

Is my blog dying because I don't post, or do I not post because it's dying? :p

Anyways, exams are over. Yay for small mercies at least...

Mmm... might as well migrate the blog for good, on its third birthday :) Which happens to be Christmas.

WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.

SO happy! The dang blasted BSP presentation is over!

Before I wax lyrical about why I'm so happy, you gotta understand what a BSP presentation consists of. We were presenting on currencies/forex, and it's just so BROAD, the scope - China vs US vs Europe vs ten years ago vs ten years later vs whatever some superpower decides on the blink of an eye, yadda yadda.

The last presentation on Wal-Mart de Mexico was a completely qualitative one... and someone asked "Did you do a regression analysis on this question?" (Is Wal-Mart's success due more to X than Y?) There was a collective intake of breath and the presenters looks positively horrified. That's why we all feeeer the Q&A section, which takes more than the presentation, really.

But because I don't need to repeat that presentation I'll just tell you why I'm so happy ;)
1. It's OVER.
2. The teacher said it was a tough case.
3. Said teacher also said we did it well!
4. Did I mention that presentation is worth 15% of our grade?
5. People asked for our presentation! They've NEVER done that before!
6. No one asked stupid (re: regression analysis) questions.

I really feel it was because yesterday night someone told me to just forget about the presentation and... what was it? "Just go to bed, look pwetty tomorrow, get an A xP" end quote. I didn't take one part of his advice seriously, I slept late. *grins*

I will not make the same mistakes that you did
I will not let myself
Cause my heart so much misery
I will not break the way you did,
You fell so hard
I've learned the hard way
To never let it get that far

Because of you
I never stray too far from the sidewalk
Because of you
I learned to play on the safe side so I don't get hurt
Because of you
I find it hard to trust not only me, but everyone around me
Because of you
I am afraid

I lose my way
And it's not too long before you point it out
I cannot cry
Because I know that's weakness in your eyes
I'm forced to fake
A smile, a laugh everyday of my life
My heart can't possibly break
When it wasn't even whole to start with

Because of you
I never stray too far from the sidewalk
Because of you
I learned to play on the safe side so I don't get hurt
Because of you
I find it hard to trust not only me, but everyone around me
Because of you
I am afraid

I watched you die
I heard you cry every night in your sleep
I was so young
You should have known better than to lean on me
You never thought of anyone else
You just saw your pain
And now I cry in the middle of the night
For the same damn thing

Because of you
I never stray too far from the sidewalk
Because of you
I learned to play on the safe side so I don't get hurt
Because of you
I try my hardest just to forget everything
Because of you
I don't know how to let anyone else in
Because of you
I'm ashamed of my life because it's empty
Because of you
I am afraid

Because of you
Because of you

Dedicated to my mother.

I wrote a long post about how I was so glad work was over, how school sucked, etc, etc.

Then I left and mulled over stuff for a bit.

And then I saved that long epistle as draft, composed three sentences and clicked publish post, gotta love second thoughts :)

I'm breaking all protocol (self-imposed :p) that I've had for the past... eleven-ish weeks of work and blogging at work. Yes, because I have not the time (or the restraint) to blog at home when I have so many things to do online, most of which I'm shamefully neglecting :(

Yes but I have a lot to chatter on about, so bear with me... -grins-

The past few weeks have been pretty whirlwind. I keep thinking I'll pay off that infernal sleep debt on weekends and end up sleeping even less because of the even more infernal inclination of my body to wake up no later than 7:45AM. -cry- like for instance just the last Saturday gone by I caught Transformers finally before it swept out of cinemas with Kheng Hui, Kai Ting and Victor and then Jo met me for lunch + Kbox (woohoo) and then we went walking around for a bit before going home. Out for 10 hourish, slept not a lot. x.x am trying not to go out on weekdays unless absolutely necessary -wry- because 1. my wallet has a hole the size of... I have less wallet than hole now. 2. I'm just so tired! I seem to have a perpetual ache in the head that's persuasively seducing me to take days off (I refuse to give in, ten more days!) 3. Did I mention I have no money? :p

Yesterday mom brought us to East Ocean again! My favourite place for dimsum ^^ I made reservations for 12, so we thought getting a seat would be no problem, right? That was a rhetorical question, by the way. :p The entire lobby was packed - apparently everyone else and their family reunion had reservations too, the restaurant was so crowded even the fish were squeezed out of their tank. Word of caution - tread not those hallowed floors on Sunday, or prepare to be squished. Between the ah mm's and the children running amok - BLEH. I hatesh waiting and I hatesh waiting in unpleasant environment even more. But but but! the redeeming factor! They brought back the cute little animal dimsum! *cue squeals* They had one set in briefly over CNY and I was so sad to see them disappear :( but now another series is back! It's a surefire way to endear yourself to the waitress ("I want one tortoise, one porcupine, one cobra...") and really, they are so adorable. Granted, the butterfly looked a little... dodgy. But it was quite nice nonetheless. *beams* I did like the tortoise (shrimp paste for body + long beans for legs + mushroom as a shell) even though my cruel brother plucked off its head, impaled it on a toothpick and stuck it in the teapot spout. I remember he did it last round when there was a dog dimsum and the head was made of material similar to the skin of char siew baos and whatnot. :(

It's 8:45... Why can't they open the pre-bidding exercise EARLY? (I realise the irony.) Next sem seems rather sad. Am so far taking Finance, Accounting Information Systems, Legal somethingorother, and, er. Asia Pac somethingorotherthatinvolveseconsbleh. So that leaves one more module - I'm considering three... Singapore Society, Intro to Cybercrime and Biz Communications. One fulfils the SS req, one the science GEM req and the other is my core module. :( I have a couple more days to decide, anyway... Still a little upset I couldn't take Intro to Computing because THAT clashes with Asia Pac lecture. If I'd taken Management Science it'd clash with THAT exam. Other than that, my timetable looks pretty sweet. If I don't take the cybercrime module... -contemplates- I'll probably get Monday off (can never tell with the tutorials, et al) and the rest of the days are contained within 9 - 4. The great thing about going to school from work is you think hey, 9 is so cool, I can wake up at 7 instead of 5:45 and woohoo that's an extra 75 min of sleep GOODBYE EYEBAGS. And yea ending at 4 is pretty much like 90 minutes off work :p and hey, there are more breaks at school...

Ten more days of work, ten more days of work, hang in there... I feel my sanity slipping (slipped?) away!

Screw the school admin. I just tried to bid and they tell me I do not meet the requirements for Asia Pac?! I panicked and checked CORS (I might have missed something, after all...) and the pre-reqs are BSP2001. This is so screwed because I CANNOT TAKE BSP2001. They made the accounting students take EC2102 (pukes and dies) as a BREADTH so that we could free up one more precious space for another death-by-boredom accounting module. Ugh, my head is trying to spontaneously combust. Every sem they throw spanners the size of tanks in my plans! First sem they didn't allow us to take the normal IT module. Next sem they forced us to take EC2102 and now they're messing with my timetable again! I hope some indignant accounting scholar is taking it up with the school right now. Pffts.

Pffts. Check back in two hours? -glares and mutters and curses-

Man, I haven't blogged in a month! How delinquent of me. Having no time to blog at reasonable hours, I resort to updating at 6:30am in the morning while hoping mom won't pop out of of her room just as I type this - whew.

I'm too lazy to update in the evenings. Especially with all the *cough* extracurricular activities I have now... Meh, is that chee cheong fun for breakfast again? Getting heartily unhappy of seeing it. I think I was traumatised in secondary school after having it for a few weeks in a row. -randoms-

Busy busy lately :S I met Cyn on Monday before she left for Germany (which is today!! Have a safe flight if you see this before you leave, Cyn!) and we went to Le Meridien food court because she -had- to have the beef bulgogi before she left. Lol. So I indulged her... and then we went shopping for all the presents I owe/will owe. Hrmph. I feel so poor now :(

Today we're going to watch Dimsum Dollies! I badly need some comedy in my life now :p and tomorrow will be meeting Juls and Sylvia for Seoul Garden (if nothing unforeseen happens, touch wood) and on Sat I'll be going with Ee for Harry Potter. Still kinda want to watch Transformers, but Jo won't watch with me... wonder who I can drag. -thinks of pinch to wallet and winces- Maybe I should go to Jubilee and watch. Nic tells me it's cheap there -ponders-

Whee, three more weeks of work before I get one week of freedom before we start school. x.x If my body clock didn't play me out all the time and wake up at 7am I might be decently rested on weekends (of course, me going to sleep at 2am plays a part, I suppose...)

Hrmmm. Mom's out. Time to have breakfast and be insanely early for work...again. Tata!

New York New York!

Well. Yesterday I finally went to the NYNY at AMKhub after Ru and I stood outside lustfully drooling over the cotton candy machine. Pity it wasn't with Ru cos she's holidaying in Aust, but maybe when you're back we'll go, okay? :p

Kingsley was so kiasu he made reservations for SIX and there were only four of us. The waitress was a bit weird about letting us in when we don't have at least 75% of the people there - but what if you're one of two people, or two of three? Lol. So inflexible.

So Roy and Kingsley and I went in first since KH was rushing down from Bukit Batok and was going to be late. NYNY's zao pai seems to be this humoungous burger KH swore all four of us could eat - 8 inch wide and 4 inch tall oooOOOooo. Hehe. In the end all of us ended up ordering pasta, though. I think Jo'd like the pasta. Looks real creamy. (I ordered my normal, the cream looked TOO much.)

Ooh okay skip to dessert (my personal fave, of course ;)) it was too cold and I ordered this caramel swirly thing which is, in my opinion, too sweet. Now, to date, the only thing I've found worthy of -too sweet- is Picky's yoghurt sweets. This chocolatey confection was topped with whipped cream, chocolate powder and marshmallows. Too damn sweet :p

On our way out we saw this, er, train carriage with about 12 people squeezed in. There were people almost falling out the sides... Rather amusing -grins- Sardine like, they were, and glad, WE were, that we were only four :p Next time I go there I want to attempt the beeg beeg burger... with at least two others.

Ooh AMKhub is opening up! When Ru and I wandered through on our studying stints it was quite lonesome. Kinda like what Central is now. And now all the little shops are opening up (fortunately the cute little yoghurt stall is still there) then we trawled the nearby AMK area and I kinda miss the old little HDB shops that were around since I was what, seven. All the mama shops and stuff that either smelt weird or weirder :p ah, those were the days.

Somehow we ended up at the arcade near Jubilee and Roy had this relic of a Tapz card so we set to with gusto :p I watched them drive Daytona and was quite heartily glad I prefer to watch ;) Madness, I crash into every turn and I don't know all the tricksy things they do, but it was very fun to stand behind and laugh :p Then... hmm. What did we play. I do believe we hit the bishibashi machine :p That was crazy, because Roy KH and I teamed up and Kingsley took one by himself, that's how sucky we were :p We deduced that Roy likes the directional games (drive a boat around the circuit kind), KH likes the numbers type (arrange fat men in order kind), Kingsley likes anything but the colours type and yea, I like the colours type :p After that we also tried out the catch the differences game. Four of us hunkered down near the supersmall machine (reminiscent of those in Raffles Marina, lol) and used our various vantage points to pick out the differences. That was pretty fun :p

Oh, worthy of mention was the fighting game, kinda like Street Fighter style. Kingsley is SUPERPARANORMALLYGOOD at those! He managed to do all the stuff the hax0rs do :p So Roy just sat there and boggled while KH and I wandered off to play more bishibashi and I watched KH take out his anger on the Chinese drums thingy. One of the funniest was when Roy wanted to try the DJ machine and he accidentally turned the turntable and set it on PROFESSIONAL ONLY mode. We all freaked out, but eventually left the arcade laughing anyway :p Funfun. Can't remember the last time I really hit the arcade last, it's quite as good as a gym workout. Woke up today with muscles I didn't know I had aching *halo*

Time really passes fast when you're enjoying yourself. But all in all it was a very pleasant way to pass TGIF-night :)

Ladidums. Alllmost halfway through work! Two more months -mournful- and I'll be kinda lonely at work next week since Jo's away two days and KH and Mingyong are both going to their ICT -waves sadly-

Sigh tomorrow shopping with Cyn, I hope my feet/heart/wallet can take it. Who am I kidding :p If I die tomorrow, I want an epitaph - She died trying.

Mosaic

Well, just wanted to blog about the HC dance concert I went to on Saturday. A friend offered to treat me to it, so... why not, right? :p

The concert wasn't bad, definitely. Although we preferred different dances... My personal favourite was this semi-modern Chinese dance titled "Journey" because the costumes were pretty, the music was suitably sombre and enchanting and the style was very refreshing.

On the other hand, I wasn't too pleased with whoever was mixing their music. The tracks had an annoying tendency of just stopping short, one second of muteness, then launching into the next track without so much as a by-your-leave. So disruptive. And I suppose I'll never really appreciate hip hop. But all in all I think it was an entertaining and very enlightening concert.

Wow, I'm already 2.5 weeks into work ^^ It's not too bad, tedious but definitely doable. Must ren3 until end July. Think of the money! Sigh. Everyday I have two not-necessarily-mutually-exclusive thoughts - what were those parents THINKING, and why doesn't everyone who has even the most tenuous link to the service industry get schooled in PHONE ETIQUETTE?

The phont etiquette part irks me the most - while obviously we don't need hotel receptionist standards, we should know better than to do all these things that the people I call do:

1. Me: "Thank y-" -beep, beep, beep-
2. "What?" being substitutable for "Hello?"
3. Not putting the phone on hold while you tell the person to hold, then discussing loudly the unreasonable task set to you by this caller
4. Then saying within earshot of the not-put-on-hold-phone - "Ask her what's her problem, la!" - repeatedly and in a very churlish fashion.
5. Telling someone to call back in ten minutes, and when they dutifully do, tell them to call back in fifteen. Then in thirty. Then the next day, before telling them you don't have what they need.

Last note before I post (this thing has been hanging on since Sunday, eeks.) I thought all my calling would be done on Friday... Some 16 x 30 names over a couple of weeks. Unfortunately it seems I'll be going through them with a finer-than-fine tooth comb to pick out errant non-reporters-of-vaccinations, so help me, sigh. But it's not all that bad! I do like taking long leisurely lunches (ooh, alliteration) and the MRT nearby is so convenient :p It's also nice that Jo's working with me :D

Today we had a fire drill! It was quite fun. (Not bad, half an hour free pay!) Luckily Jo and I use the stairs fairly often so we're used to it ;) so we all ambled out to the nice patch of green grass, and I was quite alarmed to hear:

"Hey, where's X?"
"Aiyarrrrr, just say she on leave larrrrr!"

O.O

I doubt the usefulness of these exercises because if there was really a fire, and you took FIFTEEN minutes to evacuate, you'd either be burnt like roast pigs, as someone eloquently told me, or squashed by debris, or... at least get your curls singed. Some people just won't be able to hobble down six flights of stairs in time, much less exchange office gossip with the secretary on the fourth floor you haven't seen in three years. The attendance-taking is also a bit of a farce, because you get stuff like:

"Where's X?"
"I saw her over there!"

We all know how this could turn out. I've done my fair share of thinking that lady in red was Mommy. Ah well... A free half an hour is about as close as I'll get to a free lunch on this earth. When you put things in perspective that way, who am I to quibble over ineffective fire drills?

I don't often blog about the food I eat, but today's lunch - I make an exception. -swoons-

Went out with mom, grandmother, aunt and brothers to Lei Garden at Chijmes (I'll always remember the story Lynn related about someone pronouncing it chee-jer-meez, snickers) and had nice Cantonese food and a bit of dimsum but what I really, really, really, really liked and will probably only have had one chance ever to eat it. Of course it's gotta be dessert. All my teeth are sweet teeth.

Ger and I were pretty aghast when we read the menu and saw the longevity buns with bird's nest at a whopping $9.80+++ EACH. -sputters- I mean! Ten bucks for that pink butt bun! (as I call it.) I didn't even like the stuffing and it brought back bad memories when I ate one a long time ago when I scalded my tongue on it -mournful- But THIS one was a beaut. It was big enough for four people to eat; I estimate at least the size of five normal pink butt buns. It was filled with sticky sweet custard and with a pretty generous dollop of bird's nest inside too. Sweet, sweet, sweet. I liked it sooooooo much. Pity it's only a mothers day special :( I remember the adorable animal dimsum at East Ocean... which is now no more -reminisces-

But I'm supposed to go and sleep now. I hope I dream of that custard filled bird's nest pink butt bun :D

Okay, I promised Picky I'd blog, so...

Heh, today was the first day of the course I had to attend in school. Finishing school. If that doesn't strike immediate terror into the hearts of most, it's the thingy ye olde English lordies sent their daughters to to turn them into ladies. Our version of finishing school is business-oriented, as befitting Bizad...

The single most astonishing thing I learnt today was from Teo Ser Lee, our grooming and etiquette instructor, ex-Miss-Singpore too. Apparently, in civilised countries like most of Europe, when a lady gets up at the dinner table (formal dinner, obviously :p) the men at the table ALL put down their cutlery and stand up. When she comes back, they allll stand up again, and the man nearest her has the privilege of pulling out her chair for her. Wowwwww. All the girls looked awed and all the guys looked constipated. So, for the whole luncheon, the rule was enforced - when a lady gets up, men dance attention on her -grins- ain't it fun? We wanted to take turns to visit the ladies' but took pity on the guys. Heh.

We also learnt how to dress, both for ladies and for men ;) I can pick out a quality tie now to match any shirt you want! And I know how to tell it's a quality tie ;) Etc, etc. Don't know how useful that could be, but... -grins-

I thought of so many funny things to blog throughout the day, meh. Evidently I forgot -glares at self- YAWNS maybe I should go to sleep. Always sleepy o.O