Today I woke up at 8am to prepare for my last presentation for AB0601 Communication Fundamentals. It involves rehearsing my speech 5 times before I wash my face and dry it and put on toner and moisturizer and BB cream and blusher and lipstick and then changing into white shirt and black dress pants. Halfway through rehearsal #3 I was hijacked by the new whatsapp mass convo set up by squadmates and I was distracted for 15min. After that I went off to do my stuff but still got distracted for 5min every time I looked at my phone. 
***
Today I gave my last presentation for AB0601 Communication Fundamentals which took up a 30% stake in my overall grade. My teacher feedback that I spoke too quickly, far too quickly, for her to give me a good grade. That sort of dampens my spirit a little. She then told the class the criteria for last Saturday's written examination which was also 30% and I don't think I did well for that either. Still, I hope that I'll get an overall grade of at least a B+. An A- will make me really, really happy. Dare I hope for an A? Our seminar group will be having an outing in January in Sentosa. This sounds like fun.
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Today I had my last lesson for university year 1 semester 1. It was AB1101 Accounting I. I like the teacher. She is a post-graduate candidate and so funny and so hardworking I will miss her. Not a lot of teachers in university are like her. I appreciate her for adding spice to my life. She returned me my mid-years and I got above average. My group project got B+ which was average. So far I have been doing above average in accounting. Maybe not so fab that I'll definitely be an A+, but every component places me at average or slightly above average. I really, really wish I can get an A for this, or at the very least, an A-. I'll work hard for this module to make sure my standard remains in my examinations.
***
Today I met huishan for dinner. We ate din tai fung. We ordered honey lotus roots with glutinous rice for appetizer and she had dan dan mien while I had mushroom mien and we had red bean glutinous cake for dessert. It was delicious. Nom nom nom. We will go to Anjappar next time for dinner. After dinner we walked around Jurong Point for 2 hours. Huishan declared that we have walked through the entire Jurong Point. Then we bought bread and went back.
***
Today when I was taking 179 back to hall a lesbian couple came on the bus and sat beside me and proceeded to smooch with loud wet kissing sounds. Not that I mind their sexual orientation, but I sort of minded the loud wet kissing sounds, because they did not stop for the entire journey which lasted about 10min until I got off and they were doing it in repetitive kisses and lots of giggling and whispering in between. There is a difference between not being afraid to show the world what you are and what you have and being rather obnoxious about it all. I was amused and curious and repulsed all at the same time. Contradictory, ain't it? If they had frenched silently I would just have been amused and curious, but no, they had to add in the loud wet kissing sounds. It was quite disturbing.
***
Today was an eventful day.

NTU has a lot of zebra crossings, which makes it very, very easy to cross the road properly and legally, unlike the real world out there, which is basically the rest of Singapore. The problem is, I have lived outside NTU for the first 19 years of my life. I think I jaywalk a little too often. I am now trained to cross roads illegally, having absolutely no regard for road regulations. Therefore, when I approach a zebra crossing, I stop to allow the cars to pass. Of course, the car will not move, because I have not crossed, so both parties stop there and wait until I remember that I am supposed to move. Then I hurriedly cross. This has happened a few times already. I should return to becoming a law-abiding citizen soon, for the sake of face and convenience.

***

I just want to say that I really like recorded lectures. I am totally serious about this. I have, to date, skipped 4 weeks of lectures because they are all recorded and I can watch them in the comfort of my room. While eating/drinking/wrapped in my blanket/surfing the net/doing other work. See the convenience! If lecturer gets too boring I can skip the entire slide. If lecturer mumbles I can rewind and replay. Totally modified to suit my way of learning! Recorded lectures are fabulous awesome. :D

***

Exams are coming! I have a presentation coming up that is worth 30% of my grades. Granted, it is only 3 minutes long, but still. ): I got B+ for my previous presentation. That's a 4.0. I'm not sure how I'm feeling now about this grade. Hmm. Oh well. 

My exam period is so frigging long. Do they have to drag it out so much? ):

***



Hmm what did I want to do?

I really like watching horror movies with a bunch of people who are my friends!! It's so fun to sit together in the dark and enjoy being scared and enjoy scaring other people and enjoy scaring yourself. And then we can scream and laugh and swear and discuss the overused tactics and the scary plot and how some people are terrified already and is almost going to convulse and die.

Like, die.

The cheap thrills that we all go for. Hah!

The ones that I've watched so far are so few in numbers. Like, Shutter, Alone, House of Wax, Omen, the Maid. Bleh. I think that's all.

I WANT TO WATCH MORE HORROR FILMS.

Come, come, watch with me.

I am running out of stuff that I'm interested in. Considering that I get bored so very easily, this isn't really all that surprising.

But I'm now bored of the internet, which really sucks, because if you're not bored of it, then you can do so many things. 
And I'm now sort of bored of reading, because all this information reception is so mundane and not thrilling to me.
And I'm bored of music, because the recent releases are not all that nice, and having frequent access to them makes you immune to them.
And I'm bored of PW, but seriously speaking, who isn't?

So I want to watch movies, preferrably horror ones, or thrillers, but no one is free to watch with me, and I'm not brave enough to watch alone (wahlao, it sounds like a bad pun).
And I want to go on wikipedia, because I haven't really got bored of it yet, what with all the interesting information and the underlying tones of sarcasm and/or biasness, but because of all this, you can't really be sure whether it's fact or fiction, and then you sort of confuse yourself, which is bad.
And I want to do something new, but I have, like, no time, because they all require commitment.

Hmph. This is so annoying. And it's making me frustrated and bad-tempered.

Rawr. 

***

I passed, with somewhat slightly above average results (I think). I'm currently at the period where my marks are above what I thought I would get, but I am still unable to be happy with them, and yet is unwilling to put in effort to raise them. 

How how how?

I suppose I should work hard. But considering me, who gets bored so very easily, I might actually do worse if I put in consistent effort. That would not be fun. It would be really, really disappointing. Because the amount of work done and the expected results do not form a positive correlation.

I am still in the state where I am unable to link marks to lifelong happiness, and so, is unwilling to work for them. Considering that my mother doesn't pressurize me, my teachers have other people to worry about, and my friends are lovely people who thinks that I 'can do it one lah', I am relatively free from any motivation and pressure.

This life is actually rather nice. Thank you for your help. :D

***

Should I go for grading or not? Hmm? If I don't go in January, I will have to wait one year, because April I have Huang Cheng, July I have prelims, October I am studying very hard for A levels, so one year later lor. 

But I am so not prepared to go in January. There are better ways to waste $107.

***

Does anyone have good music?

I really like this video.
The production crew used about 3250 photos for this entire video, taken over a period of 2 days with a camera hanging from the ceiling of the studio in which it was filmed.
Some of the bed sheets are owned by the singer, who managed to find people who are willing to work at a discounted price for this video.
All of them are Israeli, I think.

I like citrus fruits like oranges, grapefruits, lime, lemon, pomelos, etc. They're so tangy and stimulating and interesting and nice. No matter whether it's juice or the fruit or the candy or the baked goods, they all taste so nice!! And then there's the contrast thing between the skin and the flesh of the fruit. Like sour and bitter. I want to bake lemon meringe!! And I want to know the recipe to Secret Recipe's lemon cheesecake. D:

***

I read up on human spontaneous combustion on wikipedia. It is rather interesting. Imagine it: a person walking down a street with a few other random passerbys, and then he suddenly bursts into fire!! Such an interesting concept. I wonder if it's actually possible. Maybe the rate of it happening is like the rate of a lighting ball happening.

A lighting ball, by the way, is a ball of lighting that is capable of floating around randomly, like a ghost light, and is a controversial phenomenom due to lack of visual and scientific evidence.

But anyway, the thing about spontaneous combustion is that most reported incidents over the past few centuries are often hearsays, or are caused by external sources of fire, like cigarettes or other not noticeble objects. But anyway, there are accounts from people who actually survived such burnings, and they have reported extreme static electricity since young. One of them used to sting himself whenever he touched metal because of his internal static electricity. Apparently, both of them burst suddenly into blue flames (on seperate occasions), and didn't realise until their family members pointed it out in shock.

One of them was walking up the driveway to the house when she noticed flashes of blue light, and then she shouted for her mother to come out to see, then her mother came out and looked at her and started screaming, because she was on blue fire. Then she ushered the daughter to the bath to wash off the fire, and the daughter is apparently hysterically happy because she thought everything was really fun. Actually, if I spontaneously combusted and I can't feel the fire, I would be hysterically happy too. 

But there's no explaination for it as of now. All the given explainations kill the victims by burning them to charcoal. So interesting. 

There's cases of exploding animal carcass though. Because people leave them rotting, so the built up of gases causes the carcass to explode. Like beached whales. Or they can self induce the explosion. Like ants and termites, that will self explode to cause damage or emit noxious and sticky chemical. Or they can fail in self defence mechanisms. Like this pool of toads in Germany. They normally expand to scare off potential predators, like birds. The concept is similar to puffer fish. But apparently, they over expanded, and then they exploded. But let's not blame them for their failures, because scientists suspect a viral infection.

But they still fail lah.

After reading the inspirational piece on yinhwee's blog about drawing whenever you can, and not fearing about possible sneering and scorn, I got the urge to try it out one day on the mrt when I was travelling from Jurong to Bugis. As all who travels this line knows, the journey is long and boring and without any added value to one's short life. So I took out this notebook that's actually a minature version of a foolscape stack which I have taken to carrying around, and started drawing the shoe of the guy standing opposite me (I was standing beside the door and leaning on the glass pane, if you know what I mean).

It was quite interesting. He was wearing Converse black shoes. The design with two tongues. Anyway, it was quite interesting, but I think he noticed me looking constantly, because very few people take out a notebook and a mechanical pencil on a train while standing and then stare at your feet constantly while scribbling away. So I think he got suspicious and started shifting around. But I think I managed to get a decent drawing with all his shifting around. In the span of 3 stations. Not bad lah. I think. Hahaha. 

Then I drew the sandals of the lady who was sitting behind him. Then I got bored. Then I started writing prose, because drawing is really tiring for someone like me whose right brain is not frequently in use. But it was interesting. So far I have now drawn qianrui's water bottle, my highlighter, the 2 pens+post-it set that the school gave for whatever it was. And other things that I forgot about. But it was really quite fun. People should try it out.

***

I like CSI Miami. Today they introduced a case where the murder weapon is a highly illegal electronic gun that is capable of setting off 10,000 bullets per minute. The victim turns to what is commonly known as 'minced meat'. It's quite interesting. And then they introduce the very clever method of killing a person by injecting an air bubble into a vein or an artery, so you introduce air into the circulatory system, thus causing heart failure when the bubble reaches the heart, because somehow the heart cannot function because it cannot pump air. So they die, with seemingly no trace. Oh, but I realise that there's a problem, because injections leave bruises.

Okay, nevermind, the show just solved that problem. You can just inject the bubble into the circulatory system through the eye. And, well, there's no obvious trace. 

Ahhh, but real life is never this glam. You don't even get to wear nice clothes like them when you inspect crime scenes. You have to wrap yourself up protective layers like medical staff in the infectious disease department. With shower caps and face masks somemore. And then spend dunno how long testing for DNA and looking for stands of hair and fingerprints and examining all sorts of marks for possible evidence. But it's quite satisfying, I suppose, when you solve a case. But I also think it's equally frustrating when you can't do anything to help a case.

And CSI New York have cases that are too, er, provocative? Contraversial? Either way, it's more explicit and eyebrow-raising than CSI Miami.

***

I am feeling better today. It's good that I'm improving!! I think. My father bought a Dell laptop during the recent IT fair. It lags, but it has face recognition which works very fast, so I don't need to type anything at all!! It's not bad lah. And it's pretty convinient. And according to some website it saves electricity as compared to a desktop unit, which means I'm sort of like being environmentally friendly. Hahaha. The static keeps stinging my forearms though, when I'm trying to type, so it's a bit hard.

***

Jomain currently has a dog. It has cured her of her phobias of dogs, but not yet of other animals. Maybe we should get zhiyi a dog, so she won't be scared of dogs anymore. It's very interesting, this phenomenom. But I don't think getting a cockroach for a pet will cure me of my extreme dislike of them. 

 I think I'm ill, though I can't specifically point out what my illness is. My mom attributes it returning-to-school stress. One classmate suggested very mild stomach flu. I don't really know. *Sigh*

So the symptoms are: I can't eat a lot. If I do I feel really terrible, like, my chest constricts and I can't breathe, and I will want to throw up. If I'm not eating, then thinking about food makes me want to throw up. Urgh. It's like, I'm being cut off from food. The only things I can stomach without problems now are liquids (like fruit juice or non-gassy drinks) and ice-cream, but not the creamy kind. The icy, sorbet kind. Yep. So, basically, I have to stop eating until this symptom passes. It's good lah, in a way. I guess.

Yesterday my mother gave me medicated oil to apply. I forgot how it feels like already. It's quite ticklish and shocking. Hahaha. When it hits your navel, it's ticklish like mad, then it starts burning, and that's the shocking part. But it's quite soothing. Oh man, I sound strange. Er, so it's like how you eat chilli, then the burn is shuang. Something like that.

***

The responses I gathered from my previous posts are rather interesting. I had no idea that anyone will actually respond to such a strange topic. Hahaha. Yep, but I gained knowledge. Apparently the chinese thing about cooling and heaty has some basis to it.

I do feel that chinese medicine and western medicine has their own brand of basis for their reasonings, so it will be unfair to judge one by methods of the other. For example, chinese medicine examines more on the overall human body, but western medicine focuses on individual cells. So while, maybe, western medicine is unable to heal some illness or problems, because they can identify effects on the entire human body, chinese medicine may also be unable to treat some diseases that goes on at the cellular level (like virus-induced diseases). To each their own, I guess.

But up till now, I am getting more and more interested in the traditional chinese medicine and biomedical science double degree course that NTU offers. I suspect my eventual grades won't be enough for the choosing panel to even glance at, but, well, it's quite nice to think about the impossible sometimes. 

*** 

I'm quite worried about my mother. She has been expressing her concerns about her joint pains and her memory deteriorating. I'm not so much worried about the former than the latter. It's a very scary thought, thinking about your parents growing old, and contracting illness that you hear so frequently about, but never thought will happen to your parents. Many people try to avoid thinking about it, or they simply refuse to belive that it will happen, but I think sooner or later, we will have to confront it. I try not to let it affect me too much, but I admit that sometimes I cannot help but get overwhelmed by the fear of what may happen to my mother. And then I worry about how I am going to take care of her, and how I have to do all the household chores (because my family is bloody chauvanisitc), and how I have to cook rubbish food because I can't cook, and how she won't be there to offer advice or give common sense, because god knows her level of common sense and my level of common sense are like, miles apart. And then I try to think of other stuff.

Because, really, she's not young anymore, and, well, time passes really fast, and that day will really come, so what will I do then?

***

I discovered that the mama shop below my flat sells very nice ice cream bars, that's cold and sour and cheap and nicer by far than any of the $2++ ones. Really, they're trying to cheat the customers, the price they sell some of the ice creams at.

Meh, today was such a boring day. I was not able to function normally until 3.30 because I woke at 1.00 and ate lunch and had splitting headache and was eventually forced to eat 2 tablets of extra strong panadol because going for taekwondo with splitting headaches is not advisable.

I wonder if one can develop resistance to panadol. My mother says yes, but zongbin says no, because her brother, who is in medicine, says no. There are very confusing advices floating around on Earth in our society about various kinds of things.

Okay never mind I close this topic because I just asked my mother again and she denies ever saying that. She then diverted the topic to how I should stop drinking cold drinks because apparently they induce menstrual cramps. I asked around once, and no one has even heard of this relationship. This is very strange. She also attributes tea to cramps. And citrus fruits and pears and pineapples to heavy flow. My mother has very interesting knowledge on this sort of things.

***

Taekwondo is entering a very critical period. I wonder if I'll ever rightfully own a black belt. It is so very expensive and time consuming. And then there's the feeling that I can't be very good at it, but still, the feeling is not strong enough to prompt action. Hmm. The dilemna of being a lazy person who doesn't need to meet expectations but becomes mildly unsatisfied with life, or a person who actively pursues what they want, but goes through so much trials and tribulations that it hurts my head and heart to even think about it. But we all have to admit that these people are the ones that acheive the most, and becomes the envy of many others.

If laziness is a terrible trait because it makes you leech off other people, what about people who are lazy, but still make enough out of life to support themselves? Why do people despise those who do not, as they say, pursue what they want to the maximum. It is very curious, I feel. If they complain about their plight, then to despise them is probably understandable, because they mostly blame their plight on other people. But then if they lead their lives quietly, do they still suffer the criticism of other people? I read somewhere, that everything that irritates us about other people is what you fear in yourself the most. Maybe those who criticise fear precisely this trait in them, the lax and laziness.

Thus, by condeming other people, they leave themselves no choice but to never be in that position.

*** 

Cutting my hair and trimming my nails make me feel like I am going through a very big change. I have no idea why. I like funny hairdressers. They are very entertaining people. And I also like hairdressers who try not to breathe onto your hair or your head or your face.

Wake me up, when September comes~

Okay that was cliche. I just cut my nails, so they will no longer be long and curved and nicely manicured and scary. So now they're blunted and short and fugly but still capable of scratching other people so they're still (secretly) scary.

***

Mid-autumn festival is coming!! I anticipate mooncakes and pomelos!! WOOHOO!! I love mooncakes and pomelos! Somehow the laxative effect pomelos have on other people don't work on me. I am capable of eating an entire pomelo for a meal without feeling like throwing up or going to the loo. No doubt yilin has bad memories about pomelos and their association with me.

Apparently laxative effects don't really work on me. For example, candies like Ricola (apparently you really feel shitty in the literal sense if you consume one whole box), excessive amounts of raisins. If you know of anymore you can let me know and I'll see whether they work. If I'm interested in testing them out in the first place, that is.

Oily stuff and spicy stuff works though. But they're gross anyway, so who wants to eat them in excess anyway. DX

***

Okay, my mother just insulted the hc dragon and lion dance troupe shirt that I brought home to wash. Lol. She dug it out from the washing machine, where we usually dump all our dirty clothes, so that she can throw them back in by colour, then she saw it, then she went, "Oh, why do you have this shirt-- aiyoh, why is it so ugly?!" This is hilarious. Actually I share her sentiments, but by tradition, lion dance troupes usually have neon uniforms so that we can be loud and flaming and attention seeking. So no can do.

***

Promos are in less than 30 days away. I am absolutely not worrying about anything. My life starts going into shambles from this point onwards, as I am unable to take H3 in the future due to laziness in JC1 promotional exams and therefore, I will be unable to obtain a good scholarship, and I cannot take all the bloody expensive university courses and end up with one that's meagre and unsatisfactory and I shall be a common and untalented office lady till the day I retire and then die from boredom or something equally bland. In summary, I will lead a common and boring life, as with other common and boring people.

That is so unappetising. I always knew that I will end up in that path, but I was just wondering when I will finally tread upon it and walk down it to a point of no return.