after the storm, and the vague outline of a rainbow.
written: 8:09 p.m. on Saturday, Jul. 30, 2005

I know I can't write but I insist on doing it anyway, simply because the catharsis that comes along with the ride is so amazing that nothing else in the world could ever top it, ever. Felt so fucking great early this morning after writing that pseudo-poem I posted in the previous entry. It's flawed, I don't edit, but who cares, it's the process that counts. Writing works best when the words come from the heart.

I'm searching for Filter's "Take A Picture" and I'm getting more porn videos than actual MP3's of the song. I browsed this person's files and came up with lots of porno-related nonsense. Seriously, the appeal of porn is something that I'd never get; the odd bits (no pun intended) here and there that I've seen genuinely repulse me, especially pictures of a man and a woman having sex. Like, ewwww. Don't laugh at me, but I have this slight aversion to the idea of sex, for some reason or other. I don't quite get it.

But hey, whatever floats your boat. Live and let live.

Shit, two J. Englishman songs stopped at 20-something percent. A few Cardigans songs never even started. Dammit. I drank an iced mocha at the Coffee Club just now and now my head hurts. Are the two events mutually exclusive or otherwise? My mom said the coffee's pretty strong.

Anyway, I went to Suntec/Marina Square with my mom today. There was this scholarship/overseas education exhibition thingy going on at Suntec and my mom asked me to go, for no particular rhyme or reason. I went there, located the British Council table, and effectively went, "Uh, what am I doing here, exactly?" In the end I headed over to the American education table and asked this American dude about the kind of grades I'd need to get into Yale/Stanford/etc, and he went on this huge tirade about how I shouldn't merely look at the reputation of a school, that I should open up my options, that Yale is located in New Haven which is a shitty place, that Yale's undergraduate programme sucks, that, in short, there's no way in hell I'd ever make Yale/Stanford/etc because they take in ten out of eight hundred Singaporean applicants a year (or was it a hundred? I can't remember).

And I found it hilarious. I remember this American Education fair that I went to last year, where I asked the American dude about NYU, and that dude went on a similar tirade and started bitching about how NYU is filled with spoilt C-grade students who get through university riding on the coattails of their rich parents and get drunk every night and are really stupid braindead jocks who go places only because their parents are rich.

It was the funniest thing ever, it was, that American dude's aversion to NYU and how similar it was to what I heard today. Anyway, today's American dude answered my question thus: "Straight A's, perfect SAT scores and very rich parents."

Is it just me or is the world fucking unfair? My SAT score was thoroughly humiliating; but then again, I can't do multiple choice shit and the new format comes with a section that allows you to write...but on second thoughts, I can't write short essays either, because the word 'succinct' does not exist in my vocabulary. And the rich parents thing, I was slightly thinking about it today and I've reached the conclusion that middle-class people like myself get the worst kind of deals, ever. We're not poor enough to apply for bursaries and other similar financial aid to lessen the burden of paying for university fees, and we're not rich enough to casually toss out three thousand dollars every six months and not feel the pinch of such an action.

Best solution? Get rich quick. Prostitution, here I come.

Just kidding.

Anyway, back to my original point: The world is unfair because...uh, because my parents are not rich. Yeah, and that I'm not over-achieving enough to become a President scholar. And because I suck at doing MCQs and short essays, all thanks to my penchant for long-windedness and inability to function under purely hypothetical, right-or-wrong situations. I was talking to Clarence one day about Econs MCQs and how it fucked up my stupid prelim last year and basically prevented me from getting an A, ranting to him about some stupid MCQ option that involved monopolies and advertising, how that correct option made absolutely no sense to me, when he said something so brilliant that everything suddenly made sense. He said, monopolies need to advertise to raise awareness for their product.

Which makes perfect sense, because monopolies operate within an imperfect market, and an imperfect market basically dictates that consumers do not have perfect knowledge of a certain good/product; hence the need for advertising.

Like, if someone had said that to me last year, I wouldn't have bitched so much about it. Ahh he's so smart!

Okay I digress. Anyway, after that exhibition thing my mom and I headed for Marina Square to do some shopping. I bought an over-priced shirt from ebase ($33 for a simply-designed, no frills white top) and I realised that I am strangely attracted to their range of clothing. I have this thing for wearing baggy, loose-looking shirts to hide my grotesquely-fat stomach (let's just assume for a moment that 'grotesquely' is a word) and that's precisely the kind of tops ebase offers. So damn nice. My mom bought a funky top from there too. She's so cool ain't she? I love hanging out with my mom. She's one of the few people in my life that can put up with my crazy gushings over pretty clothes, my super indecisiveness over what to buy, my penchant for going, "Ahh I wanna buy everything!" The way I flit from store to store and check out everything is quite stupid and insane, but today she followed me and didn't remotely complain. Amazing.

The purpose of the shopping was to get me a black skirt to wear to NUS on Monday. So we went to Esprit - huge display window that greeted my excited eyes en route to the MS carpark, but damn puny store that does not carry Esprit's Collection range. What the hell. Pointed out that Lyrca preppy top I tried on the other day at Raffles City to my mom and she concurred that I'd totally melt in it. Damn glad I came to my senses and didn't buy it, however pretty it was.

G2000 - oh my god there's no way in hell I'd ever make myself wear fugly black A-line skirts! No way no way no way! I'd never take it lying down, I'd never disfigure myself like that, no matter what!

So I said, let's go to Dorothy Perkins, and we went to Dorothy Perkins and I zoomed in on their formal wear, found this decent-looking black skirt, tried it on and oh my god, IT LOOKS GREAT!

Okay so I think it'd look a lot better if it were a few inches shorter, but compared to the light grey G2000 skirt I wore to the Law interview, the Perkins black one is gorgeous. So so nice. Only downside? It's waist-high (predictably) and hence it hugs my disgusting pot belly and I look fat.

Oh well, I'll just not eat anything on Monday. Hahahahaha.

I hate waist-high clothes, I really do. I tried on a pair of jeans at Dorothy Perkins; first time putting it on, I wondered why a size 38 was so loose and so long, and then I put it on a second time and found that I could pull it all the day to my waist. How hideous! I didn't know that people still wore waist-high jeans.

Tried on two denim skirt, one made me look disgustingly fat, the other too ordinary to fork out 49 dollars for so didn't get anything in the end, just that nice black skirt. Yay. I love shopping and shopping loves me.

Was supposed to get shoes but we walked into Everbest, I asked the woman for non-leather shoes and they had none so we walked out. Walked into this other shoe store, was looking at this dubious pair of shoes with snake-like skin, Mom was saying, Don't think this is leather, and the salesgirl innocently told me, "This is snake skin."

Ha. I resisted the urge to go, "Oh my god that is gross" in her face and went, "Oh okay thanks" instead.

Snake skin! Disgusting fucking shit. I refuse to wear leather shoes too, and I don't care that the small slip of paper they gave us at the Law booth during the matric fair specifically states "black leather shoes". And hey, non-leather shoes are dirt cheap so it's all good...except that they're damn hard to find.

I hate existing on this planet sometimes, I really do. How difficult is it to pursue something that loosely resembles compassionate living, fuck it? Ugh.

Oh, speaking of which, Clarence told me that he read somewhere that perfumes (perfume? whatever) are (is? whatever) are extracted from some whale body part, which freaked me out. Also said something about deer musk, how it's literally deer deer and no, 'deer' is not another word for a non-animal thingy, that's used in the production of cologne and some fragrances thingies. I got freaked out and all because I spray perfume no matter where I go, even if it's only a trip to West Mall for groceries, so this morning I was on Wikipedia.com (or org? whatever) scouring information on the production of perfume and its ingredients.

Clarence was right. I was absolutely horrified. The whale thing, they use some portion of the intestine of a sperm whale as a perfume ingredient (called "ambergris"), and also as flavouring in some food and beverages (the mere thought is enough to make me hurl). Deer musk? "Musk deer" is an actual specie of deers that are hunted for their glands to use as a scent ingredient. How sickening, really.

Thankfully, most perfumes are made of synthetic aromatics nowadays due to the enactment of anti-hunting laws meant to protect poor animals that are hunted for something as superficial as human vanity and something as abhorrent as careless human folly and disregard for other forms of life on earth. I love perfume and all but no deer should die just so I can smell good, you know?

It's pretty interesting. Info located here.

Clarence knows all these odd bits of random trivia. They're so interesting. He's so smart. And I'm on the verge of doing some out-of-character gushing so I shall move on before I lose all semblance to credibility.

Anyway, Mom and I had coffee and delicious tiramisu mud pie at Coffee Club. Save for the bad choice of including chocolate ice cream, the mud pie was heavenly. Such amazing dessert really makes life worthwhile. The iced mocha wasn't sweet though. Why is mocha not sweet? But I liked it; wasn't too bitter, had a nice coffee aroma, yadayadayada. Downside: My head still hurts.

I was acting stupid and singing along to the songs they were playing and some geeky dude kept looking at me. What the hell. I hate it when guys stare openly like you're a piece of meat and nothing more because it's downright rude and disgustingly disrespectful. I hate it even more when I'm sitting at a bus stop, waiting for the bus, and some stupid truck drives by and honks the fucking horn at me. And I know it's directed at me, 'cause whenever I look up the stupid men in the damn truck will cheerfully wave at me, and before I can flip them the finger they're long gone.

Annoying jackasses should just die. Yes, they should.

Had a nice chat with Mom at Coffee Club (spent twenty bucks there by the way; OMG). I was talking to her about Zhang Ziyi and how I find her charismatically gorgeous, other random stuff, yadayada, was great.

I am embarrassingly addicted to Timmy Thomas's "Dying Inside to Hold You". Clarence and I were at Levi's yesterday and it was playing over the system. Just downloaded it, it's playing in my head, and I can so identify with the lyrics. Ah hahahaha. Clarence, you're screwing with my head!

Mom just parked the car at Marina Square's carpark, I got out and my handphone rang. It was Clarence calling to say 'hi'. What a pleasant surprise, and it put a wide, dreamy smile on my face.

I like listening to him talk, the sound of his voice over the phone just before I sleep. So Nice.

My dad isn't mad with me anymore. He hasn't brought up the contentious issue. I don't think I want to talk about it with him. I'll enjoy the peace while it lasts.

My mom thinks I should go shopping with Clarence more often because he saved me $83 in total yesterday. First it was that pretty-looking handbag I was eyeing at Aldo Raffles City. Cost only $30, but he said it was impractical and so I didn't buy it. Then it was that Topman shirt that I would've probably bought if he weren't there to say that it wasn't worth the money.

Hmm. I spend too much. Let's go to a hawker centre for lunch someday okay? Maxwell food-whatever really rocks. Love it to bits.

I know my entries are long.

Um, bwahaha.

before sunrise // before sunset


Previously:
- - Tuesday, Aug. 29, 2017
I'm moving. - Sunday, Jul. 11, 2010
In all honesty - Tuesday, Jul. 06, 2010
What I want for my birthday... - Sunday, Jul. 04, 2010
On Roger's behalf. - Friday, Jul. 02, 2010