just another entry.
written: 1:09 a.m. on Tuesday, Dec. 06, 2005

The thought of speaking in front of an audience is enough for me to break out in hives. When was the last time I did that? How 'bout never? I blame Jurong for not having a better candidate for this job and yes I always shoot myself in the foot when I'm supposed to be enjoying moments of glory such as this but that's just me in a nutshell and so I'm wishing I didn't have to do it.

The only upside is that I get to put it down in my Yale application (applying because I have too much money lying around and no better things to waste them on; of course I won't get in) as an "achievement" - even though, in my humble opinion, it isn't that big of a deal, or a deal at all. Can they just, like, copy and paste my speech into Powerpoint and show that instead? I so do not want to open my mouth and look stupid when the things that come out of it are incoherent and retarded.

I wasn't even the top student. This honour existed more beautifully when it was merely a figment of my imagination.

Anyway, I screwed up on my mom's birthday. I skipped the charity thing to spend time with her but I ended up waking up at 2.08 in the afternoon when I smelled food being cooked. I was terribly ashamed, and still am, and we parked at home, me in front of Veronica Mars while eating my lunch, my mom reading the papers beside me and telling me about Taiwan's recent elections, all the way until 4-something when my dad finally got his ass home. We were supposed to go to Parkway Parade where my dad was supposed to buy diamonds for my mom but my brother the Interminably Idiotic Moron kicked up a huge tantrum and refused to wait at my grandma's while we diamond-shopped at Parkway, and he also refused to tag along to diamond-shop, and in the end my mom was so damn pissed off that she parked the car and made all of us park at my grandma's.

I won't go into details about how my bro vented his frustration on the car door and the fuse box; suffice to say that he did and it was pretty ugly (my all-time favourite oxymoron) and you wonder why some people just can't get over themselves for someone as important as their mothers on her birthday.

We had dinner at Long Beach seafood restaurant and I'm ashamed to report that I loved the barbequed fish. It was yummy and the sauce was brilliant and I sat with my back facing the tanks because I think it's pretty sadistic to eat a fish served barbequed on your plate and to stare at its friends swimming claustrophobically in the fish tank which the dead and barbequed fish used to inhabit. More and more I'm becoming very perturbed by the thought of eating something that was once alive (vegetables and the like obviously don't count), especially if it's served whole, with head and eyes and tail intact. The waiter cut it up into four huge chunks and I kept thinking of the human equivalent of that severed fish and picturing a dead human body being cut up a la our barbequed fish and I saw its dead eye staring at me and I had to look away and tell my brain to shut up before I could finish the portions my dad placed on my plate.

Now, I hate seafood, I abhor eating prawns (biting into that...body is...just...disgusting; recently I've been wondering what kind of intestines we're digesting here and YUCK the very thought creeps me out), eating fish is the lesser of the two evils, I've never liked eating crabs, I don't eat lobsters much and when I did eat lobsters in the past they were served as salads, and my point is, I would've been happy just eating the mee goreng or whatever noodles they had but my parents will, without fail, push me to eat more and so I ate, even ate the sweet and sour prawns 'cause I knew my mom ordered that specially for me (since I refuse to eat steamed prawns or unshelled prawns because I'm freakball-ish like that, pardon another Veronica Mars reference, except I'm not remotely a vegan). Ordinarily I wouldn't vote for going to a seafood restaurant but since my mom wanted it and since it was her birthday, I smiled and nodded and tagged along.

I love my mom.

So after dinner and all we dropped my bro off at home and the three of us drove to West Mall where my dad bought my mom a pretty diamond pendant (which, incidentally, I voted for) from Lee Hwa. I bought coffee from Coffee Bean. It was 10 p.m. I found DVD burners at Harvey Norman. Life is good. My mom's birthday cake, a yogurt cake, is major yum.

I wanted to take pictures but I didn't buy film and we don't have a digi cam and my stupid handphone is out of disk space because my even more stupid laptop built-in Bluetooth still refuses to work and so, and so.

This entry sucks.

Anyway Saturday. Went Bugis with Tingren! It was fun. She wanted to buy a KTV VCD thingy but couldn't find it anywhere, unfortunately. We had mocha at Billy Bombers (I was too full for milkshake and cheese fries) where we talked about random things and laughed a lot. We walked around Bugis Village or whatever that place is called and laughed a lot. She was complaining about the heat and so was I. Amazingly, I didn't buy anything, just a pretty hairpin for my mom (which costs $14 and I also purchased a stupid box for the pin which costs $3.90 and if it were someone else who is not my mom I wouldn't have spent all that money on such trivial stuff) and a bracelet. I had to go home for dinner and so I parted ways with Tingren a bit too early. Hehe. Oh well.

The next time we go shopping again, we will buy something!

College Day rehearsal on the 12th. Uh, that is freaking next freaking Monday. I have to spend my entire Tuesday writing the speech or else...I will die. Dore says he needs to check it for "subversive tendencies"; I'm wondering if that phrase was tailored to suit me, or if it's just a general thing.

My holidays will be spent freaking out over College Day, writing the speech and memorising it and reading it aloud over and over so that I don't stumble over anything, cramming for the stupid SATs, writing my personal statement for the Yale app, figuring out what .php is, setting up my very own website (I bought a domain name which was activated a few months ago and I didn't have time to tinker around with it), and watching lots and lots and lots of TV shows and movies. Yay.

I wish I don't have to go back to school. In all honesty I'm so allergic to law school that the mere thought of going back is wholly capable of making me very, very suicidal. But, I will do my own thing and get my own back and I will never sign up for another law school event again.

So many flashbacks to the way things were in SNGS, so unsettling and ill-fitting, and I'm so thankful for my two years in JJC because they were my oasis in this desert of same-y people and conversations and personalities. Mel and Khai and Tingren and Angela and Simon and Peixuan and Baoyue and Jesselyn, these people who made JJC more memorable and different than SNGS, even the culture of the school itself, the culture that I made snide jibes at and laughed my ass off at and criticised the hell out of; you never realise what you have until it's taken away from you, and so I'm wondering how it was that I forgot how glad I was to be out of SNGS for good.

So now I'm kind of back there; law school is Vicarious SNGS and I'm so tired of wishing things were different and I really don't give a shit who reads this, if I offend anyone, I won't bother with false politeness i.e. political correctness, the truth is I'm not impressed and I will remain unimpressed and hey let's just leave it at that. I'm perfectly content with being the girl who's standing awkwardly by herself in the midst of people who are supposed to be her peers, the girl who doesn't know anyone and whom nobody knows, the girl who's always on the outside.

I have no desire to fit in. It's liberating to say this and to know for a fact that I don't care at all.

Anyway, an anecdote before I post this. So Tingren was telling me that a friend of hers knows Shawn and I was like, "Who's Shawn?"

A voice in my head hours later when I was thinking back to that conversation: Um, your ex-boyfriend?

In my defence I was thinking maybe she was referring to another Shawn/Sean/Shaun who's supposed to be a mutual friend whose existence happened to slip my mind at that very moment. Of course I know who Shawn is. I just...yeah.

Just like that simple "no" when she asked that other question.

I think maybe it screwed me up more than I thought it would, for some reason or other; that's why I don't want to talk about it.

Oh, whatever.

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