falling into grace

ok, if by popular demand you mean one person. since tzing insisted! (and i'm free cos i ponned work):

THREE NAMES YOU GO BY:
1. rachel
2. hahhee (yes, thanks yaxin..this nickname has lasted so long that i've long ago stopped resisting)
3. rae; rae-rae (mother; jireh)

THREE SCREEN NAMES YOU HAVE HAD:
1. finally the silence
2. falling into grace
3. you see all my light, and you love my dark
yes, i'm partial to the "snatches of lyrics" thing, tzing! it makes me happy. and at least i never choose depressedmylifesucks lyrics cos that's just exhibitionistic.

THREE PHYSICAL THINGS YOU LIKE ABOUT YOURSELF:
1. eyebrows!
2. eyelashes and double eyelids
3. dimple (regardless of the early childhood trauma circa 1993 when my sister told me in a particularly vicious moment: "if you don't stop eating your dimple will be swallowed up by fat!". yes, thanks jie. i love you too)

THREE PHYSICAL THINGS YOU DON'T LIKE ABOUT YOURSELF:
1. big ass
2. the fact that i will never be "thin"
3. big nose

THREE PARTS OF YOUR HERITAGE:
1. shanghainese
2. diabetes
3. as my mother likes to point out loudly: "you have your father's fat lazy genes!"
yes, thanks ma. i love you too!

THREE THINGS THAT SCARE YOU:
1. rats
2. dying alone
3. rape

THREE OF YOUR EVERYDAY ESSENTIALS:
wow i really racked my brain for this one. is it sad that the ONLY thing i can think of that I use EVERYDAY regardless is clearasil pimple cream? yes, it is sad.
1. clearasil pimple cream
2. water
3. kissing my musky man!

THREE THINGS YOU ARE WEARING RIGHT NOW:
1. uh, stained, old fairy cartoon t-shirt. (it's stinky and tattered and i love it)
2. purple shots
3. silver hairband. a look i only do at home.

THREE OF YOUR FAVORITE BANDS OR MUSICAL ARTISTS:
1. alanis
2. lifehouse
3. and although the obsession has faded somewhat (and he is now so popular that i hate to associate myself with those millions of screaming fangirls with keychains), i still own every one of his albums and i loved him from the beginning and forever: jay chou

FIFTEEN OF YOUR FAVORITE SONGS:
1. you learn - alanis. such wisdom.
2. open your eyes - a-mei
3. breathing - lifehouse
4. qi li xiang - jay chou
5. zui hou de zhan yi - jay chou
6. everything - alanis.
7. what you're made of - lucy silvas
8. fix you - coldplay (this song just kills me!)
9. cold water - damien rice (which i think is more genius than the overrated "the blower's daughter")
10. yahweh - U2. I LOVE THIS SONG SO MUCH
11. my stupid mouth - john mayer. always makes me feel happier
12. goodbye to you - michelle branch
13. your winter - sister hazel
14. jeff buckley - hallelujah
15. s club 7 - bring it all back. I'm sorry, but i just unabashedly love this song. it makes me feel like i can do anything in the world!

THREE THINGS YOU WANT IN A RELATIONSHIP:
1. someone who makes me laugh
2. someone who tells me off when i deserve it
3. chemistry

TWO TRUTHS AND A LIE (in no particular order):
i'm excited about going to oxford; i'm pretty depressed that i didn't choose to go to the US; i like my hair better all black.

THREE PHYSICAL THINGS ABOUT THE PREFERRED SEX THAT APPEAL TO YOU:
1. good skin
2. good jeans that hang right
3. legs

THREE OF YOUR FAVORITE HOBBIES:
1. watching tennis (really. it's weird. i can just watch any random match and have alot of fun)
2. talking. (this is in a moment of serious self-awareness: i talk alot. i dominate most of my conversations. no wonder so many of my friends hate me.)
3. shopping/ getting good bargains. i have endless stamina when it comes to the latter.

THREE THINGS YOU WANT TO DO REALLY BADLY RIGHT NOW:
1. see aimee
2. do something about my hair
3. pick my pimples

THREE CAREERS YOU'RE CONSIDERING/YOU'VE CONSIDERED:
1. lawyer
2. serious journalist
3. entertainment journalist (like those people in vanity fair who write about celebrities. "her skin glows with an almost frightening luminescence, and her almond-shaped eyes - not lined or made up in any way - are so hazel they are almost blue." see! i'm so good at it!)

THREE PLACES YOU WANT TO GO ON VACATION:
1. the maldives
2. venice
3. egypt

THREE KID'S NAMES YOU LIKE:
1. isaac
2. matthew (matthew will always remain for me, a hot name.)
3. summer
(this reminds me of the time in nooch with aimee and lira and lyn, where they all somehow knew already how many kids they wanted, and what would be their names, and i was all "people spend time thinking about such things?!!". and also: I miss all of you so much!!)

THREE THINGS YOU WANT TO DO BEFORE YOU DIE:
1. fall in love
2. be successful
3. run a marathon. (yeah right. but i really do want to do this)

THREE WAYS THAT YOU ARE STEREOTYPICALLY A BOY: (is it depressing that i can think of so many more ways than 3?)
1. I see your "i can be bossy and domineering sometimes", tzing, and up you a "I can be bossy and domineering all the time".
2. I am extremely impatient with people, especially stupid ones
3. I am loud, agressive, intimidating
4. I can be incredibly unperceptive, and thus, cruel.

THREE WAYS THAT YOU ARE STEREOTYPICALLY A GIRL:
1. oversensitive
2. insecure
3. i overthink

THREE MALE CELEB CRUSHES:
1. adam brody
2. ewan mcgregor
3. tim henman (for his very british teeth and ears, and because he's such a loser. i always root for the underdog)

THREE FEMALE CELEB CRUSHES or TWO CELEBRITIES YOU WANT TO BE WHO HAVE YOUR NAME, AND ONE YOU REALLY SHOULDN'T WANT TO BE
1. Rachel Bilson (soooo pretty, and dating adam brody)
2. Rachel McAdams (sooo pretty, and sooo vicious in mean girls)
3. Ashlee Simpson (in my defence: with black hair, and before the lip-syncing thing)

THREE PEOPLE THAT I WOULD LIKE TO SEE TAKE THIS QUIZ NOW:
all people who don't have blogs, but that adds to the mystery doesn't it!
1. sheryl loke - enigmatic dimsum you are.
2. my sister
3. aimee

Posted by chang! at 4:19 PM | Permalink | Comments

The past few days and the next few days will be filled with goodbyes. And almost like pets, goodbyes usually turn out to resemble the person taking flight -

lyn's goodbye: quiet, stoic - just like her. Not many words were spoken, nonetheless everyone there felt a certain wrenching bereavement in the air.

jen's goodbye: teary and very emotional. huge hoards of people turned up - the many many friends she had from always being so unjudgmentally understanding. This one pulled out all the stops: prayers, presents, waving at the glass and lots of tears.

aimee's goodbye (her farewell party): a social event befitting the most sociable teenager in the world - everyone eating alot, having fun. no tears, no undignified emotion..just lots of laughing and mahjong.

What will my farewell be like? half the world will be there, because I have the (mis)fortune of flying with everyone from HC and RJ going to oxbridge. This enrages me a little, because I know that in the pandemonium it will be harder for me to seek out the people I care about the most - harder to say a private goodbye without interruptions from irrelevant people.

But that's just like me isn't it - I want undiluted goodbyes the way I need absolute loyalty. It's a little ridiculous - only people like the clintons and the kennedys have this neurosis - but I cannot trust friends whom I know to have other, conflicting allegiances. I cannot respect that they are "in (someone else's) confidence", the way my nobler friend can bring herself to. How can you look me in the eye and lie to me? Or withhold something you know I should know? Maybe it's an extension of my "ready frankness", I just cannot forgive duplicity - especially from people I have taken into my confidence.

Or it's just megalomania.

But for all the little things recently that have made me kind of think: shit, I should have decided on georgetown, I'm thankful that at least at oxford I will have you: thanks for taking my plea to "protect me" so seriously, to the point of doing me bodily harm to avoid potential emotional trauma. Stubbed toe aside, that meant alot to me, and kind of made what would otherwise have been a painful experience, almost hilarious.

And after dreading the day for so long, I kind of felt relieved and jovial in its aftermath. I guess I just cared less than I thought I would. When the scene I had envisioned for so long finally played out, I could only think of how irrelevant these people are to me, and oh, how thankful I am for that. And that I wasn't alone, grinning and bearing it..your sympathetic glances alone were enough. And just while I feel constantly distressed that I'm losing my best friends through distance - geographical or emotional - I'm reminded that all is not lost.

The final bit of a long rambly post: I'll miss you terribly, jen.

Posted by chang! at 1:45 AM | Permalink | Comments

Right. So friday was the first day I could really sleep in - my shift only started at 12.45pm. Having had to endure 2 weeks of getting up at 8 or 9 every morning, then spending 8 hour days staring into space or persuading random tai-tai that that top is so sexy!, I was pleased to be staring 12-hour-sleep in the face.

Then the night before, my sister, who has been planning to scam off my amore card for ages, but has decided that I must go with her to her first class, because "I don't want to be the only one who doesn't know the steps!", decides that we are going for a 9.30am aerobics class.

9.30am. My 12-hour night of sleep had rapidly deflated into under-8. Even better, she told (told, not asked) me about the plan around 1 am. I was up late reading Harry Potter, assuming that I would be waking up the next day when everyone else was already on lunch break.

In response to my unhappy noises, she placates me by volunteering the information that she has the car so we'll drive there! Considering that she hasn't drove in about a year and a half, and she becomes only more like my mother when driving, this was cold comfort.

Right. So the next morning, she wakes me up in our usual way - involving alot of shouting on her part about how I am disgusting and wasting my life and disappointing her, while I resolutely burrow into my pillow refusing to wake up out of spite.

So around 9 am, we're ready to go. Blearily we approach the car..she's jittery, as would befit someone who hasn't drove for a year and half, and someone who drives like my mother - that is, with an unrelenting belief that something will happen on the journey: "the car is making funny noises!"; "why is that man tailgating me?!"; "did I miss the exit?!", coupled with the assumption that whatever happens it is my fault: "why must you make me drive you around? why can't you take public transport? why are you so lazy?"; me: stunned into silence/resigned to the barrage.

But back to regularly scheduled programming. So of course, while insisting that we are alright, she misses the exit to woodlands. And only realises this while we're heading towards tuas. She gets me to pull out the street directory.

I am of course no help in the midst of crisis - I can neither navigate nor drive (which happens to be why no one wants to do the amazing race with me) - I can only flip from map 23 to map 46 on her command. In my defense, she doesn't seem to know what's going on either.

Soon, it's 9.30 - the class is starting, and we're still on the BKE.

"Shall we abort?", she asks.

"You mean, not go for the class I woke up at 8.45am for, because we're lost in a country the size of a thumb? yeah alright."

But she finds the right exit a few minutes later, and we decide to press on to the woodlands amore anyways, to use the gym. To her protests that we only have one card and that we'll be caught, I say that I've used the gym there tons of times without giving my card to the counter - they'll probably not notice.

And of course, they do. They chase us into the gym to ask for our membership cards. We return to the locker room on the pretext of "getting our cards", to strategise. We decide that she should give my card, and I'll say that I forgot to bring mine, but give them my "card number" so they can check on the system. Unfortunately, the only card number I can remember is registered in the name of one jennani durai- so this ruse will invariably involve me pretending to have indian blood.

At the counter, the nice young lady informs me that I will have to pay 15 bucks, which will be refunded to me the next time I ("jennani durai") presents her card to any outlet.

She also clarifies that using the gym is considered one lesson, a huge shock to me: I've used the gym tons of times without giving them my card at all! (I mean, a gleeful shock). But a shock nonetheless at the guerilla tactics of amore fitness.

Sidebar: Other amore members: did you know this?! did you know that one gym session is equal to one class?? isn't that disgusting?!

Right. So of course now I can't go through with the whole chindian thing - I can't use one of jen's lessons without asking her! and plus, I don't want to part with 15 bucks.

So we give up and go eat breakfast at mac's instead. We should have just done that in the first place.

Or, I should just never have gotten out of bed.

Posted by chang! at 2:56 PM | Permalink | Comments