falling into grace

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

Henley

Posted by chang! at 4:00 AM | Permalink | Comments

the regatta was quite shit for the teddy hall boat club altogether, but at least the end-of-regatta dinner was awesome fun. random pictures:

some of the rowing guys:

my coach: crazy italian andrea and I.


will, vicki, karl in vicki's very drunken idea of "individual portraits"




more rowing guys:

vicki and I!

look at the row of wine bottles haha

our table:



the ginger is my cox Hamish..he's so cute! andrea very drunk:

karl posing with his guinness pint glass of water! trying to sobre up..it obviously didn't work very well

me posing around:


tonight there's christmas dinner! another huuuuuge piss-up it'll be. and more pics hopefully! ahhh memories.

Posted by chang! at 7:20 AM | Permalink | Comments

well. we went out with a bang anyway, i guess. it's a good story, but also quite a sad one, so i'm not gonna post about it. everyone here has heard it anyhow...and when i see people in singapore again in august, i hope i remember to tell it.

RIP Teddy Hall Novice As...we hardly knew ye!

Posted by chang! at 7:20 PM | Permalink | Comments

1. the christchurch regatta starts tomorrow! I'm actually getting quite excited and nervous about it, especially after tonight's pasta dinner with the whole rowing team. The thing is there's so much expectation on us...we're really expected to win (apparently our crew is really good), and I'm so nervous that I'm gonna catch a crab (have your blade dragged underwater) during the race or something horrific like that. And the thing is, although I'm not incredibly close to my crew, and although I'm pretty sure I'm not going to keep rowing after this term, I really do want to win it, and have just this amazing experience capped off brilliantly. Because we have done so much work for this - the 40 minute sessions on ergs, the 6am outings,the circuits and sprints. And tomorrow it's going to be a brilliant 3 minutes I know.

2. I've been having alot of sobre fun lately, have hardly been going out. Doing things like playing scrabble (extra 10 points for dirty words!), and piling into someone's room to watch DVDs (Napoleon Dynamite was brilliant in bits: we've been doing "Do chickens have large talons?" to one another for days; American History X is so amazing, everyone please watch it), and having late night toast parties in the kitchen (argh! getting fat!), and yes, even studying together in the library, with everyone doing that stupid whisper voice, had its fun moments (amy making fun of peter's philosophy essay almost gave me an aneurysm from trying not to laugh out loud).

3. The Asian Food Fest! That was good fun, although incredibly overpriced (OUMSSA! 2 quid 50 for a chicken rice?!!). I even helped out a bit with the singaporean stall when they were shorthanded! And the looong queue was worth it to see the look on vicki's face when she tried chendol.

4. I'm looking more and more forward to the holidays..I can't wait to see sengteck and jo (shout-out woooo! haha), and hang out with them in london, as well as see my parents and sister and see paris again! But before my family arrives I'll have a nice long time of 12 days to just explore london, and have a nice long big stretch of being alone. And of course of having nice home-cooked meals at rosy's, and partying with phoebe's rich friends' rich friends.

5. And I also feel like I haven't properly been getting the oxford experience - academics-wise anyway. Like phoebe told me how flic's law tutor wrote her an email saying that her essay's in her pidge because the stuff he has to say about it are too embarrassing for him to want to say it to her in class, and as brutal as that is, it just struck me as sad that none of my tutors would ever show that amount of interest in any of us. We're all just cruising and blagging our way through tutorials, which is why i'm so looking forward to next term when politics start. Because I'm hoping that then I'll feel more passion for my work - I'll actually be interested and interesting and be close to my tutors and have wonderful intellectual discussions...and feel like I want to read the economist in my spare time instead of doing rubbish like spending too much time online and blogging.

6. I can't believe there's less than 2 weeks left to term. Things move so fast here you hardly have time to think.

7. It's getting dark and freezing. and the past few days have been -2 degrees or less. walking along christchurch meadow to get to the boathouse is almost a surreal experience - frost-covered fields and mist hanging so low you can hardly see, and with the sun setting behind the clocktower... it's like an LOTR scene. Walking along alone with my hood up, the pebbles crunching beneath my feet and making smoke rings with my puffs of breath, i almost forget to appreciate it, until i look up and realise that I'm walking under a canopy formed by the overhanging frosty trees...and everything in that moment is so splendid i could cry.

Posted by chang! at 1:44 AM | Permalink | Comments

my alliteration amuses me. i just did it again! hee, ok i'm sorry about that

I've had a good evening! Despite the fact that I should have been reading for my induction essay rather than doing everything I did tonight (and I should be reading for my essay now too. in fact making up for the lost hours of the evening. But here I am. blogging.)

Sheryl, Karen, John and I had dinner at cafe opium (oh I can taste that roast duck in my dreams!). What was meant to be a short dinner because of our various essay deadlines (karen the day before: "two hours only! you better come!") turned into a four hour dinner with ice-cream after chat session. I haven't seen those guys in ages (but karen, I see you all the time actually! haha), and it was a splendid time. Making fun of each other's brit accents (mostly sheryl's morphing accent between answering her phone and realising it was a brit friend. Seriously it went from full on singlish "har-low?" to crsip "are you having dinner now?" (aiyah, typing does that comedy bit no favours at all)), and karen and john being indignant that I should have any part in making fun of sheryl because apparently my accent is really bad as well (it isn't LOR! haha), talking about everything from the hwa chong-RJ divide to racism in singapore and in the UK. It felt good to pull out my las and wahlaos for a night, being crazy loud orientals (stupid brits! haha) and just having a good time really. AND we were invited for chilli crab on sunday by peter whom we bumped into at the restaurant as well. I love my singaporeans! hee.

Went back to college with heroic plans of studying. Unfortunately the girls invaded my room and we spent wayyy too long talking about our house next year. We're getting a beeg 7 person house, but getting the right mix is sooo annoying and troublesome. The boys want to live with us, but they have 4, and we - rosy, phoebe and I - can't possibly leave vicky out. So the boys are probably going to get an all-boys 5 person house (which we will crash constantly simply because they cook better than us! haha), and we're gonna get a 7 person house with other pple. (if stupid saj ever gets past his annoying "one indian and one lawyer" condition, we're all set, really.)

It felt really nice and homely just chatting with the girls, then getting interrupted by the boys telling their stupid stories and messing around in my room again. It felt comfortable. And while nothing really exciting happened today, after all the sometimes scary adventure I've been having - all the new experiences - it felt good to just chill out with pple I trust and love (both the singaporeans and the brits). It felt like home - almost. And when I recall that if I were still in singapore, I would probably be watching some mindless thing on MTV, bored out of my mind, I feel like I never want to leave here.

But then I remember jerald talking about bak chor mee last night, annd I change my mind. Plus there's that whole bond thing in the way anyway. Well it's a good long time before that. And in the meantime I'm going to have the time of my life.

Daddy: I do hang out with asians ok! And your email was seriously bizarre.

Posted by chang! at 2:32 AM | Permalink | Comments

the title of this post is alice through the looking glass because I remember there was once in 2nd week or something, that I was feeling really lonesome and sick (like, i was literally sick), and karl made me some tea, and I was just whining on and on to him about how I felt so out of place and homesick and that i've stepped into bizarro world, that i was like alice through the looking glass etc etc (bear in mind, i barely knew him at this point. it was frightening for him, to say the least. the fact that he's still my friend says something haha). And the connecting thread from that conversation is that I've been having adventures lately, and feeling like alice again, but this time in a good way.

but first:

on friday night: we had dinner at this fancy restaurant called Ask, and had THREE bottles of wine. (our bill was 80 pounds ouch!)


karl and I. It's obvious that this was at the tail-end of the three-bottle-of-wine dinner, huh

On saturday night, I was out with luke, and some of his friends. And it was a bit insane really. we went to the south park, where they had a fireworks! and a giant bonfire..it was like a carnival thing, with rides and stuff.


we were just hanging out there (and his friend ed, was doing fire poi. you know those guys who have two chains with fireballs at the end, and swing them around like shuang jie gun? really amazing:



It was funny because luke's friends are all the dreadlocked, chains and studs kind (but such cool people)..and when we stopped in teddy hall for a drink from the college bar, you could see all these preppy boys' eyes following them as they passed. And then me in their midst: innocent asian girl in a baby pink jumper. heh.

After that we walked for AGES to this party, which was being held on an allotment (a patch of field on which people grow vegetables, i kid you not). It was seriously in the middle of nowhere, and we had to walk down this creepy-ass dirt path which was pitch-black (and had like LOTR-esque trees), and past a railway (!) (which had the sign: "look and listen: it is not our responsibility if you are killed" haah!) and through this giant field (like those cornfields which dwarf you: if you've seen forest gump where jenny as a kid runs off into the field from her pervert dad? yeah, like that. except pitchdark). and we came to a clearing (the allotment), where there was a bonfire, and drunk people singing. heh. it was awesome really. then after that luke and I hung out in his room for wayyyy too long (until something like 5am), listening to music and talking about everything from magic mushrooms to the war in iraq.

It was quite the adventure really. There were moments where I was like 'oh my god, what am I doing here with these random people walking into a field in the middle of nowhere!' But well, it could have been that I'm losing my singaporean-ness, and getting used to the randomness of things here (or it could have been the spliff. hmmmmm.. haha), but then sitting by the bonfire listening to drunk people sing bohemian rhapsody...I felt right at home.


Luke and I! windswept in the south park.

Posted by chang! at 6:43 PM | Permalink | Comments

When I find myself in times of trouble
Mother mary comes to me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.
And in my hour of darkness
She is standing right in front of me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.
Let it be, let it be.
Whisper words of wisdom, let it be.

And when the broken hearted people
Living in the world agree,
There will be an answer, let it be.
For though they may be parted there is
Still a chance that they will see
There will be an answer, let it be.
Let it be, let it be
There will be an answer, let it be.

And when the night is cloudy,
There is still a light that shines on me,
Shine on until tomorrow, let it be.
I wake up to the sound of music
Mother mary comes to me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.
Let it be, let it be.
There will be an answer, let it be.
Let it be, let it be,
Whisper words of wisdom, let it be.



It had been a miserable day - we were all miserable and wet and cold from walking home from the rain, and when we appeared in the guys' doorway with wet hair and clothes and looking so miserable, they made space for us under the covers; we find out that they've done the washing although it was our turn, and with their familiar simple way they make us laugh.

The last 2 days have been spent feeling miserable, lonely and confused. But looking back - I spent so much time feeling down, and talking about how shit I felt that I forgot how blessed I am. That the girls listened to me whine while we were lazing around in rosy's room sharing a bottle of wine. That when I said we needed to go out and get drunk they all went out with me. That when I wanted to leave bar risa because it was shit, they left with me. That when we came back the boys made us laugh and shared their muffins. That saj can make me laugh with a well-timed accent imitation; that chris was watching FRIENDS when we came into his room, and it just made me feel so happy to have found another FRIENDS fan.

And when tim said in his lazy way "simple pleasures yeah...just let it be" while pulling on my wet hair, I felt the relief come rushing at me, and the tears welling up, because I knew he was right - and how could I have missed it for so long?

Posted by chang! at 9:16 PM | Permalink | Comments