falling into grace

hi babies, sorry for the lack of updates. been living a nomadic life out of a suitcase and a van (long story, will post about it soon) for too long. typing this now from my ibook in a hostel in oxford, leeching off the wireless from the neighbouring office block. it snowed today! we were all wonderfully un-glamly excited by the snow, prancing around making snowballs (regardless of the fact that you had to scrape to get together enough snow for a snowball).

christmas was lovely, and so has been the last two weeks. we're all now in oxford for two days, then my parents are flying back to singapore. it's going to be hard to say bye again :(

i'll be moving into shafa's lse room until I return to college on the 8th. there are so many stories to tell - from muddling throught with my gcse french in paris and freezing our nuts off in york, to getting lost and finding stonehenge. and pictures! stay tuned babies.

I miss you all very much! everyone who reads this has crossed my mind at least once during the past few weeks, and knowing that all the other oxford singaporeans are back in the heat, and seeing the familiar faces of my parents and sister contributes to the strangeness of having snow outside and a fire inside on christmas day (it was lovely though), and the confusion of not seeing the same old people for the same old parties.

I hope everyone had a brilliant christmas, and that in the first days of 2006 (god is it really 2006? i feel old that i can remember 1999), we'll all remember to be thankful for the blessings past, and hopeful for the blessings to come. good times ahead.

Posted by chang! at 10:10 PM | Permalink | Comments

well I was re-reading my archives. (yes, I do that.). In my defence it was to read the comments that I never knew were there. And I find this after one of those "questionnaire" posts (i don't know how to hyperlink, you'll have to find it yourself. it was funny though. under "three parts of your heritage", i include "diabetes". haha! i just kill myself sometimes.), this gem my sister left in the comments box: (since I had listed her as one of the people I wanted to see do this quiz.) it's seriously funny though, I had to post it. I know you won't mind, jie.

(my comments are in italics btw)

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rebecca said...
THREE NAMES YOU GO BY:
1. rebecca
2. rebec
3. bec/becks

THREE SCREEN NAMES YOU HAVE HAD:
1. starlime
2. wishfind
3. rebecca
(ok so i am not so cool and poety like u)

THREE PHYSICAL THINGS YOU LIKE ABOUT YOURSELF:
1. eyebrows
2. straight obedient hair
3. wrist and hands

THREE PHYSICAL THINGS YOU DON'T LIKE ABOUT YOURSELF:
1. big ass/thighs
2. barrel torso (bwhahaha! "barrel torso" is such a funny phrase!!)
3. crooked teeth which remain crooked even aft years of braces (and thousands of dollars! heh.). sigh.

THREE PARTS OF YOUR HERITAGE:
1. shanghainese
2. diabetes
3. unbalanced hormones (?!!)

THREE THINGS THAT SCARE YOU:
1. falling (frm high flr) to my death
2. being on death row (shouldn't this more accurately be "committing a crime that would get me on death row"? or are you alright with say, killing someone..just not alright with dying for it?)
3. Having no hope/future

THREE OF YOUR EVERYDAY ESSENTIALS:
1. Glass of water in the morning when i wake up b4 i consume anything, and glass of water at night b4 bed - habit ingrained by a simple sms frm mum when i was in shanghai.
2. checking email (whenever nick isn't in town)
3. Quiet time. OK la i really try.
(and i guess u're right my clean and clear acne control is really a daily affair too)

THREE THINGS YOU ARE WEARING RIGHT NOW:

u can pop in and have a look.

THREE OF YOUR FAVORITE BANDS OR MUSICAL ARTISTS:
sigh actually im super not in tune with all these things..guess i kinda like sun yanzi and jay chou too. i noe u think i am totally suaku with these stuff. and i noe that i will prove u right in the next question. ..


FIFTEEN OF YOUR FAVORITE SONGS:
1. It's all abt u - mcfly (i love this song too. i love mcfly! and i'm not ashamed to admit it! haha)
2. wouldn't it be nice - beach boys
3. qi li xiang - jay chou
5. jie kou - jay chou
6. the you & me song - wannadees
7. be thou my vision/in christ alone - ??
8. ji de - amei
9. i could not ask for more - edwin mccain (my wedding song!) (what song is this? i've never heard it! but i love edward mccain's "i'll be"! share the song pls..)
10. triumph in the skies theme song - eason chan (hahah! ohhhh triumph in the skies. good memories. remember how we didn't have time to watch the last few episodes while I was in shanghai, and I could watch it only after coming home, and I totally emailed you my thoughts on the finale, and it was ridiculously detailed. and you were all "wahlao i can't believe you really emailed me your thoughts on the finale you loser." haha!)
11. dong jie - JJ lim
12. Still - Hillsongs
13. Home - michael buble
14. can't cry hard enough - susan ashton
15. xiang xin - yanzi

THREE THINGS YOU WANT IN A RELATIONSHIP: (the question said "in a relationship", not "in a person", so u shldn't start ur answers with "someone...") (it's my blog stop telling me what to do! haha)
1. grounded on God's love
2. mutual respect
3. patience

THREE PHYSICAL THINGS ABOUT THE PREFERRED SEX THAT APPEAL TO YOU:
1. a good tan
2. specs
3. deep voice
(hmmmm i wonder who has all of that hor. you should have changed that title to "three things i like in nick" and also, ew! haha.)

THREE CAREERS YOU'RE CONSIDERING/YOU'VE CONSIDERED:
1. lawyer
2. travel/food talkshow host(ok i suppose this is more like dream job)
3. teacher

THREE PLACES YOU WANT TO GO ON VACATION:
1. hongkong
2. europe
3. seychelles

THREE KID'S NAMES YOU LIKE:
1. anne
2. caris
3. jason

THREE WAYS THAT YOU ARE STEREOTYPICALLY A BOY:
(its intersting how the horrible bad things u list are all here)

1. i think soft toys and lovey dovey gifts are a waste of time and money.
2. I hate spending money on things I think i won't use or won't need (hi, this is called being "stingy". also known as "heritage from the Yap side". hee.) (but i admit there are exceptions and this is when the girl side takes over)
3. i simply cannot lose face.

THREE WAYS THAT YOU ARE STEREOTYPICALLY A GIRL:
(it's funny how the horrible bad things are also here for u. aren't there any good things abt being a boy or a girl?)

1. chocolate addiction
2. endless compulsion to have more clothes, shoes, bags etc.
3. can be moved to tears quite easily.

YAY FINALLY DONE. If u noticed i omitted some sections - those i really have nothign to say so no point wasting time. tada! hope this satisfies u!

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on a related note: watching my sister and nick around each other..the old married couple-ness, with her saying stupid things and him correcting with an eye-roll; her fussing over him and his cold, and ordering him around in the same breath. And things like him camping overnight at heathrow to get her - missing the last bus to terminal 4, and having had to walk all the way, and making a video for her on the trek there (altogether now: awww! and, ew! haha). so sweet.

while the thought of my sister and her boyfriend usually grosses me out (haha)..seeing the small things - like her hand on his arm, and seeing the comfort and the love there - in a relationship where they're in the same timezone only for a quarter of the year - makes me feel so .... jealous. but also, really happy for them, of course. haha.

But mostly I wonder if I'll ever find anyone I could have a connection like that with. Or maybe i'll just die alone and the cats will eat my face before the neighbours complain about the smell and find my body. Then I'll have to have a closed coffin cos half my face will be gone. That won't be pleasant.

Posted by chang! at 12:17 AM | Permalink | Comments

ok I know it's crazy to be posting three posts in a row (everyone! there are two other new posts below this one!), but well. I really don't want to study. and I haven't been able to post for so long! and somehow..weirdly, my blog has become important to me personally...like it collects my memories, and knowing other people read it too gets me to be alot more disciplined than keeping a journal would.

It's creepy how fast michaelmas flew by. looking through my old pictures I stumbled on so many pretty ones we took those first few days...the bunch of us singaporeans all alone in oxford (having arrived much earlier than anyone else, in true singaporean fashion), travelling in a pack and taking pictures endlessly. In those days we were uncertain and trepidatious about what it would be like when school finally started, but also open-mouthed and excited - total tourists, as you'll see in the pictures.

Sending you bunch off at heathrow a few days ago was nice - i'm glad I decided to go see you guys off. I met most of you only two months ago but so much has happened and who could understand everything we've been through but each other? Although we've had our share of drama (and no more rachel-for-oumssa-pres jokes ok! haha) and although i never got to see you guys as much as those first few days, looking through these old pics, and hugging everyone goodbye at the airport - it's nice to feel the bond. and it's an important one because i would die if I couldn't speak singlish at all, or if there was no one who would share my bak chor mee cravings (jerald tan you better be eating for both of us back there!). and i'm glad i genuinely like you people as well. haha.

i remember when this pic was taken - we were in univ? jesus? one of the colleges, and everyone lined their cameras up on some stones, and we set them off and ran to assemble in front of the quad. it was hilarious - like 7 flashes popping off one after another - which explains why we're all laughing in the pic. And as you can see, my camera, delegated to a lower stone than everyone else's, didn't exactly capture the proper background. But it captured the moment:


gorgeous keble! and poseurs. heh. keble is so splendid though - the first time we walked into the quad, it just took my breath away. and also, I remember the sign in the lodge saying "no posters allowed", and jerald making zhuang pose next to the sign with his finger covering the "t" in posters. hahahhahaa. that's so lame and hilarious.


in somerville. this pic is so lovely!

Posted by chang! at 8:35 PM | Permalink | Comments

The past week has been so amazingly hectic, I don't even know where to start. But there's so much to say, and this is the first time in a week i have legroom! and space to take out my ibook! and there's wireless! and a nice big kitchen! I'm at nick's (my sister's boyfriend) house in tower hill, london, which is by the thames and has the view of the tower of london-cum-the london bridge nearby. and the gherkin (omg!!) in the horizon as well!!! eeeeee. and now i'm all alone in this big spooky house. nick's housemates have all flown home, and he's gone out for dinner after which he's camping out at heathrow to receive my sister. who's coming in a just a few hours! and then my parents in a few days! but first: a proper bout of blogging. replying emails (finally! sorry to everyone who's been waiting for replies), and some reading (obviously that last bit is said with a lot less conviction).

But first!

it all start inauspiciously enough: I wait at the busstop for an hour while seng teck (aww i still love you though) oversleeps and then gets lost. Then we proceed to get lost in the underground: wrong platform, wrong line, forgot to change trains, train service disrupted etc etc, until finally, seng teck: "fuck it we're taking a cab!".

so we get back finally. london really does not treat its students as well as oxford does (and i'm from freakin' teddy hall! that's saying alot coming from me). My suitcase takes up about a quarter of the room. but it's seng teck, and he's neat and clean and giving and smells nice, so i'm just glad to be out of the london smog.

Unfortunately however, the bitchy receptionists employed in canterbury hall do not want us to be happy. They not only charge 1.50 pounds (dear god i couldn't find the pound sign on my keyboard! eee americanisation) a night, but for some reason students can't sign in guests past 11pm at night, even if said guest is standing there with a big suitcase, nowhere to go, and in no way seems inebriated or likely to trash anything.

so this 11pm rule comes to bite us in the arse quite abit. On tuesday after les mis (amazing!! so much better when i watched it in singapore in pri 3. well, i don't remember much from that experience other than thoroughly pissing everyone sitting around us off with my endless questions.), karen john and I come back to the hall, only to be told that we're not allowed in. I manage to sneak in to st's room through the basement, while karen and john head off. On thursday however, I arrive back at the hall at about 1.30am (after walking about 40 minutes from the tube station, hopelessly lost of course), try to sneak in through the basement, get caught, and have to make an emergency call to jo to ask if I can crash at her place. so then it's another 20 minute walk to high holburn.

despite the sneaking around and the bitchy receptionists, the tepid shower, the lack of space, the salsa spills (NOT my fault!), the uncomfortable run-ins with neighbours, the even more uncomfortable walk-in-on-me-changing moment, I was really lucky to have seng teck (aww!) the past week, sharing his space, giving me his bed, and always being so kind, even though he bitched alot in his passive-agressive way (haha!). And it was loads of fun as well - watching will and grace through the night, listening to your paul-inspired beng techno (and my insistence on corrinne may to lull me to sleep, and you playing cher instead just because it's funny), chomping through carrots and salsa, (you spilling said salsa on the armchair and panickedly running out to tesco's to get baking soda, and then complain about the salsa smell over the next few days while giving me the evil eye as if I had anything to do with it!), and just in general hanging out - bitching, giggling..talking about anything and everything.

So thank you for sleeping in a foetal position on the floor for a whole week (no space to stretch out cos of my suitcase), for being so generous, and for putting up with my entitled moments and tantrums. And it's alright that you always got us lost and made us late, and never had the solution - it was good enough that you hadn't changed at all. hee. It was like having my own Will.

I feel like I need to cap this off with a picture. But I haven't take any of the two of us the past week. So here's a very dated picture: a month or so before we both flew: (look at my tropical tan! ah...the sun: a distant memory) young and innocent. before england took our souls:

Posted by chang! at 5:49 PM | Permalink | Comments

london is so big. it's so easy to get lost (and i have, constantly). it's so pretty as well - not as pretty as oxford in the day, but loads prettier at night. And it's just so bustly and busy, and everyone's so purposeful and well-dressed (not like in oxford: students everywhere in jumpers and sneakers. i was berated once for looking through my suitcase for my sneakers. st: "hi, you're in london lor. no one wears sneakers here!"). And it's just..it's london! walking through leicester square just makes me so happy: seeing the giant H&Ms, and the billboards everywhere advertising this musical or that play, and riding the tube. I haven't been doing many touristy things so far, waiting for my parents to do all of that. But just wandering around, shopping, or sitting in a cafe in oxford street just reading for a few hours while outside the world passes you by. (ahhhh that is something i have missed in oxford: there's just no time for simply sitting around. even if it is the economist you're reading). And that feeling you get when the city is so big: that you could die right now and no one would even notice and people would probably just step over your prostrate body...that's so awesome.

i'll post more about london when it's been properly done. But first, abit about the last few days of michaelmas.

The christmas dinner was quite fun: but playing poker after and cleaning everyone out was more fun!! (and only my second time ever playing thank you! veno's face on that last hand when he realised that my straight trumped his was sweeeeet. heh)

our table at christmas dinner:


whitehall 1! (my floor):


paul, dush and I at dinner:


a few of the third-year's I'm friends with thanks to Vicky. it was a few of them I beat at poker. heh. we're all standing on chairs because this was taken right after the whoooole dining hall (basically the whole college) gets up on their chairs after dinner and everyone belts out "teddy bears' picnic" and other christmas carols, it's sooo crazy and fun heh.


random pic of teddy hall singaporeans on cornmarket street on the second last day of term. awww we've come so far since the first day we all met!

Posted by chang! at 10:36 AM | Permalink | Comments

so maybe i shouldn't have had gone out since I was feeling the onset of a flu. But it was the last Bridge night of michaelmas, and the second last day of term, and vicky was about to fuck off to america forEVER. And what better to numb the pain of a running nose than 14 shots? It was a good night anyways, genuine good fun, and I didn't feel sick at all in there. But stumbling home in the rain made my throat and nose hurt, and so I asked paul for paracetemol, and he gave me alka-seltzer. They were kind of like those huge vitamin C orange tablet things which you put in water and it fizzes and disappears and you drink the whole thing, and they're meant to be like lemsip: a combination of aspirin and paracetemol it was.

Sounds fine enough right? So I down it and then go up to join tony and the rest cooking instant noodles. My eyes start to itch a little, hmm, it must be my dry contact lenses or runny mascara or something. So I go take off my make-up and take out my contact lenses. But they're really starting to itch now. I rub a little - it's just lack of sleep, I tell myself.My eyes look a little puffy, but nothing unexpected from a long night out. Then, while standing over the boiling noodles, I literally feel the skin around my eyes swell up - I can feel the bloom, and suddenly: my peripheral vision is gone, and I feel like I can't open my eyes. I run to the mirror. My eyes have swollen up completely, both the skin above and below, giving me a kind of extra-terrestrial haunted look.

I scream and run to where veno is in tony's room - he's a third-year medic. "It's an allergic reaction to something! What did you take?" he says. Nothing! I say. except instant noodles, and I've never been allergic to that! They reccommend sleep, and the college nurse in the morning (well, in 2 hours. it was about 6am at the moment) if it doesn't go down.

I get into bed. Then it hits me immediately! It's the fucking alka-seltzer. This eye-swelling thing has happened to me 3 or 4 times in singapore, and always after some cold medication that I'm allergic to. (yes, the fact that I didn't - and don't - know the name of the drug i'm allergic to, kind of makes the whole thing my fault, I know.) So I run to the bathroom to puke out what's left of the alka-seltzer, hoping this would stop the swelling from getting worse.

And of course I wake up at 8 with even more swollen eyes. I now look just - there's no other word - monstrous. I run to the porter's lodge in horror for help, and they react in horror when they see me, but at least that translated into speedy advice to get down to the doctor's.

After the 7 pound (!) taxi ride, I am ushered in to the doctor immediately (the good thing about having such a terrifying blatant ailment does help in getting speedy service, I must say), and this young (he's like bloody 25 or something) dotor greets me. I gesture towards the plateau on my face. I tell him it's an allergic reaction to alka-seltzer. I ask for the name of the drug that I'm allergic to, and for immediate presciption to bring down the swelling. He spends - I am not kidding - the next 15 minutes flipping through his medical dictionary and looking up (!) stuff on the internet (!!!) and tells me that it "should" be aspirin that I'm allergic to. I get an injection of loratedine, and am told to wait for half an hour to see "if it works".

The swelling goes down a little. He says, wait another hour..see if it goes down more. I spend the hour in the marks and sparks nearby (scaring off every shopper within metre radius), and reading about chloe sevigny! muse. The swelling does not fo down further. it's stagnated at a still-alien-looking stage.

The doctor says, go home and come back to see him later. I say - 14 pounds for a return trip leh! He says, call him later instead.

So I go back and go to bed, hoping that I will wake up looking normal again. I don't. I wake up looking exactly the same, and when I open the door for phoebe, she goes "OHHHHH MY GOD", and proceeds to mutter "oh my god, oh my god" as I speak, peppered with the occasional "I feel sooooo sorry for you". This of course puts me in a great mood. Then, I actually have to go for collections (!) (which is basically at every end of term where your tutors sit together and you sit in front of them and they tell you what they think of you) like this. I frighten every person I meet on the way, earning comments like, from paisley: "you look very asian today...(and as I go nearer) OH MY GOD!", and paul: "why are you squinting at me....(and as I go nearer) OH MY GOD!"

So I go back and call the doctor. I say, it's not going down..why?! he says, I'll ring you back in 5 minutes (i.e I have to go flip through my dictionary now and google it somemore). he calls back, saying basically "well...I don't know. Take another pill and hope for the best."

So the swelling does go down little by little (by now i've popped about 5 of those pills). But I also had to pack - i had not started at all on clearing out of my room - and do about 4 weeks worth of laundry.

So here I am at 5.38am, still looking very Asian, but at least human-ish, with bags all around me, and giant suitcase which I don't know how I'm going to lug up the bus.

Ahhhh, this is the life.

Posted by chang! at 5:39 AM | Permalink | Comments