the betrayal is complete
ive moved to http://theuninitiated.blogspot.com
fluttered into your heart on Monday, November 28, 2005 at 11:26 p.m.
nothing like home
i miss singapore! i have already started a list of food places to go in summer. i miss the comfort of my room and the convenience of a toilet and kitchen in my house. i miss my parents who will irritate me when i get back i know but i still want to see them (mutually felt im sure). i miss hearing my bro cough his lungs out in the next room and eating up all my food. i miss the warm weather and the gorgeous sun (my legs are a pasty white which absolutely sucks). i miss my best friend and my other friends who have grown up with me.
on the other hand, i love london for its impossible weather, the freedom i have all the time, the good friends ive made, the laidback/hardcore living here, the gym and the yoga classes and the travelling at the drop of a hat.
i think im a lucky girl to have so much to look forward to at both ends of the world.
fluttered into your heart on Monday, November 21, 2005 at 10:44 a.m.
clutter!
after tidying up sheryls rm in oxford, maria returns to her room in 1-11 cartwright gardens, commonwealth hall, and is shocked to find that her room isnt in much better condition! ok granted nothing's growing mold (draw the inferences yourself)but her dirty clothes have been lying in her laundry bag for an obscene number of days, she hasnt hung up the clothes she is recycling for the week, her bed and chair and desk are full of miscellaneous things, photographs of loved ones are all over the place and threatening to overwhelm her walls and she has not a drop of drinkable water in her containers. life is cluttered. with the demands of school, friends and loved ones, family back home, holiday plans and memories that don't die but grow into nostalgia,... where do i find the time for myself? the answer: i don't. thank god for the ppl here in london who pull me thru the longest days (not that the days are long) and the darkest nights (many of those). love goes out to:
1. boyboy
2. phil
3. gerald
4. yunlei
5. florrine
6. jillian
7. john
and last but not least emily my girl, who may not be here with me but wishes acutely for london to be in chinese high. so do i. :)
fluttered into your heart on Tuesday, November 15, 2005 at 11:18 p.m.
oxford
the trip was smashing! DJ Double-T was in da house man, complete with flying fucks, loud c*** b**s and threats to spit down my throat. haha lest you think i only went up to associate with gangstas, i wasn't, that was actually one of my friends. spent 24 hours with shloke, zhuang, Double-T, Serene, lixin and jammy, and suffice to say it was great seeing them again. i'm so happy for them cos oxford is such a gorgeous place to live and study. the small town feel contrasts sharply with the london big city feel. but oh, to sneak a peek into the christchurch library and to gaze over the quadrangle of keble is enough to feed my dreams of academic flight and fantasy. okay, so i know and am reassured by them that of course it isn't all that romantic and dreamy. but what is life without dreams? i can't quite articulate it (as usual where words fail) but knowing that we had a limited time together meant that our conversations on the way to a place or back took on a new urgency. holding hands or linking arms we just said whatever was on our minds, and for myself i said a lot of things that i never knew i thought before. sometimes when you admit something things tend to go downhill from there, but this time i wont let that happen. i'll find a meaning and direction in which to proceed.
fluttered into your heart on Sunday, November 13, 2005 at 11:40 a.m.
the ageing process
it seems so strange to wish my friend happy 19th birthday when it feels like we r all at least 20! 19 seems like a roadsign i drove past long, long ago. boyboy is 21 but i don't feel younger than him either. how far we have come since then, or maybe its a question of having moved to london and having one's roadmap completely re-orientated and messed up. over here, i am 16, 20 or 25- all at once. the fact remains that i am 19 years 9 months to the day, but you and i know it doesnt mean anything.
i borrowed the unbearable lightness of being from philip yesterday and have brought it everywhere w me since then. in the toilet, by my bed, in the lecture theatre, and on the way to oxford tonight it shall fight to prevent me from sleeping. what is it about reading a gd book that makes you feel so whole, so human?
fluttered into your heart on Friday, November 11, 2005 at 09:52 a.m.
this is a real girl in a real place
Lines On A Young Lady's Photograph Album
Philip Larkin
At last you yielded up the album, which
Once open, sent me distracted. All your ages
Matt and glossy on the thick black pages!
Too much confectionery, too rich:
I choke on such nutritious images.
My swivel eye hungers from pose to pose --
In pigtails, clutching a reluctant cat;
Or furred yourself, a sweet girl-graduate;
Or lifting a heavy-headed rose
Beneath a trellis, or in a trilby-hat
(Faintly disturbing, that, in several ways) --
From every side you strike at my control,
Not least through those these disquieting chaps who loll
At ease about your earlier days:
Not quite your class, I'd say, dear, on the whole.
But o, photography! as no art is,
Faithful and disappointing! that records
Dull days as dull, and hold-it smiles as frauds,
And will not censor blemishes
Like washing-lines, and Hall's-Distemper boards,
But shows a cat as disinclined, and shades
A chin as doubled when it is, what grace
Your candour thus confers upon her face!
How overwhelmingly persuades
That this is a real girl in a real place,
In every sense empirically true!
Or is it just the past? Those flowers, that gate,
These misty parks and motors, lacerate
Simply by being you; you
Contract my heart by looking out of date.
Yes, true; but in the end, surely, we cry
Not only at exclusion, but because
It leaves us free to cry. We know what was
Won't call on us to justify
Our grief, however hard we yowl across
The gap from eye to page. So I am left
To mourn (without a chance of consequence)
You, balanced on a bike against a fence;
To wonder if you'd spot the theft
Of this one of you bathing; to condense,
In short, a past that no one now can share,
No matter whose your future; calm and dry,
It holds you like a heaven, and you lie
Unvariably lovely there,
Smaller and clearer as the years go by.
fluttered into your heart on Tuesday, November 8, 2005 at 04:48 p.m.
drive
the thing abt blogging is that once u get started, u cant stop. but when u do go on hiatus, u go for very long.
anyway my thursday and friday last wk was marked by lots of booze and nothing else. ok la, on thurs there was talking, tears and vodka with a good friend, the best ive found here. then there was beer and clubbing at 2 bars a few hours later- where i dropped my rm keys genius girl, luckily i got them back a few days after. on friday there was bridge and beer where i managed to get sloshed once again. im amazed i can even rmb this much of what happened, hahaha. just kidding.
my dinner surprise for gerald went pretty well, barring the fact that the boss of the restaurant was a real dick and almost made me cry (!) eeps. but the cake was gd and yeah gerald was happy, which is gd enuf for me.
i cooked fried rice on sunday hahaha. ok that abt rounds up my week. u see mon-wed i rarely do anything exciting cos there's just too many lessons and work to do. thurs-sun are by far more interesting. feeling incredibly moody and pensive these days... not unhappy per se, but like im searching for something that i cant pinpoint. yah well hope this feeling passes cos i'd rather be mad and happy.
fluttered into your heart on Tuesday, November 8, 2005 at 02:31 a.m.
my favourite part of the day
was when we cracked a new joke that seems too unbelieveably stupid and yet too true. it was when we admitted something was wrong the whole of last week and when i articulated our frustration and unhappiness with each other in a sentence. it was also when i tested myself by walking 20 minutes to somerfield's in the rain alone, feeling scared cos it was dark, refusing to bring a handphone and not using the umbrella you made me take. it was when i bought food that was heavy for me to bring back but enough to feed you for a week because you shouldnt have to starve just cos you want to save. it was when i walked home the longer way, not feeling the weight and thinking of how to cook the fried rice. it was when i wanted to do things for you without your help. it was when i realised i love you not because i need something from you, but because i want to.
fluttered into your heart on Sunday, November 6, 2005 at 10:03 p.m.
cliched.
i am the girl who misses home acutely but refuses to go back til next year.
i am the girl who really believes that self-destructiveness is a trait of brilliance.
i am the girl who wants to be brilliant.
i am the girl who loves bad things, and takes for granted the good things.
i am the girl who believes that fuckcare month is the best thing she's heard all year.
i am the girl who loves pink gerberas.
i am the girl who is touchy abt money. and weight.
i am the girl who is frequently too loud or too quiet.
i am the girl who organises birthday parties, including her own.
i am the girl who indulges in melancholy, believing it to be the most real feeling.
i am the girl who lost too many friendships along the way and blames herself.
i am the girl who hasn't found a girlfriend here.
i am the girl who doesn't know how to say goodbye, or "the end".
i am the beer-and-bridge girl, the early-morning-play-badminton girl, the let's-go-for-a-drink-tonight girl.
i am the girl who woke up feeling she had to leave.
i am your girl.
fluttered into your heart on Thursday, November 3, 2005 at 11:32 a.m.
always cold
ive been here for more than a month already! time flies when so much is happening. life has fallen into an easy routine centering around school and friends. have never had so much freedom before; the ironic thing is that once you get it, you don't quite know what to do with it. i took it and got drunk, but that's abt it man.. :) ok seriously speaking i now have the freedom to do only what i want. fuck care abt making myself look gd on my CV... to me its smth im leaving behind in singapore. if i have to pay for it by losing my masters sponsorship, so be it. serious.
there's a strange mix of independence on weekdays and cohabitation on weekends, sometimes tiring to be running btwn south ken and holborn/russell, but in the end the 3.40pounds to and fro are well spent. have never felt like someone is so much a part of my life before, it's a gd thing- don't get me wrong - despite the jokes i make abt my social life disappearing over the weekend i think the trade-off is worth it.
well, have been to salisbury, stonehenge and canterbury so far. trips to oxford and france & spain are being planned. if i could fly home i might, but well, that's not an option.
fluttered into your heart on Tuesday, November 1, 2005 at 07:05 p.m.
as i sit in a room i can really call my own, munching on strawberries i bought from the street corner off the way to school, reading my 2ndhand martin amis book of short stories, i think: i could really learn to love this place.
as i sit in the lecture theatre listening to a lecturer who is funny, informed and interested in what he is teaching, i think: i could really learn to love school. if not the whole thing, then at least this particular module- EH101.
oh and the shopping here is great too.
fluttered into your heart on Tuesday, October 4, 2005 at 10:58 a.m.
update
hello, its my first real entry since i got to london. life here is incredibly liberating! so much freedom, so little security. it's like you've really gotta do everything yourself... looking at the condition im in and my room is in, i must say ive got a lot more to learn :p :)
my rm is still in a mess, im half unpacked, my clothes r unwashed, im falling sick and ive got rashes cos of either dry weather or a filthy bed (which isnt really my fault). but it's ok i just need some time to get my act together la... and ive already done the bank stuff and whatever other admin stuff. yup.
am trying to see if i can switch rms with this indian guy in this other hall... if all goes well i'll have a nicer newer rm nearby! but well we'll see.
fluttered into your heart on Monday, October 3, 2005 at 07:09 a.m.
the better part of me
wow pitas really does take a very long time to upload entries. but nvm, im sticking with it cos i like the URL :p
btw to my faithful readers i think i'll be closing my opendiary for quite a while. simply cos there r no secrets left to write abt.
am typing this in between lessons at chinese high. thought i wld relief teach before i fly, jus to remind myself of the reason why i can study in LSE in the 1st place. also cos these little bits of teaching experience im accumulating help prepare me for what's to come from 2009 onwards. lastly, there's the SGD380 i'm making while im at it. so yah, im not crazy or anything.... :)
gotta admit though, this sure is tiring.
fluttered into your heart on Thursday, September 15, 2005 at 09:37 a.m.
exactly 30 days more to go,
and as i send off my US-bound friends the reality of leaving is beginning to sink in. 9 months isn't forever, but it's long enough to make a helluva difference to everything.
breathless anticipation to screw the suitcases and go over right now with nothing but a loved one in hand and a passport. the freedom of having lots of time and no parental guidance is liberating to say the least. one taste of it when i camped out and i am hooked.
at the same time, unready to accept that i'll be giving up my laksa! my prata! my teh-o! the hours of sunshine because i do love having the sun in my eyes. oh yeah, family and friends too (after thought)haha.
the wonderful ppl of SQ322: who knows i may really go to heathrow to welcome u guys to the wonderful city of london :) haha, but that's NOT a promise.
fluttered into your heart on Wednesday, August 24, 2005 at 10:38 a.m.
HELLO
wah seh! u still come here to read ah?
will be posting regularly once i get to london. so err be prepared to read my exploits once again!
fluttered into your heart on Wednesday, June 22, 2005 at 10:27 a.m.