the mousepotato :)

March - the best time in the year

2010-03-14T21:00:00.001+08:00

4 march - my birthday! my friends held a surprise party for me. it was organised by er jie and it was pretty fun! that day, a thursday was quite a bad day, especially the first 2/3 of the day. early in the morning, i was booked by councilors cos i was late. received a severe warning never to be late again cos it would be bad if i really got into council - punishment would be double the usual. during contact time, my class sang me a birthday song. after that, the day went on with lessons. i hated the chinese lesson most, i had to do some summary thing on some uninteresting issue. i took eons to finish it. i left school only at 5. i remember wallowing in self-pity at the bus stop while waiting for 53, it was raining and the atmosphere wasn't birthdayish. furthermore, the prospects of a boring birthday (my family had no plans on that day itself, instead we were going on the following following sunday for the customary birthday dinner)

reached home at 6. mom was cleaning the house up and i asked if there were any people coming (i didn't at all suspect a party cos i made my mom pledge in sep 2009 never to accede to a request for a surprise bday party for me.) in the kitchen, i saw that mom had cooked a basket full of cray fishes and i was gleefully thinking to myself that i would have the privilege of eating so many of them. used the com, thanked the ppl who wished me on fb and went to shower.

when i came out, i saw er jie holding on the the balloon and i was, "crap! shoulda seen this coming! :(" i was reluctant to go out at first, i was wondering whether it was church friends or my clique, i noe it's obviously church friends cos surprise bday parties are their trademark, but i couldn't think very clearly then. when i walked out, i saw the people hiding under the cushions and all, they were my dear church friends. the people who came: cheryl, nat, huiqi, elisa, huishi, aaron, josiah, ivan, boaz, ezra, daniel and jonah. the rest of the night was as follows:

- they presented me my presents. very very nice ones. the balloon, the shirt and the slippers. the slippers are so nice and new that i dun dare to wear them out. the balloon unfortunately was a casualty after being hit by the ceiling fan. nevertheless, the presents are still very dear to me!

- i made it a point to thank everyone and take a personal pic with them

- i viewed the ppt presentation dedicated to me from ck as er jie played wonderful tonight on the piano. haha, it mentioned a few character traits of mine that start with c. eg cheeky, clever... i can't remember all, but thanks a lot ck! :)

- we played 2 rounds of 'don't forget the lyrics'

- dinner by mom, super good dinner. she rocks man, being able to cater such great food on my birthday.

- cut birthday cake. i had to make a speech out the cuff, started crapping a great deal, hope the audience weren't bored to death. the cake was choc + macadamia nuts + rum. also done by my capable mom. she rawks!

- played guitar for phantom of the opera while ezra and huishi sang. super fun project!

- videoed the 'performance', went on to do do re mi with cheryl and nat. videoed that down too

- with that, my party ended. THANKS ALL WHO CAME, YALL MADE MY BIRTHDAY EXTRAORDINARY

lastly, i must thank my dad immensely. he has bought me so many stuff since feb. he bought me all my school stuff - books, attire etc. when we went to queensway, he bought me a sunlight responsive FRISBEE (it turns purple in the sun), an ACOUSTIC GUITAR, and my black nike school shoes. and just yesterday, he purchased a macbook for me. and today, he sponsored my dinner at boshi sushi. great dad in this aspect!! muacks! i will miss my birthday this year for so many reasons.

oh yes, i did my theory exam yesterday too, before the it show. it was good la, except that i defined 'sehr' wrongly, duh. :( i put 'a little' instead of 'very'. so dumb of me, actually i had some inkling of 'very' over 'a little', but didn't dare to change. :(

CKS on 23 Jan

2010-01-25T22:21:00.003+08:00

past sat was pretty fun! i joined cks the second time this year for prayer session. anyway, before that, i had a smashing time of tennis! to be frank, i enjoyed tennis more than cks. lol, im just a tennis maniac now. i wanna play lots of it! i love it when the ball goes POK! POK! POK! and so on, i love rallies too! back to sat, i went to aaron's at 12 with nat. i visited the gym, trained my inferior left arm with 2.5 kg weights before aaron came down.

we played 2h worth of tennis! aaron's good for a beginner and besides, he had to make a shift from badminton, which he plays more often, so i had a good time. then josiah came. the real FUN started cos he was from tennis in jc and he was more experienced, so we had a match. we were unable to finish even a set, there wasn't sufficient time. haha, but im glad to say that i was leading 6-5. we were supposed to have tie breaker, but couldn't. we were about to go when nat and ezra came from gym. they wanted to play so we relented a little. i partnered ezra on the less sunny side. i rmb telling him to skip from side to side instead of using his badminton footing. positioning is very vital in tennis. actually it is super important in every sport, but it is essential in tennis la. it was approaching 3, so we made our way up.

during cks, jonah introduced the mobile youth prayer group. this was a project that aims to make cks a vehicle of encouragement and blessing to members of the church. we were supposed to visit pastor lau that day to pray with him as well as fellowship with him, but he was in hospital.

for exhortation, josiah shared on psalms 23 and gave us an in depth analysis of the chapter. he said that we are liken to dumb sheep that only deserve God's wrath and are prone to attack from wolves. thus we need a shepherd, our Lord Jesus Christ who will be our mediator with God as well as the faithful protector against the devil. he also pointed out that the blessings that God grants unto us are more than sufficient (cup runneth over) and we shall never be in want.

after exhortation, we went a round sharing what our prayer items were. i shared that i hope that the youths can organise trips to penang to visit them over the weekend especially during our holidays, attend their service and by doing so, we can encourage them. i think many youths are keen to go up, it is just that we do not have the transport as well as finanacial backing. i am dreaming of a time when some youths will accompany pastor when he makes his monthly 'pilgrimage' north. maybe it will be too much to go every month, maybe at least twice a year would be good.

oh, i forgot to mention that tian long came! im pretty excited about a new member, cos i think ce is quite stagnant in terms of membership. i think the fe people were the last 'new' members in the congregation. im not saying that i hope we have new ppl every week so that our church will grow abundantly in size and manpower, besides, the true church of God is but a remnant. but it is indeed encouraging to see new faces. oh, i might be counting my golden eggs before they are hatched, cos tian long's not even a member yet, but he seems to be really interested in the reform faith and appears to enjoy our company loads. hmm, i think i will stay hopeful. :)

after the sharing, we had prayer by ezra, nicole then jonah. then we chatted and snacked before going down to play street soccer. my team consisted of aaron, cheryl and tian long. the opposing were er jie, josiah, erza and jonah. my team lost 15-12. i scored 3 goals out of my team's 12. not bad for a girl lah. aaron scored the majority of the remaining. oh, this was how i scrapped my knee. (reminiscence of westlife's seasons in the sun - skinned our hearts and skinned our knees) haha. it happened at the very beginning of the match, when i received the ball for the very first time, i dribbled the ball and stepped over an insignificant pile of leaves, however, it was big enough to reduce friction and i fell heavily onto the cement ground. the skin on my left knee was gashed, it was quite deep, i could see something white, probably a much deeper level of skin, or maybe it was my muscle, i dunno! someone (i forgot who) poured water over the wound and er jie provided tissue to dap the area to rid of the dirt particles. despite my wound, i played on. diluted blood and viscous plasma later trickled down my shin, but it was very little. i cleaned it up when i got to the house.

following the sweaty game of soccer, all of them went for swimming except for cheryl, tian long and i. we went up to the house, cheryl went to shower, tian long and i helped to cut fruits. tian long was pretty chatty, he was sharing about his special style in cutting watermelon and kiwi. then after a while, he conceded that i was doing a better job. lol, when we were supposed to shave the kiwi skin, he got lazy and started cutting off the edges of the kiwi, leaving behind a apalling cuboid with the black seeds on all sides. he didn't stay for dinner, before he left, he told me, 'dun tell the rest about the... HAHAHA...'

when dinner was done, i wanted to play tennis again. but it was too late. instead, josiah and i had a very spiritually refreshing talk on worldly music, charismatic worship, false teaching by some pastors in present times and the doctrine of healing. this all points to us that the true church of God has to be guarded well, if not we will succumb to other things contrary to truth.

Saturday of service, studying the bible and with Samuel!

2010-01-09T21:33:00.004+08:00

while im blogging here, my dear cousin samuel is sparring with his dad in a game of chess. lol, this cousin of mine is so smart. he wrote (all by himself) an amazing, awesomest essay on his experience as a child ambassador for APEC2009. his english is so good, he used the word 'buggies', i have no clue what that is but i guess it is a car, or some sort of transportation. and he's only apporaching 9! i absolutely love my smart cousin! :) he loves to prance and caper around, loves to tinkle the ivories and he even performed a chinese dance for us! (catch it below) i think he definitely has the makings of a wonderful person!

only pic of the night together. :)

teaching er jie how to play chess. cheemology! but i read the instructions, cool game, but i will take time to remember the roles of each character. :S

fooling around. he's in equilibrium! i think he's pretending to be a diving board, or maybe a dolphin gliding in the ocean.

he loves my sofa.

a future doc? given his intellect, most probably! depends on whether he wants to be one though! he's fiddling with er jie's sethoscope btw, using it on auntie hannah.

the video i promised. ignore my mum's convo...

before samuel, auntie hannah and uncle stephen came, i was at dinner with ck. we ate at some economy rice stall cum steamboat cum tze char stall. i ate seafood tze char and drank lime juice, they were not bad. then to get home, er jie and i took 62 bus service.

oh! talking about service, i shall explain the title of my post. today, at 11, mum and i travelled to 11 jalan mesin, it's the new church location! when we reached, josiah gave us a tour, whoot, the place is pretty neat! i think it will serve us well in the years to come. after that, we got down to work. mum mainly wiped the chairs while i ripped the plastics off the chairs. i found the experience akin to a kung fu practice. lol, especially when it came to shredding the plastics of the legs of the chair, i felt that i had a special kind of 'skill' that did the job very effectively. besides, i was imagining that the chair was some chicken that had to be removed of its feathers and eventually skinned. haha, that's quite interesting, but dumb too! at least it made me smile a little as i 'skinned' the chairs. lol. by 30mins, i was dripping with sweat! (fortunately, not blood) ewk!

after about 3 hours of hard work, we had lunch and some of the youths chatted around the conference table. we proceeded to play some circle games which weren't as fun as i had thought they would be. by 330, ck started.

during bs, i was enlightened very much on how to refute the armenians on what they claim about 'all' and 'world' in their pet verses. i realise how unfortunate they are, misquoting the bible and bringing unto themselves grave judgement. they fail to see the context around the verse or see the passage in light of scripture and foolishly jump into conclusions. i also learnt the differences between the different denials of limited atonement and how they are wrong. im proud to say that after 2 sessions of bs, (n 1 more yet to come), im already very convinced about this truth and am comforted that ck is guided rightly in the sacred word.

after bs, majority of us had the golden opportunity to utilize an ancient cargo lift! it was a blast using the lift! i daresay many of us are pretty adventurous, we dared to step into an elevator that did not guarantee a safe trip. haha, i could say that i was mentally prepared for a shut down when we were inside the lift. thank God we managed to survive a few trips up and down unscathed. we visited the rooftop and witnessed some quite scenic views of town. some of us even suggested camping there, i second that! :)

that sums up my saturday, im glad i set aside time for God this day. besides, saturday is a day for u to set-ur-day. spending time with church friends is the best option for me! :) okay u probably think that im extrememly lame, but it cannot be helped! but church friends, u will most likely concur with me on my last comment :)

More holidays

2010-01-06T16:12:00.004+08:00

im loving it! while others are going to school, im lazing at home. okay, not really, apart from using the com most of the time, i stilll have to practise piano and do lots of theory homework. i have been going out quite often too.
2 weds back, i watched avatar with er jie and michelle (er jie's med friend). i was feeling nauseous throughout the movie cause we were sitting in the front row and there was quite a fair bit of action, but i still enjoyed it loads cos its storyline is something fresh and the graphics are superb. yep, so u can imagine how good the movie was, cos u would enjoy it even though u feel sick.
last mon, i played badminton with cheryl, nat, daniel, given and tabi at sengkang sports complex. that place's really quite complex cos there are many facilities, including the pool that has slides. whoo, but i have yet to try that out. after badminton, nat, cheryl and i went for dinner at some hongkong cafe with cks. we had devotion after that and aaron shared us on rev 3. he was encouraging us about the physical and financial size of our church, though we may be small, but what is more important is that Christ commends our spiritual strength. go read it if u have the time, very very comforting. :)
on wed, i went swimming with bernice at her condo, swam for 1.5h. okay, i shall say the truth, we swam for half an hour, talked the rest. haha. following that, i went up to shower and met mom and er jie to visit the singapore flyer. it was a good experience and the night lights are good for pictures. :) after that, we went for dinner at mankansutra. SHIOK FOOD (and drinks), despite a little high on the cost. i still can't forget the taste of my calamansi juice! it's now my all-time favourite drink
on thurs, was super excited for pnp in the morning to afternoon, when evening approached, i was nonchalant about it. haha, typical me. during the rehearsal, i arranged the ppl. remembering how the seating arrangement was so problematic that it ate into my dinner eating time. fortunately, cheryl kindly stood by me. pastor goh preached his sermon, we had a break. elisa, me and isa took our-names-obsessed-pics. after that, it was the youth's turn to sing. the girls kind of screwed up o holy night. here am i, lord was passable to me. almighty father was good enough. the women sang hallowed memories and the men fellowship sang faithful men. my dad was being crappy and egoistic... >(
after pnp, many youths and their families went to henderson bridge to watch the fireworks. there, we captured the view of 2 spectacular shows. we also snapped away, photos are the best way to remember the fun we had.
then about 15 youths embarked toward josiah's house for a sleep over. we played games like charade, mafia and ate chips before we finally slept at 4. charade was great fun, im so proud of how i managed to act out annias and saphira. haha. my group gave the other group eglon, joseph and potipher's wife, we sure were pretty tricky!
the next day, i woke up at 9. we headed down where we had a devotion sharing by ezra in psalms. we sang songs too, i was as very usual, strumming the guitar. we had breakfast prepared by emily which consisted of curry and bread, watermelons etc, can't remember all of them. then we sang secular songs like phantom of the opera tunes and sound of music and westlife! it was soooo fun. i was playing the piano though, i think im really not made out to sing, plus my throats not its best and i would feel giddy after singing high notes. :/
after singing and playing the piano, i played a few games of bridge then went to the park with josiah and others to play table tennis and badminton. josiah, jonah, ivan and i had a friendly table tennis doubles, which was super fun. the rest of the girls played badminton and card games. later, we merged to play mafia. towards the end of the afternoon, i played more table tennis with jonah, ivan and huishi. i even taught huishi some table tennis and im glad she enjoys it too. :)

it started to drizzle, so me and huishi walked back. the rest were already back there helping out to prepare the place for the dinner. huishi wanted to learn guitar so i taught her. actually she knew how to play alr, but never practise. while i was playing josiah's acoustic guitar, the first string uncannily broke! i was so alarmed, but i was also calm. i informed josiah about it and he kindly overlooked the matter. then when i played joshua's acoustic guitar, the same thing occured, this time third string. fortunately, there was hope to salvage the string. i did the same, to admit to joshua later on, and likewise he brushed the matter off, saying that it was fine. i can't apologise enough and i really thank them for being so kind-hearted. what i learnt from this incident is that the acoustic guitar strings are way more fragile than the classical guitar strings (which is soo ironic cos acoustic guitar strings are metallic while the latter's nylon), so i have to extra careful with the acoustic guitar next time i play it. but i wonder why i never broke any strings, including acoustic, ever since i ever played guitar, which makes this incident so peculiar.

then, we had an unexpected visitor, uncle soon kia! when he arrived in paul's car, it was pouring, so i instinctively ran out with an umbrella to receive him. i tried to make him comfortable, serve him warm milo and sing+strum to old christian tunes with paul singing along. i even got to chat with him a little. he was lamenting how his aged mother had passed on without receiving Christ. i tried empathising with him a little and comforting him. im glad that the singing took this depressing matter of his mind effectively. actually, through this experience, i am convienced that i have a soft spot for old people whom i can communicate with. i was so willing to talk with uncle soon kia as though he was my relative. this reminds me of my love for mama, although we have a communication barrier, she speaks teochew and a smattering of chinese, my conversing chinese is much worse than my written chinese (which is super horrible too...)

the dinner was preceded by pastor lau's sharing. i remember being extremely exhausted, so i wasn't really listening. argh, i seem to have forgotten the whole message. D: im utterly disappointd in myself.

dinner was good although nat, elisa and i had meagre leftovers as we attended to joanne who was having lower abdomen pains. after dinner, the real fun rolled in. the youths played a few rounds of mafia then we play the retarded games like huang shang, bing bong. they are super dumb games, but that night, it was pretty refreshing for all the tired youths, and we had a great time of laughter.

the next day on sat, i played tennis with noelene, aaron and boaz at aaron's condo. it was very fun, only that it was horribly torrid. after that, we went up to help cheryl plan games for the ck outing in that afternoon. in the afternoon, we made our way to marina bay, i recall having a good talk with aaron about stuff like paino examinations and ck bs sessions. it was pretty interesting.

at marina bay, i was super tired. i hadn't sleeping enough for the past few nights plus i had drained my energy (albeit being fully aware of it) on a demanding sports like tennis. :) we had exhortation on the responses of ruth and orpah by marcus wee. i think he did a good job draw comparisons between the two women, how one is so zealous to stay faithful to God while the other is easily persuaded to forsake God.

after that, we had a game, the catching game. then followed by bing bong, which wasn't fun anymore with this bigger group of people. after that, some guys flew kites, while i played apples to apples with a few others. then most of us played captains ball. i was still very tired so i sat out of the game till they were going to end. towards the end, marcus' kite got cut, he must have been sad...

next, we went for dinner at lau pa sat. nat and i treated ourselves to a good meal. i hunted for calamansi juice, but it was nowhere to be sold. so i settled with lime juice. i had bbq chicken wings with lime and fishball beehoon with black vinegar. dinner was the end of the day.

on sun, we had open sunday. ce's open sunday is a very much quieter affair compared to fe's, but im satisfied with the former's anyway. im glad my group did good enough. :)

yesterday, i went out with nat to watch movie, then play badminton, then dinner and finally with an awesome time of tennis! :D i lub tennis now. but table tennis is still my utmost favourite followed by tennis, close behind. i think i have given up on badminton, i dun like it anymore. im more interested in cool ball spins than lame shuttle cock exchanges.

today morning, i crashed er jie's med lectures. lol, it was pretty fun, but i must commend myself for being brave enough to go with her all the way to nus just to experience uni life. i learnt about rosuvastatin, atrovastatin, simvastatin, lovastatin. do you even have a clue what they are? lol, they are to drugs to treat high cholesterol. i learnt terms like tombosis, stenosis, myocardial infarction. verdict: medicine school is COOL! but i will not end up there cos im afraid of large amounts of blood, so being a doc is out of the question! :)

yay, that sums up my holidays so far. im receiving o results on this mon at about 2. please dun ask me for my results! i will just say thank God. will u get a hint? NOPE! cos i will thank God regardless of my results. ;)

Recollections

2009-12-26T14:09:00.012+08:00

people have been pestering me to blog. i couldn't cos i was sick with sore throat thrice (which i absolutely hate cos i can't talk and i will feel so weak all over) and cos the com was down, and still remains very unreliable. now im not very keen to blog, haha, i just feel so lazy, plus i can't believe i actually could write such LONG passages previously. im going to do a quick recap of my hols, starting from janice's birthday outing with clique somewhere in nov.

clique outing: janice's birthday celebration

- went to downtown east with the intention to go escape, we were disappointed, escape was closed...

- DES (standing for diane, elyssa and sam) actually effortlessly planned an amazing race for janice. they are very ingenious indeed.

- janice arrived. we ate lunch at buddies hoagies. i hope i got the spelling rite! we presented birthday girl her presents. the food was not bad.

- then we contemplated a movie (my girlfriend's an agent/2012) OR cycling. the movie timings were off our schedule so we cycled pasir ris park instead. took a lot of random photos at the playground. took pics with the beautiful landascape of green grass and blue sky. spotted PDAs. JEDS (janice included now) claimed the spotted nat, but i wasn't there.

- then they wanted to watch 2012, i wanted to be counted out, told them that i didn't want to waste my money and time on some speculations i don't believe in. truth is, im not that firm in holding my believes, i just didn't want to watch the film, had some hidden grudge against it.

- after that, we headed home

prom nite on 24 nov

- first time i really dressed up. hated the hassle!

- went to hair dressers, trimmed, washed and styled

- slipped on my gown at home, make up on by mum

- dad fetched janice and i to conrad business hotel, venue of prom

- elyssa's dad had sponsored us (excluding diane as she was in australia at the time) to a night at a room, we checked in. the room was posh enough for school kids, the toilet was even cooler. (i bet u have seen the pics alr)

- at about 630 was the start of the dinner in the ballroom, there were about 40 tables. i rmb mine, 27! we had miss cambridge pageant, heather, my class representative came in runner-up. - we had blessed draw (some lucky draw of sorts) and throughout it, i was hoping that i wouldn't win anything, not eve 100 bucks vouchers at any capitalmall malls. if not i would have to inch up the stage in my gown and receive the last thing i want - attention.

- the dinner was really palatable, but the serving was pathetic. putting $70 for the dinner as a little ex.

- during intermissions between eating, i took pics with all the teachers that taught me in sec 4, at least with those that were present at the dinner.

- after the dinner, clique went back to room, we took pictures :) it was our first night tgt and at such a cool place, we were sure excited!

- it was about 12 plus when we sneaked out to suntec, still in our gowns to buy some snacks etc for the night, but all the shops were closed, 7-11 was too far away. actually 'sneaked out' isn't a very appropriate term to use cos we had no parents to restrict us! i was quite apprehensive at first, sensing the danger and all, but it was pretty thrilling.

- when we returned, we films videos for diane, telling her how much we missed her and i watched a little tennis

- we played taboo and monopoly through the nite. had loads of fun and ate instant mee. i monopolised the monopoly game. heehee. we invented ourselves memorable names. sam's - bubi, janice - bo bo, elyssa - bin pin, mine - bra-brain

- we only slept at 6, unfortunately it was not 'late' enough to catch the sunrise, we had konked out alr.

- woke up at 9.30, we ate breakfast at macs. at 11, elyssa's mom came to check us out and fetch us all home.

- at home i only had a further 1.5h of sleep, then i went for rock climbing

rock climbing on 25 nov

- i was obliged to go for rock climbing at 3, cos nat was the organiser, although i was soo drained of energy, i still went, out of support for nat.

- the admission fee was more ex than usual. $14.50...

- we climbed in the indoor hall. i tried the route boaz had given nat, couldn't do it even with several attempts. maybe im not so good a rock climbing. or maybe i was just too tired

- we did not try the outdoor trails cos there was additional charges, it was like they were trying to extort from us.

- i had dinner with iva and nat

- on the way back on the bus, nat n i confided in each other, our friendship was strengthened

26 nov.

- prob due to the lack of sleep, i fell sick with sore throat. i was miserable.

1st week of dec - supposed to go ks camp, but i didnt want to see them and feel sad when i left, so i didn't :(

2nd week of dec - i was a helper in vbs

- vbs was a great experience! i realised that i actually can stand kids, haha, the last time i worked with them was during cip

- day 1. nat and i planned the games. it was quite chaotic but we managed to pull it off.

- i helped out in the kitchen quite a lot cos nat and huiqi abandoned me for rock climbing.

- i tried doing my theory homework in the girls' room but was constantly distracted, i got to talk with zhi hui! motivated her never to stop learning piano, even when the going gets tough, cos she will eventually enjoy it loads!

- i was the unofficial guitarist for singspration. the kids were pretty curious about my guitar. made friends with them via guitar teaching

- helped mom out in teaching the song item that they were to present on the last night. discovered who are the naughty kids and the lovable ones, as well as the naughty but still lovable ones.

- first night, the youths stayed up till 2am to chat about a lot of juicy stuff, which comprised rumours as well as facts. bernice and ezra entertained us. we laughed too much, the kids couldn't really sleep. oopsie, haha, but later we learnt that it w as because the air con was too cold.

day 2

- woke up at 6, assisted in preparing breakfast

- bernice helped out in 5 bx, very sweet of her. we played h20, i had fun!

- second day was pretty much like the first, just that i swam 20 laps in the pool! that was a good work out for me!

- second night, the youths sang our hearts out by singing songs from 'we're singing' and christmas carols. slept at 1.30

day 3

- the same stuff, just that i fell sick with sore throat. bad day for me. :(

- left camp at 8 plus with auntie wan teng

weekend of 2nd week

- ck came to my house for song prac. a delicious dinner followed. :)

- some of us watched sea games and witnessed our singapore pride soar when team singapore made yet another splash in the pool.

3rd week of dec - ck/cks camp

day 1

- i was so enthu and excited that i made dad fetch my along with cheryl and bernice to camp at 1.30pm. :)

- arrived at campsite with cheryl and bernice, being obviously too early, dad brought us to changi village to have a drink first till it was 3. it was sure a loooong drink. haha

- i was group leader of the glorifiers. my group was really cool, it had ppl like nat and cheryl, as well jem, yang zhi, joanna, matt, ezra, jonah and hui shi

- camp master matthias declared the start of camp and gave us a safety briefing

- cheryl led in icebreakers. her game was great, i loved the tongue twister part, ming hui was so awesome at it! :D

- again i was guitarist for ck camp, can't ever get enough of guitar :)

- that night, message by pastor goh reminded me of how glorious God is, and how everything He created should give Him glory

- as the group leader, i led in discussion for the ckers in my group, namely jemima nad yang zhi with cheryl as facilitator. the discussion was pretty fun, everyone was very responsive and i even made them laugh quite a lot. to boost team spirit (we were trailing behind in games do to a poor start in ice breakers), the four of us came up with a group cheer! haha, it was so creative and motivating, and i was so sure that we would turn tables around

- during the closing singspiration, i sucked out phelgm from my throat and smelt blood. at first, thinking that it was just the aftermath of my sore throat that weekend i sallowed it. just a few seconds later, more phelgm accumulated so i sucked it into my mouth and spat it out into a paper napkin and lo and behold! it was fresh blood, thick and curdy of the size larger than that of a 50cent coin. informed er jie and she was shocked, she in turn called for joanne (they are the medics of sorts for camp) since my mouth was bloody they at first derived that it was probably my gum or a shaky tooth. but then judgeing from the amount of blood, my er jie thought that it was something more serious. they ushered me to the kitchen and shone light into my throat, joanne said that the surface was very rough, compared to my er jie's and blood was everywhere the passage. er jie even almost scared me by nearly exclaiming, 'your whole mouth is bloody!' that moment, i felt a little afraid of course, but i was perfectly fine, there was no pain at all! i went on to spit out more globules of blood uncle roy tried cold compression on my forehead, suspecting that it was a nose bleed. with all that attention, i felt so honoured, yet worried about worrying them too much and i hated the fussying over me. matthias came in and learnt of my condition. (nat told me later at the clinic that matthias announced that i coughed out blood and there were gasps, i felt even worse, i didn't want so many ppl feeling worried!) er jie advised my to go to the doc, uncle roy kindly offered to fetch me there. on the way out, i felt faint, i leaned on the car while some of the campers expressed concern for me, i really didn't like that attention. :S so i quickly got into the car with my sisters and nat.

at the clinic, the doc checked my blood pressure, heartbeat and said that everything was find, but she wanted to be very sure, so she referred me to A&E. by then, dad and mom arrived. dad fetched me to A&E at SGH, nat and er jie set off for camp with uncle roy. at that time, i was very very sad, lol, i had been so so excited about this camp, yet i had to miss it a little. at A&E, it was a long wait of 2hours before i had a x-ray taken of my lungs and a blood test. when the doc withdrew blood from my arm, i turned away, haha, i still couldn't get over seeing too much blood being lost from my body. after a further hour, the doc told me that i didn't have tb as gathered from the x-ray results and blood test, but he still wanted me to visit the lung doc on 29 dec (which is tmr) to confirmed that i was fine. he even advised me not to go back to camp, instead say at home and rest. on the way home, i pestered my dad to fetch me to camp the next day even though the doc had given me 2 days mc.

i reached home at 4am. slept till 11 that very day and immediately got ready to go back to camp.

day 2.

- when i was back, er jie squeauled that she loves me so much. btw, i kept her posted on what the doctors had said the previous night. the campers welcomed me back and some people asked about me, i appreciate their concern. :)

- we had song practice. i love song practise, but irony is i couldn't sing, mum told me not to exert my throat

- following that, we had treasure hunt. my group did superly well, after finishing first, we did our cheer victoriously.

- upon learning that we had some sort of group challenge to memorise philippians 3, i decided to use the free time to make them memorise. we spent quite a fair bit of time trying to come up with a short-cut to rmb the verses, but all that failed, in the end, we just took to memorising the whole chapter individually

- next was dinner i think and then singspiration

- pastor goh preached on the maid's testimony. i was amazed at how God can use the lowly to spread his gospel.

- that night, auntie jean prepared luo han guo drink, i drank it during my group discussion, our discussion was as fruitful as the first.

- after discussion was games by er jie and jonah. jonah's game was quite cool, the only glitch was ezra's couldn't-care-more attitude. he helped us lose at least 5 out of 20 lives!

- er jie's game was survivor inspired, i like like! in fact i helped her come out with the different aspects, and i ended up with the best endurance. it was tough but i managed to do it. although my group came in last, yet, i think we have a great deal of team spirit. :) next, we had another game of mind vs eye kind of challenge.

- after the games, i was severely exhausted. considering that i was going to bukit tinggi the following day, i chose to be wise and go home to rest. i did not return the next day.

bukit tinggi trip

day1

- i was much stronger and well-rested for this trip. i was pretty excited too!

- the families that went where tze yan's, isa's, dorcas', boaz's and mine's

- we set off at 8am

- our first stop in malaysia was for tea break, the kids were treated to an ice cream affair

- the second stop was at the foot of genting. we had lunch and i rmb being bombarded by
chestnut stalls! oh man, how much i had to resist temptation cos my throat was still recovering!

- we fianlly reached at 4pm. the hotel was like a castle, and it was not the only sight that was picturesque. the greenery was awesome! my quote: im living in a geography textbook!

- we checked in, took pics and then went for dinner. the dinner was as great as tioman's. we had an international buffet, which consisted of chocolate-dipped brownies, tiramisu just to name some.

- at night, our group of girls caroled down the street! (boaz was too tired and yang zhi was sick with fever) this was sure one of the highlights of our trip (although it was not at all planned in the itinerary). we earned applause from the other tourists dining in the area and even some of them took pictures of us! whoa, we were that famous!

- the day ended with devotion

day 2

- we had breakfast, an equally sumptuous affair. i had prata, cheesy omelette and cereal with milk! devotion was next

- we went to the botanic gardens. took more pics

- went back to the hotel for lunch, the singers (the real hotel-hired singers) came to sing sha lalala (reminiscence of tioman!) and stand by me.

- after lunch we had horse riding! this was the first time i would be riding alone. the last time i rode was with my dad behind me cos i was only 4. i got indiana rose, a beautiful all-black stallion. the ride was cool, but too controlled. the trainers did not let the horses venture too much by themselves. besides, my horse was infamous to be easily distracted by leaves along the roadside, thus it would be a hindrance to the group, this made the trainer even more strict it.

- back at the stable, we took many many pictures. i was quite fortunate to have taken a few close up shots with indiana rose cos the trainer later warned us that it bites people! maybe my patting and carressing did work!

- after horse riding, we visited the jap garden. we didn't try the kimono rental though, we went there for dinner. there was free flow of sushi, but i wouldn't say that it was great, but it was palatable enough

- that night, it drizzled, that shelved our plans for yet another caroling session down the street. instead we caroled a little in isa, iva and tze yan's room.

day 3.

- we spent much of it travelling back to singapore.

- we arrived in singapore at 7. had an extravagant dinner at ah yat seafood restaurant! cheesy lobster and karoke were my favourites!

25 dec - christmas!

- attended church activity - caroling at 2 old folks homes. i didn't sing much cos u noe why... i was playing the guitar! so predictable. met isaac after months of no see. :)

- in the afternoon, the youths came to my house for song prac. er jie was stressing out cos her standards were too high, but we hadn't had much time to learn the songs and perfect them! chill er jie! i love the altos (lol, i almost spelt all toes!), we are so on everytime!!

- we had a sweaty game of captains ball.

- mum prepared dinner for us. after which, most of the youths left

- bernice and i watched 'together' together while playing stress with noelene, aaron and dad were immersed in a game of chinese chess (again....), er jie was out, da jie was singing with nat and cheryl at the piano.

- after 'together', we sang more phantom of the opera, sound of music and we made a video - so long farewell.

26 dec - boxing day

- this day, received my 3rd yearly scholarship in a row! thank God for upkeeping me in my grades. :)

- in the afternoon, i went for ck. i learnt that Christ's death is powerful to save all, yet God only elects some people for it to be effective for. and my group covered the verses which we can use to reject the armenian teachings that God loves the whole world! i was pretty much enlightened after bs!

- had a wet and muddy captains ball. but i liked it, it feels good to have a good run after a long hiatus from exercising (apart from the previous day)

- during dinner, er jie was being funny again... haha, anyway we discussed on the dress code for pnp. talking about which, im super excited for pnp this thursday! i hope i can stay over! :)

alright! this post is ultra long too! great that i finally managed to finish it! it was a little daunting!

Sat and sun and mon

2009-11-17T17:31:00.003+08:00

when it's the holidays, there's so many activities that i think i will be blogging almost everyday. i do this for memory's sake.

i dunno why im going to talk about sat, since it was so ordinary save from ck. ummmmm............ okay, i finally rmb why it's special! it was cheryl's birthday! how could i forget! lol, i better recap everything before they slip off my mind. 14 nov could mark my and cheryl's 3rd week as best friends. haha. i rmb she encouraging me at the youth conference, we had a good talk together and i found her a very nice girl to be best friends with. :) lol, we have much in common. our lameness or rather, subtle sense of humour, love for sports and singing (more accurately, her singing and my guitar playing). hehheh. i baked cookies for her (very very predictable), hoped she like them cos there were walnuts in them! haha, they're brain food, good for her exams. haha.

yup, so on sat, dad fetched er jie, nat and i there. i rmb being really late cos of the ondeh ondeh. mom was so stressed out cos the ondeh ondeh dough wasn't pliable. she even asked God to forgive her of any wrongdoing she could have had committed, all in sheer desperation! lol, later i meshed the dough further and all the sweet potatoes were smooth, not lumpy. tada! that was it, the dough became more pliable. :) we reached parc palais at 2. sang the birthday song, i played a little of frisbee to appease cheryl. haiz, but i yet to be really good at frisbee.

ck started at 3. we had bs on the second point of TULIP, unconditional election. it's a topic that is hard to accept, especially the fact that God is not an all loving Father, instead one who loves only His elect and reprobates the rest. however, it is a comfort for christians to know that they are a part of God's eternal plan. after ck, i played tennis with josiah and boaz. haha, dunno why jonah and josiah both think i super zai in tennis (must be er jie who exaggerate!). personally, im only an amateur. it started to drizzle a little and we left for dinner at subway. i ordered cold cut. and we yet again celebrated cheryl's birthday with apple strudel, her favourite apparently. :) after dinner, er jie and i came home by bus. the journey took 1h 15min. wow, that i think is the longest i have travelled by bus, but i dont mind at all. lol.

on sunday morning, rev koole preached about eglon and ehud. okay, the story's really interesting. okay i noe i must remember in the spiritual insight of the story, not just the story itself, but later that night, i had great fun cos of the story.

that evening, daniel tang's and my family congregated at vera's house to accomodate the kooles for dinner. vera's peranakan house is really cool. i had been there last year for caroling, it still had the exotic feel. my family was there first. while waiting for daniel's family, da jie, mum and i helped out in the kitchen. then i taught vera guitar chords. shes a fast learner. :)

soon, daniel's family came. we had a dinner of lots of uniquely singapore food. the men (including daniel) dined in the living room while the ladies ate in the dining room. the ladies learned that auntie pat (mrs koole) has 2 sons and 2 daughters, and grandchildren! that was what i remembered best. other than that, the older women were chatting about the geography of usa, what colorado to michigan etc. i didn't bother listening. upon finishing our food, the youths, namely vera, daniel, joanna, da jie, er jie and i used msn for a while. lol, we teased ivan a little about his small eyes and him and hui qi being a couple in his msn dp and bernice about her lack of peseverance to guess our identities.

next joanna, daniel, vera and i went to vera's bedroom. we had a mini pillow fight. i felt soooooooooooo immature! but i also felt very very free. so burdenless! so carefree! so happy! daniel of course took pictures while the girls hurled pillows at each other. then we daniel, vera and i played a little game of hide and seek with joanna. lol, we managed to slip away from her while she went down to get her camera. so clever!

after that came the highlight of the evening. er jie and da jie joined us to do a production of the ehud and eglon play! lol, rev koole must never know of this! on first take, i was ehud, 2 sticks of satay made a very competent double edged sword, daniel propped up a pillow and a panda very effectively as eglon he also controled eglon's shit (vera had a brown soft toy that could well represent eglon's' shit - "and the dirt came out".) er jie and vera were the guards, each holding satay sticks and da jie gave the introduction. we did one take but joanna, the camera woman stopped videoing too early, and i, in my eagerness actually stabbed the pillow, (lol, i was too giddy to forget that this was all acting, that i had to pretend to stab the pillow without stabbing it!). at second take, i exchanged roles with er jie. lol, on this take, eglon shit did not just "come out", but it flew out, it torpedoed out! all of us were in a delirious state of laughter. after that, we took a few 'production cast and crew pictures'. then proceeded downstairs to take a picture with the adults.

the youths then did a few jumpshots and headed for the railway track and playground. we took more pictures.... learnt that dick lee is vera's neighbour just a few houses down. cool

with that, we had a very fun and exciting sunday night! :)

just yesterday, on mon, i went to nat's house to play sims. oops, i made my characters commit fornication! lol, very very naughty!!!! dun worry, wouldn't do that again! nat then invited me to play badminton with the j1s. afraid that i would be gate-crashing, i was a little reluctant to go. but nat dismissed it by her 'nevermind lah.....' so i decided to go, anyway, i prefered to get active instead of sitting idle at home.

since we thought we were late, nat and i took taxi there. when we reached, we played badminton with marcus. haiz, i played as a single against them. then ivan came, he partnered me for doubles. i forgot which side won. :( after that, we taught nat bridge and then hui qi came. then it was bridge - table soccer - bridge - some memory game - table soccer - table tennis - animal chase - table soccer. that pretty much sums up what happened, the order more or less in that way. though we played the same things over and over again, it was very very very fun nevertheless.

table soccer was guys vs gals. i was 'condemned' to be both the goalie and defenders, with the exception of one game. we played about 10 games in total, i think the gals won majority! :) table tennis was fun for me, im not sure about the rest. haha, tried coaching nat how to spin + smash, she's got the basics, but needs a lot of practise.

after that all, we went for dinner at .... subway. yeah, my 2nd time in 3 days. and guess what i ate! cold cut! haha, it's not only the cheapest, but the nicest, to me.

okay, i have done quite a detailed recounting of the events these past 3 days. im now suffering from aches. i deserve them cos i never warm up before playing sports, very rarely would i be patient enough to warm up. i guess i better rid this impatience in me before i become injured or something! :)

Barbie Cue

2009-11-14T09:46:00.006+08:00

friday 13 november was a day to remember for 2 reasons:

- im finally free from severe exam stress, at least for a year and a half. i can finally go out without having to worry what work was waiting for me at home. oh crap, i forgot that i have piano practical and theory exams on march next year! that means grueling practise and many theory papers to do!!!! argh! but i shall consider that different from the norm (academic).

- it was the first time i had BBQ with church friends without any parental interference. well, that's fun cos it is something out of the norm!

okay, let me side track a little, i am so hairpee cos i finally can chuck my stuff away! my table was getting really messy and dusty, i couldn't stand it any longer. so i cleared my table (surprisingly, i did this before my Os ended!!!), i found out that i had a mountain worth of notes, textbooks and it was only for this year! yeah, i noe go jc will be worse! here's the picture story

looks like a lot of stuff hor...

haha, must always see the FULL STORY! the books even have to lean on a table (not mine) for support, books are spewing onto the table even!

okay, back the point... i shall recap the BBQ. it was a little rushed in planning cos all of us (tze yan and me specifically) were too excited, so we decided to have one asap. haha, this was too the extent of leaving elias out. tze yan pointed out that he should be consuming enough food in China, yeah, i totally agree. in China, u go with school, they stuff u with food, u will never starve. good for someone who ever said that he would enjoy food even when he's full, all the best to him shedding kilos!

why do i keep talking about other unimportant things???? bringing me back to Singapore, the sec 3 n 4s had a really humourous meeting on the previous sunday. thanks to bernice, lol, she and her bangla... we allocated the food. i ended up doing satay and barley.

fast forward to friday the 13th. oh, btw, isn't it the unlucky day for supersitious people? what a coincidence... well it doesn't apply to me! i met jemima and bernice at the latter's house. there we prepared ingredients for beehoon. auntie kim neo cooked it of course, but jemima and i cleaned up. bernice was too busy showering to help out much. that's so predictable of her. it started raining when we departed

we arrived at uncle gim theng's condo by 3. daniel, joanna, elena, samantha, noelene, tze yan were already there, marcus joined us. we checked out the badminton court and it was available! though marcus told me that it was alr booked. i hopped from table tennis with tze yan to badminton with noelene, daniel and jemima to table soccer with jemima to badminton with joanna, daniel and noelene again. i wanted to play more table tennis no one was as enthu as me about it. tsk. by then, it was 5, hui qi and hui yi came. it was still drizzling so i hurried to the house, trying my best to keep my hearing aids dry. then joshua rang the door bell, i was quite surprised, but his presence also made the event more special. :)

while i was kept dry under the shelter of the roof, bailey sure licked my legs even wetter than they already were. i didn't mind, since i was soooooo dirty and sweaty anyway. lol, planned to shower but got too lazy. we played a few card games. now im not a particular fan of card games after what cheryl told me. i realised that playing card games should be the last resort for christian gatherings as it is not very edifying. i mean, u won't get to noe each other much better just by card games! i totally agree with her about play sports or singing together would be much better options.

after a game of animal chase, i diluted the barley concentrate and served ppl. then tze yan and i marinated the stingray. tried out my chopping skills. i guess chopping coconuts are not so much the same as chopping stingrays. i guess i just don't have that chops. while we did that, a few others went down to start up the fire. the drizzle almost put a damper on our spirits but amazingly, noelene could start the flames! she certainly could eat no lean, but can start fire very well. (okay, i shall stop being soooo lame) heh, i still remember smelling the smoke from the barbecue from 8th floor and knowing from that instant that their quest was successful.

yup, so we ate food. um, there's nothing much to describe here....

midway, nat came. she requested for games, so i wrecked my brains for a game. charade came to my mind. jemima and i decided to do it off the bat. lol, we thought we were being very tricky. some of phrases were idioms, some were songs titles and even phua chu kang. haiz, but we underestimated these bunch of people. the game ended by 30 mins, and we eventually had time for auntie pat to do several encores on demand. hehe, i think i loved the one beauty and the beast most. LOL, nat's expression as beauty is worth more than priceless. bernice even gave herself away by saying that she peed on her pants... not very smart! haha.

after that, we cleaned up again. i got a little fright by that sly cat lurking around. it was rummaging through the rubbish nat and i left on the ground, cos the bag was too big to go into the hole. this is why i still prefer dogs.

upstairs, our plan to go for midnight movie was screwed. nat told me later that it was just cos our parents worried about our transport home.. haiz, what a horrible reason... but its quite true cos its unsafe. but i was quite disappointed. :( next, we, the gals played twister. i needed this badly, i wanted a real work out on my stamina! it was reduced to me vs hui yi. it was tough competition! i was combating my willpower, i wanted to push myself to the extreme. the game resolved as a draw after hui qi started making us do the humanly impossible stunts. she commented that i was very flexible, thanks ya, but i think it was because of my stamina.

at last it was time to go home. after a few pictures taken, uncle seow thong kindly fetched us home. i still had the energy to watch survivor. harhar. i think john's so cute.

whoa, it's past 12 already! i needa wake up tmr at 7 to practise piano and complete theory homework! gah, will talk about sat and sun another time!

A book review: A view from saturday

2009-11-10T22:49:00.004+08:00

it's holiday time and everyone's wondering what to do with their time. so that best thing is to be hooked to a book. actually, fact is that i read this while my Os were still on, not during hols. anw da jie recommended it to me, so i shall recommend others, to return da jie a BIG favour. :) (she will be so happy that more people agree with her what is a good book!)

title: a view from saturday (AVFS)

author: Elaine Lobl Konigsburg

genre: general (everyone can read this)

plot: find out how 4 six grade children get to know each other through incidents of coincidence and how these incidents make them learn something very essential for acquiring certain knowledge. how they are eventually being selected to represent their state in the academic bowl championship ( a general knowledge quiz competition) and fully utilise the various knowledge they have.

rating: **** (very good alr, given that nothing can be perfect)

why 4 stars: i felt that this book gave me a sense of deja vu of slumdog millionaire, though this book was written way before slumdog even came about. there are several parallels.

- content is almost similar

- their storylines are feel good. slumdog's poor boy becomes rich. AVFS's 4 six graders beating eight graders

- both have very good resolutions. you could say that they are comedies, in the way that they end happily. (their stories were never sad anyway)

so if you enjoyed slumdog, you will love this.

again, the story is very interesting and the author's several play of words here and there makes it a light hearted content. there are some things that students (like me) would definitely be something that students can relate to. eg bullying etc.. oh, not that i have been bullied, but have witnessed bullying.

plus, it is an award winning book, surely it is of good standard (yeah it absolutely is!)

why one star less from perfect: the story is a little short, so you may finish it in 1h-2h, so it defeats the purpose of having a sustainable read to eat up days of your holiday. but it would be very suitable for impatient people who hate suspense (like me!)

in short: this book is a must read! :)

让为你唱首歌

2009-10-26T18:40:00.003+08:00

yay one subject down. haha, dun wanna talk about it. but it was manageable. i want to introduce a super nice song.

boy! this song is sooo nice. :) dun get me wrong, the boys are so ugly and i don't intend to watch this version of meteor garden. i think it is the china version. but anyway... the song is not bad lah. ;)

Durian mania

2009-10-02T14:13:00.002+08:00

it's the first time im on my blog for the whole week. i have decided to limit myself to only 1h of internet for a week. yep, n 2.30 to 3.30 today is the time. :) im quite proud of myself cos i did no facebook, no survivor, no singapore idol, no paul chan blog for the whole of this week! yay, what an accomplishment for a mouse potato like me!

oh n i have big news to share. of course it's many new things, that's why it's news. on wednesday, my parents bought so much durian, that i could be satisfied for the rest of the month! it was over $50 worth of durian! somemore mao shan wang, the super shiok durian! haha, actually it's very foolish of me to have such a fetish over durian in this period, cos if i fall ill, there goes my revision time. but on the flip side, it is an incentive for me to feel joyful when im approaching the door of my house when i come home from school, cos i noe that apart from dreaded studying, i have durian to perk me up!

alright, going to read updates on SI, survivor plus plus...

Haha!

2009-09-11T13:29:00.002+08:00

elyssa, rmb this song from class? i didn't noe SI season 1 contestants sang it! haha. it's really funny. the naughty naughty part.

你要的爱

2009-09-07T23:21:00.003+08:00

oh boy, im in love with a song. it's old, but i like liking old stuff, then i will feel special cos no one else would be thinking of it while i do. it's penny tai - ni yao de ai. i watched meteor garden last time, but it is only now then i realised the song. haiz, it's soooo nice!

huiqi, here's the i cast all my cares upon you song.

Cast all my Cares Upon You - Kids Praise and Worship

yay! survivor samoa is coming up next week, n im following singapore idol too. i guess i will become reality tv crazy. i will have to pioritize my time lots. or i might have to choose between them. for singapore idol, i render my support to Fathin Amira, MJ and Charlene. haha, nat and i agree that amira can sing! she made us have goosebumps when she sang the auditions. i think MJ is the best looking out of the guys and he can play guitar, so that's a plus. for charlene, i think she is the best looking girl, not sure about her voice, but i think she ploy to garner viewer's sympathy for her mum is not a wise thing to do.

and right, the car won the plane...

Eye on ion (more photos, courtesy of diane) :)

2009-09-04T19:00:00.011+08:00

today, prelim's officially over. but it's just the start of the bigger thing. the os. but before thinking about it, my clique decided to go out n have fun first. today, we went orchard, ion orchard area. watched the proposal at shaw house, the we walked around in ion and wheelock. the good thing was that it was such a rare occassion that we go out. okay la, not that rare, we have one out about 2 times this year? the bad thing was that i was suffering from a flu and a little headache, but i still enjoyed myself.

The pics!

at the xin wang hong kong cafe. note, all of us are wearing our clique shirt. so cute right!

further evidence. haha,

me and my mui fan. it was great! pork floss and mui fan make an interesting combo.

elyssa and her favourtie drink of all time - lemon tea

diane with her horlicks and her meal, forgot what it is

elyssa, sam with their chicken congee

janice, chicken congee too with milk tea

best friends in school

after the movie, photo shoot time.

can u see it, it's ion in the background! oooo

elyssa took this. no reason

partial view of ion. how fitting a place to be at after chem paper 1

hah, elyssa cam whoring...

sam!

what's this fruit? esplanade's the durian, ion's the

with the fruit.

jumpshot. diane's cam has the better ones. i have to put this up cos the others jumped so nice, yeah, i spoiled it, but im not selfish!

sam's idea of taylor swift. im doing it with elyssa!

from dear diane's cam

doing the taylor swift, forword motion this time

jumpshot #1

using a surface that has total internal reflection. physics! :P

jumshot#2

jumpshot#3

our renditions of taylor swift

i like this pic :)

Whee

2009-08-29T12:00:00.002+08:00

yay, i only have 3 more papers for prelims. which are chem p1, a math p2 and e math p2, and im not scared of them AT ALL! im alr rejoicing for a while, but will get down to serious work soon. o levels.. i dun feel scared of it, in fact im waiting for it to come, so that it will end as quickly.
yesterday, i baked golden oatmeal muffin from a recipe book mum borrowed from the library. it sounds delectable enough, but it was a failure for me. haha, i think the muffin wasn't fully done before i took it out, even though it was pretty much golden. well, it's a good lesson for me to learn, not to have golden muffins but wait for it to turn a little tarnished gold then take out. alright, crabbing here,

today morning, i played tennis with nat for a while, then she felt like she didn't want to play any more, then we started talking about our crushes while waiting for dad to come and play with me. lol, she said that it's normal to have crushes, i think that is true! after that, dad came and we played a competitive game. we drew 5-5 then the sun was up in the sky already and it was torrid, so we decided to leave the game hanging.

plus, i like a new song. it's not new to me, i learnt in school around 3 years ago, but now then i discovered that i like it, thus it is new in a way to me. i like it now cos maybe it's the way the singer sings it.

Christ Alone - Brian Littrell

and yes, it is another song, not the same in Christ alone song i had introduced.

UP

2009-08-18T21:22:00.004+08:00

this movie is basically LOL, then sniff sniff, but by large it was rofl. it is soooo funny. plus 3D was interesting. haha, i watched it with mum and da jie. er jie had driving. so sad.

i would really recommend this to someone who needs something to keep his/her mind off from stress, worries, even exams. the surreal plot makes your mind wander, and wonder. do catch it if u can! :)

btw, russel's (the cute lil boy) ethnicity is asian! only asians, i like! :)

In Christ Alone!

2009-08-14T18:19:00.004+08:00

i wanna share a fantastic song. how often i forget to depend on Christ. this song is so impactful, the last time i heard it was last year, but when i recently replayed it, it made me feel soooo touched.

In Christ alone - Stuart Townend

In Christ alone my hope is found,

He is my light, my strength, my song;

this Cornerstone, this solid Ground,

firm through the fiercest drought and storm.

What heights of love, what depths of peace,

when fears are stilled, when strivings cease!

My Comforter, my All in All,

here in the love of Christ I stand.

In Christ alone! who took on flesh

Fulness of God in helpless babe!

This gift of love and righteousness

Scorned by the ones he came to save:

Till on that cross as Jesus died,

The wrath of God was satisfied -

For every sin on Him was laid;

Here in the death of Christ I live.

There in the ground His body lay

Light of the world by darkness slain:

Then bursting forth in glorious Day

Up from the grave he rose again!

And as He stands in victory

Sin's curse has lost its grip on me,

For I am His and He is mine -

Bought with the precious blood of Christ.

No guilt in life, no fear in death,

This is the power of Christ in me;

From life's first cry to final breath.

Jesus commands my destiny.

No power of hell, no scheme of man,

Can ever pluck me from His hand;

Till He returns or calls me home,

Here in the power of Christ I'll stand.

it's so meaningful. i can't seem to have enough of it. :)

You minimus of hindering knotgrass made!

2009-07-31T16:36:00.002+08:00

you must be wondering what on earth im saying in the heading, it is a quote from midsummers night dream. shakespear's language's pretty cool. the meaning's actually just a simple 2 words. 'you shortie!' haha, i hope that i can use this on someone in the future, but i have to grow taller before i can do that! oh, but i bet she/he will catch no ball, all the better!

this past week has been the same, study a bit, use com a bit and most importantly, play guitar! however, now's a little different, cos dad sings along with the guitar. heh, i dun usually sing along when i play a song, so dad does the vocals. n boy, he's real good. and cos if his powerful voice, im tempted to sing along too, so i sing.. rare moments in the life of lisa ong! we sing songs ranging from christian tunes to some oldies like tears in heaven and michael learns to rock (my all time FAVOURITE!). playing the guitar (plus singing) helps me lifts my spirits, it's pretty therapeutic for study blues. on tues night, i played guitar for two and a half hours straight! thank God my fingers didn't ache or worse, break! and this activity is so addictive that i usually plan to do it only for 15 mins, then it drags to 30 mins, then soon it will be an hour... that's how i ended up playin two and a half hours long of guitar. ADDICTION, the culprit.

my dad' real happy too, he wants my family to perform for anniversary. LOL. but not bad, he and mom can sing, da jie the keyboardist, er jie the violinist and i the guitarist. the instrumental range is a little weird, but actually, they still combine strangely well enough. btw, my dad wants to do a chinese song. oh horrors! but i just realised, im not going to open my mouth, just strum the guitar, that's it! :)

Mama's birhtday celebration

2009-07-22T16:13:00.008+08:00

since im done with chinese listening comprehension exam, i have the time to blog a little. though i dun think i would do really well for o level chinese, however, the process itself helped me to be more interested and passionate about the language. and that's something new for me.

now, to mama's birthday celebration on 17th july! her birthday is in fact on 18th july, same as nat and isaac. anyway, i shall just let the pictures do the talking. :)

before dinner. mama's osteoporosis has really taken its toll on her, she used to be taller than me. :(

dinner at nakorn kitchen ( i almost said chicken.. lol) the food's very flavoursome.

my beloved cousie samuel! he likes to raise his hand while taking pics, for no reason.

again hand raised. i decided to do a fleming. no reason too.

playing happy family. old past time, but it makes u think hard!

samuel was attracted to the exercise trampoline

on the way up!

landed. sheer jubilation. he sure is one active little man.

the marble cake! i helped mum bake the cake, and i did all the decorations, with a little help from samuel. hehe, i realised i do very very complicated decorations. maybe i was trying to use up all the choc. haha.

mama so chio! hair so black, teeth all naturally white. lol, i joked that if one said the above phrase too quickly before thinking, it would be hair so white, teeth naturally black.

ohana (extended).

grandma and her grandkids. er jie not around cos she went night cycling. so naughty.

mama looks so happy, like a queen who has it all!

mama, mum and auntie hannah.

Birthday picnic + ck on 11 july

2009-07-12T22:58:00.002+08:00

yay! saturday was indubitably fun! well, more accurately, the fun really started on friday night. when i baked the banana choc cake with mom. btw, the cake was done from scratch, even the template for the words were cut out by me. heh, just goes to show how passionate i am about baking. anw, much must be credited to mom, she led the reigns in the baking process, she's so experienced, i feel so priveleged for her to be my mom. :) this is how the cake turned out:

notice the 'holes' for the letters B,D,R,A they are circular, that's cos i overlooked this when i did my template, so mom ingeniously came up with inserting chopsticks. the only imperfection about that is the chopstick sinking in (cos the choc is still soft and warm, hmmm... :) ), yep, so it looked a little uneven there. plus when i was removing the template, which was strewn with chopped pistachio nuts, from the cake, i couldn't stop laughing at the way mom was meticulously holding the chopsticks, trying as hard as she could to prevent them from sinking too much. that sent specks of pistachios glittering the forbidden areas. but that couldn't be helped. wow, i really went to this detail to describe the small imperfections of the cake. i guess the theory that women are more concerned about the details is certainly true after all. :)

now to the main content of this entry. on sat morning, nat came to my house to laze. i did not want to touch my work cos i knew i wouldn't be able to concentrate. so we ate up my unfinished breakfast and started viewing childhood pictures. heh, we were so amused but how happy carefree we looked, and remembering how close our families were, my fav pic is all of us girls (excluding nichelle) jumping on a king sized bed at one church camp. i was only 5 then! boy, i silky hair then... hehe. btw, we saw hui qi too, on the 'log' pic. she was so chubby. :)

by then, dad had come to fetch us. i rmb lying to huiqi and joanne that we were on the way there when we were actually snugly viewing photos. LOL. just couldn't resist the lure of memories.

we reach changi beach at about 12.45. joanne and josiah were there alr, picnic stuff all set up. okay, to cut to the main point, we ate, drank, fellowshipped, played frisbe, volleyball, bridge, bang, sang songs with guitar accompaniment, took pics to our hearts content. time passed too slowly, cos we were using it too quickly.

at 3.45, ck finally started, we sang ck songs while waiting for the july babies to come. we they were all finally here, we sang the song, and they blew the candles. we all did our part, everything went smoothly. i received feedback that the cake was great. well, thank God. :) and mommy! :)

exhortation followed. josiah was trying to drive the points about unity and meaningfulness home. heh, can't help but fondly remember the part when his expression changed upon seeing a pair of otters (silly me, i kept thinking it was oysters, until mom corrected me at home). then everyone suddenly jumped up in curiosity, but the otters were scared away by this sudden movement and padded back the waters.

subsequently, we played 3 games that were related to the exhortation. i like the 2nd one most. it was most challenging, although my team faced the embarrassment of singing with our mouths full of water. i cheated. :)

after a little while of rest time, hui qi gave out presents to the july babies. then we ended ck the most regular way - captains ball. and the game ended in the same disturbing way, noelene's leg had a wound from carelessly banging into a dustbin during the game. to me, i felt that this uncannily parallels what happeded last week. this is pretty disconcerting. :(

last but not least, we headed for dinner and changi village. i didn't eat cos uncle beng young came to fetch us. :) i wasn't hungry anyway.

yep that sums up ck last sat. i decided to talk about it here cos it is an exceptional case. :) plus huiqi wants me to blog. i've done a loooooooong post here, maybe you could read one word at a time so that i wouldn't have to blog again before my o's. haha!

Lighter burden!

2009-07-10T16:55:00.002+08:00

oh man! i was so dying for today's school to end. cos it's really tedious! 6 subjects packed together in a day is just too much for me to handle. and furthermore, the fun prospect of tmr made it worse, i couldn't concentrate much in class. my last lesson was lit, and mrs dhaliwal was finishing up on the funnyman bottom, but i still couldn't wait. when it was all over, i scooted home, yeah, im that excited!

tonight, im going to bake the cake. i pray to God that nothing goes wrong! unfortunately, it will not be a creamed cake, for 2 reasons. 1. cream will not hold out without refrigeration, so the logistics is a problem. 2. my mom does not wanted us to indulge in any less than proper behaviour - hazing. however hard i persuaded her, she just did not buy the cream. so sorry folks. anyway, i have suggested to bake an equally cool cake, that is banana chocolate cake! it is one of my all time favs, especially when mom bakes it. :) plus i'll make sure that there's superabundant choc for everyone to enjoy, if everything goes well with my health crazed mom.

im looking forward to having a blast tmr! :) thanks be to huiqi and joanne for organizing the event. plus ck will be great too! i presume...

National pride

2009-07-07T14:38:00.003+08:00

wow, i can't believe i am back at it - blogging. anyway i can't help but feel a huge sense of pride for my country singapore. we have done so well in the current AYG! heh, 9 gold's really unbeliveable, but definitely possible. apart from our country, i find south korea the next country to watch. they have fantastic soccer players as well as swimmers. not to forget the female sprinter sunae, they are so charming. :)

okay, i shall follow what my heart says and deviate off topic. i have a fatal attraction. or is it curiosity? i can't take it anymore. tsk tsk..

im getting worse at writing. i dun understand what im writing! duh!

Randomness

2009-07-06T19:08:00.002+08:00

i realise i have become super lazy when it comes to blogging... tsk tsk. even the church camp post can't be bothered to finish. cos i tend to go so much into detail that i find it a little redundant. then i get upset with myself and stop. whenever i go online, i would rather watch the korean drama the man who can't get married..

well, these past few weeks have had a few highlights, but i shall limit myself talk about the more relevant stuff. and i have decided to blog for ppl who faithfully read my blog. i hope seeing a myraid of words will appease them...

night cycling at east of singapore.
first time i ever cycled a good 40km. i was not alone, about 30 others from ck + cks accomplished the same feat. haha, it was supposed to be a good bonding session for me with everyone, but it turned out that i got too kiasu and cycled in front most of the time. and nat was likewise, so i ended up bonding even more with her. lol, i quite had enough her alr.. anw, nat and i became a little nuts and started singing our favourite songs together. our favourites for that night were do re mi and how you solve a problem like maria. we kept singing the part

'How do you solve a problem like Maria?How do you catch a cloud and pin it down?How do you find a word that means Maria?A flibbertijibbet! A will-o'-the wisp! A clown!'

and then we will burst out in hysterical laughter. you may think it old fashioned, but it was pretty fun in the circumstances, it took the tiredness off us.

okay, i think i shall just talk about this. ck is really much a part of me now. or is it just nat.. church is getting more and more great. with friends and all. :)

Church camp 2009!

2009-06-25T18:09:00.010+08:00

yays!! here's the recount on the most anticipated and most fulfilling church camp i ever had in my life. i must say that im getting more comfortable in ce. cos the people are really nice and very closely knit. haha, i remember being so crazy about camp at least a month before it even kicked off. i had planned my to-bring list before my mid years, that was in mid may... and i pestered my dad for updates daily (he was the comm. member remember..) i pretty much knew almost everything and every game that would be played in camp before the camp itself. LOL..

my family was part of the advance party with uncle kian lye's family. i was super excited cos advance party's always fun, just the thought of 'i knew the campsite before you' makes me feel like having a 'edge' over others. no, im not competitive, just over excited about church camps. uncle kian lye's the camp master, my dad was the rooming ic, so we went up first to handle admin matters, oh, it's only the two of them involved. it was leisure for the rest of us, auntie siew loong and mum, three of us sisters and jonah (uncle kian lye's son) i was still sick on the way up, clogged nose and cough, i felt little terrible.

we reached mersing at about 5. went into a seafood restaurant, the boss told us that they were only ready at 530, so our families decided to jalan jalan as well as shop a little. that was when i discovered that the dried guava i bought from singapore was sold twice the price there, i felt a little twinge of regret, but who knew they would sell it there. anyway, it started to drizzle and it was 530, so we made our way to the restaurant. we had a good dinner, and the badminton finals for the singapore open was being broadcasted. i mistook bonsak ponsana's name as pornsak, then jonah was so cute, he called the guy pornsak too, by then i had realised my mistake, but er jie n i couldn't help but giggle a little. in the end, this little misunderstanding cleared. after dinner, we took another 1h plus to get to the camp site. da jie was going all crazy about the sun setting in the backdrop of a pink sky.

we reached about 7.30. the first impression was good.... :) the chalets were cool, and more spacious than last years. jonah and the three of us went around the camp site, he was becoming more and more of a nice brother to us (he's er jie age). later that night, we played bridge and made the ice bags for the games. after all that tying of the bags, da jie said we are potential tao hwey and fishball sellers. lol.

the next morning, we went out to do more shopping for camp necessities. when we got back, our fathers had some meeting with the resort management and the rest of us congregated at jonah's room. we were going to teach our moms how to play bridge. it was an overall amusing experience, cos it was so interesting to watch our moms bemused expressions when we explained the game to them. they didn't really get it, but we still had fun! after that, we proceeded to do a factory chain for the goodie bags. we were super efficient, n i felt the sense of accomplishment when we finished, we had packed 130 bags!

we then made our way to the main hall. on the way, i saw joanne's family arriving. er jie and i went to greet them. after that, it was pretty much ping pong with josiah for me. haha. soon, nat, marcus and isaac chan arrived, so we played together. very fun!

anybody cares for kung fu ping pong? marcus on the left, isaac chan the hilarious guy on the right. his name sounds familiar? he was one of the people who made my group such a comical one.

isaac chan - auntie pat - uncle ishu. auntie pat's the master mind behind the painting, i just helped her. :) and uncle ishu, my group's beloved leader. such a funny guy too.

my group presentation! i will forever remember it! i was the guitarist, not in the pic, and the women of the group + isaac chan were off stage singing the song did you ever talk to God above. isaac played dual roles of providing the cue for the actions as well as the sole male singer. haha

my group discussion room, also uncle ishu's room. he gave us a lot of camp momentos, and it was volunteery on his part, i doubt any other group leader was as generous as him, and as enthu. haha

camp shot. the faces too small la. but what to do, it's has to be...

at tioman, the fishes are cool

the singers! they are great and great and great! i love their singing, and the guys are really good guitarists. they could entertain u with any song u wanted. including somewhere over the rainbow, sha lalala, im yours, can't take my eyes off you and most importantly, the michael learns to rock song: paint my love!

snorkelers! no such word... but we were really hairpee!

upon arrival at tioman. note: jonah's the guy on the extreme left, :)

the ceramic tile, the brain child of auntie pat. nicole and i helped her. :) im so proud of it.

more fish. this fish came to say HIEEEEE.okay, the pics are totally not in order....

coral or what do you call this? anyway, they had a calming effect on u. very pretty

er jie playing a fool. heh

nat and i. i guess i have to teach nat that she has a backbone. lol, im so mean.

snorkel and co.

chalet style at tioman. super homely

the sub lobby, this lobby was for us only. so cool, it is beside the main lobby. just beside this is the private pool where we teens play pool captains' ball. so fun!

last look at tioman. how beautiful....

bah, shan't continue...

Church camp (not the recap)

2009-06-22T16:26:00.004+08:00

Church camp + tioman trip was great!!! im suffering from severe withdrawal symptoms!!! argh! now i can say that i like malaysia more than singapore, not cos it's superior in any way, but cos it's the place where i have so much fun with church friends every year, and singapore's the place where i have to slog (supposedly, but i don't, but the thought of o's make me sick...)

the many things i liked about church camp were:
- the fellowship!!! (x 100)
- i have to admit i wasn't 100% attentive during the sermons, but i think pastor arie's pretty good, his sermons are short and SWEET
- ping pong and beach volleyball, great time for fellowship.
- my beloved group, i dare say that i had the best group cos we were sooo funny! thanks uncle ishu, uncle meng hsien and isaac chan! we had a real good time laughing!!!
- being able to enjoy myself despite being a little sick with cough. my voice even went wonky the first 2 days!
- the cool experience of the firefly cruise.

the many things i liked about tioman trip:
- the fellowship again, just that i found it a little too noisy, (especially with 'smelly tofu')
- the hotel was fabulous, international food that was fantastic, singers by table side (they sang paint my love by michael learns to rock plus other nice songs like shalalala! i was swooning!!! the ambience was just priceless) and the hotel room! i had adjorning room with isa, iva and tze yan. we were like one big family...
- the snorkeling was cool too! got underwater pics with my cam.

anyway, this is the vid of my group's presentation. it's hilarious.. if u understand it.. :)

My song!

2009-06-11T22:23:00.008+08:00

hey blog! i have officially composed my first song! it's just the tune, no lyrics yet, but i dun wanna add lyrics any time soon, but my mum, da jie, er jie, and nat like it! yay! i actually played the song 'little by little' wrongly at the beginning then i realised that it was a nice tune, so i started from there and added more chord progressions and melodies. haha, theory and guitar really helped. i haven't got a hard copy, it's all in my head! well, i have recorded it and downloaded it onto my com and mp3 player. :)

about my interpretation (all music must have interpretation) it's a mildly sad song, (it will be perfect for a drama ost, especially korean ones where the female lead dies and the male lead gets so sad... sounds like autumn in my heart!) and do not get me wrong, i did not compose the song with this in mind, instead, i just fitted in nice tunes and tada, i got a song. then when i played it once through on the piano, bingo! it sounded so much like an ending theme of a korean drama. haha. actually, after listening to it so much, i think i need to slow the tempo down... hmmmm....

it's 3 days to camp!!!!!! yipeedo! and once again, gear up for an ultra long post on both camp and tioman trip.

3 things

2009-05-24T19:22:00.003+08:00

yesterday, i went for the midsummer nights dream play. it was awesome! it was extremely comical, i liked the characters of bottom (pyramus) and flute (thisbe). i literally laughed till i had a dry throat and almost teared. actually, this play was pretty OBSCENE! that makes what bottom said that they will 'rehearse most obscenely and courageously' true and not a malaproism! LOL. there was a scene of a kiss between bottom and peter quince (good thing he was acted by a woman, if not it would have been unacceptable for me, but peter quince is supposed to be a guy, so this is confusing!). demetrius staring right into helena breast (his nose was almost in her cleavage, imagine the proximity, almost smelling ahem...). titania sitting on bottom's stomach, erm.... and the most offensive of all pyramus and thisbe, instead of speaking through the cranny, spoke through the real hole of the wall (played by tom snout), that is his butt and penis! EW! the last one is definitely an addition on the crew's part. the text talks nothing about the other 'hole' i stole glances of sam during these scenes, and her mouth was agape, my expression was probably of pure disgust!

all in all, the play was thoroughly enjoyable, i do not mean the sick parts, but the comedy of it all. the actors were competent and to be able to speak their lines so fluently, i must take my hat off them. im hoping to catch some reviews of the play in life (strait times), i hope they are positive ones, cos this play deserves it. personally, i would give it a 4.5 out of 5. haha, half mark gone cos of the obscenity. yeah, it's that good! well, for the obscene parts, i really wished janice was there, she would enjoy it to bits.

okay, the second thing im going to talk about is my pen pal! im going to have a pen pal! haha. she's from the US and is my church's american minister's grand daughter. i think having a pen pal is cool. i previously had 1 'pen pal' from portugal, we chatted a lot on msn n i shared my knowledge about singapore and she shared hers of portugal. it was always a joy to talk to her, but ever since she enter law school and never being official pen pals, i talk less to her now. but i still do! it's hard cos we prefer to chat, and chatting requires a common time, which is another challenge cos of the time difference. this time, Gwen, my new pen pal, is going to email me instead, so i foresee that this will last long! :)

last thing, and the most distressing. i have 2 sties on my left eye eyelids. so painful that i feel like crying... argh!!! mom says it cos of the heaty stuff that i have been consuming. i admit it could be because of that, but i cant help it, all the stuff i like are heaty. like chocs, cookies, hokkien mee, mango and even tom yam etc..... owwww!! im screaming in pain now. every blink reminds me of the sties... i so wish that er jie is already a doctor, so that she can heal me. :(

Random things

2009-05-20T18:54:00.004+08:00

i have bad news pertaining to my results. they are horrendous!!!! i've never done so badly in my entire school life. i had 3 c5s! the only thing 'good' out of this kind of marks is that i have broken record. on a sober note, bad results are good to learn from mistakes and gear up for upcoming test and exams. so, i shall not take it too badly.

on a lighter note, i played with my hair a little today. (oooooh, i have just realised that i keep using the word 'note', maybe this is because i have been playing too much piano these days. :) ) haha! im sure u are wondering what on earth i did that 'bush', well, it has migrated north (haha elyssa, this sounds familiar? i lack creativity to think of something else...) and since elyssa said take a pic and post it online, i have decided to do so. haha, i take elyssa so seriously, but it is fun. besides, my hair is somewhat unique and interesting cos it is super obedient.

can u see it? :s haha

anyway, talking about american idol finale tonight, i am supporting lambert! hehe, i like to oppose elyssa sometimes! :)

Waiting for church camp!!!

2009-05-16T14:11:00.002+08:00

yes, this is yet another post on church camp. the only thing in my mind is church camp. i have advanced to the next level, less than one more month of waiting. :) exactly 28 days more to go! hehe, since my dad is in the comm, i get updates about the camp. attendance is great, the best we've had in years! all but 2 or 3 families going for camp. the activities are cool. oh man, nat and joanne, i can't wait. what's more, my family's going as advance party, that means we are going on sunday, after service. boy, that's fun! after camp is tioman island. great time again with a 30 plus strong group. :)

chinese o levels.... get off my back!

AND

someone please explain to me what it means to WAIT!

June church camp!

2009-05-05T14:04:00.002+08:00

yah! im too excited about my upcoming church camp, excited until cannot study properly. :) hehe. :) im so excited about spend a week out of singapore, and spending the time with natalie and joanne!!!! im counting down to camp! lol... :)

SYF and SOP 2009

2009-05-01T10:21:00.009+08:00

hi blog, long time no talk. i dont have a post for april, not even one. argh, i regret it. anw, today's labour day n i shall take some time off to blog about 2 very significant events in late april.

SYF. it was great. i mean our performance. we played soooooo well, the best ever that guitar club of PL has presented. every thing was there, right feel, right techniques, right talents and the best ever commitment. after our performance, mr gaspar, my instructor, said that we pla yed very very well, the best ever that we had ever played. even instructors from other schools commended us and told us that they found no fault with our playing. but it turned out to be so unfortunate, we were award a silver. i remember, on tues when we got our results back (we performed on monday), the foyer was filled with emotions. sooo many of my juniors and guitar friends were wailing buckets. we had put in sooooooo much effort, i say close to 200 hours! and yet we did not get what we deserved.

SOP was good. but i was soooo tired. had spent 16 whole hours in school. yeah, i dead beat went i got home. but i had a pleasant surprise awaiting me. :) i will let the pictures do the talking. :)

guitar fwens!

nicole being ever funny and elizabeth - chinese partner!

haha, diane's unglam!

what's with that stare diane..

president and i!

traci, me and the ex co members

best friends in guitar!!!!

no bread (mei loti) and clarice. both very funny people.

santine! the cool person on the exterior but warm inside

vice pres wan xin!

here with adeline. she loves ch 8 and i love it too, so we talke about it. :)

the funny gal michelle. her sneeze can resonate throughout the whole agape concert hall and make every body stop what they are doing. happened during one of the rehearsals. LOL and that wasnt the only time she terrorized us with the sneeze of hers

best friends and instructor mr gaspar

oh my, nicole looks scandalous here

one happy family

the grand finale, singing one voice

my beloved friends!!!!! i love u all!

mummy! and i

er jie! and i. she helped me carry my bag, so sweet of her

and my pleasant surprise from dad. CHESTNUTS!

Happy week

2009-03-23T19:22:00.002+08:00

hey blog, last week was supposed to be a holiday, but apparently it was nothing different. guitar called me back from tues to fri. session durations ranging from 3hs to as long as 9hs. yeah, it was nuts, considering that we already prac 3 days a week on normal school days, each 3hs. some more today i spent 5hs at republic poly, just to familiarize itself with the syf venue. haiz, i wonder how much more of my time will be munched off by guitar... argh, it's all because of syf.

sad things aside, looking on the brighter side... on tues, the women in my family, i.e everyone except my dad (we kept him in the dark, lol) went out to 'celebrate' my b'dae. okay, it was more of a treat given by my sisters. da jie treated us on the dinner and erjie, on the movie. mom, da jie, er jie and i headed to ps. walked around, couldn't find a decent western restaurant (western food was what i requested for), and we ended up in the dreaded cafe cartel... lolz, i've been there a substantial number of times, but i never had good encounters (food was expensive and a particular sandwich i once ordered was too salty...), and thus a bad impression had formed. anyway, since all of us were females and in constant pressure not to get fat, we ordered 3 main dishes (although there were 4 of us) and a side order of cheddar fries. this time, somehow, the food was better, n i didn't feel the pinch as da jie was paying for it all. :) after that, we walked to the cathay to catch a movie, marley and me. oh btw, mum didn't want to join us as she felt that movies are a waste of time and money, and felt that she wanted to shop for necessities. that's my mum for u, she didn't bulge despite us persuading her a little. marley and me was pretty cute and FUNNY at some parts. certainly heart-warming. :) at the end of the day, i was a little exhausted, but i had a great time with my sisters and mum.

skip forward to the weekend. on fri, i was soooo sad, why? cos survivor was not aired... on sat, i baked a batch of pretty successful oatmeal+walnut+choc chip cookies! apart from what i did, i've received 2 new things that i hold very dear to me. they are my bible and my TABLE TENNIS BAT! yay!!!!! yippeee! for the bible, i have finally an old king james bible, not the new king james version (which was the one i was having), it was a little hard for me to follow my pastor, who uses the old kj, and my congregation too. also, my table tennis bat! im so in love with table tennis now, and i can't wait to spar with my dad, lol, he represents his club in table tennis, but i believe that with my perseverance, i will beat him one day. :) anyway, an update about my sports profile, i love table tennis, soccer and tennis. :) hehheh, can't help but profess it here. :D

6teen!

2009-03-04T18:09:00.008+08:00

yeah! im 16! haha, growing older means more burdens and miseries in life.. nevertheless, i will try to face life with optimism, which is a high order for me, someone who often feels suicidal. gah, life is soooo hard... but i will survive, erjie said so. she too had felt more or less this way when she was my age, so i will press on!

here i am, sitting in front of the computer and eating my aglio olio, cooked by mum!.

i shall recount significant things that have happened to me since last week
1. on wed, eating with my beloved sisters at shokudo, the heeren. we wore erjie's treadless shirts. haha, try to spot what our shirts are saying! (mine isn't shown but it shows birds and bees, yup.. mature theme, hah, but i was almost 16 then, can lah!) erjie's was counting sheep and dajie was a cow and a chicken staring at an egg with cow spots, wondering whose offspring it is. haha, very interesting designs huh.

this event was speical to us as it was our first official outing together, with only the three of us, with the aim to spend quality time with each other. and sure we did! erjie han a $30 voucher (haha, from spending over $70 eating there with her 'bf' during chinese new year) so we ate without much constraints expenditure wise. dajie had sashimi avocado sushi (my FAV!), erjie had some noodle, i had soft shell crab and rice. these dishes were shared among us, and on top of that, we had a pork dish and a desert, honey butter waffle. the bill came up to $50 and i treated them for the remainder that was not covered by the vouchers. haha, how sweet of me! oh man, after the meal, my stomach was almost bursting at its seams. yeah, i was that full. hehe, after that, i played a little with a choc saleswoman, ate her samples (i couldn't resist chocs!) and then got my sisters to reject her offer to purchase a box of choclates. haha

2. on sunday, after church, my family and i went to bliss, a western restaurant at pungol park. we had a blissful dunch there, but at the end of our meal, it started to shower, then it stormed! it was quite terrifying as there was a lightning bolt, so powerful that it crippled the restaurant's electricity. good thing my family was leaving already. outside, at the carpark, there was torrents, so it was extremely inconvenient to get to the car. and the water was getting threateningly high, so high that it could wet the engine and then spoil it. fortunately, we managed to hop into the car safe, thanks to the good service the staff had. in the car, mum thanked God for protecting us, it was an experience but definitely not one pleasant.

3. today. my birthday. school was normal, however, i was severely disheartened by the results i got for chem and phy.. surely not good enough for me! hah, and lemme tell u about my deceitful clique! during recess, janice apologised in behalf of the clique, saying that they haven't gotten a present for me cos common test just ended and they had no time, and that they promised to get me one by next week. (i should've realised that she was a 'sneaky' one and there was something fishy). anyway, i thought that was the end of the story, so i said it was okay. i was a little disappointed, but sort of expected it, haha, some 6th sense. so i didn't show my disappointment.
.....................................................................................................................................................................................................
skip to the time just before chapel.... while i was doing a maths ws with elyssa, one of them (janice or diane or sam, or maybe all of them!) placed an enormous orange bag in front of me. and the alarm in me rang. MY PRESENT! haha... the surprise was good, haha, partly also cos i was an easy bait. it was a beautiful basketball! oh man, i refused to shed tears, though i was a wee little on the verge to, haha, im too tough a nut to crack. the ball had their signatures, very complementary to ball, it made it feel as if it was a prized ball which had a collection of 4 famous stars! very ingenious to me. and there was a card too! heh, not so ingenious here, but it had their sweet notes for me. the content was basically the same, just expressed in four different manners and ink colours. haha, the content obviously was their immense love for me.. of course.. haha, ego...

okay, that's all for now, i had durian! (mumsy bought my fav food!) n later i will be having crab and a birthday cake! yeah! will tell u another time!

now for the pics!

at shokudo:

3 sisters and our spread. background gives the oriental feel, great atmosphere

spastic! haha. the food was SHIOK!

at bliss:

me here with my chicken + corn + baby potatoes + cheese + ham + onions. it was very rich food, i abandoned the thought of getting fat!

mumsy with her alaska king crab and rice. alaska crab tasted really unique, flaky(in a good way)

dad and his shank with mashed potato! haaz he ate it to the bones and then start going a little obsessed with the socket. haha, he said that it was ball and socket, er jie rebutted, said it was something else, hah, i forgot...

erjie and her aglio olio seafood, she LOVES it... almost always ordering this whenever we come to western restaurants

dajie and her codfish dish. very fresh fish. :)

today:

mum's very own attempt on aglio olio, she did it a few times before, but they were freaking healthy, im glad that today i have a succulent serving of mussels and other shell fish.

my presents!

the spalding basketball my clique bought for me! and the card. haha, here are elyssa's and sam's signatures.

and here are diane's and janice's. haha, diane told me to take shots at every angle of the ball, so that i will still remember how the signatures were, if not they will be gone forever when i start playing with the ball and all the ink will be 'scratched' off. hawh, but i shall only take 2 pics, if i do what diane suggested, i would have to infinity shots!

and lastly, a surprise from reaiah! haha! a photo frame or rather a 3-in-1 photo frame. i guess she hopes that i will always have memories of her. heh, i see her almost every week when she comes for tuition...

once again, i wanna express my heartfelt thanks to my family and friends for making my birthday special! :)

SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE and SURVIVOR!

2009-02-24T21:18:00.002+08:00

hello everyone, im finally blogging!! i have big news! :)

i wanna tell u that SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE is by far my favourite movie!! it's soooo good! it's a must watch man! haha, i got to know of since it first came out in the papers, but never really was interested. i did want to watch it online cos i was bored, but ended up not watching cos i couldn't find the videos on my preferred video server. hahs, but it came back to 'haunt' me today when mrs wong talked about it in class and even recommended it to us, she also wanted to buy the DVD as soon as possible so that she could screen it in class. then i thought that the movie must be really good to be able to appeal to mrs wong (who is definitely not a particular movie fan)! haha, so when i got home, i watched. boy it was shiok! there was romance too, haha my clique will now understand why i like it. anw, elyssa, diane, janice, watch it if u have time, it is really worth ur time and furthermore it's recurring theme is development, the new geog topic! so MUST WATCH AH!

this is the where where i watched this marvelous film. this server was pretty fast and cooperative to me.
part 1 http://www.bollyaz.com/flash/index.php?id=14
part 2 http://www.bollyaz.com/flash/index.php?id=15
part 3 http://www.bollyaz.com/flash/index.php?id=16
part 4 http://www.bollyaz.com/flash/index.php?id=17

and also, i must profess my love for SURVIVOR too! haha, i support sierra and brendan, haha, and being a romantic, i wish that they could be together! :)

syf

2009-02-13T21:53:00.002+08:00

hi blog, i just wanted to share this song with you. :) anw, it's a spoiler for what my guitar ensemble is going to play for syf. :) heres to you, mountains in autumn! :)

enthralling isn't it! :)

CNY 2009! post cny feelings

2009-01-26T07:45:00.009+08:00

actually u noe what. this year's cny's a BLAST! (at least so far, haha.) much better than i had expected. cos first of all my paternal side of my family did have a last minute reunion dinner alst night at er gu's house. it was very very last minute, so dun blame me for not blogging that i changed my pre cny feelings from bored to excited! haha. then today i am going to er gu's house again to bai nian and then samuel will come to my house! yay, it will whales of fun. (i hope it is the correct whale here, haha).

lemme recount yesterday's reunion dinner. anyway, i went from church with auntie wan teng and skipped 2nd service. at home, i had planned to nap a while, but one moment of folly and i washing my hair, so i couldn't nap anymore, haiz.. i decided to read the papers and practise my guitar pieces. haha, i have become very diligent in practising it cos i want to master the runs till they are seamless and on par with the perfect syf standard. i would say, progress is on the way. :) then my hair was slightly drier, so lay face down on my sofa and turned on the ceiling fan to blow dry my hair. and when i just got myself into a comfortable position, my family came home. my mom was going to cook while my sisters and dad were going to do last minute shopping. i meant that the sisters shopped, my dad mainly paid.

so we went to heartland mall, i bought a pair of shoes that were uncannily the same colour as the dress i had bought on wed night. yep, i remember being a little hungry, so i purchased a value pack of the kinder brueno pack. hehe, i munched away and then dad bought a cup of bubble tea for er jie and me, it's a rare treat esp in my usually health concious family, oh i forgot, my mom was absent that why we had to no objections! :)

headed for home, i used the com and watch the miracle singer, vitas. haha, he falsettos or rather 'screams' with this very shrill sound and i love it, cos it is so smooth, unlike other incompetent singers who would sound so strained going as high as him. by 6.20, my family w as ready to go. i was quite excited to meet my cousins. :)

when we reached, we were not the first as what my er jie had expected. well, there was mama, er gu, da be (oldest uncle) and my cousin chong kai (his brother is chong han, the guy in currently china and was featured in the news), er be (second uncle) with his family which consisted of er be mu and esther (my cousin), wu shu (fifth uncle) and his wife, si shu and family did not come, i guess they had something on. :( however, there were unexpected guest (i do not mean unwelcomed in this case!), there was a family from china who are my distant relatives (they live with er gu). both figuratively and literally. it consisted of the parents and their 17 year old daugther, lucy. figuratively cos they are from china, so of course distant in terms of distance, but literally cos the mom is my dad's cousin, so lucy is my distant cousin. my impression of her was that she's tall, pretty and has really nice eyes, a real chio bu. haha, fianlly i have a good looking relative (haha, im so mean!) anyway, her mom was very hospitable (reminded me very much of mrs xu from china, in case u have forgotten, my china buddy's mom), i was freaking tensed when they were seaking chinese, and whenever she commented at me or looked at me, i just gave her a smile, cueing her not to go further, if not i will just die speaking chinese. haha, and lucy, good thing she has english background, so she could understand us more or less. :)

while waiting for the food, da jie, er jie and i viewed photos of the yester years, every thing was to memorable in their ways, and i even saw myself when i was P4, when i had the luxury of keeping my then straight hair down. haha, if i keep my hair down nowadays, i might be dubbed the albert einstein look-a-like, which is not a complement at all! er jie was very very friendly and she gave lucy a mini intro to almost all the relatives that were 'imporatant' to noe.

following that, it w as dinner time! the food was decent, but i was on a diet, so i just took a little of food. the teens sat together at one table and we had many many interesting topics which mainly covered education and china etc. lucy's here for some study thing, hah, im not very sure actually.

after dinner, i was pressing everyone to play cards games, but i think everyone prefered to talk. so i was a little bored here, cos im not so vocal. the next highlight was taking photo. haha, very funny cos lucy's dad is the photographer by hobby and was super super meticulous about everyone's position in the pic. so we waited for about a good 5 mins before everything was perfect in his eyes. we took a few shots and then the teens went down to play sparklers. it was really fun and for the first time i think, i actually dared to hold the sparklers in such a way that i hand was so close to the sparks and i could feel the burning sensational. though it might be nothing new to u, but im proud that i have become bolder, in the more dangerous way.

to wrap up the fun-downstairs stint, we raring for a jumpshot, which took ages.. lol, let me explain below, with the pics. after that , lucy had to go for some gathering with her parents, so she left us there. we cleared up and then went upstairs.

in the house, er jie and i played our hearts out on the organ (we treated it like a piano, not that we know how to play an organ) i mainly took the upper range of keys and she, the bottom range. we played a wide range of songs, from chinese new year songs, pop songs, christmas songs, christian songs and even singapore communtity songs! lol, and chong kai, esther and da jie had a good time singing their hearts out. hehe. then came my the channel countdown thing. and i caught dai yang tian and jeanette aw in action!!! whooo! dai yang tian is so shuai! haha. after watching till 11.30pm, we decided not to impose on the host any further, so we left.

last night was truly more fun than expected! :) i loved it.

pics :

here's er jie in action, being super approachable n friendly to lucy. :) i dunno what to say, so i look away. lol

family pic, taken with my family cam, quality not there, but at least everyone's in! haha

sparklers! at first during dinner, we were trying to tanslate sparklers to chinese for lucy, but she's smart enough, she noes. but im envious that in the china, they are allowed to release fire crackers and fireworks! not professionals, but just any citizen 30 and above. haha, singapore would be burnt down if we did not implement the ban.

this is lucy. for ppl who dunno. :)

jumpshots taken by mum. we had about 20 NGs ('not good' in directorial terms)! that was so crazy, haha, never in my life did i have to take so many pics before getting one successful. haha, im glad my clique's more experienced in this aspect, if not, we wouldn't be about to steal time between lessons to take jumpshots!

this pic: mum's toooo late, we have alr landed

mum's too early, we heven't taken off . haha, er jie and i are each other's laterally inverted equivalent.

momentarily gave up on jumpshots, all girl cousins here!

the roses and the thorn.. lol

the lone success! er jie cleverly suggested using timer instead of mom manually taking the pic. and it worked! haha, why didn't i, with all my wealth of experience in clique photo taking, not suggest that earlier! haha, im so dumb!

u noe something, i have truly talked a lot a lot here, that means that im finally happy and back to my normal self, cos i can express myself properly. finally... :) festivals and breaks from school does WONDERS!

Pre chinese new year feelings

2009-01-23T23:16:00.004+08:00

(to hui qi, ur wish is answered :) )

this year's chinese new year is really dull for me. apart from having a little fun in the baking aspect, (i have been filling my time with making pineapple tarts with my mom), i feel no excitement in the air... and oh, the bad part of cny this year's my extended family's not going to have reunion dinner just cos no one wants to open their house. last year and for many other years, it was held at my house, until to was almost every year and then i think everyone got sick of it.. lol, but they don't open their house then what to do. then i persuaded my dad to hold it at a chalet, but he didn't listen, so know he has to be content with no reunion dinner! i really dun mind that at all! cos im not close at all to my paternal side.

side tracking, i saw my cousin in the chinese papers! it so happened that it was the first handout of newspapers from school (this happened like last week) and i remember cooling down from morning run and felt rather uninterested in anything. then someone put the papers on my table... lo and behold! i saw my cousin chong han on the front page! whoa, i was so perked up by that. haha, he's such genius in mandrin while im the opposite and so effectively bilingual too. im envious that he's having such a good life now (eating good food and putting on lots of weight!). i noe i noe.. must study hard then can.. haiz..

however, something to look forward to is seeing samuel!!! im sure he's getting smarter than me haha and soon will be able to talk on the same wavelength as me. and he's sure taller n more handsome too! hehe. :) he's so adorable and i love him sooooo much!! let me show u some pics of him! :)

here's samuel at 2! so darn adorable!!! and note his baby fats on his face. :)

chinese new year 2007. he played his violin and i played my recorder, haha, i dun think these instruments really match but who cares, we had fun! anyway, samuel's baby fats are dimishing. :( in the background is my beloved grandma! i lub her loads too!

the most recent pic i have of him. taken last year feb. he's so toothless here, tsk tsk, so this year he sure more handsome lah, got teeth alr. haha

i love samuel. heehee.

Bored

2009-01-17T13:52:00.002+08:00

hello blog, im so sorry for neglecting you... i noe my post here are pretty much scant and could in no time be what it is called, endangered species... lala, but i admit, im a little sick of blogging. duh, im at a loss for words whenever i want to say something, like im experiencing a drought for words in my mind... or could it be a deluge, too many things to say then dunno what to say. all i noe is that theres some disaster occuring in my brain, making me unable to do what i want. haiz... anyway, i find reversi a very good fun. it challenges ur skill.

hmmmm.... school's fine.. just yesterday, i was so weird! i just felt that everyone was not nice to me... gah, i just miss last time lah... n curriculum wise, everything is so confusing. i just wished that was less blur.

okay, im currently experience a drain of words. my eng is getting horrendous. so i shan't talk anymore.

The little nyonya : the final chapter

2009-01-09T16:33:00.001+08:00

yipee! due to overwhelming response on the finale of little nyonya, the script writer of the little nyonya has decided to write the very final ending of the show. so will chen xi and yue niang be together??? find out this sun 9.55pm! hehe!

The little nyonya!

2009-01-07T14:56:00.003+08:00

my da jie asked why i nvr blogged anymore.. haha, i replied that i have nothing to talk about.. gah! but then something popped into my mind! that is the little nyonya! haha, im so sad cos it has just concluded... haha, i am well aware that this is my first post for the year, but since the little nyonya is so sensational, it is worthy of the honour of being the first. furthermore, the last episode had a whopping high viewership! 33.8%, wow, that's... overwhelming! even my parents watched! that's big news cos the past show they watched was dae jang geum. haha, the little nyonya is like dae jang geum, but slightly more superficial. i doubt i will ever have a singapore drama as good in the coming years. boohoo. i really love little nyonya! :(

little nyonya is going overseas to malaysia, china and other asian countries! i'm sure it will do very well! haha, heard from my mum that she heard from her friends that when holland v went to malaysia, ppl closed show early just to catch it, lol. i think little nyonya with do the same, only more large scale! and jeanette aw is getting really famous now! her past character or mo jing jing was nice, and now she's going to capture viewer's hearts!

through this drama, i have become a huge fan of jeanette aw and dai yang tian! haha, i love them but im not crazy enough about them to hanker after them and go for roadshows or star gathering sessions, haha, im not that desperate. but they are really GOOD LOOKING and act well. as for ppl who criticize jeanette aw so much, i guess they have bias, which is not good. we have to be open minded. :)

the ending! i had guessed right, but of course it would be best if yueniang went with chen xi, instead of the almost unknown paul. haha, but i think the match is not bad lah. haha.

next up! table of glory, which is not coming anytime that soon, but i'll wait, cos i wanna see dai yang tian in action! he is so awfully cute! hehe.

okay, tv aside, school's okay... but i still look back to past times when i think i was much happier.. haiz.. i wish to say it here, but i shan't... haiz, im just so emo... :( nvm, i'll think of happier things, must be positive.

Sleepover at joanne's!

2008-12-31T16:55:00.008+08:00

heya! im back from joanne's house! we had stay over and it was super fun! here are the details as i remember it...

yesterday, i was really thankful to God that i was well enough to go out. :) i met nat on bus 53 as we had planned and began our 'arduous journey' joanne's house, which was located in some unknown part of singapore (at least to me) and the only clue about where her house was this phrase - kranji war memorial, and i had no idea where that was too. anw, we took 53 to bishan interchange and then mrt to kranji. there, we met emelyn and took a cab to joanne's house.

in the bus! haha, good thing we sat right at the back, if not ppl might think we are crazy. lol. this pic is taken by nat. :)

the second shot, this pic by me. compare compare! nat chopped off our heads while mine is so fitting!

after a manoeuvering around in the private estate of jalans, we finally got to jalan kasau and down the lane was joanne's house, it was the only 2 storey house along the whole row of houses. joanne came out to meet us. my first impresssion of it was very positive. if i were an architect, i would say that the house has one of the most neoteric designs i've ever seen, both its interior and exterior. and if i were a normal person, the house was just plainly cool! :) i like the shades of glass and white paint! also, the spaciousness was another huge plus factor. the only thing was that the house had nothing special to surprise me, like maybe some booby trap somewhere! everyone in their family had a room for himself and there was a toilet for each room. there was even a lounge, haha, so much like some resort here.

we went up to deposit our stuff in joanne's room and then settled on the comfy sofas of the lounge (or u could call it a mini cinema in the night) and watched kit kittredge. the movie was so so, but i guess it warmed us up for the fun we were going to experience!

in the lounge! cheers gals!

emelyn! moi dear gal!

after the movie, we decided to have some hands on activies, like making konnyaku and baking. we first made konnyaku and then nat and i went online to search for cookie recipes. we finally got down to one which was oatmeal cookies! so we got cracking! cos i was one of the more experienced person there, i did more of giving instructions and ensured that every thing was going smooth. it was pretty easily to make the cookies and we were done with it by 20 mins

having a go with konnyaku! teehee and later we tried baking

while wawiting for the cookies to bake in the oven. seen here with our star game for the stay over, that is taboo! haha.

after baking, ruth had to leave, so it was only 5 of us. we sat around in the living room and played a few rounds of taboo. it was superbly fun! haha. after that, we decided to play badminton before it was dark. we made our way to the nearby park and played badminton for about half an hour. hehe, i rmb very clearly that i was mooning about the little nyonya, why yueniang married paul.. haiz, though paul is a good guy and yueniang would finally have good life with a british man (a good point that emelyn brought up), i felt that this paul guy is so unknown!!! haiz, but i guess that's better than she breaking up chen xi's marriage or staying single (i will talk more of xiao niang re later!). :) haha.

at the park, i paired with nat against joanne and emelyn for badminton while xin yi watched us. haha, she didn't want to play... :( although i was still recovering from my illness, this exercise was really good as it made me sweat! haha. i felt much fitter and better from my illness after the workout. at 8, we made our way back to the house as we wanted to shower, eat, etc and be on time to catch xiao niang re!

dinner was sumptious! i loved the chicken wings! haha! after that, xin yi left. emelyn and joanne went to shower and nat n i were preparing ourselves for xiao niang re! hehe! i watched a little of soccer, man u vs m'borough, it was pretty boring cos there was no goals. and even though i was an avid fan of man u, when 9pm came, xiao niang re took the front seat! all four of us watched the show. this episode was very nice, though i won't good into details. hehheh, even auntie hwee keng also loves the show!

after xiao niang re, we played a few smashing rounds of taboo! it was so darn hilrious. once natalie described dreams as la la land... LOL i laughed so hard that i could only rock back and forth and no word could come out of my mouth! there was another time when emelyn was describing kangeroo and she said to joanne, animal from the place she went last year (australia), hop hop, and joanne dumbly guessed grasshopper! LOL! i mean kangeroo was such and obvious answer, haha, but under pressure, all the funny expressions and answers come out, it w as pretty interesting! half way through our game, nat had to go. haiz, we were begging her to stay, but she had homework to complete, so her parents didn't allow her to sleep over. :(

oops!! u can't say that word. heehee

after nat left, jo, em and i played taiti. haha, guess what! for the first 3 rounds straight, i had 3 tis! and to prove that the cards were indeed shuffled, i got different tis each time of course. i hid my smile all the time! ho ho.

after many games, we proceeded to watch the nanny, a comedical sitcom. and when it ended, we watch a midnight movie. haiz, i forgot what it's called, but it is about racial violence and dispute. it was pretty good and after watching it, i so much appreciate the peace and harmony we have in singapore among the multicolour of races and nationalities. btw, this movie so reminded me of this poem i had read in an email my dad sent me. it is very interesting.

The best poem of 2008

This poem was nominated by UN as the best poem of 2008,

Written by an African Kid

When I born, I black

When I grow up, I black

When I go in Sun, I black

When I scared, I black

When I sick, I black

And when I die, I still black

And you white fellow

When you born, you pink

When you grow up, you white

When you go in sun, you red

When you cold, you blue

When you scared, you yellow

When you sick, you green

And when you die, you gray

And you calling me colored?

haha! back to the recount, when the movie was over, we turned in. very very tired. it was 3 am.

today, i woke up at 10.30am! that's that latest in ages! haha, we went down to prepare our breakfast! we made bombay toast cooked the sausages. on top of those, we had chengtng and tomato and cucumber and papaya. heez, it w as delicious!

brunch spread! it was really fab, our bombay toast. :)

the ppl who slept over. :)

and for the last time, we watched the beginning of the movie norbit and then em and i bade farewell to joanne. :) this stay over was truly enjoyable n i could get to know my friends better. thanks joanne of the opportunity! :)

last pic together.

em n i were fetched by auntie hwee keng to the mrt. thanks auntie! then we travelled to bishan together n then parted ways. during the journey, i learnt about her hobbies, haha, very passive but admirable ones!

at j8, i bought a copy of 8 days, haha, just to read the synopsis of the little nyonya! haha! n u noe something, (spoiler) yuzhu did have a son. and i suspect that anqi is actually yuzhu biological grand daughter! i bet!!! haha, with anqi under-the-lip-mole in the first few episodes is so like joanne peh's. that may be some coincidence, but i think it is so... furthermore, it's supposed to be a consistency mistake on the part of the make up crew cos anqi did not sport the mole past the first few episodes, but maybe they purposely did it so that people will not suspect that anqi is not yueniang biological grand daughter and yueniang supposed son actually yuzhu's, but since she's mentally unsound, yueniang took custody of him. ai yah, this is unproven theory, but i think it is so true. haha, but forgive me if it is not! hehheh! ;)

Emelyn

2008-12-25T00:21:00.002+08:00

on tuesday night at about 11pm, i received a very pleasant surprise from emelyn. :) she had given me a note to wish me a blessed christmas! thanks so much emelyn! i love you so much (not in the wrong way of course, but as a beloved sister in Christ) your note cheered me up cos i was a little down at that moment. i was so touched that i even cried. haha, maybe i went overboard with my emotions, but i was really happy to receive ur note! i never expected that u would send me something via my sister. n u noe what, i also have something for u! it's perishable (haha, big clue here!) so i really hope we meet up soon! i really wish to see you soon and u will always be my best friend in fe along with lin yan! haha, that's a privilege! no lah, jkjk, u are so nice! :) we must keep in touch! adieu!

Secrets part 2

2008-12-24T13:25:00.003+08:00

i have discovered a few more facts about myself and wouldn't mind making them public.. since i have nothing better to do...

1. i really like good historical dramas! what i mean by good is not those crappy ones with a bad story line and acting. (it started with huan zhu ge ge, then the duke of mount deer deer 2000, da chang jin!!! and finally now it's the little nyonya!) coincidentally, all these dramas have rather good osts, so music does play a part!

2. if ever (ever and ever) my education does not work out for me, i will consider being a chef or baker. haha, i noe that's so shocking. haha, but i have always fancied cooking and baking since young. cos i helped out my mum esp with baking and occassionally with cooking. :) but if i am given the chance, i would want to do architecture. it is more or less confirmed, unless i change my mind at the last minute.

uh oh, that's all i have. :)

Carpenters!

2008-12-23T17:58:00.002+08:00

dearest blog, i have been having a fetish for carpenter songs. i noe they are soooo old songs. but they are soooo nice! haha! i used to only like top of the world. now i love almost their whole album! however, i think it is a compromise on my part as it is worldly music, but they are not that worldly huh... hehe, but i think some of the lyrics are very funny. like ticket to ride, and the song the end of the world, where there is like 'Why does the sun go on shining? Why does the sea rush to shore? Dont they know its the end of the world cause you dont love me anymore?... Why does my heart go on beating? Why do these eyes of mine crying? Dont they know its the end of the world? It ended when you said goodbye' awww. so touching.. haha, but the tunes are great, i just like them, they are my taste of songs, haha, it's pretty subjective. :)

Camp pics (ck)

2008-12-22T14:57:00.009+08:00

before i say anything else, i am very puzzle why ppl are saying that im funny and cute (look at the tagboard). haiz, im not at all lah! and huiqi is a laughing freak that's why she keeps laughing! u will see later in the ck camp pics, they are vital evidences for this fact!

noelene's group (their very boring group name) and cheryl, camp mistress! and iva, camp comm!

group itch! haha. at least this group name is better. those 2 ladies smiling are isa (L) and tze yan (the unglam woman!)

my group, gluteus maximus aka backside, butt2, butt2us... nat, ur mouth a bit big huh! actually not all members are around in this shot.

cheryl and isa. :) isa, me and elisa have names that are very close. isa, lisa and elisa. yeah, i noe u can see that....

elias (same letters as elisa!) comm member too, and vice camp master

first congregation.

during workshop in the night

morning exercise! hehe, this is like in school training.

we were supposed to be jogging and look at these lazy bums!

playing h2o

being chased by noelene, did she catch me? i think not!

morning devotion! led by michael and we were facing the sea.

josiah and i, the guitarist for camp, in action

pastor goh delivering his 2nd message.

it was lunh time and i discovered this amazing tiny pineapple bud! this is kongwee's finger in comparison to the fruit, it is so cute and small!

lunch time!

my games! the plastic bag game, we can see who laughed when the bag was on the ground!

aha! look at huiqi! she is laughing with her mouth agape! this is my evidence! ;) btw, this is the fox and squirrel game! it was pretty high activity and quite tensing!

finally, tze yan and josiah were the last ones standing. josiah won! haha cos tze yan got too flustered and lost concentration

my can can game! i am briefing the campers

this is the model example of how to transport the cans. no hands and the cans must be in contact between the 2 players.

the sponge captains ball. everyone loved this game although it made them smell! egg water, can u imagine it! i wouldn't have liked it if i had to play!

prof hanko! he is a really good preacher. one of my favs!

kong wee and the other ks discussion group

prof hanko and my discussion group! he is very down to earth despite his wealth of knowledge

dinner time! itch's turn to serve!

free time in the night and a number of girls were playing mrt. and where was i?

here i am! i was with the singing group which consisted of fe ppl. :) such as sharleen, tabi, phebe, pamela, ezra, tim quek, josiah and i. later iz chan and iz tan joined for a while.

morning devotion by boaz, i m playing the guitar, obviously. and iz tan taking over josiah

prof hanko talking and wilma and elaine at the back! they were the most esteemed guest of cerc during their stay in singapore. :) sadly, they had just gone back today. :(

prof hanko! :)

the last morning devotion by marcus. the mood was rather down.

first formal shot!

second formal shot! but some people premature lah, they informal a bit alr. haha

informal shot! everyone pointing to cheryl, our star! :) aiyoh and nat 'open coffee shop'!

Camp pics. (ks)

2008-12-22T11:18:00.011+08:00

my blog is seriously brimming full of words. so i shall put up some pics! :) i will put up the ks camp pics first. then on another post, the ck camp pics.

the assembly of almost all the campers in the hall of the bungalow. i miss everyone there now. :( from emelyn, lin yan, jemima, johanna, jessie and ben yeo...

1. introduction of the comm members whose effort made this camp more than possible.

camp master kevin and comm members hannah (L) and sharleen (R)

nathaniel, another comm member

amanda and emelyn! emelyn is also a comm member and my best friend

me with bernice and lin yan. they are my best friends too!

icebreakers! jo leading us with the first game

i was first to go. haha! rachel (rach) beside me, another good friend of mine

ahha! look at this 'sealion'!

2. introduction of newcomers

jem sim!

andrew loh

wallace and ryan

joanna doing chicken dance? haha

three beauties

bernice and her sadistic act to the styrofoam lunch box

morning exercise! bw in action! mohan's unglam!

this was part of the night walk on the second night. here's the poor old woman in the parable. brought to you by sharleen!

water games! look at mummy rach! she is so delicate that an umbrella is required to shield her from the slight drizzle.

my group with mummy jo! umbrella was needed cos rain got heavier

i sparring with rach for the dog and bone game

lin yan attacking the opooseing group. look how gentle she is!

and now look at this big bully! he doesn't spare a thought about the ladies he is splashing water on!

jo is still very much covered her mummy paper (or whatever u call it). and my unglam. i must have been suffering from a blinking disorder during the camp as quite a number of my pics have me with closed eyes.

look at rach! she looks like a mummy that had unfortunately run out of supplies of paper... a very nice necklace though!

teehee, my group with our mummy.

the quek bros in one of their not so surprising 'fights'

the big bully in action. haha i say big bully in a jk manner (no offense to nathaniel if he reads this!)

haha. now he is really funny during the appreciation session

ben yeo leaving with his dad. he will always be my best guy friend in fe! :)

the ice cream eaters. the penang bros here. they have joined us for 4 years! hope they will come again next year!

the clowns. hehe. and tryphena in the middle! i got to noe her during this camp and she's a really nice gal!

loading our things in to the bak mobile

hehe, i just realised that i have a lot pics of nathaniel. well, he is really a funny guy that's why! he looks like a kindergarten kid here!

saying adios to camp!

Secrets

2008-12-19T15:26:00.004+08:00

since im so bored. i have decided to tell all some of my secrets, to make them not secrets anymore...

the well known secret 1. im a hedonist
the shocking secret 2. i hate studying and exams
the prideful secret 3. im a self-proclaimed jane of all trades. but mistress (as in master) of none.
the disgusting secret 4. i like girls more than guys. i mean LOVE. i always crush girls.... :( - er jie says wait till i go jc. haha, but guys are so immature! yikes!
the forever unknown secret 5. i like _______
the empty secret 6. i dunno a lot about myself

China trip (part 3)!

2008-12-18T14:50:00.000+08:00

the final part (3)

29 OCT, Wednesday

Today, had no lessons, instead, we went to keyan, another scenic area in shaoxing. it was a large tourist park which had many lakes and rivers within. however, at the time when we went, it wasn’t a bit crowded, so it was a breeze walking through the park. on top of that, we had 2 boat rides (again) and were sight seeing. this place was great, fresh air and all the green. after walking quite a lot, we came upon a few rides that were stationed in the park. they were namely the Viking ship, bumper cars, archery etc… the teachers allowed us a ride on the Viking ship! so I bought a ticket for 10 yuan, sat with sherilyn and had a whale of time on the ship swinging from end to end. I was a little surprised that I did not few scared of the height at all, instead, I was screaming with joy.

the walk in the park took up the whole morning, so it was time to eat lunch at the park itself. it was more good food. haha. subsequently, we headed for anchang and I forgot what happened there… L but since I forgot, it probably wasn’t very exciting. hehe

after that, we went back to school where our buddy’s parent once again picked up for the second night of home stay. I remember being half anxious and half happy. anxious because I was afraid of the language barrier that was impossible to ignore, and I was happy cos it was the very last day that I had to endure. haha. anyway, the home stay today wasn’t too bad. lemme tell u why.

mrs xu decided to eat out for dinner, with yijia’s friend and her buddy sam ang. so I had company who could speak english. I was appeased. this was although mrs xu had said the previous night that she might eat out with melodi’s buddy’s family, but in the end, the plan did not materialize. so we went to some posh western restaurant adjacent to a hotel. we took a little while to decide where to sit, in the vip room or in the common area, whether we wanted privacy or ventilation. but in the end, ventilation was preferred. I was given the chance to order what I wanted. I ordered chicken porridge as I was quite full alr and knew that I couldn’t down large portions of food, furthermore, I the chicken porridge was one of the cheapest on the menu, so as to not tax the person footing the bill. the food was okay..

this night, I didn’t meet melodi at all, but im glad I managed to have some quality time with yi jia. we managed to have decent conversations and we had fun together. I taught her how to play the piano, pachabel’s canon in d and she was so happy to learn it that she picked up the first part in about 15 mins! she’s a quick learner, and her little history with music definitely played a part here. the rest of the time was spent watching repeated telecast of meteor garden on tv and watching variety shows, in chinese of course with no english subs. but I tried hard to follow and more or less managed to. im glad that we watch meteor garden together as it was a common interest and as a result, we had more to talk about. we also exchanged gifts. I gave her a souvenir and a bottle of perfume. she gave me a ‘souvenir’ that would make me really remember her. haha, it was a little memento of her pic when she was young and one of her dogs. additionally, she gave me a picture book of a bog would had a real life adventure in Africa, interesting huh. after that, we went to sleep.

30 OCT, Thursday

it was our last day in shaoxing. we went for tour in lan ting. we toured this park that had a magnificent Buddha effigy out of a solid rock that was easily 100-150 metres high! though im not Buddhist, but this craft was an impressive sight to behold! and I cannot imagine how many people risked their lives to carve the Buddha out, it was probably done when the sea level was higher (the park was claimed to be once covered by water, I dunno how, but they say so.) furthermore, there was a soft side to the seemingly high and mighty Buddha statue, there was a beautiful blue bird perched on buddha’s right index finger. it was a sweet sight. the park was home to also an interesting looking piece of boulder that had a very narrow base, but a very big top. it was like a pyramid turn upside down! it looked a little intimidating as it might topple and collapse, but good thing it did not. on the rock, there were inscriptions in Chinese which mean: the no. 1 rock under the sky. okay… haha. we walked further and then we encountered a over hanging canopy of trees with pink leaves. it was breathtaking! yun yun, jin ting, shariel and I did not take a second thought at taking a classic picture.

lan ting was enjoyable due the fresh air and the green. after the morning there, we went for lunch and then went to da yu ling. the story behind this memoriam for this guy da yu was because he was an upright official that cared for the peasants, esp the flood problems. so he built drains and dams for them and the people from then commemorated his deed for them. at the entrance, there was a high wall that had 9 large cauldrons location on top of it. the guide explained that the no. 9 was only reserved for the king as it was the largest single digit number, but because of the high admiration and honour the people had for da yu, they gave him the honour of the no. 9. and the water caudrons ( I forgot the real name for this) were in remembrance of his help in solving the flood problems. inside the da yu ling, there was a temple for da yu and outside, there was a large bell. mr lim paid 5 yuan to ring 5 times, and he was wishing us students and teachers good fortunate in studies and career. thanks mr lim for being to thoughtful. lol.

I guess that da yu ling took up the whole afternoon. then we went to some posh restaurant located in some high end hotel. we were to have our farewell dinner there. unfortunately, it wasn’t really a students’ affair, cos our buddies were not present. instead, it was ma xiao zhang and her band of teachers. so it was more of the teachers saying farewell, the students just ate to their hearts content and nothing more. anyway, there was crazily wide range of food there. from seafood to meat to veg to western food to desert etc. I even ate flower crab there and mussels. I really loved the seafood. haha. after dinner, we went back to the hotel for the night’s sleep.

31 OCT, Friday

we departed for Hangzhou early in the morning. on the bus, the teachers allowed us rest, that was good for us, if not we would not have the energy for the rest of the day. at Hangzhou, we went to the yue wang mausoleum. Hangzhou was yue fei’s home town, and thus they had a temple for this famous warrior. when I was young, I rmb reading a comic on the life of this patriotic war lord. his story is so sad and really makes people sympathise with him. he was so loyal to his country, and had inked on his back 4 words that signified his total loyalty and devotion to protecting his country, yet, he was accused as the disloyal subject and hence executed. I really admire this guy, but his ending is just too sad.

after the tour at the yue wang mausoleum, we ate lunch and then we headed for the west lake cruise. the west lake was really beaut! we viewed the lei fong tai, where the legendary madam white snake was trapped by the monk fa hai. we also so saw a few other pagodas, and along the trip, there was a constant breeze filling into the boat. it was a pleasure traveling on the west lake.

next up was the flower garden at the west lake park itself. this flower garden didn’t really impress me much, but there was vibrancy of colours present in the flowers. so it was quite an eye opener.

after this, we had dinner and then we transited to the cultural performance park. this place was super cool. the park was a in the setting of the dynastic era, it was as if we were in a city, with the high walls, and there were even ‘soldiers’ in costumes guarding the gate. on the walls, we occasionally saw some imperial edict kind of thing and the most wanted list. these things added all together made the place seem like it was an authentic historical ground. in the ‘city’, there were many mini stalls, and since we had about 30 mins before the cultural show started, we were allowed to roam about, buy things and look around this interesting place. I walked around with sherilyn and we took a few note-worthy pics! there was this waterfall, probably man made, but it was so scenic!

soon it was time for the show. since we didn’t purchase the best of tickets, we were seated at seats which were a few rows short from the back. the characters in the show appeared really tiny, nevertheless, the show was enthralling enough! there was acrobatics, dancing, singing and all that u could name. haha, it is some world class performance and not some cheap show made up of any kind of actors. there were even eng subs! haha! they potrayed the stories of the historical greats, like yue fei, madam white snake, and others.

after the show, I still rmb the pl group scurrying to stay together in the midst of the sea of people. there were easily 10 thousand ppl! fortunately, no one got lost and then we were fetched to our dinner destination. with that, we checked into our hang zhou hotel.

1 NOV, Saturday

in the morning, we set off to the Hangzhou bookshop. there, the prices were more costly than that of the shanghai bookstore. but they were still affordable. I bought the good earth, my mum’s lit text last time, so I was quite curious about it. also, I bought about 7 dvds! haha, including 2 of Charlie chaplin’s works. hehe. I felt very happy. LOL!

after that, we went to the mei jia wu tea plantation. here, I spent a good sum of money on buying tea leaves! 300 yuan! that is S$60! wow, I can’t believe in myself, but then I couldn’t bear not to miss out on such a ‘miracle’ item. why do I say so? it is because the sales woman gave a demonstration on how the tea drink could neutralize some black liquid in ur stomach, the black liquid was a result of starch (from rice) and water. also the sales women said that the black solution was the culprit of the black/brown spots under our skin as we grow older. heh I was so grossed out at the black thing, so I decided to buy one premium grade bottle for my family. :) haha, im so nice! and I bought it too cos I saw the teachers buying, so I thought, at least it is safe enough for the teachers to believe in it, and it wasn’t a sham.

after that, we had lunch and then travelled to Suzhou. haha, I must admit that I was quite excited about Suzhou, for their mei nϋ. I wanted to see for my eyes what beauties the Suzhou women were. haha. on the bus, the teachers gave us some quite grueling lessons and we had the qiang da competition again..

at Suzhou, we had the privilege to do more shopping at the guan qian street. I bought chestnuts again! but Suzhou chestnuts aren’t the best! L they were freaking hard to shell. L and the taste wasn’t all that fantastic, although the stupid store keeper recommended that particular type of chestnut our of her 3 kinds. I bet she was having me on! I didn’t really buy anything else as I was quite tight on money after buying the tea leaves!

after shopping a little, we had a tour along the old canal. it was quite beautiful as there were floats about the canal and they were lighted. other than that, the cruise was okay… oh! before I forget, I was utterly disappointed at how ‘beautiful’ the Suzhou ladies were. they weren’t at all! maybe that was all those that I had set my eyes on, maybe all the pretty ones were shut at home and not allowed to set foot outside their homes, in fear of being abducted, but who was so old fashioned in thinking, maybe all the pretty ones had gone on holiday, and left the ugly ones behind. lol, or maybe my taste is too eccentric. haiz, but the term Suzhou beauties is an over statement, that is in my opinion. I bet the Koreans a tones more ravishing, be they fake or not. :)

yup, so after cruising and walking down the canal, we checked into the Suzhou hotel.

2 NOV, Sunday

the first place we were brought to was this silk embroidery factory. there, we had a tour around the showcases of silk embroidery products. they were terrific! I couldn’t take my eyes off them. my group was scheduled to do shopping first. I was thinking that I needed to get at least something back home. the problem was the prices. the cheapest nice product was 150 yuan. I managed to get one thanks to mr lim, lending me money, even though that wasn’t the best resort. L but the design on the product was very nice, and it depicted 2 lover birds on a tree branch. I could say that I bought it for my parents, even though it was using their money (I paid mr lim back at the airport in singapore) after that, we had a hands on session on embroidering silk! it was very tedious to me, I had to sit still and the only action required was the up and down movement of my right hand. my body was so restless! haha. but my end product was quite well done lah, esp with the silk thread red in colour, what more could I ask for!

after the embroidery factory visit, we had lunch within the vicinity and then we went to the tiger hill park. it was nothing spectacular, on the sword testing stone caught my attention. :) it was a piece of large rock that had a fine and even slit in the middle, which was supposedly caused by a sword. it was quite cool and I even got the chance to stand on the rock! lol..

with that, our time at Suzhou was done, and we travelled back to shanghai. the teachers, as usual made use of this time to have qiang da. I wasn’t very interested cos my group was losing in the point system. oh, maybe I should reprimand myself for saying that cos it was probably because I didn’t participate that my group did so badly. but I was sitting at the back (the seats were allocated according to groups, so I could protest for the front seat cos it w as cause too much trouble for others), and my voice was so weak, esp when I spoke chinese, that even if I shouted with all my might, the front couldn’t hear me. I tried once on the 2 trip from shanghai to shaoxing, I wanted to answer mr lim’s maths question, but was too soft, so I made a blunder. L from then, I just shut my trap whenever there was this qiang da thing.

when we reached, it alr dusk. we had dinner at one of the restaurants that we had visited earlier. this time, we were to sit in our groups! it was a very fun time with all my group mates. we had a lot of funny incidents, with invoke laughter throughout the rest of dinner time.

following dinner was the visit to the pearl oriental tower! it was definitely exciting! our group went up to a height that could see the whole of the city of shanghai and its suburbs. but I guess I couldn’t see much cos it was dark at night, haiz, we should have gone in the day! L anyway, it was at the opt when someone was being mean me and I had to sms to ah heng for her comfort. that woman, I dunno why she like that but she like always bore some stupid grudge against me. I didn’t do anything to deserved that lor, she just broke up with my clique and then all because she had friends on the trip, she was throwing her weight around. haiz, I have almost forgotten this matter as I abide by this idiom: live and let live! but she was seriously mean! sickening!

that night in the hotel room, I asked her why she was so bad to me, and then she gave her excuse, “oh, because I’m no longer with ur clique, so I not so close to u anymore…” weak excuse! this would probably have gotten a measly 2 out of a 25 for a lit essay! in me, I was thinking, “so what, does that mean u purposely don’t want to be nice to me? sickeningly… anyway, tmr, we will be back in singapore, u have ur share of friends, n I have mine, so we are fair and square! n then u will not be able to act high and mighty!!!” from then, I was quite lonely for the rest of the trip. but at least I was going home soon!

3 NOV, Monday

we left for airport at 4! slept on the bus. when we reached the airport, we checked in and then waited to board the plane. I rmb watching a little soccer on tv while waiting, it sure beats talking with the people I dun wan to.. on the plane, I watched 3 and a half movies during the 5h flight! they included angus, thongs and perfect snogging, the dark knight, corbardes (a Spanish movie), and a Korean movie, and another which I forgot. haha! on the plane, I also got a few sia souvenirs and I even brought the pillow home! LOL, so kiasu me! at the airport, mum and dad were there to pick me up. I bought a medium fries to eat. :) and then the following day, I had sore throat! lol. okay, so my journey to china and back ends here! :)

Yay! da jie's back

2008-12-17T14:16:00.002+08:00

hello blog! my da jie's back! n im very happy. :) thank God for keeping her safe through the 5-6 months in the states! hehe, da jie's very nice and i hope she n i will not quarrel as often as we once did. anw, the bad thing about her homecoming is... i have to sleep on the upper bunk, which is soooo troublesome... lol. the good thing was that i could eat crab last night, not that crab is such a rarity here, but i ate huge ones! :) of course da jie being at home is good enough a thing. haha. anw, the main point in this post is: DA JIE, WELCOME BACK! :D

CK/CKS Camp 2008!

2008-12-15T11:57:00.009+08:00

it's been 2 days since i've come back from ck camp. it was fun, but not as fulfilling as ks camp. maybe cos i was in the comm and thus was constantly worried about how things would turn out. esp for the games i planned, got feedback that they were real good, but i still can't forge how nervous i was... and being the logistics in charge with nat was a task that demanded quite an amount of responsibility.. so i was kind of more stressed and tired than enjoying myself. maybe ths stress was self-inflicted, haha, but im this kind of person that puts herself in stress for no reason. lol.

day 1, 10 dec wed

i can't really remember what emotions i was going through, probably more nervous than excited. i had packed my bag just the day before and shaking my head at how huge and heavy it was.. i had used the same bag for ks camp and when i got to camp, it was large in comparison to many other bags, and i told emelyn that i didn't feel secure having a small bag, if i had brought a smaller bag, i was afraid thathad left things out or worse, at the end of camp, with the cumulation of other additional items, i wouldn't be able to squeeze everything in and become a lobang auntie, so i just stuck to the big bag although it was embarrassing.

kind auntie wan teng volunteered to fetch me along with her 4 girls to camp. ps, vbs and ck/cks camp was held in the same venue and on the same days, so it was pretty convenient for auntie wan teng. btw, since nat and i were log, we had a few boxes worth of groceries and other stuff to bring to camp, good thing my dad could help us in this area, if not auntie wan teng's car wouldn't have any space left for sitting! yep, in the car, we were quite sien, so i took out my guitar and we had a mini sing along session in the car. :) it was cool. by 45 mins, we reached.

we assembled in the main hall for ck/cks and then we were given the camp opening by cheryl, the camp mistress. then we split into our groups to come up with a group name and hail someone as our leader. my group consisted of nat, bernice, joanne, boaz, isaac chan, samantha and elias. we elected boaz as our leader and out group name was gluteus maximus, aka backside or butt.. lol. other groups were itch and noelene's group (no creativity here... haha)

after that, we proceeded to the next programme, which was ice breakers. the first game we played was a can game, by which every group had a rubber band with strings attached to it, and also there were each member a can representing him/her. so every member had to arrange the cans using the strings to make them in a certain order of something, like weight etc. i will tell all here, lol, my group did a great deal of cheating! even though elias was the organizer and was playing with us, he closed one eye whenever we cut corners by using our hands instead of really using strings only. lol. the first pattern required was a straight row, followed by creating a row on a narrow curb and finally forming a pyramid with the cans. and boy, my group cheating unabashedly, of course we concealed it. haha, but we still did not come in tops.

the second game played was some food war. it was pretty physical and i didnt really like this game. each group had a station where it had all it's 'food supplies'. the aim was to steal other groups' food as well as guard the food we had. in addition to all of the above, we had to guard our 'lives' which hung on the tail that we had on our backs. once an enemy ripped off our tail, we had to drop all that we had and go to the tail giver who was located quite far away. so the point was, prevent ur enemies from grabbing ur tail off, and horde food!! for the 1st game, was more of attacker, but i never got any loot, i did not dare to take risk... haiz, i also rmb getting into a really rough tussle with auntie suet yin, and she scratched my arms, but i didn't rmb hurting her in any way, so i was quite pissed that she caused a few scratch scabs on my arms. during the first game, joanne and josiah arrived! i was so excited about their presence in camp cos i think it was time for them to assimilate into ck. so they played round 2 with us. in the end, my group had quite alot of spoil and they were for our teabreak, haha, but like what bernice had said, it was no use fighting so much, cos in the end, everyone would just share food.

following teabreak was message 1 by pastor goh on worship. something cool that i learnt from this message was the 1st 4 commandments each spoke about an aspect of worship. like the 1st was on who to worship, the 2nd, how to worship, the 3rd, what to worship and the 4th, when to worship. it was something that never struck me till that day. later during discussion, my discussion group which had members like isa, tze yan, elias and joanna and kong wee, our facilitator for then went to the guys dorm and parked ourselves on upper beds of 2 bunks. it was then i shared about the contemporary worship in my school and how much i felt it inapropiate for christian worship. i really dislike the type of chapel services we have in school and all the christian pop songs sung again and again. although my other christian friends are okay with it, i seriously think that it is not right.

after discussion, by right we had dinner, but joanne, nat, some guys and i played soccer. the guys were namely aaron, marcus, boaz, josiah and daniel. they were the soccer faithful throughout camp and always played soccer during free time, while i always switched about soccer and captains ball and volley ball. btw, in regards to soccer, lemme tell u something, i dunno why, but every single soccer game i played, i ALWAYS scored a goal and then never could anymore. it's weird... but at least i scored a goal.. haha, while some others didnt have that chance. yeah, so i played soccer till i was almost soaked with sweat. then went for dinner. the amount of veg left was pathetic so i had minimal veg and lots of rice and meat... oh, this was going to be one of my sacrifices if i wanted to play soccer before the meal.

after dinner, we had a workshop. oh did i forget.. i was the guitarist for this camp too. lol, my church quite sad, very little talent for guitar, but good thing josiah can play too, so we were the official guitarists for camp. the worshop was conducted by pastor goh and was on service. i basically learnt that whatever gifted i had, i had to give it God in service, which i am proud to say that i alr am, cos love to play guitar for singspiration during youth meetings and camps. then i paired off with nat to share about our talents and how we could use it in God's kingdom.

after the worshop, we had a 'night walk'. this was planned by kong wee and fortunately, i was the one who was not blindfolded, cos if i was blindfolded, i would feel super useless and handicapped as being alr impaired in hearing, i didn't want to have anything less. i had to lead my group through the camp site and there was of course some uneven trail and even one part when there was wet mud, so i had to guide them ultra carefully. however, the fun of the night walk was marred when ezra lost his specs, in the dark, it was impossible to locate his specs, so we were quite worried about it. in the end, ezra had to go home and wasn't back till the following day.

before going to sleep, i realized that ihad left my tooth brush at home! i was so angry with myself. goodthing mum was coming to the campsite the following day, my saving grace. other than realizing that my toothbrush was absent, i had some fun before lights out, i played bridge with friends. it was fun! :)

day 2, 11 dec thurs

day 2 started with exercise conducted by elisa and hui qi! yay, we jogged a little around camp then played h2o and finally chain catching. i played till i was sweaty again, hehe. then it was devotion time. i rmb we were sitting facing the sea and i was casually sipping on a can of 100 plus while michael led us with devotion. after devotion, we had breakfast, for me, it was cereals and milk again!!! :) i love koko krunch with honey stars in milk. that's the best combo ever! hehe, but we were fortunate to have the auntie cooks who prepared pau for us. it was a filling meal for me.

next up was message 2 by pastor goh on bible intake. i was reminded that the bible is authoritative and reliable, so we should not alter it to fit with what we want. discussion was with pastor goh and there i was encouraged to pick up a commentary to follow me through my daily devotion and also to find out whatever i didn't understand in the bible. thanks pastor goh! i will try to make these things become real.

before lunch, a large group of ckers wanted to play captains ball, but was stopped by cheryl as lunch was alr prepared for us on the table. so we no choice but to push play back, but i was afraid of getting stitch, so while i played soccer, i played goalie and later on, i went up and scored my lone goal for the game. after that, we played captains ball but i had to leave half way to prepare for my games slot which was next. noelene and i set up the obstacle course for the can-can game and got ready all materials.

soon it was time for my games! my first 2 games were in door games. the first was the plastic bag and laughter game, which i got from ks camp. it was just a warm up activity that made everyone happy and relaxed. after that, i introduced to the a game which was slighty more tensing, which was fox and squirrel.

after that, we moved outdoors. there, we played the can-can game. it was tremendously funny watching the groups work together. there were a few incidents when isaac tan (who joined my group in my place) piggy backed isaac chan, in between them, all the cans, i guess they were raring for first place that when i.t ran, the cans dropped, and they had to start from the beginning. more haste, less speed guys! though there were times when the piggy back theory worked well. but there was once it failed rather badly andddd very dangerously! tze yan was piggy backing isa and the string which they had to go under was caught in isa's eyes but tze yan went on and the string was pulled down by sheer force on isa's eyes. man! so scary and then later while tze yan had to climb up a chair, she fell forward, knocking isa and herself down. but all they did was burst into a heap of laughter. so i was glad that they weren't hurt.

sunbesequently, we played captains ball, this time, with wet sponges. i didnt play cos i was organizer and i couldn't get wet cos of my hearing aids. hehe, i dipped the sponges in disgusting egg+water+soap water. eww! and there was even cold water! but my friends all loved the game. aw wright...

after my games, which everyone obviously enjoyed, we played more captains ball and had tea break. then we settled down for message 3 on prayer by prof hanko. i learnt that we should pray to God for who he is, our creator and therefore, we have to offer thanksgiving to him. during discussion, prof hanko asked a few intriguing questions, like why didnt the saints of the old testament pray 'our father', while it was so in the new testament. it was because Jesus is our elder brother and we are adopted sons of God. oh, after the message, i understood it so well finally. also, i had some pleasant surprises! tabi, sharleen, phebe, and pamela had come to visit us and would be staying till the following night! oh, how exciting!

after discussion, we had dinner and then i played soccer with the usual group, this time we had more ppl like tze yan and isa. heh, i dunnid to say this again, but i scored! hehe, and i was beginning to discover my hidden passion and goalkeeping, although i wasn't that good. but at least it allowed my food to churn without entering my appendix. at 8, it was time for movie screening. we watched facing the giants, it was quite good as a chirstian show, but i guess it wasn't great, cos movies aren't the best way to impart christian values... we had a mini discussion on the movie. then i played more card games and then went to sleep. i had my toothbrush finally! thanks mum! :)

day 3, 12 dec fri

today started with exercise again. hehe, organizers hui qi and elisa were relying on me to give them ideas lol. so we played jacob's ladder, cowboy and dog and bone. then boaz gave devotion. he was too soft that i couldn't really hear what he was sharing...

after that was breakfast. my, i tell u that ck has ferocious appetite! i had gotten 2 large boxes of cereal and bread and nutella and other stuff for breakfast. on top of that, the aunties prepared pau and pandan cakes and milo. and within the first breakfast, the 2 boxes of cereal were finished, 3 cartons of milk were emptied and we were running on low supplies! later, i asked sharleen whether she had any idea on how much breakfast food nathaniel got for ks camp, she said, "probably a lot more, cos u noe who he is..." lol, okay, maybe i really underestimated the amount of food needed for breakfast. anw, good thing that uncle faichong bought 3 large boxes of cereal more, if not i would be in hot soup!

when we were still eating breakfast, the hankos had arrived. this time wilma and elaine came along, so we had to play host to more ppl! the last message was on sunbmitting to God's will. for discussion, kong wee sat in for my group and then we discussed on submitting to our parent's will as they are appointed by God in our lives to guide us. hmm.. i must confess that i haven't been very guai to my parents, esp my dad... haiz but i'll try..

message was followed by lunch and then we went to west coast park for camp outing! we took a chartered bus there. on the bus, majority of the girls, including me played games, like the animal game and mafia etc. it was a pleasant time on the bus.

when we reached, we settled down along a field of grass. there, cheryl conducted her games, the first being on the pavement. the first game was traffic jam, and i thought i was experienced in this cos i played this exact game in ks camp alr, but it turned out to be slightly different, and this version of the game was unbearably easy, while ks' was much more fun and challenging. the next game was some acid pool thing that which i didn't understand the concept behind it, but basically, we had to use whatever resources we had to take a bottle out of the acid pool, without us going into the boundary set by cheryl. while my group was pondering on how it could ever by possible to carry out, isaac chan, who was very playfully experimenting around different methods, very unintentionally slipped on the bottle and he went on his back with his limbs pointed to the sky. however, he got someone hurt during the process.. that was bernice, n i guess it hurt super a lot, cos it was her jaw line that was hit. being a very small surface area, there was definitely a lot of pressure on her jaw, so i seriously empathised with her, well knowing that this incident could cost her her entire afternoon of fun. so joanne and i we quick to comfort her and even pucked up courage to request for a bag of ice from the macs nearby. and boy, they were generous enough, giving us a bagful of ice, more than we needed. so the task was now to cajol bernice into rubbing the ice on her affected area, though it was be excrutiatingly painful. thank God, bernice was compliant and then she could join us for the rest of the activities!

what was up next was this super embarrassing game (at least to my group). it went like this. we had to do catepillar walk for quite a distance then train 'walk' and then prisoner walk, of course, girls and guys in separate lines. the first was bearable, but the second was abhorrible and the last, was impossible (cos the other teams had finished, so it was impossible for us to even do it, yeah, so pathetic...) what's worse was that we had to transport a cup full of water, yeah, so it was extra effort here and not that simple. at the end, my group was pretty slow, but our cups were almost full! so i guess that made up! and the last game was machine! bernice and i had also played this in ks camp, but what made it different was the presence of isaac chan! he was sooooooooo darn hilarious!!! the first of object was computer. nat n i were the screen, joanne was the com user, boaz was the cpu (with his nose as the button, ears as the volume control, nose as the usb plug in, and his mouth the cd player... lol! isaac injected humour when he said that joanne had to be careful cos boaz's nose very oily, lol!), bernice was the mouse, samantha was keyboard and lastly, isaac and elias were the computer characters. at first, joanne would play cs, which is counter strike, and then watch, superman and the baddie. i wondered whether prof hanko, wilma and eliane had any clue about the worldly things we were potraying, but im glad they were having a good laugh anyway, thanks to funnyman isaac! the second object was a car/bus/car.. lol, my group was so retarded! i was an ah ma, isaac was the fat driver and so on.. we really had a good time. after the game, we played captain's ball, while some guys played soccer. i played soccer for a while, scored my only goal and then played captains ball. LOL!

we played for about half an hour and then the bus had come. so we boarded and on the bus, we played more mafia. upon reaching the campsite, we had teabreak. nat n i utilized that time to prepare for my upcoming auction game that would settle dinner. i was very stressed cos we had many items that were not around, but the aunties really comforted us as they had prepared tonnes of food. plates of sushi, chicken wings, otah, omelettes etc.. oooh, thanks so much aunties!

after teabreak was workshop no 2 on propriety in dressing, by auntie ah moi. auntie ah moi made it a point to address the guys too, instead of just focussing on girls, which i thought was a good point cos pastors always singled it out on the ladies, and that wasn't very fair.. :)

i left workshop early to do the last minure preparation for my auction. finally, it was time! i was quite sure that i would lose my voice during the auction, but i didn't! things went pretty smoothly. there were a few hiccups here and there esp when i group got something out of a mystery item that they didn't fancy. hehe, it was so exciting! now, i now how jeff probst feels in survivor auction, hehe! all in all, we had a very full dinner and there was left overs, but not much. we had a 'finale' with ice cream and coke, u could combine them to make a float which was great! i had a float and the foam formed a hill on the rim of my cup! haha.

after dinner, it was the tedious journey. i must say that i w as a little disappointed with the games, cos it was supposed to be some sort of an amazing race, but iva did not have the time to do a good job, so i forgive her.. hehe. no lah, i don't have the right to forgive people or not to, thanks iva for the effort put im, i loved the limbo-ing! hehe. after tedious journey, most of the ckers played captains ball till 12 plus. it was here when i once again discovered a hidden passion of mine, that is being the captain! catching balls gave u the thrill! :) after that, we played a few rounds of mafia and bridge. i had comm meeting to wrap things up, then the day was over.

day 4, 13 dec sat

this day, we had no exercise! i quite wanted to protest! haha. anw, we had to do cleaning up and then we took a few group shots! by then i was very tired alr.. this is the effect of not having morning exercise! we sang the theme song once more and camp closed.

i went to jurong point for brunch with nat's family (excluding uncle chee choong). then headed home. this camp was enjoyable in its way, but very very exhausting, esp cos i was the comm member and thus i had an extra responsiblilties to carry. :) but i had thoroughly enjoyed the messages, the fun and the fellowship!

KS camp 2008!

2008-12-06T12:35:00.012+08:00

hey blog! i've come back from ks camp! and i shall blog about it while it is fresh in my memory. actually i was planning to finish u p my 3rd the final post of the written account of my china trip, and was pressing to do so cos da jie made a bet with me, haha. but i have decided that ks camp is MORE important as it involves my spiritual life. also, i have promised emelyn that i will blog, and that it will be a long post, so i don't want to keep her waiting! hmm... i've just napped for for 3 hs and when i woke up, first thing to do was blog, but i have to be super concious of the time, cos i don't want to infringe the law of christian liberty!

anyway, first things first, this post will be very alike my other recount posts, very long and sometimes boring, but all in the name of memory's sake, so bear with it.

day 1 - tues 2 dec 2008. 'i'm lovable lisa....'

first of all, that 'i'm lovable lisa....' thing was actually a qoute from me on the first day. wanna know why i said so.. find out!

the day before on monday, i had a contract with joanna and bernice to travel by taxi to the campsite itself, and with it, we had to adhere by certain rules like waiting at the main road for the taxi so that when it came, we could hop on without wasting money on waiting time. the taxi was flagged by joanna (and her sis jema who i did not have a fore-knowledge of her presence) and would travel to my house and subsequently bernice's. i had a set of bulky lobang that consisted of my guitar and my enormous duffel bag. good thing mum helped me to the bus stop, if not i would have used up a considerable amount of my energy... while waiting for the taxi to arrive, i was a little nervous of what i would say to joanna when i saw her, remembering that i had a year's worth of things to talk with her, i was both worried and calmed at the same time.

so joanna came and i saw jema too, i hopped on. in the taxi, i was surprised that i could talk freely with them, catching up with them a little, and sharing a few laughs.. my fears were unfounded. then we headed for bernice's condo and then she boarded. jema had a little joke about bernice being too big and the rear had no space for her so she had to lie in the boot. harhar, that was some lame joke that unconciously made me feel more awake and comfortable with them.

the ride was a pretty smooth sailing one, without jams or worse, being lost on the way. so we reached there in about 45mins, and the fare was $24.20. bernice smartly bargained with the taxi driver to give us a flexibility of $0.20 and she achieved it. so we had a fare that could be cleanly divided by 4. nice work bernice! when we reached, i thought we were the first cos the place was so quiet, but i was wrong, the bungalow had many footwear outside at the door, so i was preparing myself to be greeted by the follow youths and maybe get a 'long time no see' from them. but no one said that, maybe 1 year to them was a day? lol. although i had no 'long time no see' from them, i'm certain that they had missed me and had welcomed me sweetly with open arms, whoever i went up to gave me a broad smile. :)

anw, when i got in the bungalow, i first greeted emelyn! my best friend for camp! i didn't see lin yan around, so i thought she hadn't reached. and lin yan is also my best friend for camp! haha. anw, emelyn led me to the room she was sleeping in, which was the same old room we had slept in the previous year with rachel tan and joanne. this year, we had a new comer jemima sim, and she roomed with us. my bed was the upper bunk and emelyn's was the lower bunk. jemima had the double bed for herself (at least until part timer joanne claimed the other half) after putting my bag down, i went out and said hey to a few people, namely ben yeo, rachel (goh), nathaniel, kevin, hannah etc. they said hey back and exchanged smiles.

soon it was time to gather for the official opening of the camp. camp master kevin greeted us and welcomed us. we had the introduction of camp personnel and the camp theme song and verse. i was girls' dorm ic, and i had no idea whether my role involved anything other than waking people up, which i sucked cos i woke up later than them... so i immediately told emelyn to take over me, cos she seems better at it from past experiences. the camp theme song was new to me, but it was very nice and i liked it in no time. we had 4 groups. namely epistle, testimony, witness and children of light. mine was children of light (col) and consisted of johanna (jo) and jessie who were our group leaders, jema, jemima, ryan, kevin, tim quek and i.

it was time for ice breakers! joanna led us and we sat in a circle. there after, she explained that the first game was as follows, we had to introduce ourselves, by stating our name with an adjective that more of less described us and started with the same letter as our name. in my mind, i went oh... i've played this before in p5, when miss lam introduced herself as sleepy sarah and i as lovable lisa. so i probably carried a very confident expression, and that is probably why joanna asked me to start. and lol, my mind went blank. i wasn't lovable, besides, that p5 vocabulary... but i hate unwanted silence, especially whenever i was the cause of it. so i blurted out 'i'm lovable lisa' and i was relieved that ppl laughed, cos what i just said was rubbish. lol. after thinking about it, i realised im more of lisa, the leisure lover, in other words, the hedonist. back to the point, i also stated my age and which school i am from and how long i have been a christian. then i threw the ball to emelyn and then the game went on. this game generated laughs at a few points of time, when the ball was thrown to ryan, he deflected it with his camp booklet. LOL, it was so quick and i was surprised that he could respond that fast. also, it was entertaining watching the verbal squabble between the quek brothers. song jia said that she was sociable-not, i guess joanna meant that the adjective was meant to be a positive one, but she didn't define, so we left it at that.

after the first game, we had another game that was miming facts about ourselves. i partnered rachel and i mime that i like seafood and red. actually u could say i will red seafood like crabs and lobsters, but i didn't mean them to be combined cos i really love all kinds of seafood, all but the deplorable cockles! lol. rachel told me that she knew jap (which i alr knew) and that she was considering body building! LOL, i never never knew that fact, it must have evolved during the 1 year of my hiatus from fe, if not i might have known. for the finale of this game, we all had to guess what jo had to say which jessie had no clue on how to decipher. but i managed to guess easily cos i could lip read. lol, hamsters still pretty much are the highlights of jo's life.. her phrase was 'my hamster changed home'. LOL!

the game which followed was an improvision of the game blow wind blow. we had to state i love people who love.. yeah, so when it was my turn, i said i love people who love sports. :) and im glad many people share my sentiments. after the game, the game of ice breakers was to a close.

after the ice breakers, we had lunch. i remember having chicken rice, and it was brought to us by auntie saw huey. thanks auntie! anyway, next up we had SYLO, which was short for sing your lungs out. i found myself very familiar with the robust singing of the ksers. i have always enjoyed singing with them as they nvr lacked enthusaism when it came to singing, furthermore, there were a considerable number of strong singers in our midst, thus in pitch wise, we always met the mark. i was one of the official camp guitarists, so i played the guitar this round.

following that, we had our first message on guarding out heart by uncle joseph liow. i learnt that our heart is what God sees as most important, thus, we must do our utmost to keep it from evil and sin. also, that we could do so by relying on God to help us and centering God's word in our hearts. during discussion later on, i shared about pranking diane, haha, i still feel bad about the incident that also broke our clique up!

when discussion was over, it w as time for 'chapalang' game time! haha, i had no idea what on earth was chapalang, maybe it's the brother of hampalang... anyway, i asked emelyn at the start of camp when i was still flipping through the booklet and she said that i would noe later, of course i would if not how would i play her game? anyway, the game was sort of a team bonding game that required us to be able to spray out our team members' names in seconds, at the same time, be quick in passing balls from under our legs to above our heads. wow, it rhymes. haha. so the game is as follows (i hope i will be able to explain it better than emelyn as it is quite complicated at first). basically, there are 2 balls for 4 groups. so 2 groups will have a ball each while the other two have none. when the game starts the groups that have the ball will throw the ball as far as possible while the other group chases after it, the members have to stand in a circle and one person in the middle will shoot his/her tongue off with all the names of the group members, the more rounds gone, the better. once the other group chasing after the ball has gotten it, they have to pass the ball under their legs and above their heads and then shout stop, that is to stop the other group from saying the names, and then they will throw the ball some where else and then start reciting their group memebers' names, and the game follows in that cycle. okay, it that clear enough? eh i hope so, but i think emelyn did a better job cos we eventually played the game in the proper, while i think mine would make people never start the game. okay, im confusing myself now... :/ anyway, my team's alpha male kevin joined the another group for this game as we had uneven numbers, and my group was very reluctant of this, but later i learnt that he was more of a hindrance than help, lol, his excuse: i purposely made it so, so that our group could win.. um, okay kevin...

after chapalang, we had the game traffic jam, my group teamed with epistle and guess what, we solved the seemingly impossible to solve puzzle. anyway, we accomplished that after trying out many times, but it was sure better than the other group which never succeeded. it was thanks to the focus we had that enabled us to solve the problem. :) well done col and epistle! :) anyway, it was during this game that the penang brothers came, that's why there were a lot of distractions with nicholas and all. it's the forth time jonathan and timothy have joined us. :) im very happy for that. haha. hope that this will continue to years to come.

the next game played was depicting an object. i dunno whats the name for this game, but it involved a group forming a particular object given by emelyn. the first was toilet bowl if im not wrong. lol, so i rmb i was the toilet bowl seat with jess, we linked arms and squat down. then beside us was johanna, the flushing component, jema was the toilet paper holder and jemima was the toilet paper as she was wearing white then. kevin was the toilet user and ryan was amusingly the 'poop', so he hid behind johanna till kevin 'did his business' and then he would come from behind to appear and when kevin flushed the toilet, he would once again disappear. lol! it was really funny! the second object was a car. i was the car front door plus front wheel, jo was the other front wheel and kevin and ryan was the rear wheels. jema was the driver, jess was the flashlight (lol, she used her camera which unfortunately didn't coorperate during the real thing itself and led to a blooper) jemima was mutli-purpose steering wheel and wiper. whee, it was really funneh! that's was all i think for the games. great job done emelyn!!! :D

after that, we played captains ball. :) i must say that captains ball took over as one of my 'fun' during the camp as the table tennis table was removed (much to my despair) another things i like about ks was captains ball, cos we truly displayed team work and sportsmanship during captains ball. furthermore, we had many strong players, thus the game was always enetertaining and fast paced. i rmb being more or less active during this game cos i wanted to sweat it out. :) i LOVED sports rmb? :)

dinner came at 6.30, uncle wee beng was the provider. thanks uncle! :) i forgot what we ate. hmm... :( bad memory. anyway, i recall having bad appetite throughout camp for some unknown reason, so food was definitely not the best thing at camp. :( also i had some stomach pains, i guess was because of the water cooler water cos whenever i drank it, it sent some painful sensation through my stomach. after dinner, ben, lin yan, jonathan mohan (whom i shall 'mohan' as he seems very mohanish to me... ps, i called him that way at camp, lol, and he wasn't too happy, so make sure this doesn't reach his ears!) and i played cards (to be specific, taiti)! this is another 'fun' of mine at camp. :) also, it was dinner time when my group lost a memeber, tim quek, he wasn't feeling very well and had to leave. :( but he was back on the third day! fast recovery tim!

soon it was time to gather for SYLO, joanna played guitar as i was unfamiliar with most tunes and then we had message 2 on christian liberty. :) when our speaker uncle gim theng entered, ben quek asked where's marcus? haha, i was upset that he didn't come, didn't he want to meet up with his friends from childhood?! haha. when i met him later on fri, he said that he had wanted to go, but lazy, lol, is that his only excuse, and he said that he should have gone. yes, marcus, u should have gone cos u didn't know how much u missed :) lol. also, some interesting coincidence here, jemima was marcus' schoolmate and classmate, what a small world. :)

when uncle gim theng shared about christian liberty, i think what struck me most was that i had been doing too many things on sunday that wasn't really pleasing to God. i was made further guilty during tabi's workshop the following day. however, i still do not think that eating out on sunday is a crime, cos like what bak wei said, the non-believers are a 'tool' for us... umm. i think i've made it sound very cruel, but it wa s something along that line, that as long as we do not stumble fellow christians, instead, 'make use' of non-christians who find no wrong in working on the Lord's day, and maybe buy food from them or take a bus ride on sunday. hmmm, is the reasoning of mine sound reasoning enough? after that we had group discussion where we delved deeper into the examples of things we do in daily lives and whether they defile christian liberty. i learnt that worldly music is really bad, and so is christian pop, which is just world pop in disguise, so i shall try not to ever listen to them again. I'LL TRY and hope i succeed! :)

anyway, on a side-note, (this is for da jie) while i was writing notes, i kept writing christine liberty instead of christian liberty! lol, maybe i missed u so much that i wanted u to be liberated from america and come back to singapore. harhar. u will be soon! 16 dec! :D

after discussion, we had group bonding time. it was really funneh! thanks to jo and jess the organisers. at first, we were to play as a group, but then we saw the other groups loitering around, not having anything solid to do, so in the end, we included them in our games and it became more of camp bonding time, only epistle did not join us. the first game we played was lao ying zhuo xiao ji, but this time, the organizers steered the objectives to remind us about guarding our heart against evil. so the mother hen became the protector, the eagle became the evil and the chicks were the pink hearts, that looked too palatble to the evil one. :) after a few rounds, we gathered around in a circle to play a very interesting game. it was the plastic bag game. the game went as follows, while jess tossed the plastic bag up, everyone in the circle had to laugh, be it fake or real, but the catch was once the plastic bag touched the floor, all laughter had to cease. the game seemed so simple, but once u played, it was wasn't at all! i was sitting beside bernice and boy! she burst out laughing when the bag touched the floor, so much so that i joined in, cos... laughter is CONTAGIOUS! and i got caught for that. :(((( but good thing they did not make me perform forfeit as i hate it. :) likewise, we played a few rounds. and boy, it was good to play. there was a time when jessie kept hitting the plastic bag up and then we had to laugh non stop, it was then when our fake laughter turned real. LOL! it was very very very very very funny! after this game, we played hide and seek, although emelyn and i had been the champions last year, this year, i could not repeat it as i didn't have even enough time to hide! so i became a seeker almost immediately after the game started. hmph!

with that, camp bonding was brough to a close, i went to shower, played a few rounds of bridge and taiti with ben, lin yan, mohan, and jonathan tan. :) it was fun! and i also talked a little with emelyn about the little nyonya and being excited about the morning exercise the next morning. :)

day 2 - wed 3 dec 2008. 'why do zebras cover their eyes when they see women? cos they see bras!'

what's up there is what u have to read out to appreciate. so do u get it? haha... it was a joke coined by jessie, or maybe she had seen it else where, anyway, jo and i laughed like mad when we heard this, maybe we were too high then. lol. we were on our way back from 'i spy with my little eye' :) read out to find out!

as i had told u, emelyn was the one waking me up! haha. anyway, i had a very bad night sleep. the air con was way too cold and the blanket was way too thin, so i was awake most of the time, if i ever slept, it would be defined as a fleeting sleep. but i thank God, cos i didnt not fall terribly sick with flu the following day, which is pretty unnatural for my nose under such circumstances. and also, i learnt that emelyn did not sleep very well too. :( anyway, i was still more or less refreshed for the day.

morning exercise! i was looking forward to it! ben quek was suppose to lead in it but he was absent for too long, so jo took the initiative to lead! and boy, she did a fantastic job! at first, we played lao ying zhuo xiao ji again. it was not bad lah, but later on, we played what i would call the highlights, the one that really made me run and get out of my slumber, was the chain catching! i starting with lin yan and we caught many people, some of whom we are proud of like bak wei, kevin etc. haha, cos i noe they are the mean runners that hardly get caught!

by the end of morning exercise, i suffered from a teeny wound on my right big toe. haha, it's itching right now when im typing. haha. thank you joanna for attending to my insignificant wound. haha.

breakfast, i ate mainly cereals,milo balls, and milk. after eating, the card club went to play taiti and bridge again. lol, ben, lin yan n i could be the official card games club for the camp. lol. next was SYLO, sharleen played the guitar. then message 3 followed. it was by pastor berends, some canadian pastor, i must say that i didn't really appreciate his message. :( (anyway, i noe im not suppose to look on the outward, but i couldn't help thinking when he stepped in, that he looked like a goose, cos his neck is so long and his head shape so oblong too.) also, there were times when i didn't really understand what he was speaking about. his message was on prayer. but i did take some things back, like being reverent in prayer and trying not be distracted or doze off while sleeping and always, what ever we need, we have to constantly ask, knowing the He is able to provide.

after discussion, we had lunch, provided by some kind parent whom i forgot. haiz, i should quit trying to remembering who brought food cos it will only expose the weakness of my memory. :( lunch was followed by the briefing for 'i spy with my little eye'. this was an activity that involved us going out to take pics of the required things on the list. i shall name a few queer ones, like taking a pic of a flower with 12 petals and an item that has a price tag of $1.97 and taking a pic of a pair of identical twins, witnessing to someone etc... my group went to causeway point in woodlands to complete our task. there, we saw many ang mohs and we started taking pics with them cos we needed to have pics with foreigners from 5 different countries. and let me share with u the ingenious things my group did! to get a pair of twins, we went to minitoons and got a pair of dwarves, supposedly from snow white and the 7 dwarves. one looked sleepy and one looked happy, but nevertherless, they looked alike. also, when we witnessed to someone on the mrt, we gave tracks, so the person had no choice but to listen to our witnessing, we manually photoshopped bananas so that a bunch would have 11 by combining one bunch that had 4 with another that had a comb of 7. smart eh! we did other crazy things, like taking a pic of a car park and then conveniently claiming that there was a toyota car in there that had a christian bumper sticker. lol, obviously we failed for that.

on the way back, while on the mrt, jess made me do some stupid poses with jema, lol... i made a fool of myself there. later on the bus, jess, jo, jema and i got a little crazy about jess' little teeth. and then while walking back to the camp site, jo jess and i created animal jokes, laughing our way in. haha.

after all the groups came back, we viewed the pics. had a few laughs when the quek brothers presented. haha, many of the twins became soft toys and the was one flower that pitifully its petals plucked out so that it had 12 petals. how incorrigible could that person be who came up with that idea, first of all, it was cheating and it was also harming a poor flower that did no halm to deserve such treatment. :( anyway, when it came to my group, i feel that we had to most no. of things taken, all but the name key chain. haha, although we did cheat a little by changing one of the price tags from $1.99 to $1.97 just by covering the last 9 with a downturn 'j' created by our fingers. lol. when it came to the mrt pics, everyone was burst into a guffaw, the only one who didn't laugh was me. lol, so embarrassing, but i did allow myself a smile. :)

after the whole presentation, we play more captains ball. :) i pretty active this time too. :) after that, dinner, and of course playing card with the card club and then SYLO. i guess i took turns with sharleen to play guitar. then we had a workshop by tabi on keeping the sabbath holy. she covered many many things that pricked my conscience and made me resolute to change. i shall just put down what i think are the important points: i should keep the sabbath holy by question whether what i do is helpful to the service of God, and what is my intent of doing that thing, is it to glorify God or grieve Him? and that i should keep the sabbath holy with joy in my heart. lol, i rmb just failing to do that yesterdya when i went tracking with ks youths. when in bak wei's car, tabi asked why nat and i suddenly wanted to go tracking with them. and then i quite spitefully said cos of u lah! (refering to her workshop about doing things for God only on the sabbath day), lol, then i was reminded that i should do it happily. lol!

anyway, if u are wondering what on earth i was doing by tracking. i shall explain here, please forvive me for side-tracking. nat n i had to go fe yesterday cos we had to design the bottles for ck camp and needed tabi's help. so we met up with many friends of old, actually, not that old, only one year of separation and then we got cracking. by the time we finished, we had time to join the kser for tracking. nat n i hopped onto bak wei's car with 5 others in the rear. they were jo, song jia, qian hui, ben yeo, jema! lol, 7 in the rear and tabi and bak wei in front. LOL! this reminds me of the past ks camp when about 10 ppl from my group the wanderes squeezed into his car! it seemed like so much fun that ee jia wanted to come in too, but ben yeo protested, lol, 'no more space!' heh. during the ride, bak wei made a 3 point turn, much to the discomfort of us at the back. haha.

back to the point. i learnt that i have to keep the sabbath holy, and i will try very hard to. after that, we had night walk. ben quek as usual was the organizer. i think he had been at it for the past 3/4 years! and he is so pro at it! anyway, though this year's was not bad, i felt that last year's was the best. i loved the forest walk! haha! anyway, this year's was more confusing and i half didnt understand what on earth was going on, only the time when we searched for silver coins in the bungalow did i find myself active. i found 2 out of 6!! haha, i claim my credits! but other than that, i think i have learnt more about the different parables during this activity. :)

during free time after thati played cards again and then read my bible and then went to sleep. this time, i fell into a deep sleep. :)

day 3 - thurs 4 dec 2008 'what a shame!'

'what a shame!' it's the second last day of camp!

today was the same, emelyn woke me up with her soft pats. i was half unwilling to give up my snug bed, the temperature last night had been less extreme, so i had a good sleep which made up for my poor sleep the previous night. something i forgot to add in my post on the past day, i actually fulfuilled my role as dorm ic by waking up 2 of the impossible-to-wake-up-ers. they are lin yan and bernice. haha, emelyn and their room mates had no success in waking these 2 sleepy heads, but i had 100% success! maybe it is because i was close to lin yan and thus knew that she will not bear a grudge against me for stirring her from her slumber. so listen up for the 100% success rate method in waking my friend lin yan. i basically grabbed her hands and pulled her up, then she dropped down on her back. then i tickled her on the sides, she squirmed and squirmed, causing much 'turbulence' on the bed. in the end, lin yan woke up within a minute and her partner bernice woke up right after her, without me even touching her, she had woken up due to the 'turbulence'. yeah, so effective huh, in fact it is 200% success rate, cos i woke 2 people up in one go...

jema was in charge of this morning's exercise. she introduced to us the ben quek and ben yeo game! lol, it was probably created by her, cos this game was rather lame, but at the same time, it was funny too. we had 2 lines and they stood face to face with the other line. one line would be ben quek and the other ben yeo, so when jema called ben quek, the line that was ben quek had to turn around and run to its baseline before the ben yeo group catches it. i was in the ben yeo group, and it was pretty funny. my partner on the other side, tryphena could not catch me all the time, but i could catch her easily. haha. there was also another call, that w as bernice. when jema called this, both lines had to run to their baseline and then go on our backs and point our arms and legs toward the sky and wave them. lol. it was kinda stupid. after that, we played the island game. very enjoyable cos i could run. :)

for breakfast, i ate the same stuff and then played the same card games after that. SYLO followed after that and the final message for the camp. it was presented to us by uncle kam loon on the topic of being the salt of the earth and the light of the world. i learnt that as christians, we have to be different from the world, being a salt of the earth in my perspective is like bring souls to Christ, a more pro-active measure, and adding the gospel to others' lives, thus like adding salt to a bowl of soup to make it different. as a light of the world, we have to be a shinning example for people who are lost in their lives, and guiding them to learn about salvation in Christ. haiz, i think it is something like that.

during discussion, my group went one round to share of what we are thankful to God for and what are our prayer requests. i said that i was very thankful that ks is still treats me so well, as if we have never been separated. i also said that i felt very welcomed and the fellowship was very warm. then jema adding, 'yeah, especially in this warm room.' haha, the warm room we are refering to here is the discussion venue my group had. for almost all the time, it had no air con on cos the remote control was lost. so it was always stuffing hot - this was why i was blur and unspontaneous during discussion, cos i couldn't really concentrate. and yes, we often referred to our room as the 'sauna'! haha. and i also prayed that i would be more consistent in my walk in faith. after the prayer, my group discussed on what props we wanted for the other groups to use for the upcoming skit performance.

next up was lunch. half way through, it started to drizzle, then it become heavier and started to pour. the schedule had water games following lunch, but seeing the condition of the weather, we had to push it back till the weather was more friendly. meanwhile, we prepared our song and skit. since group testimony was using the sauna, my group was exiled to the kitchen. haha, no lah, we were willingly 'exiled' and gave in to testimony. in the kitchen, it was rather hot too cos the windows were shut and there was no fan or air con. but fortunately, our ideas managed to flow coherently and we ended up with very good compositions of songs. after the songs, we planned our skit.

after rehearsing our skit for a few times, the rain was much lighter, so we decided to commence on the water games. the water games were organized by sharleen and hannah (i think). the first game was the toilet paper game. two groups out of the four were combined to make 2 big groups. col was with testimony once again. we had to wrap someone in our group with toilet paper and then later, we would have 3 attackers and the rest were defenders. johanna kindly voluteered for my group and rachel was the other. after wrapping them, we started on the game, the attackers had to try to toatlly drench the toilet paper mummy. ryan, ben yeo and lin yan were the attackers. the rest of us tried to surround jo to shield her from the water. the final result was close, but i think my group did better cos much of the toilet paper still clung on jo while rachel looked 'feather-less'. anw, here are some pics to relief your eyes of words and of course, to add colour to my blog! :)

heh, this is our group photo (with testimony). :)

from left: camp master kevin, me, amanda (partly blocked by me), emelyn, jessie, jo, jemima, ben quek, lin yan, ben yeo, ryan (partly blocked) and jema.

we all look so hairpee!

big bully nat(haniel)! many many on lookers not doing anything! lol, im one of them!

after the toilet paper game, we had dog and bone, but slightly different. instead, it was more of dip and splash! we had to get water using our cup and within certain boundaries, splash our opponent.

after dip and splash, we played captains ball! this time, all of us were soaked to the skin, and the ground was pretty wet too. i took of my slippers to play, but didn't play as active as before cos i was afraid of wounding myself if i ever slipped and fell.

after captain's ball, we had pizza dinner! it was something different and i guess i liked it. and yes same story, the card club played more games. subsequently, we had SYLO and timo's exhortation. then we had the group presentations of songs and skit! the songs to me weren't every interesting, but i shall share with you what my group did for pride's sake! haha. we had in total 5 songs, 4 which included the memory verses and the last one to round up. the sang to many tunes like the colours of the winds, the lonely goatherd, heigh ho, a whole new world and where i belong! wow, what a diverse range songs! it was so hilarious that i couldn't sing properly! but i must say that it was a very very good job done col! cos although bak wei marked us down for worldly music, but i bet ours was most enjoyed by the audience.

after th song presentation, it was time for skit! the first skit was by testimony. it w as not bad lah, having the shield of faith and all. the next group was witness. lol, jonathan mohan was so comical as the ever holy deacon! haha! and his expression during the offering part was priceless! the following group was epistle! i love the 'remember ah maaaaaaaaaa' part! oh man, i laughed my guts out! furthermore, when it was nathaniel who said it, it was just perfect. and joanna as the ah ma on her death bed. i love it she would quote proverbs 4:23 - 'keep your heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life' and at the word life, her hand would drop and she dies! lol, they are putting irony to place here! also jia song-ah in her defensive tone purring mam, mam.. lol. also the part when ah gong-ah aka jonathan tan and his walking chair! LOL! and his toilet paper beard. hehe. i still can't stop laughing when i recall the part while 'remebering ah maaaaaa', ah gong-ah faints and ah maaa wakes up from her death! lol!!!! it was so crazily facetious!

but last but not least! col's presentation which won the the skit component! was snowlight and the 7 dwarves, a la snow white and the seven dwarves! we had seven dwarves, they are as follows - sleepy (jo), busy (jemima), shameful (me), grumpy (kevin), happy (jessie), shy (jema) and potty (the potted plant prop)! ryan was snow light and tim quek was the narrator. the wicked witch was part of audience participation, and someone who had an evil laugh could do it. and it was obvious who was going to render his service... it was nathaniel! boy! it was so funny, he had to trick snowlight into eating the poisoned rocky road chocolate. so snowlight was to eat it and be poisoned into an unnatural sleep and then lie on the mattress (another prop) the dwarves would come back from work, once again singing the heigh ho song. then they would realized that snowlight is in a sleep and is unable to be woken up. so they start praying and in the end, snow light woke up. it was kind of a typically story, but it was very funny, at least to the audience. and i will never forget how freaking nervous i was. hehheh, even jemima had to prompt me to deliver my lines to her... anyway, if u are wondering whats the line 'what a shame' up there, it was actually my main line in the skit, cos i wa s shameful.. yeah..

towards the end of the special night activity, we played a game by which my had to cut out words relating to guarding out heart from the newspaper. other groups did crossword puzzles etc on other topics. after the game, gifts of appreciation were given out to respective camp personnels and then we viewed the much anticipated camp photos, there were much laughter whenever an unglam of someone popped out. with that, the speical night activities was brought to an end.

for the rest of the night, i mainly played cards, not only with my card club, but with others too. and past midnight, we sang ben yeo his birthday song! happy 14th ben! :)

lights out was at 1.30, but emelyn and i chatted till about 2. :) we had so much to talk! :( but then sharleen came in to remind us to sleep.. oh well, i really miss emelyn now. and furthermore our common interests, like the little nyonya etc make me so excited when im with her! :)

day 4 and final day - fri 5 dec 2008

same story about waking up. :) ps, i woke lin yan again! :) but this time, we had no morning exercise. :( we had camp debrief and clean up. i was very very sad. :( i would not be really seeing the ksers till next year. but maybe i will go for some of the ks meetings! before we left, we took a few camp shots. here they are!

camp shot! formal take. i love everyone there!

lol... fun shot!

yep, so that brought camp to a close. majority of the campers went for lunch at lot 1 and i joined them. there, dad picked me up to go marcus' house. there i played even more. lol. i play badminton, ping pong, soccer and captains ball. it was very fun but very draining too, considering that i had slept for only about 5hs that night. hehe. but thanks marcus for opening ur house! it was fun.

okay, thus far are the proceedings of the few days at ks camp! :)

China trip (part 2)!

2008-11-26T13:00:00.000+08:00

hey! here’s part 2! anw, about the link moat part in the prev part was actually cancelled at the last minute, no wonder I had no recollection of it! haha, good thing, if not i will be very sad that memory escaped me.

28 OCT Tuesday

woke up slightly later cos we were allowed to. today was different as there was no assembly and thus the shaoxing teachers gave us some leeway. they hold their assembly only on mon every week. no wonder the students are so robust during assembly cos it is only once a week and they give it their all then and then can slack for the rest of the days. haha.

we attended maths, science and music (again) lessons. for maths, it was pretty exciting as the students were given the opportunity to qiang da. and the questions were simple algebraic problems that were no match for me. haha. but I wondering whether the teacher had purposely downgraded the questions so as to not scare us. should be lah, cos shaoxing school had maths as one of the pet subjects, surely their maths standard wasn’t easy peasy.

next up was science. we were having class with students that were of lower standard. in singapore terms, maybe sec 2 or even sec1! maybe the underestimated singapore student’s ability in science. haiz, they think we stupid or what huh! we had to do some science experiment dealing with onion skin. yes the epidermis cells. this is what we did in sec one and they thought we never did… lol, good thing the teacher gave her presentation and instructions in Chinese, if not I might have dozed off. anw, I pity those pure bio students in our midst, they must have been so bored, but I guess they could show off their prowess in this simple activity.

this lesson was kind of horrid for me cos I was sitting beside some idiotic snobbish china student. (we had to pair up with one and sit in rows of four, like our science lab.) and I had to carry out the experiment with her and another pl-china student pair. I forgot who was in the other pair. anw, this snob of a china girl, spoke to me as though I was some stupid person, she enunciated every syllable of her speech and talked as if I was some dumb deaf idiot. anyway, maybe she saw my hearing aids, but who cares! I think im smarter than her lor… she asked me in super slow manner what is my name. I said hui xin and then I ask her hers and she said yu kuai (as in happiness in chinese). I think she was out to make fun of me cos I think I saw something else on her namecard. so be it, yu kuai the madwoman! then she asked me a few more questions, I answered painstakingly and some of her stupid china friends laughed… okay… whatever, sam ang and charissa in front of me told me to ignore her cos she was ‘making fun’ of me.. what the heck and then we started conversing in english, making sure that we spoke super fast so that those brainless china idiots couldn’t understand. after that, that snob went a little quiet for a while.

soon it was time to do the experiment. I discovered that my partner quite sucked at the experiment so I took the reigns. and she had no choice but to praise me for being so good at it. I was saying to myself, ‘of course, snobs don’t do well in life, AND Singaporean students are not to be look down at! what’s more, we are better than u china dorky simpletons and have better character even though we are so much more superior than u!’ I was so pissed. when the lesson was over, I was so happy… that stupid girl! I just had to remind myself that china has the good, the bad and ugly, I had just witnessed the bad and a little of the ugly (cos the girl wasn’t pretty at all!) I just have to be optimistic about the good!

after that, we had music. it was more of rhythm class as we played with drums and clapped rhythms. I saw that snob again and shunned her. yeah, so this class was quite easy for me as I knew music and knew how to read the different durations of the towgay (musical notes).

in the afternoon, we went to the lu xun memorial hall. we basically toured lu xun residence. it was kinda interesting yet frustrating at the same time. it was interesting cos I was smelling lu xun air and was viewing all his possessions. the kitchen, I remember, was really antique and had all the cool equipment. haha. but the tour was a little irritating as there were hordes of tourist there, but the worse were the locals, the shoved and pushed and always formed a human wall in front of us so that we poor pl girls couldn’t really catch a glimpse of the view. but keeping in mind about the good, the bad and the ugly, I reminded myself that the people there were mainly old folks, so I hope that this bad manners of theirs has been washed away in the next generation.

after lu xun, we went back to school to for the happy hour programme. basically it is like our cca kind of activities. we had a ‘gallery walk’ around the art room. we witnessed the art students in action. wow, I was mesmerized by the talent of the students, they were especially good at sketching irregular objects. their work was just in pencil shades, yet they reflected every detail and shadow. I wondered how long did they take to complete a piece of work, I guess it took them a few sessions to do so, wow, their effort is really remarkable.

we ended the gallery walk and proceeded to the calligraphy class. there awaited us students and we had to a take a place between 2 china students and then they will teach us calligraphy. since I had some experience last year during the enrichment classes, I was quite confident writing my name. though I managed to write decent looking characters, the problem was, the strokes were not deep enough and not well defined enough. so when the china friends taught me the thick stroke kind of calligraphy, I stumbled and never could do a good piece of work. and im glad that I had a pair of friendly and helpful teachers. they were more patient and had much better character than that snob earlier that day.

the calligraphy class ended and the teacher gave us each a breathtaking piece of calligraphy work done by the students themselves. it was a prize! we said goodbye, after which we assembled at the conference room where the parents of our buddies would could come to pick us up to our buddy’s home. I was darn nervous!!!!!!! argh, I still can rmb the feeling, my heart wanted to scream so bad! I was so scared of the homestay and so scared of how things would turn out at my buddy’s house. a few parents came and went, until there were about half of the no. of pl left, my buddy’s mom came. clad in black from top down she looked exactly like some high class tai tai/businesswomen, but she at the same time, she looked sooooooooooo freaking scary, u could pass her as a mafia’s woman. boy, I wanted to pee in my pants. why did my buddy’s mom look so different from her. lol.

anyway, my buddy said that she was cycling home and that meant I would sit in the car alone with her mom. I told myself, tahan 2 nights and then I will be liberated!!! of course, I had to be polite, so I introduced myself to mrs xu (xu is yi jia’s surname, so I shall call her mom mrs xu here, cos she’s to scary looking to be called mamma xu) and then she told me that she knew alr. anq, I could feel that she was trying to accommodate me well and be caring for me. and her car was as black jeep! why I was seeing everything black? is it some foreboding? and her jeep was super high, so high that my unstretchable jeans combined with my short legs made it hard to mount her jeep. the platform I could say was at my waist. so frigging high that I quite embarrassed myself by taking a little bit of time just to get up. in the car, we talked, but a little only. mrs xu asked me what I liked to eat and asked how many siblings I had. I said 2 older sisters and then she said, ‘oh. yi jia is the only child!’ I so much wanted to be smartly spontaneous and to inject a little of humour to break the ice by saying, ‘yeah, the one child policy, nvm! I can become yi jia’s sister these days.’ of course, nvr managed to put them in chinese words. n the last thing I wanted was to embarrass myself in front of this seemingly haughty woman, so I just smiled and said yes yes….. btw, the traffic conditions were terrifying. thank goodness mrs xu’s car was big, so many cars gave way to us. there even was a point of time when mrs xu’s jeep was the lone vehicle against the flow of traffic and was in the middle of 2 streams of the other cars going in opposite directions on both sides! it was an ugly sight, and not to mention, frightening too!

when we reached the house (it was like an apartment building, or large condo in sinagpore terms), I had to come down from the jeep so that mrs xu could park her car. when I was going down, my shoe got stuck in the underneath of the stupid seat. I so embarrassed myself! mrs xu was understanding and she said slowly slowy, and smiled. while mrs xu parked in her garage, yi jia came bounding back on her bic. when I entered the house, I realized that my buddy was somewhat wealthy. they had a homemaker, a mini gym, a juccuzi bath, a study room for her dad which had a piano, an attic that was dedicated to her dog (my buddy loves dogs and has a dog, but it was residing somewhere else, maybe she has another house!) and my buddy had 2 rooms conjoined together for her use. she gave a choice of which room I preferred. I choose the room which had red bed sheet and a red blanket on the bed. the other room had blue. i choose this way cos there wasn’t much of a difference between the 2 rooms and picked the one that looked more appealing to me. haha, I like red!

it was time for dinner. the dinner wasn’t great… was a little too salty. the homemaker was some old ah ma probably wanting to earn some money during her retirement years. I was much more comfortable with her as she smiled all the time, whereas mrs xu frequently stiff smile reminded me of some cold and ruthless mafia woman. lol, I dunno why I felt that way, maybe I had built a barrier against her since I first saw her. I was scared of her. but I really could feel her effort in trying to make me feel welcomed.

after dinner, mrs xu and yi jia planned to bring me around the lu xun place (which was just a stone’s throw from their house) but since I had visited it in the afternoon, we decided to take a walk about the periphery,

before going out, yi jia and I used the com for a while. there, I realized that she knew vitas and loved his shrill and falsetto voice! I loved that of him too! so we discovered a few od our common interests. I let her listen to coldplay’s viva la vida and she was quite surprised I liked this kind of songs, she had probably never heard them before.

yi jia and I talking about ourselves. i learnt that she liked music and loved dramas too. then she asked about me, about my family, hobbies and likes. there, she got so interested in me cos I had musical background and was quite ‘cool’ cos I was like an ‘all rounder’, knowing sports and music and loving maths and sciences. I told her that I knew how to play the piano, guitar, recorder and handbell (I doubt she had a clue what it was) to impress her, cos I wanted to make her hold me in some admiration to make up for my poor Chinese. n I succeeded, she was very interested in me after that and asked what grade I was in for piano, I said 8, and then she got all excited and insisted that I perform for her on piano when we got back. actually, she wanted to go back just then, so that she could hear me perform asap. lol, she was so eager. she told me that she had learnt piano when she was young but only for 1 month cos she was too busy and had not time given that she had to be in school till 5.

back at home, I played for her some of my exam pieces and then I played cannon in d. she was so happy and made me perform for her mom. haha, I made a few mistakes here and there cos I was so nervous performing before mrs xu. after that, I suggested dropping by at melodi’s buddy’s home. yi jia said it was a good idea and she said she would check if they were home. I thought she might phone them, instead, she went to her kitchen and shouted over. she reported that there was no reply, but we could try.

so along with mrs xu, yi jia and I went to melodi’s buddy’s (I forgot to ask her name) house which was just one block away. when we were at the door, it was opened and there was commotion inside. I thought whoa, maybe melodi’s buddy’s is so hospitable that she even invited her extended family to welcome melodi. instead, a shocker was in stall for us! after melodi’s buddy’s mother gave us ‘mittens’ to wea over our shoes to save us the trouble of taking them off. I realized to my horror that the teachers were visiting melodi’s buddy’s home! the teachers were both from pl and shaoxing combined, and the camera man was there too!!! I saw melodi and she looked a little traumatized by the attention. lol, she looked so cute, sitting beside mrs lee on the sofa while the teachers were bombarding her on how she was etc. lol! when I entered the house, I greeted the teachers and then fled to melodi for ‘solace’. lol, I nvr knew I was inviting myself into this situation by coming to the house. melodi and I conversed like long lost friends, thankful that we finally had someone to speak english to. melodi showed me her room and it was pretty much like mine, the same conjoined room story. lol, we were so excited being together and likewise, my buddy was with melodi’s buddy, chit chatting away. lol, and we hid from the limelight till the teachers commanded us out to eat fruit. I ate I grape and then poor melodi was presented something bigger although she was very full. it was something like an apple and she could not bite it even after a few attempts, thanks to her braces that forbade her open her mouth too widely. lol, it was a sight seeing her desperately trying to bite to no avail. after that, we had a group photo with the teachers on the sofa. the 2 pairs of buddies stood on the sofa, I rmb being a little conscious of the fact that I was still wearing my shoes, but realized that I was wearing mittens. lol.

after that, the buddies suggested going over to yi jia’s house to play for a while. yi jia’s mom said okay, for an hour. yay! I was so excited and so was melodi. haha

at yi jia’s house, I played more piano for melodi and her buddy. my buddy was so excited to show off her talented buddy. I asked melodi whether she knew how to play the piano, she was a little embarrass and said no. she lamented that she did not have any talents besides maths and was very flustered whenever her buddy’s family asked her cos she knew that shaoxing was famous for music and the arts. haha, I had to console her a little. she added that it was an irony that her name’s melodi. and we laughed. btw, melodi’s taking the exact same combi as me and is going to 3A2! except for the higher Chinese part, she’s quite similar to me! and I realized that with melodi, I was more natural in conversing in Chinese with my buddy and melodi’s buddy. after that, we went to the attic where there was rusty metal swing which was actually for her dog but melodi and I sat on it. lol. I was having so much fun joking around with everyone.
later when everyone was a little tired. melodi and her buddy went home. then I went to shower and had some trouble with it. I couldn’t figure how to turn on the hot water, so I showered in cold water, and when I got out, I was a little chilled, but I survived. mrs xu noticed that I was cold and then she apologized to me for not adjusting the shower. lol, and then she said that she would do it the next day for me. haha. then I read my bible and went to sleep.

whoa! I’ve talked so much on one day! it was a really eventful day that’s why. so this shall be part 2! part three present the rest of the trip. or maybe a day or 2 if my posts are too long.

Whoopeedoo!

2008-11-25T22:39:00.003+08:00

yay, dad has given me the green light! im going for both ks and ck camp! yipee! i hope that i will be able to make use of ks camp meet up with the people i miss so dearly! n for ck camp, i hope that it will be fun. im a little scared cos im in the comm n i half dont understand what's going on. but the messages from prof hanko makes me very excited!
then later dec, when da jie comes back, my family might go up north with auntie hannah, samuel and uncle steven! yay. but this is all a possibility, not confirmed. haha. :)
okay, i have watched the first episode of the little nyonya. it's not bad lah, but i hope things will get more exciting as the plot deepens! i love this kind of history. jap occupation and all. haha. :)
ps. survivor's getting better n better. i love it! randy's was so pathetic and sugar's getting sweeter. n ken... is learning to be a man! a smart one at that. yay, i love it!

Horriday!

2008-11-24T15:29:00.002+08:00

holiday.. it's supposed to be free from any work!
i hate work!
i hate studying!
n im a bad steward!

anyway, i think im going to have a few good weeks! ks camp then ck camp! yay, i want to enjoy! i dun wan mrs chong's whatever homejoy.. or miss dong oh so cheem homework! im stressed. btw, it's out of the topic but there's this article that says that ppl who watch tv are generally the unhappy lot. :(((((( i dun care, im going to watch the little nyonya. :) they say it's singapore's parallel of jewel in the palace. it had better do justice for the excitement im in right now. tmr it premiers!

Flash back

2008-11-23T19:06:00.004+08:00

i just realized that i hadnt talked about a few things. firstly, the clique outing and class party on nov 10. i shall recount this very briskly. secondly, nat and mine 'outing' together. :) and lastly, my 'outing' with nadine and the prof. the prof i refering to is prof hanko, i revered figure in my church.

i met janice at kovan then we met up with sam and elyssa at ps outside auntie annes. went to pasta mania to eat a haiwaian pizza, it was very delicious. aniwae, janice and i were commenting on the self proclaimed number of pasta the restaurant had served, they boasted that they had 8 million plus in all their outlets, we were thinking that they could have just put up any number to please the customers.

subsequently, all of us went to buy tickets for the movie the coffin. harhar, a horror movie, the first one i would be watching! not counting the excerpts miss dong showed us for lit. yup, then since the movie started in 1hs time, we went shopping at carrefour for the dessert stuff for class party. and elyssa wanted to grab her david archuletta cd the time it was released but unfortunately it hadn't arrived. so we went macs, bought drinks to smuggle into the theatre by putting them inconspicuously into our bags. then got our popcorn and then went to the hall. the movie was okay lah. i was a little scared here and there cos horror movies always catch u when u are unsuspecting. though i didnt really enjoy the movie cos i was half the time figuring out what was happening (and i never managed to) but i definitely learnt what's the best thing to do when i watch a horror movie next time (though i doubt i would) i have to always anticipate what's next and the best time to do that is when everything is so quiet and still, that is the favourite time of the director's cos her/she would most likely succeed in frightening u badly if u do not be careful and fall into the trap of suspense. haha, actually i learnt a bit of this in lit, so im was very wary of every suspense in the movie, i guess that made me more prepared for the scary scenes. poor janice and sam (even though she's in the same lit class as me, i guess she's more fragile by nature) were screaming and yelping. janice even went to the extent of hiding behind the popcorn box, haha, then i was wondering why on earth did she pay 6 bucks to watch a still picture in front of her.

after the movie, elyssa finally got her david a cd and sam bought too. then we made our way to to kovan to buy diane's birthday present. n as tradition entailed us to trick her, we did and she ended up with the wrong company. the rest of the day pretty much sucked.

we got lost a little on the way to mrs wong's house cos elyssa rmbed 21b but there wasnt any 21b, instead it was 11b! so we were walking a little aimlessly and even asked a few not-so-eager-to-help passer bys. finally we got to the house after sam called sarah. n there was the start of all troubles. but im glad we've patched up.

last sun, my family and nat's decided to meet up for dinner! we were all sooooooooo bursting with excitement cos it had been years since the last time had dinner together. her family and mine had this tradition since young to meet up at each others' house alternatively for dinner every sun after church. that explains the strong ties i and erjie and dajie have with nat and her siblings (or sisters u can say. :) ) and our moms cooked the bestest food to savour. haha. however, when i was a bout p2 or somewhere thereabout, we discontinued this tradition, probably cos everyone was getting more and more busy and i think nichelle was born so it was hard to have this kind of visitations. :( so last sun was special cos we were meeting up once again, and this time of course with dear nichelle! buy, er jie and i were so excited that we wanted to bring our cam. sadly we only took 1 pic, at the restaurant.

we went to soup restaurant at changi airport. the wongs went first so they had a table ready by the time my family went in. i sat with nat and aunty wan teng (nat's mom). we ordered or rather, uncle chee choong and dad order our dishes. we had chicken meat with lettuce, fish dish and soup etc.... i forgot alr! haha. the food was not bad, but since i came out from china being pampered with all the chinese food, i somehow had expected more food, like the treatment in that i received in china, lots and lots of chinese food, unfortunately, i had to be brought back to earth, chinese food did not equal tonnes of food. :( haha. so i was a little disappointed cos the food wasn't a lot, but i guess i have to change that ridiculous idea of mine.

this the pic! but it's so dark, haiz. :( er jie, nicole (biggest sis), noelene (third sis), nichelle (the baby of the family), nat (the sec sis and of course, my best friend!) and me. im wearing my man u shirt! btw, for extra info, a man probably in his thirties, sitting at a neighbouring table was so captivated by the no. of girls my table held. lol, if only if dajie was around, that would have brought the tally to a perfect 7!

after dinner, while the adults were all praising prof hanko to the skies for his wonderful sermon that morning, all the kids went for our tour around the airport. it started with us going to the toilet. i accompanied nichelle and then nat decided to come along. on the way, nat felt naseaus and complain that we stomach was giving her a little problem. lol, then nichelle and i joked that she was preg. then we walked past a real pregnant lady and compared her with nat, lol, nat was unfortunately too thin to bear any resemblance. cos we were so happy go lucky, we were laughing our way to the toilet. there, the rest of the girls joined us. after each one of us had visited the toilet, we embarked on our self organized tour about the airport. boy! that night was absolute fun! and we bonded very well. i will just share the highlights.

as girls, we are most self concious about our weight, so we weighed ourselves on the luggage wighing scale, both individually and in total (the platform was wide enough to stage all of us). our total mass was 255kg! haha, we were crazy, but we were happy. we didnt care the stares we got from others and maybe the security officer couldnt be bothered by there few good for nothings.. lol. and er jie was a little too unhappy about her weight and kept complaining to us that she's fat... lol. then we explored the enormous lift that transported all the heavy trolleys and baggage. when er jie walked in, i was naughty enough to set the overweight 'alarm', of course, it was my noise but it was real enough to get er jie into a split second of shock. lol! she really thought that the lift despised her weight! everyone dropped in peals of laughter at the trick, er jie laughed too!

after that, we decided that we wanted to explore T3 since T2 was so boring. it would be my 2nd time there after departing for china there. i rmbed the interesting decors the ceiling had. i was excited, cos i had an 'advantage' over the others were entering for the first time. we hopped onto the skytrain and it brought us to T3! we were so away from our parents and they didnt know. at T3, we went to see the new crowne plaza. it was cool and high class, but the lift denied us access to the corridoor of the rooms. the security was strict and only by the presentation of the card was one allowed access to the corridoor and all the facilities. haiz, too high class that we kids could not even go and dream about going up. T3 also did not offer much except for shops. we planned to go budget terminal but instead caught the skytrain to go back to T2.

nic had a craving for ice with waffle and i too. we wanted to be merry and get fat. er jie was tempted too. so we went swensens but never had the cheek to order something cos we had not a penny on us. noelene called her mom to come but the adults, who were at macs, refused to bulge. so in the end, we had to be satified with fires and mac flurry from macs. then the event was brought to a close. oh man, it was so fun! :)

just yesterday, on sat, i went tennis with nadine. thanks to a few good games as mix doubles with isaac and xavier, her passion for tennis is revived! haha, now she can't wait to go back n play. after tennis, nad cam over to my house to help mum bake. we also looked at my pics on the com, had some good laughs. haha. then upon my invitation, she went with my family to the reformation day conference. prof hanko was the speaker and he spoke about the unconditional convenant of God. i hope nad understood a little, cos she said it was cheem. but im glad where prof was a little funny at times and nad did laugh, that meant that she was listening! i hope God will work in her heart so that she can become more sister in Christ. :)

after the rdc, my family and aunty ee fong brought prof out for dinner at pow sing restaurant. aunty ee fong is super funny, and prof too. u noe, prof's so tall that when he was walking to the table, his head could hit the ceiling beam that was so high for asians, good thing he bent a little to avoid it. he even joked a little when he said that his head could ring the bells (the christmas ornates hung at the beam). prof settle between aunty ee fong and dad, i was beside aunty ee fong and er jie beside me. when my dad gave prof the honour of ordeing some dishes, aunty ee fong made him order a few dishes by the pictures presented in the menu cos prof wasn't too familar what was nice. so said he could look at which art appealed to him and when he pointed at them, we would make sure it turned edible! lol! okay, so we had sweet and sour pork, fish, black pepper chicken, lotus root soup and veg. a simple fare but the food was great. anw, throughout the time together last night, prof was super cute and funny. i laughed so much! he's actually much different from his what his usual stern expression during preaching tells u. i once thought that he seldom smiled, what more joke, but he really prove me wrong.

at the end, my family and aunty ee fong had the opportunity to see his room at YMCA. it was more of a super comfy apartment. the room was very very nice and was like a sophiscated 2 room condo. the was even a sheltered swimming pool. btw, a fact to prove how tall he is, his shoe size is 13 to 14! that's twice my feet size! and most of his clothes are tailor made. lol, amazingly tall guy here, probably 2m ++. haha. and if u didnt noe, he's 78 alr, but still as fit as a 50 year old! haha, i really respect prof now!

100th post! And China trip recount (Part 1)

2008-11-17T12:34:00.003+08:00

this is my hundredth post! this blog is a century old (at least in terms of the no. of posts)! im glad i have kept faithful to this blog and not give up on it halfway. so this marks the stepping stone of the advancement of this blog. haha, i think i make this sound like such a big shot, haha, i must remind myself that there have been millions of people who have accomplished this before me. so no big deal. i actually wanted to compose a poem or something like that, but since it's not a big deal, i shall not do so.

alright, i have decided to devide my china trip recounts into parts, if not the post would be too trmendously long! so here's day 1 to day 4. haha, i think all the excitement has subsided, but nvm, this shall be a very good journal of sorts for me. and no, i have not gone beyond day 1 -4. :)

okay, warning. u are in for a ultra verbose post here. so hang on!

OCT 23, Thursday

I was pretty unsure about this trip. In the morning, I couldn’t believe that in a few hours time, I would be in the air, and I wasn’t even in the mood for the trip. this was due to some reasons, firstly, I felt that shariel and I were not as good friends as we once were, so that meant that I had to ‘look’ for another friends, a ‘special one’ for the trip. secondly, the teachers had a little bit of a bad impression of me. cos I had genuinely forgotten to turn up for an important briefing, but my excuse was that I was depressed due to some problems in school, but would anyone think it valid? furthermore, mrs lee, the principal was going, so that meant that I had to put on my best behavior for the trip.

I got to the airpot at 11pm, with dad and mom (er jie had exam the next day, so couldn’t accompany me. L) and because I didn’t attend the briefing, I was the only one who wasn’t wearing the PL jacket. so I quickly changed out. this was definitely not to best way to start a trip of 10 days, not knowing what I had missed out during the briefing. some more, shariel wasn’t very friendly at all, so I wasn’t roo keen to approach her. and oh, sherilyn went too, but I wasn’t in the same group as her, so I could not really interact with her. we all took a group photo and then ms goh our vp prayed for us. Then we waited to board the plane. mr lim, my blue group’s teacher-in-charge was ever competitive and wanted to to outwalk the red group even while heading to the inspection area. haha, he cheered me up a little.

OCT 24, Friday

at the stroke of midnight to friday, i was on the plane, i sat at the window beside shariel, awake, exploring the cool facilities. unfortunately, i could not sacrifice my precious sleep and health for a movie or two, so most of the time, i was sleeping, excluding times when i was served food and when the annoying lights went on and off while the air stewardess were making their rounds. so i about only 4hs of sleep that night. when we reached the shanghai airport, i was still droopy. we collected our luggage and deposited them in a coach which would transport them to the shanghai hotel we would be residing in. we also met our tour guide for the whole trip, xiao yan.

then we were off to the maglev train station just nearby the airport. boy, i tell u, the experience was golly good! in the carriage, mr lim, the only physic teacher took the opportunity to explain to us the wonder of the train, that it rode on magnetism and was actually floating on a thin sheet of air that it removed the presence of friction, resulting in faster speeding for the train. it was really interesting! the train went up to 301km/h and took abt 7mins to bring us from the shanghai airport to its city, the distance easily being slightly larger than the width of singapore!

upon reaching the city, we had our maiden experience of the outside environment. the temperature was a cool 15 degrees celcius! I felt kinda weird having an air conditioned open space. haha. we headed for a xiaolongbao restaurant just below the station. there, we witnessed the first unpleasant situation. a male customer was fighting with the female restaurant manager. the fight was not only verbal, but physical too! the guy was roughly hitting the woman in the face while other customers and staff tried to calm them down. the interesting thing was that the woman was game, she was fighting back. i was wondering how on earth could the ppl express their unhappiness and anger in such an open way. in my 15 years of life, I can guarantee that I have not ever witness such a happening in my country, or maybe only 1 or 2 only. and in china, my very first experience with china Chinese was a fight! it was truly evidence that Singaporeans are cultured people. :) and im glad to say that that was the only fight that I saw in the land of china.

next, at the science centre in shanghai, we watched a 4D show! u noe what’s 4D? it is a 3D show that incorporates the other senses of touch, smell, besides the usual 2 of sound and sight. it was super cool! there were times when water was sprayed to give a more authentic feel as we were watching a pirate show, and there was a time when the seats dramatically plunge down a little when 2 pirates fell into a booby-trap. everyone screamed! haha, it was so sudden and unexpected.

after the show, we were given time to explore the 4 whole levels of the science centre. we had to go in groups of 4s for safety. I went with yun yun, shariel and jinting. the science centre was swell! it was a little of an amusement park combined with a learning centre. this made the learning oh so interesting! I shall not go so much into detail here, but what I meant by fun was that they games like archery to explain elasticity and boxing a bolster to test for reactivity etc.

then we headed for nanjinglu. we went to the most pedestrian friendly part of the shopping area. there I bought my beloved food! CHESTNUTS. and they were pretty palatable!

subsequently, we headed for dinner at a restaurant. before I start bragging about how good the dinner was, I shall first boast how our meals were like throughout the whole of the china trip. we went to restaurants for every meal. they were more or less good restaurants which served good food, if not decent ones. and we were fed with so much food each time that we became serial offenders of the law against wasting of food! everyday, I ate till my belly was bloated and so did everyone, but the table never seemed to be lacked of leftovers. boy! I could say that I have grown fatter over the days, so much pampering! but it was also at the restaurants that I discovering this very abhorrible problem of the Chinese men. they LOVEEEEE to smoke. >( even in air- conditioned places were there were the ‘no smoking’ signs. they would harm people around them with unwanted diseases in the future and pollute the air necessarily yet they smoke their lungs away as if the world was at their feet, I hate these detestable idiots! our tour guide xiao yan explained that it was culture, cos it was very cold and thus they smoked to warm their bodies. my foot, they must as well eat fire, since they are indirectly doing that while smoking… nevertheless, despite the smoke from smokers, I had generally had a good time with my group at the dinner table, with mr lim, my group teacher, cracking up us up with the jokes of his.

following dinner, we checked in the shanghai business hotel, otherwise called joyage. there was a com! but I didn’t know whether it was free to use, so I didn’t use. I watched tv and ate some of the delicious chestnuts. then went to sleep. day 1 of china trip came to a close.

OCT 25, Saturday

we had breakfast at the hotel, food was normal, with xiaolongbao again. then we went to the world famous madame tussauds wax museum. there, we saw many wax mannequins of many celebs. some of them were liuxiang, the Chinese hurdler who is a hero in the hearts of the china citizens for winning a gold in the 2004 olympics. although he was a flop in this year’s, I guess the Chinese don’t mind at all, cos the fact of him winning once was good enough for Chinese pride. furthermore, they had a few manikins of him at the museum, this shows how important and popular he still is. other stars include yao ming, the becks couple, movie characters like Charlie chaplin, james bond, and local singers. all in all, the tour impressed me greatly, the ability of the crafter of the mannequins is unquestionable, almost all had looked exactly like their respective personas. but I was a little disappointed at how limited the collection was, I was hoping to see some of my fav Korean stars, but I saw none. maybe, my next travel destination target is new york, where I believe has a much more wider variety.

afterwards, we ate lunch at some restaurant. when we finished, it started to drizzle. as u know, im hearing impaired and the device that I wear is unresistant to water, so it was super inconvenient for me to be out. furthermore, we were going for shopping, shopping in cheng huang miao, an open area with many many stalls. and no, the place isn’t what it’s name suggest, a temple, instead it is rows of shops that are all inside building structures that are in the shape of temples. yeah, so the name was probably derived from the architectural beauty of the shopping area.

at cheng huang miao, we moved in our usual fours, we went around and saw cool stuff like Chinese art and crafts. I bought a purse for my grandma, that was probably the first purchase I made during the trip. :) then we went to a chopsticks shop. there were so many chopsticks, and all in different prices. some were dirt cheap, other exquisite ones were a few hundreds of rmb. there were chopsticks with one’s surname imprinted, I was contemplating whether I should get 5 pairs for my family, but since it was about 20 plus a pair, no bargaining was allowed so I thought that I might be spending too much on just one item, so I dropped the idea. the next shop we went to was a shirt shop, thanks to the previous group of friends were haggled pretty much for us, I managed to a get a shirt for erjie at 40 rmb in contrast with it usual price of 80 rmb! haha, I was so glad. afterwards, while shariel and yun yun were searching for their pooh shop, we came upon a shop that did name printing in a rainbow of colours. it was very beautiful and I decided to get one bookmark for Samuel. actually, I had come across such business in Malaysia during the 2007 church camp. I got one scroll for myself and even one for Nadine. it was truly sensational art! after that, it was time to leave to go to the shanghai bookshop.

the bookshop swept me off my feet! the books were pretty cheap there, thanks to the keen competition among the shops in the area. the bookshop was a 7 storeys high, haha, I doubt singapore has a bookstore that can match up to this. even borders isn’t as big, but in shanghai, there was this street of bookstores that were a few floors high, all vying for customers, thus the strong competition and low prices. this was so although unfortunately, majority of the books were in Chinese. that was the only drawback. and the irony was that although we were in china, all the pl girls flocked around the foreign imported books section, that is, the english books. haha, I bought the choice there, a novel by Nicholas sparks at 65 rmb. that’s about S$13? I think it’s cheaper :) I wanted to buy brisingr, but I saw the price and felt that it could be cheaper with the small paperback version. so im waiting till it is released that way in singapore. also, I went to the cd store and bought 2 shows.

after all the shopping, I was quite tired, esp my legs. haha, and then we went for dinner. I forgot where, but it was definitely some high end restaurant with lots of good food. :) after dinner, we got a cruise along the shanghai bund. the boat was pretty much like some larger steamboat made of wood and it was of course run by motor. during the cruise, I remember that it w as raining and there was strong wind, so it was freaking cold! I had worn 2 layers of clothes and the pl jacket, but that was definitely not enough! I had to slip on another jacket and zipped up all the way. so much for the physical discomfort, I was rewarded with the dazzling sights along straits. much of the city was lit up and the scene was magnificent enough to keep the pl girls flashing their cameras away. on the banks, i saw the pearl oriental tower (the sky scraper that we visited on the last night) and all the buildings that make up what u could call the CDB of shanghai. after about 20 mins, most of the pl girls felt chilled, so we all made our way down to the more or less enclosed room, which had no need for air con, instead, only 2 thin spaces of openings were enough to keep us comfortable, not too cold nor warm. there, shariel, yun yun, jinting and I shared some jokes with each other to keep the excitement going. when it was close to the end of the journey, we went up again to have a last feel of the atmosphere on top of the boat. that brought the day’s activities to a close, we had our debrief in the coach cos it was getting very late. then we went to our rooms to catch valued rest.

OCT 26, Sunday

the Lord’s day! being a group representing a Christian school, traveling with the company of mainly Christian teachers, they made sure that we started the day with God. I quite appreciated that. :) we had singspiration in the coach and chen lao shi even gave exhortation and told us her life stories. we were so captivated by her charm in telling stories that the bus was all quiet while she spun her tale, which is a rare happening unless all of us are resting. haha, I knew chen lao shi talents in story telling before I came for this trip as she is my Chinese teacher and she nvr fails to keep my class enchanted by her stories, be they real or fictitious, but they were most life stories that had some morale of the story kind of thing. the stories she shared on the coach was about God’s faithfulness in protecting she and her family in many of life occasions. I really enjoyed them.

after exhortation, it was lesson time. these teachers are sure hardworking! they didn’t give us a chance to be too idle. mr lim taught us probability.. which is maths.. and I remember it best cos the lesson was in english. harhar… also, we had snatch quiz, by which we had to qiang da question on what we had learnt the previous 2 days.

after about 4 hours of travel, we had reached shaoxing. almost immediately after the toll gate, we saw a few cars waiting. guess what, in them was ma xiao zhang, the principal of jian gong school (the school we’re doing cultural immersion with) and her bevy of teachers. when our teachers got down the coach to greet them, they received bouquets of fresh flowers. whoa, the host are really hospitable! ma xiao zhang even embraced mrs lee with a warm hug. wow, they look just like little playmates. hehe.

we had lunch at the garden hotel of shelter bridge, the hotel that we were to put up at when we were in shao xing. the food was woah! so much food! this was where we had stacked plates of unfinished food. not that we wanted to waste them, but we ate to our filled and could not eat any further. what’s more is that the teachers got vip treatment, they went to the vip room and they were probably served 2 times the amount of what we got! the host are really models of congeniality.

following lunch, we went to ma shan farm. at first, I was unsure of what king of farm it would be. was it a fruit farm? an animal farm? but it wasn’t any of the two, it was a fish farm! and u noe what we were going to do. :) yes, we were going to fish. haha, I was really excited about fishing! I rmb the times when I was young, when I went to kelongs with my family and church friends, I had on one occasion caught a small fish with the help of my dad. it was a genuine sense of accomplishment when u caught a fish. hehe. but this time, there were too many fishers contending for fish that most of the fish were either caught or smart enough to keep to the middle of the pond, lest they be tempted by the bait. after waiting for a while, only 1 meagre fish was caught within the pl group, n that fish was unfortunately not mine. I was wondering whether the farm owners were cheats that pur only a few small fishes for us to catch, but I was proven wrong as there were some Chinese nationals, fishing n the same pool, who manage to hit jackpot a few times, and their fish were large ones, like those u see cooked in restaurants. maybe it was just the problem with our poor skill. later, mr lim said that the fish were all too full alr and did not bother about more food. so I was unsuccessful in my quest to catch one fish.

since we fished for about 1 hour, in the cold chilly wind and slight drizzle, we were quite hungry. good thing dinner came at 5. oh, and something I would like to add here, the sky gets dark at 5! thanks to the autumn season, so when I was in china, I always thought it is 9 when it was actually only 7. like china was 2hs slower than singapore time, but it is not, only the sky darkening earlier makes 9 in china feel like midnight to me, a singaporean.
yeah, back to the point, we were served a very scrumptious dinner by the farm people. oh, I think this was the first time we ate away from restaurants, but the food was shiok nevertheless! the farm people mostly cooked their produce, so they were fresh to the boot. and it was there where I tasted the best herbal chicken soup! it was soooooooooo nice that my table had the cheek to ask for second helping of soup! only to be quite disappointed that they gave us another kind of soup, a veg soup, but the taste was still fantastic. also, the prawns and fish rock and the mini lobsters were nice too. I guess im a very seafood person! oh btw, I introduced the lobster to Stephanie wong and to yun yun, and they both loved it. however, some at our table took a strong dislike to the lobster due to its appearance, they said it looked like cockroaches, haiz… they were missing good stuff! I must add that it was suspected that yun yun was allergic to the lobster cos the next day she was red on her ears and eyelids, haiz, I felt a little bad.

by the time we finished dinner, it was about 7, so we left for the hotel. the next day, we were to attend school! I was quite excited, at the same time nervous cos I was scared to meet my buddy and find out that everything wasn’t that good after all. and I was very uneasy about meeting her parents the day after next.

27 OCT, Monday

had to wake up at 645. ate breakfast at 7 and then at 730, travel to school and reach at 740. it was quite a rush I rmb. we took about 10 mins to get to school, so we were on time. at the school gates, there was the school band waiting to give us a resounding welcome when our coach drove in. whoa, I felt so important at that point of time. :) and what’s more interesting was that there was camera man video our every move. later I found out that he was from the tv station and along with him, there was a news interviewer and we would be on the news on tv! wow, they really treated us like esteemed guest.

the teachers in charge escorted us to a mini conference room where local snacks, water and pomelo were served and ready for consumption. very very hospitable. at about 8 sharp, it was time for the grand assembly. the pl entourage had the honour of standing in front of the whole school during the flag raising ceremony. boy, it was darn grand! they had this every monday and there where real boy and girl scouts marching into the parade, and there were even flag barriers and the flag was sooo big that if I were a china national, looking at the flag itself made me proud of my country. the flag (the cloth part) alone was supported by a rod and when it was brought onto the rostrum, 2 boy scouts were required to mount the flag. there was a commander to get everyone in attention and the china national anthem blasted throughout the whole field. the china national anthem is nothing as beautiful as ours, but it definitely sounds more majestic and the students really honour their flag. the bad point was that there were no lyrics to the anthem. and the pledge, wow, the students shouted their pledge as one, it was like a roar! being there made me really honour china too, that was the amazing spirit there. I was so awed by their patriotism and was wishing with my heart that pl could be like this too. after the flag raising, a guy, who is probably the student head, gave us a welcome message. and then the student body get us an overwhelming round of applause as if we where some Olympic winners. lol. then without further ado, they all jogged back to their classrooms. although their compound was big and there were 3000 over students, they managed to clear the grounds by 3 mins! so amazing! they are really disciplined and pl has lots to learn from them.

after assembly, we proceeded to another room were we received our official welcome message by ma xiao zhang and mrs lee gave her address. then we got paired up with aour china buddies. my buddy was xu yi jia. a supper bubbly girl, and very understanding too. I really thank God for a nice buddy. then we separated ways and went for lessons. the first lesson we attended was the Chinese lesson. it wasn’t much of a real language lesson, but it incorporated much more interesting topics. led by students (my buddy and her friend), they shared with us about the substantial number of bridges located in their province. according to their data, it was a whooping 100, 000 over bridges. while they asked us Singaporean students to guess, the numbers lingered about 50 to 100, who knew that there were so many bridges in shao xing! later, when they touched on a singapore bridge to garner our interest, to our horror, it was some bridge that we did not know. so when they asked us questions, Valerie wang represented us and told the class of about 30 china students and us that this bridge is still in construction and there was no proper name for it yet. however, I knew that it was some marina bay bridge, but never dared to open my mouth. then my bubbly buddy happily chattered in Chinese that the pic in their presentation was some immaterialized future bridge. everyone laughed. but to us Singaporean students, we were scared of the china students’ eagerness to know more!

the next class up for us was pe! I was really excited about pe cos it was probably the only subject that needn’t much talking, just body actions would do. haha, but it was a little disappointing for me as we did taiji and learn how to spin a Chinese yo yo and do a few tricks with it. we lined up in 2 rows and then the male pe teacher started instructing us on the taiji moves. they were too slow for my liking, I was hoping for active sports like badminton or table tennis, or volleyball even. taiji put me off cos it was soooo slow and boring and furthermore, I think I heard this from my mum that it has some connotations with Buddhism… so I wasn’t quite interested. next was the yo yo thingy. lol, it looked so easy but for me, it was quite a feat to muster the skill. we were paired with a china student who taught us how to spin the yo yo. and what’s worse was that I was paired with a left hander, thus it was really hard for my to learn well as my left hand wasn’t as nimble. then after much wasted time and not even grasping the first skill, I finally asked my buddy to try to teach me with her right hand, and she couldn’t! lol, she must have finally realized the frustration for using one’s inferior arm to control the yo yo, so she begged her right hander friend to teach me, that was when I managed to pick up the basics. however, it was soon time to call it a day, so I never went past the basics, and watching davina and dora perform tricks fit for experts in front of the class, I couldn’t help but feel even more disappointed, with the pe session and in myself.

after pe, we had music. shao xing is a very cultural place, and it places music and arts as one of its general aptitudes. truly, the students in the jian gong school have amazing talents, they can act, sing, perform opera or anything related. and im unsure whether every lesson is like that, but the lesson was sure interesting and enjoyable, unlike our’s back in pl.

lunch followed up after music lesson, we met our buddies and ste in the cafeteria. Samantha ang’s buddy and mine were best pals, so we ended up sitting together. interestingly, it was more of the conversations between sam and I and yi jia and her friend. so I spoke little Chinese!

at 1, we broke school. the unfortunate jian gong students have to stay in school everyday till 5! that’s torturous! but in turn, they get only 3 years of secondary education. and they have lots of breaks in between their lessons, thus are very relaxed, unlike we singapore students having to scurry from class to class all the time.

okay, back to the point, we went for a cruise down the gorgeous east lake! we sat 3 people in a sampan like boat with a paddler. I sat with shariel and yun yun, n we were clicking our cameras away. the place was just too picturesque! we even had the opportunity to enter a cave with high majestic rocks on all four corners, and when we shouted, our voices were echoed. very cool!

the boat ride lasted for 10 mins, after which, we alighted at the river side, there, the scenery was as breath-taking as the scenery when we were on the boat. so shariel, yun yun, jin ting and I requested to take a few pics with the different teachers, they all happily obliged. at that place, a small business was being run too. and things there were pretty exquisite and thus I bought 4 melon topped wooden pens for each of the members of my clique, as an object of clique identity. the irony was that I didn’t get one for myself. hmmm.. is that some negative foreboding? I hope not! the shop also sold calligraphy fans at a sound price of 20 rmb. it was almost too good to be true. wanted to get one for my dad and mom, but embarrassingly was unsure of their Chinese names. and there was insufficient time to contact them to find out, so I ditched the idea. instead, I bought for Natalie and noelene each a key chain with had their names inscribed on a grain of rice in a miniature version of a test tube which was inserted into a globule of oil that enlarged the names. it was impressive art.

later, after everyone had bought their share of coveted items, it was time for us to makan. subsequently, we went for another cruise along the link moat. oh no, I can’t really remember this event! L but nevermind, it must have been uninteresting that’s why I forgot, so it’s okay.

when we got back to the hotel, the teachers debriefed us and we had a surprise birthday celebration. it was mr lim’s birthday! haha. we had a cake that had this cool candle, which was in the manner of a lily blossom. we did not know what on earth it was until wang lao shi (who obviously knew cos I think this candle is pretty common in china) lighted it n it gloriously opened to reveal even smaller and delicate candles inside of it. haha, it almost seemed as beautiful as the real thing blossoming. so we sang the birthday song, in Chinese and english. everyone had a piece of cake and the day was brought to an end.

stay tuned for the next part. it will take time, definitely!

Watch this

2008-11-14T17:52:00.002+08:00

this is cool. im not very familiar with all the songs here, but this is definitely cool to ppl how noe all the songs.

norwegian recycling - how six songs collide

Yay, im liberated!

2008-11-13T23:32:00.003+08:00

:) im happy. cos today i went to natalie's house to play sims 2!! my characters are sooo cool and they are falling in very much in love and making babies! i wish my life was like sims 2, cos with me as the mastermind, i wouldn't allow IDIOTS to sabotage my life and make me sad. and to that someone, if u think im a pathetic little weakling that doesn't have the strength and power to retaliate to idiots who think they are sooo above me.. u are totally wrong, cos i can be extremely vicious by nature, but since God teaches me to love my enemies, i shall try to love them, even if it was against my will. i will try. a side note to someone out there, i think u are really un-commonsensical and cowardly to say what u dared to say to me. please learn one word. f-o-r-g-i-v-e. no one is perfect, and who noes, u might do something even worse to someone else one day, and what would u hope in return? forgiveness's the word. okay, i better not say more, i must restrain myself from going out of control.

oh boy, i have seriously side tracked from sims. but to all my dear friends who were concerned about what happedned to me during the beautiful mess (the title of the episode given by elyssa in her blog) and afraid if im suicidal, thank God, im no longer feeling that way. im happy. :) thanks for ur concerns, i LOVE u all A LOT!

and thanks a billion nat for letting me play sims 2! i love u for that too!

Rock Climbing (featuring CK)

2008-11-09T22:47:00.009+08:00

yay! this sat, i went for ck and it was rock climbing. it was super fun! it was my 2nd time rcing since the first time when i was P5, at P5 camp. haha, that's so long ago, but i reached the top when i was P5, so this time, i told myself to do the same.

we rced at safra yishun club. the name is something like that.. yeah, so when we got there, we had to fill up a form. it was sort of a medical background reveal all kind of form, i guess the management was making sure that they would not be held responsible for any casualties should the person adamantly rced even though he/she knew he/she was not in the right physical form. after that, we paid 5 bucks each (isaac paid for us first then we paid him at the end). it's actually 10 bucks, but since claudia knew someone from inside, we got half the price! :) thanks claudia!

next, we went to the gymnasium of sorts where there were rock climbing walls as walls. so we first-timers and unfamiliarist could try out and practice first. the floor was actually padded cushion, so that if we fell, we did not fall to injury, instead, to cushion. i climbed a fair bit a then even got game enough to race with nat. lol, but i lost. my excuse: the 'rocks' on my side were much smaller and grip unfriendly, also, i had shorter limbs, so i could not reach for the ceiling as easily. okay, i realised that i should change the word 'excuse' to 'excuses'. well, i think humans are very good at making excuses whenn they don't do well. yay, im human... lol. finally, i felt brave enough to try the ones outside. u shall see how scary looking the rcing walls were. they were a good 5 storeys high walls.

claudia went first. she tried some tricky wall, but she passed it as if it was nothing. i think she really inspired us to rock climb and finish it. btw, she's level 2 in rcing, that's the highest level, if im not wrong, so we had some professional help here. ;) after claudia, nat felt so spunky that she went next, but doing a less challenging one. she did well and reached the top before long. :) good job nat! then more and more of us became intrepid souls and gave our best. look out for the pics on those who reached the top. i didnt take all done, but great effort everyone! :)

anyway, at the end of it all, the group went for dinner near north point. uncle john aka uncle fai chong treated us to dinner! see the pics below, all of us were so happy! :) (too bad nat couldn't join us. :( )

setting off. :) both of us wearing contacts

2 pairs of sisters. :)

the 'gymnasium' cool huh! im the spiderwoman in the plug my guitar shirt. yeah, cca shirt..

three church best friends. nat, lisa, noelene. im surrounded by the wong sisters

erjie trying out rock climbing. she's probably thinking: it's no sweat, im cool..

didnt take a pic of claudia, so nat's the first for my cam. nat rciing, sweetie iva belaying her. i bet iva didnt sweat much, nat's light as an ant, nope not a feather.. im not so cliche

er jie the belayer. she learnt her skills when she was in rgs. so good!

yeah, nat has conquered the wall!

following conquerors. elias and isa!

erjie and i. whoa, i was a huge feat! i sweated throughout! i took about 5 mins to finish the wall... :( tsk, so lousy

whoo, im going up (haha, i realised it is a sister act, we are almost in the same pose!)

n up

and i've finally reached! poor erjie, used up some of her energy belaying others before, now she was quite tired

my dearest belayer, claudia, waiting so patiently. whoa, she looks so relaxed here, thank goodness she did not drop me!

yay, we've both reached! i waited for erjie, see i so nice!

taking pic. i was probably scared out of my wits cos of the height i was at, im terrified of heights!

going down! big butt i have... :(

belayer and conqueror

noelene, me, erjie in our rock climbing 'underwear'. the proper term: harness...

jump! i was too fast and spoilt the pic. :(

elisa and i. she belayed my sis and got rewarded with a huge blister on her right hand. ouch! she has o's this week! i pity her! thanks elisa, but i doubt she will read this. :(

yay! uncle fai chong the paradigm of fitness even during older ages. what i mean is that he isn't as young, but he managed to complete the daunting trail upwards. btw, he's a grandfather alr!

another belaying skill?

erjie the belayer. (with my 'crush' in the background, lol only nat and noelene will understand this ;) )

the little girl at the rocks!

sisters! but i wished i had sat properly. if not it will so nice! both of us wearing blue!

here're the walls for u! 5 storey worth of climbing. the middle's a terror, we witness some NS guy climbing it and he was shrieking in pain with each pull up the top section. unfortunately, he nvr got to the top, he kept falling... so sad for him

dinner! looks like some reunion dinner! okay lemme intro the the ppl here. starting from me in a clockwise direction, me - jemima - tze yan - ivan - boaz - uncle fai chong - claudia - bernice - iva - isa. :) boaz and claudia are siblings and uncle fai chong their dad. iva and isa are sisters. erjie was taking the pic, so she isn't in. :(

okie dokie, i gtg!

btw, im not giving up on my china trip recount, though it will take super long! stay tuned, (if u are patient enough!)