Tuesday, September 14, 2004 10:01 p.m.

so today was a pretty good one. :)
i came this close to handing in my chinese composition with the wrong question number written on it; which would have warranted me a zero had ms chua not given me permission to amend the mistake just before she left.
now that was a huge relief. :)

oh, and thaiexpress is quite terrible, i realise.
drinking their tomyum soup is like downing a bowl of boiled water, 2 mushrooms, 2 prawns and a few slices of fish.
and the restaurant actually experienced a power trip halfway through the meal.
tsk tsk.

alright, i'm pretty much free the rest of this week.
tonight shall be a few hours of light reading of my biology textbook before i catch up on some much needed shut-eye.
the prelims are taking a huge toll on my body clock.
bugger.

Sunday, September 12, 2004 03:27 p.m.

to satisfy my little list-making fetish, i am about to make a short one here.
of my circumstances henceforth.
:D

1) trish turns 16 today.
happy birthday dear!

2) today is the day before st nicks' first prelim paper (that span a torturous 3 weeks, coincidentally). i don't understand why it has to be this way. but it works for me, this spreading out of papers (more study time).
well, kinda.

3) 1 minute before the 10.45 mass started this morning (when everyone else had taken their places in church), i tapped on father james' shoulder and asked him how to pronounce a word in the bible passage i was supposed to read.
i don't know why i did it. i just felt that i might pronounce it incorrectly. divine intervention? no lah. not so dramatic.
thankfully, he knew, because someone else had read it wrongly during the previous mass. i think father james was quite peeved that i was so unprepared to start off with. but oh well.
i didn't trip. :)

4) i've decided to get a green dress for graduation. it's my favourite colour, what can i say?
plus my children are going to be inheriting it in about half a century (hoho).
so i suppose it'll be a nice touch for them to receive something that looks like there's mould growing on it (which may technically be genuine), thereby upping it's credibility as an ancient artefact.
go vintage!

5) i am suffering from the aftereffects of that horrid rocket salad at baker's inn last night. okay, so the dish itself wasn't too bad (veggie + ikan bilis (white bait) + cheese slices).
but all that fibre is...a little much.

alright, a list of 5 seems adequate.
randomness is therapeutic.
i'm missing many things too, of which i might make a list of, in time to come.
take for example watching mtv.
haven't done that in ages.
list-making is fun (as i suppose brendan might agree).
as is typing in point form.

okay, i'm off.

Sunday, September 5, 2004 06:25 p.m.

i've set a new personal record by staying up for over 48 hours from thursday through to saturday.
that's a mean feat, considering i worked non-stop on my art project.
at least mr foo's pretty happy with the boards. :D

bad thing is, i screwed my prelim paper big time yesterday, meaning that i'll probably be able to use my art grade only for the o level...
since yesterday's is beyond hope.
and, i've spent so much time on art that i've blatantly neglected all my other subjects.
if only i could fast-forward to december.

and i'm nursing a red and itchy eye now, which i think was caused by my incessant rubbing of eyes during the hours i didn't sleep.
and i just got back from mount elizabeth.
dad's staying there for 3 nights after an operation...
good to see that he's fine and dandy!

haha okay, i have to catch up on my newspaper reading then it's back to the study table.
i'm starving too, despite having eaten loads after mass with charm earlier on.
goodness, but mum's coming home with baker's inn takeaway soon.
can you say yummy! :D

Thursday, September 2, 2004 10:33 a.m.

i've been waiting for the rain to stop since...
hous ago.
but it's lessening now.
so then i'll finally be able to go to school.
which sucks, because today is supposed to be a holiday for all st nicks girls.
this is just like yesterday, when i had to zoom down to school from the airport even though it was teachers' day.
the life of a sec4 is bad enough...
but the life of a procrastinating sec4 is far worse.
at least i have good company in the art room.
and awesome music from the itunes in one of the imacs (although i've heard that playlist about a hundred times over).
plus, listening to yujin and her sister speak in korean yesterday was way cool. :D

ooh sarah just emailed from new jersey!
yay yay yay yay yay okay i'm off.
(i think i'm high on my strawberry milkshake)

Monday, August 30, 2004 09:05 p.m.

the house is filled with andre bocelli's voice now.
ladidum.
and guess who's packing store-bought marks & spencer chocolate chip cookies into neat little bundles with pretty ribbons tied on top for teachers' day tomorrow. :D
i'm such a little cheat sometimes.

but hey, i got the idea from marthastewart.com! :)
fool-proof craft-making.

Sunday, August 29, 2004 05:54 p.m.

okay let's start with friday.
lynette got the swim shadys (lame name btw) consisting of 5 national swimmers to come down for a gig at our school as a sort of charity drive.
of course, the teachers should have realised that when you place 5 hunky national swimmers (including mark chay no less) in a school perpetually lacking in testerone, the girls are bound to go a little crazy.
i'd never heard so much squealing and screaming in st nicks before. :D

the family lounge was packed by 2.15pm with flashing bulbs all over the place.
and none of the physics girls wanted to leave for their mock exam.
haha...
the sight of mrs khong brandishing her cane and mock-whipping the runaway physics girls is definitely something i won't be forgetting in a long while. :D

i think gary, the lead singer, got tipped off (lynette probably told one of the band members) about jan liking him because he gave her a couple of squeal-worthy moments everytime he knelt infront of her and sang.
haha...
the girl turned red like anything, i swear. :)

anyway, after the performance, we sat around with uncle tony (the band manager) while jan and chow were being lame with him.
and i took many photos!
shall upload them asap.

after everything, charm, swei, chow, jan and i went down to swenson's for dinner.
by gosh, i'd really forgotten how much i loved their baked rice.
it's beyond yummy.
after the meal, dad picked me up and dropped me at home afterwhich i bathed, changed and went down to sarah's place for the sleepover.

sab, mitch, tanny and sarah were there before me.
we just hung out and ate until 10pm afterwhich we cabbed down to cineleisure for a midnight movie.
stepford wives is hilarious, really.
and the houses are to-die-for.
it's a tad spooky though.

well, this is probably our last sleepover together in...
a really long time.
years, maybe?
ack, if only singapore's education system were to be that much more appealing, maybe people wouldn't be leaving the country to study overseas.
my dad just spent a few hundred on SAT books at borders this morning.
they're supremely thick!

anyway, i slept for about 15 hours in sarah's den.
that is half a day gone btw.
i think it's the accumulation of bad nights over the week.

in the evening, my family gathered for this awesome barbecue that would have been like a meat-oholic's heaven.
there was lamb and chicken and beef and pork and seafood, which the maids were continually busy with roasting over the fire.
of course, there was my mum's potato salad, salsa dips, black pepper crab (i love!) and loads of other stuff...
plus bottle after bottle of merlot, red wine, white wine, mum's homemade shandy, the works.
the running joke of the night was that my mum got slightly tipsy.
her face was flushed all night!

great food, beautiful weather up in the roof garden, the whole family present (my uncle's family came back from hongkong with a new addition to the family!), lots of chilling out and it's a definite winning formula. :)
my grandma even brought photos of her grandparents, which would mean i was staring into the faces of my very own great-great-grandparents.
they really look a lot like those photos you see of old peranakan families.

well, there's the intoxicating smell of barbecued meat roasting in the oven now.
my mum's busy in the kitchen heating up the leftovers...
and i've been eating apple strudel this entire sunday afternoon.
i must must must remember that as a sec 4, exercise is practically scarce.
i'll upload photos as soon as i'm free. :)

Thursday, August 26, 2004 11:16 p.m.

if, like me, you drop your phone at a frequency rate of twice (or even thrice) every single day, you know it's only a matter of time before the mechanics start deteriorating.

and so, i have found the nokia 6260 as my next dream gadget. :D
it looks so good in black.

hope dangles on a string
like slow spinning redemption
winding in and winding out
the shine of it has caught my eye
and roped me in
so mesmerizing, and so hypnotizing
i am captivated
i am...

vindicated
i am selfish
i am wrong
i am right
i swear i'm right
swear i knew it all along
and i am flawed
but i am cleaning up so well
i am seeing in me now the things you swore you saw yourself

and if you wish and hope (and psycho yourself) hard enough, things do happen.
mr foo extended the art project deadline. :)

Wednesday, August 25, 2004 10:20 p.m.

anyone who states that art is therapeutic should be charged with blatant fabrication and labelled a compulsive liar!

because, okay, so maybe i did join art in sec3 for the relative ease it brought in comparison to the 8 other subjects.
but i certainly never imagined myself at such a stressful stage, to the point that i get goosebumps and a sickeningly tingly feeling up my spine everytime i think about my art project.
even math doesn't bring about that sort of sensation.

so now i'm all raw nerves about whether or not i'll be able to hit the deadline without having to hand in an incomplete work.
see, my hair's standing just as i type this.
i guess the only consolation out of this is knowing that art almost always gurantees a minimum of a B grade.
but a 3 or 4 isn't enough!
okay i'm off.

Friday, August 20, 2004 12:42 a.m.

alright, i've finally updated a photo album.
it's the bestfriends one (LHS).
next on my agenda will be the photos of birthdays, and youth day etc.
but that'll come much later. :)

today was my english oral of which i genuinely screwed up.
i lost myself in the question, and very clearly pointed that out to the examiners at mid-point whilst talking.
"youths who first step into the workforce must have humility...but that does not entirely mean the older people aren't as keen as them...ultimately, a life-long learning mindset must be established by the individual...i'm sorry, but i think i've just lost myself. could you repeat the question please?"

see, i really couldn't think of anything to say about hairdressing (which was my topic, btw).
something decent, like a question about our future would have been nice.
or even our views on the singapore government.
but to speak of our relationship with our hairdresser and a description of the hair salon is not my idea of something talk-able.

oh well, i'm off to study biology (with the aid of notes done by my sister's classmates). :D
this brings back memories about the time i used to exchange written notes in lower secondary.
now?
what notes?

Monday, August 16, 2004 02:05 a.m.

5 things karina learnt this weekend:

1) that her (hehehoho) nydc guy (aka charm's nephew aka lynette's waiter aka the-guy-she-wants-jan-to-see) does not work on sundays. :(

2) that many, many chinese words that seem oh-so-familiar still elude her during self-ting-xie.

3) that maths is actually quite fun once you grasp the concept.

4) that starbucks is a relatively conducive place to study in.

5) that at age 16, she still gets all giggly when her ***** messages and she hears of exciting ****. :D

i know how annoying asterisks are, but they are especially good in superseding certain other forms of censorship.
so don't mind them. :D

anyway, all 6 of us (mitch, sab, sarah, tanny, trish and me) finally tried out the indochine restaurant at wisma on saturday, which was average-y-yummy, but also average-y-pricey (bill of about 180 dollars for 6).
however, i was quite surprised with the laxity in ordering alcohol.
it was a change though.

alright i'm off.
too sleepy to continue.

Friday, August 13, 2004 11:21 p.m.

well, guess who got her monthly fix of teenvogue, only to spot adam brody on the cover alongside alexis bledel. :D
and as if i wasn't already swooning, there was a full page of (ahhhh) jeremy sumpter inside.
shoot me please.

and i'm suffering from severe menstrual cramps and stomach indigestion.
i suspect it is the buffet lunch at sakae yesterday...
which had stacy, kristine, lynette, charm, jan, chow and i stuffing 105 plates (woot! new record) of sushi/gyoza/tako balls down our throats.
after yesterday's ordeal, i have henceforth sworn off all forms of wasabi (peas, chips, everything) for fear of stimulated provocations of the flaming-nostril syndrome as experienced by yours truly.
photos in charm's phone attest to my trauma.

and i think i might have to join in the the hordes of law-abiding singaporeans who flush public toilets and abhor any form of littering, but smuggle sex and the city dvds into our little island; so as to be able to watch the show at will.
because i have come to realise that the show might offend certain family members (eg. the parents) who disingenuously prompt me into switching channels as i watch it on hbo.
but all that couch potato-ing will come later.

because aside from all this empty talk, i have decided to retake my chinese o's and hopefully up my grade by an alphabet (an A, please, not a B again).
this means i am officially whipping my chinese texts out and will be commencing the mundane task of xi zi shortly.
oh woe is me.

Tuesday, August 10, 2004 10:23 a.m.

so yesterday went pretty well.
except for a few mishaps...
we didn't think the esplanade was going to be that crowded, but it was packed all the same, with singaporeans and tourists checking the ndp fair out.
and after some studying, so did we.

i think about half of singapore was in red yesterday...
coolio!
mitch, sab, tanny and i paired up to go on this dizzy fun fair ride that only worsened my already-giddy self from doing homework on the mrt.
but it was fun nonetheless.
mitch kept screaming and clapping and i kept giggling and swinging my legs.
we must have looked spastic. :D

after walking through the whole fun fair, listening to funky music ("the man is on the table...the table...the table...the girl is on the table...the table...the table...the teh-teh-teh-teh-table...the table...the table"), buying durian crepes and breathing our durian-reeking breaths into mitch's face, and attempting to watch the fireworks (which were entirely hidden behind the many buildings)...
we cabbed down to mitch's place to watch singapore idol.

hilarious stuff, that show.
and i like dick lee's cutting humour.
haha...
alright, i'm off to meet jan and chow in the library.

Monday, August 9, 2004 02:17 p.m.

in the past week or so, i have...

- skipped school twice.
- conferenced with chow, charm and jan (of whom i haven't seen in 3 days, gasp!)
- celebrated national day cum racial harmony day (which was pretty boring for the sec 4s, i might add, since the whole school was either in ethnic costumes/red and white while we were in family tees and shorts acting as the audience and patrons to the other secondary classes' skits and classrooms).
- had sab over at my place where we watched les misérables (my 3rd time, though it still made me tear up) and had my mum who force-fed us a huge dinner (but it was yummy nonetheless).
- shopped my prom-dress-funds away in many other well-invested purchases (haha) with my best ever shopping partner, charm!
- gone for a dinner and dessert date (quoute unquote sab, DDD) with mitch, tanny and sab (nydc drinks are the most sinful jugs of substance ever).
- had my first reading in church as a lector (wah talk about the jitters).
- bridged a whole day away with the BBC (balcony bridge club, can we get any lamer) and fave kakis sab, tanny and mitch.
- checked out the new food court at cineleisure (new smoothie place, omg, it's perfect).
- and finally, most importantly, studied.

alright, i'm gonna take a shower and leave for the esplanade in a bit (study session with mitch and the rest).
maybe we'll actually be able to watch the fireworks.
haha.

happy national day, everyone!

Monday, August 9, 2004 01:28 a.m.

i'm not sure if this template is reader-friendly because my computer screen blows stuff out of proportion, and everything appears larger than it normally would on most other monitors.
i'm especially worried about the fonts.
do they look fine?

oh well, i'm shagged for today.
shall update tomorrow then.