so busy that i hardly have time to come online and blog and do my usual blog-surfing. right so these 2 days have been quite something. one more day to go and i'm free! i can't wait for monday to arrive man.

so what exactly am i busy with? since i'm waiting for my hair to dry so that i can faster go sleep and wake up at 7.30 tmr, i shall briefly describe my very temporary job. i got it from my mum's cousin's son, who works at this coins/banknote selling company called Mavin. right now they have their 8th auction and it happens this wkend, so fri i went to the office then to the meridien hotel opposite where there is a preview. basically i just get pple who wants to view the coins/notes to fill in registration form then take out the lots for them to view one by one and sit there and stare at them and take back the lots and make sure they dun spoil them.

so today (saturday) i went to the place bright and early at the unearthly hour of 8.45am to the function room in meridien where the action (pun not intended) took place. i'm just in charge of like clicking the powerpoint and lot details so that pple can see on screen what they are bidding. very interesting to watch the bidding, all sorts of people. tmr will be even more interesting cos today is just the MAS banknotes, tmr there's all the foreign old antique coins and stuffs. there's even like chinese ingots and a 10,000 specimen singapore note! waay cool.

oh yes! there's faith dinner yesterday and it was ultra fun. i joined em after work and we went from nydc in wheelock to the xiao long bao place in paragon. very nice baos, loves it. i went from totally freezed-out from work at the freezing hotel to being totally hyper and mad. really, as in real mad. i dunno what came over me, must be pent-up energy. haha.

joined a little dinner at lau pa sat today and came home, intending to shower and just sleep. but the tv spoilt all my plans.. i watched American Beauty though i din want to cos i need to sleep but i'm glad i caught it. very dark, screwed, disturbing yet the philosophy behind it meaningful. it reminds me of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and mitch albom's books. right.

anyway my super short hair is dry. it takes exactly 1 entry for my hair to dry. interesting. i have 5 hrs of sleep before another day of semi-boredom (imagine just sitting there for the whole day looking at rich old men bidding for pieces of metal and paper). i think i drank like 3 cups of tea and 1 cup of hotel coffee today just to stay awake. i was awake though when someone bidded 8000+ USD for a 5dollar singapore note with a very nice serial no. this obsession for numbers. i don't get it.

i wonder what to wear tmr. hm.

i have no idea how to re-style my hair. organised chaos.

finally going to watch Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events later. more movies that i want to watch but i have to wait for pple and they have to wait for me :(

fri, sat and sun i'll be on some 3-day job for some singapore mint auction thingy. i have to be at the office at dhoby ghaut tmr at 9. i have no idea how i can drag myself up. i think i'll be doing all those miscellaneous stuff for the auction. but it pays good money so i'll shaddup.

going for a interview sometime next week for the job of a household surveyor for Ministry of Manpower. initially i thought the pay is good but after CPF it's just normal. but then again its just sitting there calling people up in the office so i'm looking forward to the experience. office life, here i come! and we get to buy office wear if we got the job! the best excuse to spend money, heh.

i've yet registered for uni cos i think i'll apply under the discretionary criteria and i need some big shot to help me sign the appraisal/recommendation form. i don't want to take chances and end up not getting shortlisted for the SCI in NTU. then again, there's always NUS FASS. i dunno man, NTU looks dead boring. bwargh but NUS campus very old.

ok i better get ready to go out now or i'll be late! ta~

both are taken on the same day, first pic courtesy of zq! both are coincidentally, my name. haha. the first one is my chinese name, yi2 jia1. the chinese words are not my name though. 2nd pic, a facial brush?!? wad da heow? haha and why do they name it alexis? weird. and i cannot imagine people scrubbing their faces with a brush. ouch.

cut my hair today. its short agaiN! this time its a bit different, one side long one side short.

happy day with macadamia nut brownie ice cream at nydc!

1. you should let your eyes have at least 2 days of rest out of a week of wearing contacts.
2. you still have to rub your lenses at least 12-16secs to make sure its cleaner. even if solution says No Rub.
3. lens case should be thrown away after 3 months
4. after taking lens out of case, rinse the case with tap water, rinse again with solution, then air dry with case placed upside down on flat surface.
5. never take out lenses and just dump them into solution. rinse, rub, then place them in fresh solution.
6. coloured contacts traps dirt easier (with its rougher, coloured surface) and blocks oxygen flux, being relatively thicker.
7. rule of the thumb. shorter is better. therefore dailies are the most hygienic. (and the most ex)
8. discard ur monthly after 3 weeks as buildup will be severe by then.
9. the amount of water content in ur lens (eg. 38 percent) means that it will absorb moisture around ur eyes and the surroundings to keep that amount constant. therefore the lower the percentage, the better.
10. consult an optometrist to get properly fitted lens. there's different concavity of eyeballs for different pple.
11. acuvue is probably the best brand around. and the most ex.

Now Playing: Bowling for Soup - Almost

I almost got drunk at school, at fourteen
Where I almost made out with the Homecoming Queen
Who almost went on to be Miss Texas
But lost to a slut, with much bigger breast-es
I almost dropped out to move to LA
Where I was almost famous for almost a day

And I almost had you
But I guess that doesn't cut it
Almost loved you
I almost wished you would've loved me too

I almost held up a grocery store
Where I almost did five years and then seven more
Cause I almost got bopped for a fight with a thug
Cause he almost made off with a bunch of the drugs
That I almost got hooked on cause you ran away
And I wish I would've had the nerve to ask you to stay

And I almost had you
But I guess that doesn't cut it
Almost had you
And I didn't even know it

You kept me guessin' and now I'm destined
To spend my time missing you
I almost wish you would've loved me too

Here I go, thinking 'bout all the things I could've done
I'm gonna need a forklift, cause all the baggage weighs a ton
(baggage weighs a ton)
I know we've had our problems, I can't remember one

I almost forgot to say something else
And if I can't fit it in, I'll keep it all to myself
I almost wrote a song about you today
But I tore it all up and then I threw it away

And I almost had you
But I guess that doesn't cut it
Almost had you
And I didn't even know it

You kept me guessin' and now I'm destined
To spend my time missing you
And I almost had you (almost had you)
Almost had you

I almost wish you would've loved me too

long day today. woke up at 12pm to meet the girls for the NTU open house. gave the NUS one a miss yesterday because i went last year. anyway i'm more inclined towards NTU, given its spacious campus and everything. so we journeyed to the west, and met sher halfway. then continued with our journey and reached boon lay, where we waited for pple that weren't gonna go with us to NTU in the first place. quite dumb but it was fun chatting with huifen and sher and her prince charlesming. met fab, dan, wing and ailin at the mrt station too as they were on their way home after their NTU trip, when we haven't even smelled NTU yet. the sun was blistering hot though. i think i got quite a tan now from all that walking in the sun.

we were shuttled to the campus from boon lay on this lau pok but still got air con bus to reach the sch of biological sciences where all the info's there so basically there's nothing much to see. its really quite un-happening, the place was pretty deserted and all the buildings looked so forbidding, like all science and tech and industrial. saw a few pple, then we walked around, get free aloe V and ice cream.

then we went for the Communication Studies tour at 4, to their sch and everything. its all uber-cool, they have all those equipment and mac computers, radio and tv studios and a newspaper etc. had a little refreshment, then onward to the talk at 5.

and that's when the bad news hit me.

all along i was happily thinking that i'll be able to get into the Comm Studies course, but woe me. it is not the case at all. firstly, there's about 600 applicants. then they will shortlist about 400 for written test and interview, based on their academic results. if u get AAB b3 and above, there's no problem in getting shortlisted. but! me! no! AAB! *facepalms* then they will pick a measly 160-180 students for that course. according to the lecturer, the degree of difficulty of entering this school is about the same as trying to get into NUS LAW.

hell i'm determined to stick my ass into NTU. the hostels are cheaper too. a double room there is about 600. a double in NUS about 750, according to a source met along the way. haha so i'm going to apply and hope for the best. if not, maybe i'll go for the English Lit Major they have for their new humanities school. either that or i'll go defeatedly to NUS FASS geog. not that i dun like geog, just that i'll be quite sad over in NUS since all 3 of the MGs r gonna be in NTU, and we were talking about sharing a room and living together and all that exciting independent stuff.

bought a top from a wonderful shop at a wonderful hidden place. i shall not divulge the location for fear of everyone going there to buy up all the nice stuffs :) let me give you a clue. that cool place has a t-shirt with prints like this:

dinner at JP was supremely satisfying. firstly we were famished. the foodcourt was not helping as each stall looked as inviting as the next. all three of us had different foods. i had a steamboat seafood tomyam. (i have a weakness for sour and spicy foods). rux had the noodles from the stall that sells the delicious Yellow Pillow. which is actually fried rice wrapped in egg plus chicken cutlets. i highly recommend it! wen had western fish and chips. not bad too! and we topped it off with the good ol' ice kachang.

laughed all the way back from boonlay to amk.

oh and i think i wanna quit my job. which, erm, which i did for 4 hrs yesterday at sun plaza from 5-9pm. don't look at me! the horoscope says its a good time to change jobs!

"A recent study of 1,001 patients found overweight folks slept less than their lean counterparts. So sleep -- like exercise and diet -- may be a modifiable behavior when it comes to weight loss." -via iz reloaded

sleeping is good, i tell you. its proven.

anyway yups i'm in for the job i mentioned in my prev entry. the interview went quite well, but halfway through the thing i felt like quitting already. cos they want someone with committment, like 3-6months. i thought it was more temporary, the agency nv tell me properly. and i'm so not committment. anyway i waited for the results for like 3 hrs and then they called and said i've been selected. darn. i had to go back and sit for the 3.5 hrs briefing and training. first 2 hrs was this guy who taught us "The Art of Selling", with the 4Ps. Passion, Presentable, Positive, Persuasiveness. when i read it i was like, "god its not even grammatically consistent." anyway it felt like some motivational course for the 7 of us. quite interesting, but i doubt i can achieve all that the speaker said.

then there was the product knowledge. its for acuvue lenses, and the person introduced the several types under that brand. yada yada all that stuff but hydraclear technology and silicon hydrogel watever. anyway at the end they were like saying there's some expectation to our performance and they will be unhappy if we do not reach the target. that translates to not just standing around doing nothing for the basic pay. double darn. and the commission is like if you sell 9 boxes, u dun get any. but if you hit a certain target, lets say 10, u get 1 buck for each so u'll get 10 bux. very challenging. i'm so not cut out for this kinda sales work.

that aside, went to the library today to get some literary nourishment. here's what i borrowed:

The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
The Piano Tuner by Daniel Mason
The Time Machine/War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Vanity Fair: A Novel without a Hero by William Makepeace Thackeray
Following the Wrong God Home by Catherine Lim
The Last Juror by John Grisham (is he really that good? lets see.)

everyone has goals. and i've decided that i have a few too, for these following few months i have b4 uni starts.

1. read as many books as possible. discriminate no books.
2. travel overseas at least once
3. have as many different types of jobs as possible
4. maintain contact with friends
5. improve my knowledge on local food by going around trying different foods/restaurants.
6. explore clothing/accessories (equals renovating my cupboard content)

i'm such a sucker for lists.

interesting comments regarding the discrimination for local students. somehow, i really do feel that the gahmen is doing something wrong in its foreign education policy but i guess we can't do anything about it. so many injustices, yet who are we, a random smattering of keyboard opinions to make a difference? singapore is too crowded. will wanna get out of here too after uni if singapore continues to >ignore us. all that bullshit about stayer and quitter. BAH.

on a different note, retail therapy is really good. went shopping with rux today and hell we splurged a whole lotta moolah. busted 80 bux today on slippers, a sweater, earrings and 2 tops (plus 2 tops given FOC heh). oriental salad again. but how happy i am to find such nice stuffs :) my white heels is still very elusive though. rux was feeling guilty spending so much money but i'm fine with it. my alexism theory says that there's no point keeping money in a bank, cos its better to spend it right now. we are young, energetic and fun. we can nv wear the clothes that we wear now when we are 30, so we must grab this chance! that's why i'm always so poor.. cos i spend whatever i have on me almost instantaneously on whatever my heart desires. not enough then use ATM :S

going to an interview tmr at 10.45am. its super early, in case you didn't notice. its at shaw centre and for some contact lens part time job during the weekend and sometimes weekdays. i'm going alone! so scary. haha was thinking of screwing up the interview deliberately so i can go home and continue my sleep. *oh man i'm so pig* but i need the cash to support my theory, so i'm gonna go there and smoke through and talk a whole lot of crap. hopefully the employer will believe me.

wish me luck.

WOAH! i had a great great day. in fact, it was a super good day. CONGRATS to Mr. BBE Jerry Ho aka Smart Ass Dun Study Still Can Get Bs Jerry haha. me zq and faith met him in sch today for him to collect his results. it was quite exciting eh, since the teacher who had his results is not in school. so he had to go around asking pple for his grades and when gilbert lee told him he got a E u shd have seen his face. then mr. lee told him he's joking, he actually got a B instead. me, zq and faith let out super loud disbelieving "wuah!"s in the General Office. how embarrassing haha but wow jerry really did good. moral of the story? dun study so much la.

anyway we met ms chan at the canteen and we had a chat. it was quite funny cos we were talking about doing homework.

me: "but ms chan, science students always do their tutorials cos they every night have other homework so they will also do maths by-the-way waat."

faith: "yar we arts students only have like an essay per month"

mrs chan (looking enlightened): "aiyah why now then tell me?? now i know why..."

lol its so funny how she finally gets it after all these yrs. oh and i had the egg and plain prata in sch while faith had the crispy noodles. very nice! nj food rox to the mox man. so after all that excitement we cabbed to faith's then to town to catch a movie. Hitch was quite funny, your typical comical romance flick. the soundtrack rocks though it totally sets the mood. give it 3/5 stars! yups watch it if you are free or if you are an arts student with a free afternoon. heh.

after that we met beat and we walked around town. we visited that super cute mini fish that swims so diligently at the wisma aquarium. its super comical! and jerry had a theory that the sharks in there dun grow big cos they are malnourished. then i asked if that's the case why din it eat the rest of the fish in the tank and he said cos the sharks are fed. right.

ooh after a while we went to swensens for celebration dinner. i think i'm quite high now cos of the enormous amount of sugar, whipped cream, chocolate and nuts i consumed in the Earthquake. the flavours are heavenly. main course was some chicken with spices thing, which is quite nice. beat's seafood pasta was super spicy but gastronomical. anyway conclusion is that swensens is way better than cafe cartel, where the service sucks, btw. and the earthquake! i ate like the rest after the 3 gave up.

yum. updated food pics and reviews in the sg food blog. pls be reminded that saliva is bad for the keyboard ;)

Faith's having a birthday party for all NJcians at her house on Sat, 16th of April evening for those who know her. i'm advertising it on my blog :) RSVP fast!

via my sis' fren's blog

i'm happy. life goes on, merrily.

reunion dinner was very successful. thanks alot yr2s! u guys did a great job and i enjoyed myself tremendously. its great to see everyone again and eat and laugh :)

pics up soon. oh and i've embarked on the daunting task of listing all the books i've read in my whole life. very difficult.

ok braindead its 4 am already. thanks to bubblemunche, jm, ah 9 and fe who commented on my previous post for your encouragement. to faith and all those who think u did badly, cheer up k cos results are not everything and after getting past the initial shock you'll find that things are not that bad after all..

i got my A-level results. very mixed feelings about it, its like not very good yet not very bad. kinda like running a three-person race and getting silver. on one hand, i think i can get into uni and course i want, but on the other, it doesn't really look that good on paper, and there's no hope of scholarship, i think. i had predicted BBC and ungraded for lit S, but secretly hope to get AAC. now i got in between -_-|||. the lit prac crit paper8 really screwed me up.

i'm quite disappointed with myself over lit. i totally expect my maths to get C and below so ya, its good. but its so weird that i can get merit for lit S and B for lit? i thought i screwed lit S up way badly. i mean, i din even bring in any books for reference even though its allowed, all i had was one lousy king lear play while the others had like all the copies of the books they r doing in front of them. so i'm quite happy. see? that's the thing. i am sad over half of them and happy over the other half. if only i get like ABB. or AAC. just not ABC! sucks. just that tiny bit more credit and i'll be totally satisfied. now i dunno what to feel. or do.

on the other hand, most pple did quite well, esp my ah boy sharon! proud of you gal! ailin, joanne, siim ann too. the pride and joy of our class :) fabian is one dark horse (now literally, being under Tekong sun). and i'm happy for my MGs too cos they did really well.

results results results. my head is spinning with comparing myself with others and thinking of what to do in the future. i noe comparing is bad, but i can't help it. but then again, i should be happy with my results cos seriously i din really study much at all these 2 yrs cept for those hard mugging done during the last month or so. i mean, there's SYF and being OGL and going town almost everyday. go home i'll be online chatting and watching TV. i don't even recall doing homework at except once in a blue moon for phy.geog.. maths was also last minute pia-ing with tuition. even my bro was like complaining that Arts Fac students are damn slack. hm.

now i'm in sort of what you call a "crossroad in your life" where you make that kinda decisions that's gonna affect you for life. i have absolutely no idea what course to take except its going to be non-science/maths/engineering related. thing about NUS is that it is definitely more prestigious, but i dun really like the crampy and old campus though my senior said that the hostels r nice. if i go there, my choices will be Arts n Social Sci fac or Communications and Media. NTU has a big, spacious campus and there's Jurong Point nearby. if i go NTU, it'll be the Communication Studies or something like the new Art, Design and Media course. but which one? help?

2 words for the whole results thingy. "Ok lor." at least ABC very easy to say. abcdef.

another gray, dreary day. made me stay in bed for very long snuggling up in my blankets and bolsters. i R pig.

*sigh* i really want to travel. anywhere is fine with me, actually. seems like everybody has gone somewhere and seen something but me. i want to see new things, to experience life outside singapore.

was reading the blog of one of my ex-classmate just now and was suddenly struck by envy at how perfect her life is. seems like there's always someone like this everywhere you go. that someone has brains, has the looks, has the money, has the everything. they seemed like a separate species from us and sometimes, i feel so inferior next to them. but then again, i look at my life and see that it is not that bad too. sometimes its a matter of perspective. you can feel bad when you look up but just take a look around you instead and be grateful for what you have.

i am determined to start working after the results on fri. time to earn real serious money so that i can take a plane and jet off to somewhere, soon. i need it bad.

*yawn* what a lazy wednesday. was woken up at 5 plus am last night by the thunderstorm. bloody loud thunder man. and the rain keep flying onto my face. (the window is just behind my bed you see). so of course i was brought to my consciousness. enjoyed the cool wind billowing my curtains for a while before the pictures were taken with a giant, heavenly sized camera accompanied by the dropping of equally huge cymbals down the stairs. -ouch-

realised that loads of things are happening on the 4th of march.. there's the release of stef sun's karaoke vcds, jerry's birthday, the release of Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events.. AND A-level Results! *panics and runs around in freaked out manner*

but then again what's done is already done, what should not be written WAS written and formulaes that shd be remembered WERE forgotten, so what to do?

i really have no idea what course i should take when i get to uni :S

ahh, seems like quite long ago that i've blogged. anyway if you ask me what's up i won't say the ceiling. instead i will say that i caught up with the scary Shutter flick on thurs with rux and xun, watched Howl's Moving Castle with rux on fri, went tanning on sat with rux and wen and went shopping with zq on sun.

cool, huh? haha yeah shutter was scary. i seldom watch horror flicks. lets see, the only flicks i rem watching is dark waters, the jap/korean? one with the sisters, exorcist.. hmm, that's about it. haha. quite funny la, we were watching at my house living rm at 3 plus, so the setting was so un-scary (purposely one). but i still screamed a bit when those stupid scary ghost popped out. sigh, when will characters in the show learn to stop going to scary, dark places and opening doors and stuff? oh heh i liked the tranny in toilet part. so anti-climax but hilarious.

on another note, howl's moving castle is an excellent miyazaki film. give it 4.5/5, and the 0.5 was for the incoherency in the loose plot. but the soundtrack was amazing and apt, the 2-d animation well-drawn and all in all a great movie adventure with humour, suspense, action, romance all thrown in. its a very spirited-away kinda feeling. loved it, go watch. Calcifer is super cute! in fact, i'm listening to the OST now. joe hisaishi is superb.

after the movie me and rux walked around and had dinner at Kenny Rogers at suntec, after which we went to the Fountain of Wealth. dedicated a song and had it laser-scrolled to rux, saying "We ROCK!" haha. very cool. i very SK, have not seen the fountain in action until 2 days ago. heh. oh, and after that we were walking around when we saw Steven Lim (caution, website not suitable for the faint-hearted). he was shopping with a girl so i guess his online appeal for a girlfriend succeeded. or whatever. i wonder how mark lee felt when he had to act with him in Police n Thief (some tues sitcom on ch5) when he was previously so disgusted with him on Top Fun (lame ass variety show, mon ch8). mediacorp, are calafares really that hard to find???

oh and i got myself "browned" in the more literal sense. as in you get darker because of UV rays, not the other one where you get mr.brown mentioning your website, haha. initially we wanted to cancel the trip cos it rained (!!) in the morning but it pulled thru, in the end. the sun was barely out and b4 that we were dillydallying so not much time to tan. it was great though. felt at peace with the world. saw a grand total of 1 hunk at palawan beach. many babes. oh oh! i saw this guy playing tennis at the yck station while waiting to meet up with rux and he was damn cute! 6-pack abs and all. whoo~!

retail therapy is great. enjoyed the outing with zq today. haha she is one huge shopper man. bought like so many thousand things, but its all good. yay and i bought my black tango skirt (wing! i got it! haha) and a nice bikini. yep yep! wuahaha. Hula n Co stuffs are nice, esp their tees. very funk. checked out LocalBrand too at InQBox at far east. not bad, but price at bit steep at 25 bux :S loved that particular shade of green though.

oh the sg food blog updated. check it out.

PS: Bublé's It's Time album very nice. that guy's a superb crooner.