*494 - i miss, i miss, i miss

I never found my camera again, so I bought myself a new one. It's the same one because the "better" versions were a lot chunkier and uglier.

Welcome back to my lovely sleek pink Lumix!

And here are the first few pictures I took with the new camera. I took them through the window pane, and this is what you get when you look out of a window of a 4th floor classroom in Statler. (ie. botak trees)





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Desperately missing the family. As much as I took them for granted for 19 years of my life, being away from home really forced me to realize just how much my family has always been there for me.

Daddy. He's my wall. We take walls for granted because they're just there, but then they're there quietly holding up the entire building. In my eyes, daddy's invincible. If something goes wrong, daddy's always there to fix it up and make things okay.

Mummy. She's the cutest mummy ever, she's so sweet and caring and loving and nurturing, and she's everything a mummy should be. When I'm a mummy, I want to be just like her.

Joel. The big brother everyone wishes they had. The big brother who looks out for me from afar - not enough to baby me, but enough to let me know he's there.

Elisa. The best sister in the world. I don't even know how to explain why, because there are too many things she does that really really make her the best sister in the world.

Strange. I'm just sitting here thinking about my family and sobbing away. Seems like it took three months for the homesickness to truly sink in.

*493 - mixed emotions

:)? :(?

:(.

*492 - team reports

I submitted a 25-page report this morning and a 72-page report half an hour ago. SEVENTY-TWO FRIGGIN PAGES.

Doing a victory dance around Cornell now.

:D :D :D

*491 - dancing amongst the trees

Frolicking in the Arts Quad some time back right after dance practice, when the leaves were still mostly green and when one could actually walk around in a t-shirt.

*490 - email from Mumsies ...

" ... My biggest joy was to see how much you have matured in this short period of time. You sound so confident, express yourself so well and listen so attentively to what we had to say, more patient with us and so cheerful. You look slim and healthy. I'm so happy that we made the right choice to send you to Cornell."

Aww Mumsies ...

:')

Reminded me that the parents put in so much to get me here, and I really have to make the most out of my experience here.

*489 - back to baking

My first time baking in Cornell: white chocolate cupcakes with white and blue vanilla frosting (: Yuanhong/Pebbly helped with icing some. He really has some talent, I was so impressed!

Unfortunately, I still don't have a camera, so we had to settle for crappy webcam pictures.



1. Pebbly and I with the cupcakes!
2. The bunny that I'm really proud of
3. It's snowing!
4. Pebbly the engineer (spot: pencil behind ear) and Evelyn the pig

Significance of #3: I was meaning to bake cupcakes to give to my friends in my Snow class on Wednesday - the last Snow class!! So, I decided to test my cupcake baking/icing techniques out just in case they had left me.

The icing was kind of weird, probably because I bought a slab of not-butter that claimed "I am not butter". It sort of crystallized and tasted weird. I thought it would be a healthier alternative, but I guess I'm sticking to real butter from now :P

Baking for the first time is expensive ... you can imagine how much money I had to spend on buying everything, from an entire tin of salt (for that pinch that I used in the cupcakes) to electric beaters to measuring cups and spoons. Good investment though. I missed baking (:

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Couple of (terribly) overdue replies:

Sarah I miss you too!! Of course I will <3
Bernice Aww, eco-friendly cupcakes, just as I baked some (: Hehe! How's life?
Banana <3 <3 <3 <3
Maddy <3 <3 <3 <3 (By the way, the family's moving in a week or so, I think.)
Emerson Thanks, God is great (:
Passerby The camera I used was a Lumix. It was a sexy camera. Haha! Thanks (:
Jingwen OEI I MISS YOU what have you been up to?

*488 - black friday

I think I spent more than US$300 today :\

*487 - blockheads

Finally got to Skype with the family again today (: Nice!

And I realized that one resource I totally forgot to tap on when I was looking for internships and stuff was my very own daddy. I only wish that I could get involved in the IRs but they're probably not going to be doing much when I'm back for summer next year.

Anyway, my sister and I have never looked alike. In fact, I've never looked remotely like any of my siblings.

EXCEPT FOR TODAY.



Blockheads Elisa and Evelyn :D

And here are the parents laughing over their blockheads' antics (:

*486 - break's here!

I think the weather knows that today's the start of Thanksgiving break - it's warm and sunny and positively delightful. 14 degrees. I can hardly believe it. Yay (:

Just got back from our Snow presentation. I'm so glad that's over. Huddling over our laptops in my room until past midnight for the past few days was no fun at all. Nor was walking back to Statler at 9 pm yesterday to practice till midnight for our presentation. Now all we've got to do is to write a 1914832 page report by next week :\

(Who said Hotelies don't do work?)

Here's to 4.5 days of much-needed break :D

*485 - constants

Random nothings have been setting off those tear glands lately. Trudging back from dance one cold Saturday morning, in the middle of worship, in the shower, heck, even in the Statler library while writing an emo letter to nobody in particular.

It's kind of strange how I've become such an emotional wreck. I think it's the whole fragility of being so far away from the comforts and familiarities of home - you are plunged into a new environment where you start off with close to nothing, you develop new constants in your life, you cling like hell to them because they're all you have, but when they're wrenched away from you, you're left flailing, empty, vulnerable.

Psalms 34:18.

*484 - gone

The past week or so has been almost too much for me to bear. I'm at breaking point now, and if just one more thing happens, I don't know what I would do.

I don't know whether I'll ever see you again. But most importantly, I hope you get better. It hurt me to see you sick. Maybe one day we'll meet again, maybe when you set up that hotel in Singapore, with that squashed up "S" for the logo ;)

It's hard to say goodbye, even when you know it's for the best.

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Really thank God for the people who've been keeping me sane. I haven't really told anyone what exactly happened, but his dad and Josh knew everything, and they really, really helped.

Especially after crying my eyeballs out last night and not daring go back to my dorm and be alone. Slept on the couch with a headache and swollen eyes, woke up at 4 am to see biggie and his huge cigar staring down at me, completely lost my cool, and ran to shake poor Josh awake. I'm such a baby.

And then I totally teared up in front of Brownell today when we were discussing how to go about completing our group project minus one member, and that was horribly embarrassing.

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In other news, it snowed.

*483 - (: and ):

I don't think you even realize when you're being mean and make me feel like crying. I don't think you ever noticed when my eyes welled up with tears.

But that's okay (:

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I had the most bizarre night a couple of days ago. At around 1 am, Kenneth, Joel and Simian drove up to Balch, and we bought a bunch of fries, subs, and hot chocolates. I forced everyone to sit under the big tree in the middle of the lawn, in the dark, and have a picnic with me. It was awesome - I mean, how many people have actually had a picnic on the grass at 1 am (and in their winter coats)? :D

Other strange things happened that night, including sprinting with Joel after the bus from NY (and splashing hot chocolate all over him in the process) to catch Jingxiong, missing Jingxiong and sadly giving up on seeing him, then discovering Yuanhong at RPCC buying chocolate, and then discovering Jingxiong at RPCC buying a sub. You have to realize this was near 3 in the morning, which is not the time you expect your friends to be randomly walking around.

Also, I lost my camera some time between taking a photo of everyone under the big Balch tree and settling down in RPCC. I'm terribly upset because it was a pretty decent camera, and it was PINK. Haha ): I'm going to wait a while and see if it turns up anywhere; if it doesn't, I'll just buy the same camera again because I already have the battery, charger, memory card, and wire thingy. Sigh. What a waste.

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Studying has been hard; I know I can't blame it on anyone but myself for being distracted, but I've just been sooo distracted by everything that's been going on in my life. I've been totally moody and constantly kind of upset over the past few days, but I do think that things are slowly going back to normal now, and everyone's getting better, so. No excuses anymore. I have to work hard for the finals, because I haven't been doing as well as I had hoped to for my second round of prelims. It's complacency, definitely. Gotta start studying again to pull my grades back up.

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To end on a happier note: Hotelie ball! (: It was really fun dressing up. The theme was "red carpet" so everyone was looking pretty sharp.

Joel and I went together (:


Waving to the paparazzi!


Checked out the 14-man house at VP for the first time (haha I still can't believe so many Singaporeans live together in one house). Gossipped until something like 5 am, made use of daylight savings and gossipped until 5 am again (this sentence totally doesn't make sense), concussed, and then woke up for a dim sum brunch. Which wasn't great, but it was dim sum. Haha :D





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Meh. Time to get some work done before going off for dance. I haven't done any work since last weekend.

*482 - hospital part 2

It's been a long day. In and out of the hospital, but mostly in. Depressing place to be in, really. 9.45 pm, and I'm settling down for dinner (cold salad in my room).

I have so many papers to write, but at times like these, you don't even consider thinking about homework. Trivial stuff, homework.

At any rate, I'm feeling a lot more at ease now that I know he'll be alright, thank God. That was pretty darn scary.

*481 - cayuga medical centre

2 visits to the hospital in 1 day. The first one was quite a shock, the second one was a complete trauma. Totally broke down when I heard the news, and I must have scared Kenneth to death when I ran to him sniveling and pulling him out of his seat in the middle of church service.

Looking back, it kind of makes sense. I've been so worried over the past week; I guess my worries weren't unfounded after all.

*480 - belated halloween

The last of the prelims is over - Human Development on Tuesday (the first time I actually stepped into Baker in what seemed like months; naturally, I had problems with all the questions that began with "From the video shown in class, ...") and Business Computing, which just ended a while ago at 10 pm. Yay. But now I have to complete my econ problem set and prepare for my tutorial with Snow tomorrow.

All the big big projects are due real soon, and the finals are looming. Courses for next semester to settle, and internships to look into. I can't believe fall semester ends in a month. I still feel like I'm in the midst of settling in and getting used to university life. What happened to my time?

Hm.

A couple of Halloween pictures, before it's too late:

My pretty pumpkin
(Note: eyelashes, lips, hearts)



Joel's and mine
(We thought the contrast was funny)
(& I just noticed that we have our names on our tummies hehe)



Everybody's pumpkins!! :D



Masquerade. Happy Halloween.

*479 - snow

For once, when I think of "snow" I'm not actually thinking of Professor Snow, because all I can think of is that it's actually going to snow this week! Omg!

*478 - missing underwear

My hoard of undies is diminishing.

And I can't for the life of me figure out why. I mean, undies aren't like earrings or hair pins; you don't take them off, leave them lying around, and then forget to put them on again and leave without them.

I just bought (online, of course) about $50 worth of undies to replenish my supply and I'm going to keep a VERY close watch over them this time.