*563 - mini birthday celebrations (:

Thank you so much for all the birthday wishes! I'm really touched (: Had a great birthday, despite being severely ill. In fact, I just came back from a hearty chilli crab meal which was wholly wasted on me because I couldn't taste anything, but don't tell the family that. It was so nice having dinner with the entire family + new maid!! Although that meant that 7 of us couldn't fit into the car and mum + maid had to take the bus home hahaha. At least it was only 3 stops away. We need a truck.

Tipsy girls on the rooftop


Raisins for you?




Love the family! Hehe. Fell ill that night though.

Next day: Maddy came over (I LOVE MADDYO) and exclaimed over the pile of dead skin on the floor from my flakey legs, I went for an interview (and got the internship!), and then I met Liru who gave me such a lovely surprise <3





Cake for you?


And then, I had the most violent nosebleed I've had in years (so violent that the people next to me felt compelled to give me tissue and water), and then, I was supposed to go to the salsa club, but sis forced me to go home, so I did, and conked out at 11 pm, woke up this morning (afternoon) with a hacking cough and gooey running nose and croaky voice. And a smile on my face! Because I'm home! Still can't believe it hehe.

So I spread my germs to the rest of the family (they don't realise it though hoho) in the form of pseudo (non-yeast non-fried muffin-shaped) cinnamon sugar donuts, which didn't turn out like donuts in any aspect whatsoever! Taste-wise, texture-wise, appearance-wise. Heehee. But they make good cakey-bready-muffiny things, if you don't know that they were supposed to be donuts.

It was funny baking cos we have a maid now (granny's getting old!) and she was hovering around me repeating ingredient names after me because she's learning English. She now has added to her vocabulary teaspoon, nutmeg, cinnamon, vinegar, and grease! It was really weird, though, not having to clean up after myself like the way I've been doing it for my whole life. And to have an extra pair of arms to whip the mixture and an extra pair of eyes to watch over the oven. Haha! Yesterday when she first took away my dirty dishes from under my nose, I was absolutely appalled. I can't really wrap my head around the idea of having a maid just yet. But she's cute and I like her a lot, even though she's shy and can't speak English hehe.

Ramble.



Nifty new oven


Cinnamon sugar non-donuts




Mum was saying now that I'm back, she has to go stock up on mountains of baking stuff for me. Hehe. My presence at home is felt.

-

Nuf I want pictures of our Pangea birthday dinner! (: If we actually had any (did we?) Amazing meal with amazing service. And amazing person. Heehee (: COME HOME PLS.

-

And friends, I have a new handphone number, ask me for it! (:

*563 - i'm in my 20's!!

Spent the night eating chocolate and nuts and getting tipsy with The Girls (the sis and mumsies) on my rooftop (lesbeli vodka, yum) and then it was off to the sister's room to dance woozily until we were sweaty / until it was nearly midnight ... whereupon I commenced my yearly ritual of gathering the family and waiting for the last seconds of 22 May to tick past and then leading the family in a majestic chorus of "HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU (ME)"! It was awesome. (There's something about the birthday song and how it's never sung on key.)

"This is deja vu," remarked the brother. Hehehe. He gave me a pink carnation! It's sitting in a vase on my desk, waiting to blossom. I'm so touched. Joel <3s me!!

It's good to be home (:

*562 - home.

I. Am. Home. What an amazing birthday present (:

-dies of happiness and exhaustion and flu and Singaporean HEAT-

(Calling Maddy)
Me: HI guess who.
Maddy: Melissa?

(Calling Liru)
Me: HI guess who.
Liru: Dawn?

Haha!

Today, I will move into my new temporary 'room', ie. the study, ie. the tiniest room in the house, because they're planning for at least one sibling to move out before I return for good to Singapore, which means I don't actually have a room in this house. Haha!

Tomorrow, I will wake up late, sing myself a birthday song, go out for an interview, and peek at the GSS along the way.

Hongkong was great fun, and it was so good seeing Katie and Nick again. Crazy fun times all the time. Love them both.

Now, I will slump in my chair and sleepily wait for the sister to return from work so we can eat together. Shall bug everyone to eat on the rooftop (!) but I think it's too warm. Especially since it's curry (!) tonight.

Hehe life is good.

(But could be much better, and you know why! Stob.)

*561 - almost done

Finals this year were (are) insane. They came in 2 waves: 2 in a row last week, and then 3 in 2 days this week. I'm down to the last one tomorrow, and then it's END OF FRESHMAN YEAR and I'm zipping off to Woodbury, and then a few days of Ithacan fun, before I leave on Saturday for HK! Back in Singapore on the afternoon before my birthday - can't wait! Friends, let's go out :D

But first, one more paper to go. Which I haven't started studying for thanks to the ARCH final which I just presented wheee. The product of days of going crazy with Maya and Flash, frequent cockeyes, a tablespoon of tears (I'm being realistic with volumes here), an all-nighter in Rand, nightmares, diarrhea and other ailments, and a general sense that the ground is heaving and spinning beneath me. (I bet I could reproduce that in Maya in a jiffy.)

By God's favour the finals have been going undeservedly okay, looking at the amount of work I put into each paper. I was taking this morning's F&B final while half-asleep, with only 3 solid hours of proper studying in my woozy brain. I've already forgotten how that went already because everything feels kind of ethereal and dream-like right now. Heeheehee giggle. And then I think people liked my ARCH project cos it was cute and completely different from all the others. I think it's because I'm a Hotelie and didn't do anything related to architecture like the rest of them. I mean, singing mushroom organisms that dance to classical music? Naw.

Right now I am fighting the urge to concuss because I have to sit here (alive) for now, in order to get picked up and plopped down next to my nutrition books because they are not here in my room because I am an idiot like that.

But anyway, every day I thank God for putting fabulousness into my life to keep me going (:

Do. Not. Concuss. Maybe I shall do some online shopping for a bit to stay alive :D

Heeheehee giggle.

*560 - holy crap

Today, I exploded the toilet and experienced the trauma of toilet papery, hairy, dirt clumpy, shitty water fountaining out of the toilet cubicle, into the bathroom sink area, out into the carpeted corridor, and into the living room.

The term "oh, shit" never had so much relevance before.

(I'm still trembling violently.)

Hahaha, ha, ha.

Aftermath:

*559 - sighsighsigh.

Why does this keep happening? I try so hard, and I try so hard not to talk about it each time it happens. But I'm sad, because I never seem good enough.

It's good for me in a way though. Keeps my complacency in check.

Sigh. I suck.

(But what am I to do?!)

Finals begin tomorrow, and I started studying for real just yesterday. Hooray?

-

Explorations. Best dance class ever.

*558 - garden visits

Photos from today's field trip! We went around to professors' houses to check out their gardens. I wish I could casually say things like "we've got 35 acres of land back there" to visitors. The people here are blessed with so much land - I bet they could fit a few blocks of HDBs in their backyards. Hehe.

We got to play with animals too! We were looking at Professor Pritts' strawberry fields, and then he went "oh, come over here Bob and Ben" (I just made up the names because I can't remember their real names) and a pair of sheep came running towards us! He had a dandelion-chomping goat, and and and a delightful half-lop-eared bunny! I couldn't resist and crawled into its cage to play with it. Awww. Love bunnies.

When I took this, we were like "wow, looks photoshopped already!"






They like me!!










Phallic?


Meet Toby! Daintily crossing its paws, hehe.


Sniffing my finger! I'm in love :D




<3

*557 - reverse bumblebee

Let's hope the "you" in the previous entry never comes across my blog. Heehee. Guess I should be more confident about myself.

Today, I:
Accidentally made a hole in a pillar
Talked to dearest Liru throughout class <3
Walked out of class because I hadn't prepared for it
Randomly did laundry for no reason
Completed my LAST EVER financial accounting homework hallelujah
Saw a reverse bumblebee
Went to the mall to get costumes
Overdosed on ice cream and chocolate
Sprinted for the bus twice, caught one and missed the other
Have the nicest mug I've ever owned
Need to complete two essays by tomorrow, and it is already 11 pm, oh no oh no I HAVE TO GET STARTED NOW panic twitch twitchtwitch.



(Happy bee!)

*556 - bang bang

The next few weeks are going to be rough. Had a panic attack in the middle of Financial Accounting this morning, with dear Raina beside me commanding me to "talk it out, Evelyn, talk it out!"

A crazy amount of work due, plus the fact that I have late-night rehearsals galore and 3 performances this Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Today's tech rehearsal dragged on an hour later than expected. Tired.

But the real reason why I'm so glum right now isn't so much work, or physical tiredness. It's mostly because I'm insecure about my role in the performance. It used to be that I was confident, having fun. But today it turned into a struggle to be noticed. I think it was largely because of your offhand comment to that our trio section was mostly about you messing around with D. It's as though I might as well not be there. And I can see how excited you are with dancing with D, always discussing new ideas and trying out moves, because you have some raunchy thing going on there in the dance with the whip and sexiness and everything, which is infinitely more edgy than my stage relationship to you. The thing is, I want our duet to be amazing in its own way too, but it can't be if you don't value my role in the dance. And all that makes me feel as though I'm not good enough.

Sigh. Just being insecure here. Now back to work I go!

*555 - pandora released!

Pandora performance on Saturday (: I had so much fun! Really enjoyed the dances I was in this year. Maki's (emo), Adrienne's (pretty), Anchi's (spooky).

I'm really happy to be part of Pandora! The girls are all incredibly talented! I'm so proud of us (:







(This is me wobbling out of a quick penche)






During practice:










Went to Madeline's after the performance for yummy desserts and drinks. After which, we were both bitten by the dancing bug (either that, or we were slightly tipsy) and, on the spur of the moment, proceeded to record a series of interpretive dances in the middle of the carpark, in the dead of the night.

Here's our best attempt (and Kenneth's debut dance performance):

Grande jete across the carpark


Bar at Madeline's

*554 - ?

From Singapore-like temperature (think: blazing sun, almost 30 degrees) for the whole of this week and last to about 10 degrees max next week. Huh?

Hurrah for the constantly confused Ithacan weather.

*553 - ultimate flattery

"You look like yo ji."

"What is yo ji?"

"Pig's kidney."

*552 - luau! hawaii in ithaca.

Coconuts!


If this is the kind of food you get in Hawaii, I need to visit one day :D YUM.


Doing the dance they taught us! :D


You know spring is here when:
The sun's blazing,
I have flowers around my neck,
and I'm looking most attractive.


And unrelated to the luau, here's another sure sign of spring: when we dance on the grass!!

*551 - ? % @ # ^ *

Things could be better, situations could be a lot less cloudy, everything right now is one giant question mark ?, with a bunch of little % and @ and # and ^ and *s thrown in just to make things even more convoluted. All the what if's, and the maybe's, and the maybe not's, and the if only's.

Every day my heart breaks just a little bit. But every day my heart sings too. And then it does weird things like spasm and spin in circles and dart from corner to corner and ooze from place to place because it's confused and doesn't know what to do.

But I think I'm pretty happy being "single", thank God. He puts a peace in my heart that tells me everything's going to fall neatly into place.

*550 - whine?

Even the most beautiful things become ugly when you bury them under shadows and lies.

It'll always be beautiful to me, though.

You know what I want.

-

I just discovered that I don't like pumpernickel. And I'm very disappointed that they swopped aluminum foil with wax paper for the rolls. The only reason why I started taking the rolls (free with every salad!) was that I got to scrunch them up in foil. I love how the foil came in little sheets just the right size, how I could grab a roll and haphazardly wrap it up with one hand in two seconds, and how the foil would stick nicely to the roll and turn out smooth and shiny each time. Where is the joy in wrapping rolls up in big sheets of wax paper which doesn't adhere to anything?

And can somebody tell me why it went from winter to spring (for a few happy days) and back to winter? It snowed again last night. And I was so cold I had to bring out the fluffies again, just when I was happily planning to store the winter jackets away for good. Shivered my way to and from class, but the strange thing was that there were kids stubbornly walking around in t-shirts or miniskirts. I would love to join them in their rebellion against winter but it's too damn chilly for that.

I'm upset today.

But I was a good student. I participated in class (whenever I do that, it's because I just want the lesson to end, and I figure if I provide all the answers really quickly, she'll run out of things to say, and we'll all end early, but I don't think it works very well), and I went for econ lecture for what I believe is the fifth time this semester (it was lecture #23 today) (although I'm still skipping section, which I've never gone for in my life, which is part of the reason why I'm scared to turn up now, because I imagine the conversation between the TA and I to go something like this: "Are you in my class? I've never seen you before-" "-me neither", so I probably never will).

Today in class I drew a smiling boyfriend flower and a smiling girlfriend flower holding leaves (hands) under a rainbow, with an ear of corn a few graphs away from them. They are going to have to uproot themselves and slide down treacherous unemployment curves to make their way down the page, if they want the corn. I should have drawn an easier path for them to follow, because they really want the corn. But I think they'll manage, because they're smiling and they're holding leaves (hands) under a rainbow.

I've changed my mind. I used to raise an eyebrow every time we analyzed text in nitty gritty detail because I always thought that writers probably didn't hide little nuggets of meaning in every other word for us to uncover and why can't we just read the text for what it says to us? But now I think they do bury meanings in their words, balancing on the points of the A's and resting on the curves of the B's and slyly lurking behind the C's. We can guess all we want, but we'll never know for sure what they're hiding.

-

Two hours later, and I find myself weak with what began as a splitting headache last night which never left but instead grew into a full body throbbing today. I give up.

*549 - laspbelly!

I sprinted out of my room that very instant and rushed down too quickly. Sat in the cold on my rock and beamed to myself.

(:

Raspberry thumbprints. They're definitely one of my favourite cookies to make, though they require a LOT of time, effort, and patience. Absolutely delish, and too cute to be true.

"Make one-inch ball. Make well. Fill well."


Laspbelly thumbprints!


Heart-shaped laspbelly thumbprint!