*778 - (make-your-own) mooncake festival

What Jenny and I initially thought would be a cosy little mooncake-making session with a couple of people exploded into a living-room-ful of Singaporeans making 124908696184 mooncakes.

Step 1: Select skin flavor (plain, green tea)
Step 2: Select skin color (pink, green, white, swirly, anything really)
Step 3: Select filling (lotus, red bean, ice cream)
Step 4: Select shape & design (round, square, with a variety of floral patterns)
Step 5: Make your own mooncake!

Number of times Jenny has been exposed to large numbers of Singaporeans = 2.
Number of times Jenny has been exposed to one Singaporean (ie. me) = everyday.
I think I will need to make her a quasi-Singaporean soon :)

*777 - red leaves through my (open) windown

The problem with opening your windows to let some fresh air in is that the air, while certainly very fresh, is also very cold.

*776 - my latest obsession:

Crudites with hummus :)

*775 - where there's sunshine

Outside on the patio, watching the worst movie in history (Taxi, please don't give it a shot). Well, it was only a dollar.



Ocean's 11 greaseman at work! The perks of being small: ability to fit into tiny spaces.



It was oddly reminiscent of those Raffles Rugby Girlfriend Club days (or whatever we called it back then). Except that this time it was "friend", "friend", and "sister". Haha. There must have been some kind of discrimination going on because the true girlfriends were sitting in a clump some distance from the three of us ;)



Whee! Poor boy got so beat up though. In all my years of seeing him at matches, I don't think I've ever seen him get so many wounds in one game ...



French toast mornings.



And quiche dinners.



And Chinese stir fry, which included chicken heart, yum!

*774 - winter

My "IT'S FALL" revelation lasted for a grand total of ... one day. Because it officially snowed today = first sign of WINTER. It's mid-bloody-October!!

*773 - liver, hummus, and pickle

Fall break!

Began with a good chat and then traipsing the streets of Soho, NYC. Forbade the boys to join me so that I could enjoy my shopping alone, because I am the Solitary Shopper.



Lunch with the boys at an atas-looking restaurant across the street from an even-more-atas-looking restaurant that was our first intention but we were too humbled by our non-atas-ness to enter.

We go way back to the primary school days, so catching up was lovely. Five years of past history dug up and forgiveness assured. Hahaha. Thinking back, we were so young then, and so foolish! At least we've grown up now. Gotta go back to hang out again some time :)



Horrible flight but made it in one piece to San Diego! Wandered off to the nude beach, heh, but only looked at it from afar, atop a cliff. It was really beautiful.









Happy with flower in hair.



How are we not cute? Oh man. Hahaha.



A very privileged sandwich: how many sandwiches get to have a photoshoot and be part of a picnic on a cliff looking over a nude beach? Not many, I expect.





(Observe: half-nude man behind us making his way down to the beach.)



We go way back too, from when we were ten. Ten! We've known each other for more years than we haven't. And how we've changed. But how we haven't. Best fall break ever, I would say, because of you :)

*772 - frosty

Fall break marked the distinction between "um, it's Fall, but it looks like summer and feels like winter" and "IT'S FALL." After five days of not being in Ithaca, I was spectacularly greeted upon return by a ten degree drop in temperature (current: 3 degrees Celsius) and dramatic leaf color change. Out came the woolen peacoats and knee high suedes. Miniskirts with thick leggings still possible; all is not lost!

Every little change, every little event, brings me closer to the end of my college life. Depressing, really.

*771 - fall break

Off to feed my wanderlust!

*770 - noone's fault, but,

I think that's a little, you know, pathetic.

*769 - please find me

Sometimes my heart aches a little because, because, because. I know what I want but I can't seem to find it.

*768 - gender

Explorations (name of one of my dance improvisation classes) was bizarre today. I walked out of class feeling terribly disconcerted. There were (oddly enough) an equal number of men and ladies in class today, so we broke up into two groups by gender and did a loosely instructed improvisation without giving the men/women concept a thought. But the result was so starkly stereotypically masculine vs feminine that it kind of shocked me. And trying to reverse that result or watching people trying to reverse it was so awkward that it shocked me even more. I don't know. I guess I didn't expect gender stereotypes to be THAT obvious.

*767 - zmet

Perhaps I should perform the Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique test on my own heart to find out what I am trying to tell me.

*766 - sushi jubilee

Making sushi and from-scratch gyoza was oddly exhausting. But so very fun, and so very delicious, and I love Koreans hahaha. And Jenny. Still, dragged myself out tonight, stayed sober sofa-bound, and am now finally back in my room knowing that I should have been studying my ass off. Yet still blogging. Priorities!

*765 - up

Upon checking my sent messages the next morning, I find a string of texts that I sent that all look relatively similar e.g. "i'm up for it i'm up not awake but i am!" "Up is Evelyn" "up".

I wonder what that means. Hm.

Struggling with understanding real estate now--homework is a pain, especially when you're buzzed.

took me a while to get to this page because typing is not so eaysy. Love the roomies, love the breakies/dancers. Matcha cookiues version two! :)

*763 - i'm ready!

Evelyn's method of preparing for her 5 - 11 pm law prelim tonight:

1. Skip all classes
2. Sleeeeeep
3. Wake up for in time for dance class (master class by Nicholas Leichter how exciting)
4. Go for 6-hour prelim

*762 - scavengers

For a few days there, we were surviving on tissues, while making it our mission to scavenge for toilet paper rolls so that we could last until we next went to the mall. Worst toilet paper thief gets kicked out of the house.

Toilet paper's one thing you never truly appreciate until it's gone.

*761 - What's on your mind?

FIFTY-TWO (mostly) drunken comments on my facebook status, which was totally an accident, because I meant to berate Justin on his own wall but had a brain fart and wrote it down on my own instead.

It all started off with "YTOU DON'T MOCK ME EITHER".

Haha, good times.

*760 - poison pear

Thank God, I am still alive today, which means that the wild pear a random old man plucked from a random old tree for me was not poisonous after all.

*760 - I can live without you

When you're at the point in life
where you've worked so hard to get rid of weak, silly insecurities,
where you can look at yourself and accept yourself and then love yourself,
where you have learned to be alone without being lonely,
where you have learned that people come but they go but that's okay,
where you have learned that happiness comes from within,
where you have learned that happiness comes from God,
where you have learned to love life because it is beautiful the way it is right now,

then how can you tell someone "I can't live without you,"
because it's not true,

and if he says "I can't live without you,"
does that mean he's weak,
does that mean he's lying,
because he's been surviving pretty damn fine without you all this while.

---

Just a thought.

I'm not morose. In fact, today was quite a happy day. Five hours of dancing, after four full days of not dancing at all!! How odd that felt. I'm glad I'm semi-recovered now.

Then again.

I think our feelings exist in rearrangeable layers. I can be happy at this instant. But if I dig into myself and coax a different layer up to the surface, I could very well be miserable. Dig into a different part of me, and I could bring up the fury. Or the hope. Or the hopelessness. Or the blessed.

And I think we have that choice. To dig into ourselves and paint on that final layer. It's not that it's fake or that we're hiding from ourselves. It's just a choice. A perspective.