Work is okay. More bearable than I thought it would be. Today I found out there's free coffee in the pantry so tomorrow I can stop falling asleep. Usually everybody walks to the nearby foodcourt for lunch, and I end up eating so so much because the mixed rice stall there has all my favourite dishes. I've got like 1 meat and 4 veggies which is way too much for the amount of rice they give, so I end up eating the ingredients on their own. Everybody is nice, mostly. The only thing I hate is waking up in the morning, but I don't mind riding the bus, or walking to the office, or doing work. I'd rather have more work actually.

Daily routine has become: work, Gus picks me up at 5pm, we go home and watch running man, sleep. To be honest I enjoy it, such a slothful, boring routine, but I like just slumping into bed once I'm home and watching a show that makes me laugh. Hoping to save lots of money over the next two months!!! I'm really quite thankful that God gave me this internship. I feel like I would regret not doing anything for these three months. On the other hand, it means life got significantly more boring --> have nothing to blog about.

Um last night I stayed up until 6am studying math
 Still struggling, am not made for numbers, feel like crying mostly
 Have to get a C so I can s/u the mod, if I don't get a C I don't know what to do

 Two papers down, lots more to go

 In the afternoon I received an email titled 'Internship'
 I got it, not the one I went for an interview for, this one was a surprise interview on the phone.
I was caught off guard but I also know they aren't keen to take interns.
 It makes me think I won't be doing anything very substantive.
 9-5 for two months, it makes me feel uncomfortable.
 Also, I read that bosses like to dig stuff up on their employees, I think I might lock up my blog for a bit.

Also, I just want to say.
I used to think, ok people who like to brag about academic achievements, I guess if I was them I'd be really happy too, seems like legit behaviour
But after achieving some degree of academic 'success' myself I realised that it is very easy not to talk about it, and not to brag, even if it is the first and only time I have achieved such things
Which makes me wonder why other people have to brag so much
I know this post is basically me talking about it, but this is the last time I mention it, and I only mention it wrt the bigger context of the question, why some people cannot be humble, is it because academics are excessively constitute a large part of our confidence structure
It's just one of those questions

401

This is my 401st post.

Was reading someone's blog and she was talking about skincare and stuff... some people have such elaborate skincare routines even though their skin isn't necessarily bad. I think about my skincare routine and I feel ashamed.

1. remove makeup (if I'm wearing any)
2. exfoliate
3. cleanser
4. dry
5. moisturizer & toner

Recently I forget to moisturize and tone so I just dry my face and leave the toilet haha. Also, I only do these things on days that I remember and only at night, because I would rather sleep in than spend 10 minutes doing extra things in the toilet in the morning. Thankfully my skin isn't bad so there's no serious repercussions for this piece of shit routine lol. The only reason I don't really concern myself with maintaining my looks is because 1) I'm lazy and 2) it's too time consuming. Also I never wear sunscreen cos I don't really like being too pale. But my mum says it's bad and when I grow up my skin will become wrinkly faster or something :\ ~whatever~ haha

Also I think nowadays, with all the shit in the news about the 44 men and the NSF dying, I feel like the world I have known for a long time is slowly disintegrating. The beams are becoming shaky, the wallpaper is starting to peel. I don't know if this is what disillusion is. Whether I'm crossing that threshold where your age cloaked you in naivety and innocence. I hate being so aware of everything that is wrong with the world, with Singapore. It makes me so sad and helpless. But I guess this is a symptom of growth and life. I thought about, in the midst of all this, what makes me happy. That is, coming home everyday to my family, knowing Gus is there. I thought about it. I think it is okay if I leave for awhile, as long as I know that when I come home everything is the same, everything I love hasn't changed. That knowledge, that there is some permanence in the middle of everything that is evolving into the unfamiliar, that gives me some comfort.

It's so difficult to keep studying when you know freedom is less than two weeks away... no choice though. Only awhile more. Have to keep pushing :'(

All the best, anyone out there who's going through the same pain xx

Been studying, not really, haha.

Whatever. Double As for my essays, first time ever, I'm riding this high and forgetting about the nitty gritty details of exams for a bit.

Read that Dick Clark died. I remember them mentioning him on Friends.

Lots of articles about 1) NSF who died and 2) the 44 men charged in paying an underage girl for sex

1) It's really sad that he died. I'm not sure why this has been happening so much recently. From what I know army is already a lot more relaxed than in the past. Still, military conscription is a necessity for Singapore. I think perhaps nowadays the reality of being so young when you enlist is becoming more apparent, so when someone goes it's definitely a lot harder to take. There are a lot of shitty things people can say about Singapore. About the PAP, about the transport system, about inflation. But I think that the SAF as an institution to a certain extent must be given some deference. So many of our Singaporean boys enlist and serve two years in the army. When it comes to crisis, they're the ones who will be on the front line. SAF is not just another elite, exclusive institution -- it is the lives of our friends, our family. So there's really no sense in lambasting NS in the aftermath of this tragic incident. The fact is that this NSF died serving his country, and that is one of the highest honors to be conferred upon death. No matter what so many young 'cosmopolitan' Singaporeans enjoy spouting nowadays -- 'I hate Singapore', 'I wanna get out of here' -- this is their home. This is, or was, Dominique's home. If he had to pick up a gun and go to war, I'm sure that he would have. And for that I think we must be grateful, that despite constantly being at threat from all around us, we have Singaporean boys/men who would pick up guns to defend us.

2) Don't even know how to feel about this. Disgusted at the 44 men (if guilty)? Yes. Disgusted at the 17yo prostitute? Yes. Overall just seems like such a dirty affair, a part of me wishes they didn't publicize it so much, I wish I didn't know. My inherent disposition to the girl is one that is generally negative, but I know I am being judgmental and there is probably more to her story. Although I am inclined to believe she was just a girl who wanted money so badly for branded bags or something she sold her body to do it. I've mentioned before, I will never judge prostitutes because you don't know what kind of backgrounds they come from. I qualified it by saying that a lot of them have children, siblings to feed, people to take care of. But when you're a 17YO girl earning up to $850 for one session and have banged over 40 men in the process, I find it hard to believe there is a real sob story behind it. I really don't want to judge her before knowing her full story but I'm sorry to say, I definitely am predisposed to thinking the worst of her and her C-cups. On the other hand, the 44 men: what's new, right? Men will be perverts, that's how it's always been. I'm glad they're getting charged and justice is being served -- not to the girl, because she clearly solicited their attention, but justice for the many people who believed these men to be proper men. Parents, students, Singaporeans, wives, children, colleagues, friends. A good question to ask is: does it matter that top civil servants have committed these crimes? The answer is, very simply, yes. Not because it is probably morally wrong, but because I find it incredulous that these people, apparently the government's pick of the cream of the crop, are going in with this line of defence: "She told me she was of legal age." I mean... seriously?

I tweeted this today, 'is Singapore becoming more unsafe or am i just reading more news?'
Feel like this adequately explains how I feel every single day nowadays.
Long post, boring post, oh well haha

One self-indulgent post: new hair! I like it.

Feel like this is not the hair of a conventionally 'hot' woman or whatever but I am okay with not trying to replicate ~that~ look. Making a philosophical deal out of bangs right now haha. Sometimes I think I've made a grave mistake, but other times I really like how it looks, I just feel like even though it's not the gorgeous flowing locks that all the 'sexy' women wear, it's more me because I am essentially not a 'sexy' person haha. Think this is a big deal for me because I've always hesitated cutting my hair. I've always thought it's one of the things about my head that make me bearable to look at. But I think in a way getting rid of it was quite liberating! Like ripping off a plaster. Sounds silly, linking a haircut to all these innate self-esteem problems, but... ok I dunno I don't have any justification, it's just how I feel. Haha.

Finally submitting my last essay of the term tomorrow. Feel like I'm free, then remember I have to finish reading 400 pages of Putnam then actually begin studying. Don't know how I'll do this sem... I have mixed feelings. I went from aiming for the best to praying it won't be a disaster.

To celebrate Gus's last day of school we went to watch American Pie in the afternoon... Haha I don't know, if you like these kinda shows then it was good I guess. Funny at least. I just really love Jennifer Coolidge, I think she's so so so funny.

Nowadays I feel like social media has become such a burden and a hassle... I think it starts to show too many sides of people, people that I'm actually cordial with or like, sometimes. When people start to post really opinionated things that really clash with any one of my core beliefs or values, I get really really really irritated. And the worst part is that I start to dislike that person! How awful right, he/she is just expressing his/her view. But I feel like I can't keep up with it, can't keep up with involuntarily feeling crowded out by these opinions. I don't see anything wrong with maintaining purely cordial relationships with certain people who are acquaintances more than friends, but social media sometimes really makes this impossible. Feel like de-activating everything, think I finally understand why some people do that (aside from the hipsters who de-activate because it's cool or some shit). On the other hand I suppose it shows me some people whom I can foresee I will never ever be good friends with, so I shouldn't try. That's not offensive. On many levels I'm sure I irritate some people with my tweets and my facebook updates too. It scares me a little to think that people will think of me differently based on this, but it's unreasonable for me to stop saying what I feel just because of that, and similarly I cannot expect that other people will do it too. So the best solution is really to just extricate I guess.

In a way I think maybe life is looking up. You go through these lull periods and then suddenly things seem to get better. I don't want to speak too soon but I'm really hoping that good things come from all this.

Last night Des and I sat at UTown's starbucks for six hours from 11pm - 5am and I completed so much work I was amazed. Feel like replicating this tonight at home but it's 12am and I'm already yawning... Can't sleep until I accomplish something though. Otherwise, I have to go shop for an outfit for my internship interview on Monday. I feel like they (1) give interviews to everyone or (2) nobody else applied. Told my mum "I don't have anything to wear" because I wanted her to bring me shopping, but in all honesty, I have no formal clothes in my wardrobe at all. Not even a proper white blouse, those stiff and starchy kinds. So I have to go buy some clothes soon...

Des and I went to eat Macs breakfast after studying and spent the whole time talking about religion. I liked it, I felt like it was a conversation I will remember. Although I would like to have these conversations with everyone I meet, I know it only happens naturally with some people rather than others. Des joked and said I left her with "weightier issues" on her mind. Today I told Gus, these xxx people spend their lives doing this and that, they don't go to school, they're isolated in a bubble of their trade, they don't think about certain things that always, always get me depressed because they don't know much about it. I think ignorance has two sides to it. One, it is always bad to be ignorant about important issues, it shows you are self-absorbed and inconsiderate of the world beyond yourself, but two, not being ignorant, it almost always inevitably (for me at least) leads me to becoming sad, depressed, helpless, because a lot of these issues have no ways of resolving themselves anytime soon. For me at least I don't have a proper, healthy structure to channel whatever thoughts I have about them. I let them fester in my mind, think about them for days, let them pool into a puddle of despair in the pits of my stomach. I hate that feeling.

Today:

Had four hours of lecture
Shanmugam was just another PAP man, I feel like if you put their lowest ranking MP there he would've said the same thing, maybe, maybe not
Studied in one of the study rooms at business while waiting for Gus, and three PRC guys came in and asked if they could share the room and I said ok, sure, and my productivity sky rocketed because those guys are so hardworking
They were so nice though, it's not a library or whatever but they whispered because I was studying and I was there first
We went to eat dinner at Queensway, curry chicken rice and it was $10 for both of us, then we bought muah chee for $2, I like cheap and good dinners, we almost went to IKEA, thank god we didn't
Came home around 8pm and slept until 12am, and now I am feeling guilty about two things:
a) not getting much work done
b) my bags, because I just saw the blog of someone who got their nth branded bag and I immediately thought, ugh what a waste of money, then thought, oh wait I'm one of them too, fuck

So now I'm going to
a) study. HARD. until 4am or so
b) I can't do anything about the bags but I won't buy anymore. I hope.

Today the President of the Political Science Society or something reviewed his already completed essay (the one I haven't even started on) in front of me in lecture and I read the whole thing over his shoulder and was impressed. But I knew he was smart.

Gus was trying to discipline them

just one of the few things in NUS that really crack me up, this was in the library, and i want to point out that this was a white exchange student, before people jump to presumptuous conclusions that it must be a PRC or something

and we went swimming the other day, decided to bust out my fujifilm 210. there is a super super super cute picture of Gus that I took but he has forbidden me from showing it to the world unfortunately... shy ah

Today, feeling like even my best will yield sub par results, so what is the point of trying? Feel like I haven't said this phrase, "Omg I did it!" in a long, long, long time.

Had a great lunch with Bert at Holland V. I think we had a pretty frank discussion, feel like good conversations talk about things that aren't superficial. Told her about how I get really upset about sexism, and we talked about what the biblical interpretation of certain verses regarding women should be. I don't know, I just feel like I left the conversation with some substantial value to take away.

Otherwise, Hunger Games tickets booked for tomorrow! Amidst all the essay writing I think it'll be a refreshing break. Can't wait.

Had class from 2-4pm, then a consult at 4.30pm, then I did my essay until 9.45pm, no joke. I was amazed that time flew by so fast. On one hand I'm really proud of myself, on the other I look at my essay and it's still like shit, even though I was legitimately trying the whole time and I hardly slacked. This is the extent of my capabilities, working hard for five hours and gaining almost no traction. It's difficult.

Gus had a worser day than I did. Poor boy. He was having chest pains too. Haha when he picked me he said, "I'm tired. I'm sleepy. I'm hungry. I need to shit. I need to pee." Idiot haha.

I live for good hair days like this.

I can feel myself getting more narcissistic, but I think it's okay, it helps with my self confidence a little bit, kind of, not really. Bye.

doing my essay while watching gus play soccer. a moment where old and young men come together to play the beautiful game amidst hokkien cursing, swearing, the need to protect masculinity... the saddest man on the pitch is the referee. no matter what he does, somebody will yell at him and call him stupid. i always feel bad for the ref, especially if he is old. if you are just meeting a boy and you want to see his true colours, put him on a soccer field with a dirty opponent and a lousy referee.

a mother is using the hood of her son's hoodie to wipe his hair. while he wears the hoodie. part of me sees it as quite innovative, but i think on the whole it's pretty gross

getting raped by an essay. i had school today. had to sit through the discomfort of another contentious debate. it wasn't as heated as the last, that is for sure, but it still made me uncomfortable. when you put a bunch of people in a situation where there is an opportunity to prove that they know something better than another, it gets tense. and you start to see the bad sides of people, is what i'm saying, it's not pleasant and i try to lock those memories out.

these days i am reminded of the fact that last semester i tried, hard, and came out with a grade that seemed not bad to me, but was actually super average. then i look at how much effort i put into my school work these days and i hang my head in shame. even super average is a far stretch now.

if intelligence is nature and not nurture i might as well give up now

but i won't. i am going to attempt to make this essay my bitch. last semester around this time i had a feverish desire to bang out good essays and this semester my essays are disintegrating in front of my eyes.

i have set some short-mid term goals for myself. see, goals like 'get a 5.0 CAP' is stupid, because there is no proper justification for wanting it. 'i want people to know i'm smart'. that is not good enough, because there are so many ways you can work around it: 'even if i don't get 5.0 people will still know i'm smart because i talk a lot in class and i impose my opinion on everyone', or whatever. but, if you set extremely tangible, clear-cut goals with proper life-sustaining justifications, or things that will make you truly happy for a long time, then you're more likely to work hard, right? so my goals are:

1. attain at least second upper honours because it will look good when i am looking for a job
2. shoot for masters' programmes [oxbridge, lse, ucl, maybe some ivies] (because going to a reputable school will make me happy)
3. it will make my parents happy to do well

so you see? hahahaha feel like i'm bullshitting. if you've ever watched the dialogue on karl pilkington's 'bullshit man', he would fly in right now and call me out on it. but ok let's review this post in four years or so haha

finally started on my sfp essay. took a break, since then, been doing everything to avoid continuing it. god i am a disaster...

new phone = new apps to play with right haha

this is my favourite snack!!! some sort of chicken chips, anyway you can only buy them from mama shops

these parents are seriously fail. they bought a beer tower while at dinner with their three kids, and later on their kids coughed and inhaled all their cigarette smoke. wow.

is this artistic

the bunnies!!! so cute 

this is peter. he's pretty selfish, he planted himself inside the food bowl so the other one had no way of accessing the pellets. greedy much 

this baby was at the chiro clinic!!! SO CUTE I DIED 

and this is literally my exact, permanent position while doing research for my essay. i haven't moved anything except my arm to type things. lazy lazy lazy. i think it's already a miracle i'm sitting up and doing it 

four hours of class today, i was tired towards the end, people asking rhetorical questions, bringing up stupid points, dragging the tutorial on for way too long. BUT, i just replaced my old iPhone so i was obssessed with my new one the entire time, mostly, even though i've had it before.

this is what my old iPhone 3GS was like by the way:

i literally dropped it from my hand while walking, that's how close to the ground it was, and the entire screen smashed. i had to tape it down to hold the glass shards. it was functional, but towards the end the entire hardware started to become screwy, like the silencer wouldn't hold, the home button was unresponsive, etc. so it would've been quite pointless to have wasted like $100~ to get it repaired at a dodgy shop in Far East that might not do a great job. The same thing happened to my mom's phone (though the cracks weren't as bad) and she went to Far East to repair it, and later on the phone couldn't read the SIM card. so be careful where you get your phone repaired! 

finished 9gagging way early today, so i'm pretty free now... there is a cricket outside my window and its vocal projections are apt in describing how i feel towards the Internet at this moment

While packing I found my old gameboy, my trusty Fire Red Pokemon cartridge still in it, and so I've been playing for hours and hours and the most depressing thing just happened. I was unprepared to face Articuno and he's gone, and I don't have him, and I didn't save it at any point near to meeting Articuno and I'm unwilling to retrace all those steps!!! Ugh seriously depressed I feel so frustrated. I can't do anything now except do my best to catch Zapdos and Moltres and I WON'T MAKE THE SAME MISTAKES. Yes I know I am 20 this year shut up I have defeated the elite four once and I will do it again

Otherwise it's about 4 more days to the move, and I just can't wait for everything to be over! There's too much random crap sitting around all over the house waiting to be shifted, and I'm so sick of blowing my nose so much because of all the dust that has arisen from unearthing lots of shit from long, long time ago. Packing was such a hassle, I promise to do regular cleans from now on so as to never have to go through this again.

Last night I didn't sleep... stayed up until 5am, went downstairs, Gus came over at 5.10am and off we went to the airport to send my sister off to Cambodia for 10 days. She's going for the usual OCIP trip. I've been thinking about it, also thinking about what some people have said about it -- OCIP is useless for the children in third world countries. You build a library, you teach them English, bla bla... for two weeks? That is to be honest not going to benefit them in the least. The point of OCIP is more to benefit you than to benefit them. It's to expose spoilt little Singaporean teenagers to the devastating plight of their neighbors, to instill in them compassion for the less fortunate. It is definitely not to enhance their lives for good. That is a huge, huge irony I think and I can't decide if that's good or bad. I suppose it's good, at least someone benefits. But I keep thinking perhaps we should start doing things for the kids in more tangible ways, rather than a two week crash course in English by 14 year olds. You can bring food over, clothes over, toys, etc. You can bring some legit books that will help them. I don't understand why there always has to be a skit...? Or something??? Why can't it just be some Singaporean teenagers sitting around, talking to the kids and hanging out? And you'll still be impacted even if you didn't do all this pretentious shit, teach English or paint their library walls. (my eyes are literally rolling right now) Isn't it odd?! It's a "mission" trip, a trip to do charity work, but in essence it is one that is extremely selfish and self-serving. Doesn't mean it's bad, you're being selfish in a good way, to educate and inform yourself. But it makes it worse because we already are informed. We see images on TV, on the Internet, look at pictures and videos of starving children, etc etc. And we assume that what they *really* need are colourful walls. COME ON. Seriously? In any case I also don't think that two weeks is sufficient to ingrain in young people the need to be more considerate, more compassionate, more thoughtful of others who have less. Not at all. The first few days they came back they feel drenched in epiphanies of life and others, give it a week or so and they'll be back at the malls, hooked onto f21.com or some shit. And it's just the sad reality that we all have to accept.

If you want to do charity work you must commit to be there for 6 months, a year, two years. One day I want to do that, live somewhere else for a few months each time and help with food distribution, or teach people music for fun, help out in hospitals or help build homes. And there are organizations that do that, so I give props to them. Major, major props (Y)

Do you know how easy it is to get dragged into things that do not matter?! Clothes and drinks and food and furniture and size of beds and size of rooms and club memberships and country club memberships and make up and ENOUGH. Everywhere I turn in this godforsaken society I see people boasting of something or another that they have, a new bag, those long legs, this bottle of expensive champagne and this brand new car. Ugh and I am also guilty. I feel disgusted with myself like it is justified to strip me of all my belongings and tell me "learn to live" 

When you have things so good you can't help but want more. And this society is limitless. Its provisions are never ending as long as our massive foreign reserves are there to bail the economy out, this prosperous, voracious economy! Growing and growing and growing, and is that all that matters? Why do we make the rich even richer? Surely we should put some kind of limit, some kind of cap as to how rich a person can be. Is that not for his benefit? 

Everytime Apple sells an iPhone it makes over $300 worth of profit. $300?! Surely that is too much! We cannot be so obsessed with these material things, these temporal things because what will become of them when we cross that line, enter into death? All these things will remain on the other side of that wall and in death we go as we came, with nothing. Absolutely nothing. The study of economics is to study what is driving the greed and thirst of everybody. Money and money and money. What drives a whole lot of evil.

I am such a hypocrite. I shop too much and I indulge too frivolously. Yet I look at others and think, no. I want that. Why can't I have that. Why don't I deserve that. I deserve that more than they do. But who says so? I do not. I do not want to covet anything, anymore, forever, for eternity. I know that is impossible, but it is exhausting to keep wrenching myself out from that state of mind, from that fixation on needing more. I write all this, in a few days I might just do something that I am criticizing in this post -- but I'm human and I have weaknesses. I will have those hypocritical moments but what I am feeling now, this vague shape that is trying to fill my body up to my fingertips, this rejection, this repulsion of all the things society tells me will make me happy: I want to remember this feeling. 

In Nausea, Sartre talks about the irony of existence, how he exists because he thinks, how he would stop existing if he stopped thinking, yet he mustn't think that he should not think, because that is a thought, how thought processes are eternal. He says clearly, "I am the one who pulls myself from the nothingness to which I aspire". We are such living ironies, so ironic it is sad. We throw ourselves into the very things we wish to run from. Perhaps humanity, simply, is ironic and we cannot escape. That human will and that thing you feel when you first open your eyes in the morning, its very unchangeable nature is to be at conflict with everything society says. Ironic since we are the ones who create society. 

I have not found a solution.

So after a hectic day of church, lunch, shopping, new house stuff, mother's day!!!, etc etc, I started thinking about the Dean's List. It's something that I forgot I told myself at the beginning of freshman year to work towards to. Evidently I did not because along the way I was convinced I did not need these grades, I did not need to do well. That was my first mistake. NUS students, remember this: your first semester CAP is the most important thing. Mess it up and you'll spend the next 2-3 years trying to pull it up. So I went to look again at what makes a student eligible to be mentioned on the prestigious Dean's List and it was this:

Dean's List

The Dean's List is an award given to the top 5% of each cohort, with meritorious academic achievement, at the end of each semester (excluding the special term).

There is therefore no specific cut-off as only the top 5%, of eligible students, will be selected based on the Semester Average Point (SAP).  Students must have a CAP that is above the current pass with merit cut-off.  Those in their fourth year of study must have a CAP of at least 4.00.

The current Dean's List had about 277 students on it across all cohorts, which means FASS holds about 5000+ students (thanks Bert for the calculations haha). Which is fcking a lot. And to be the top 277 students... well that, to me, seems quite impossible. And yet I feel like I really want to attain this, really want to have something to emerge from uni and be proud of, something more than your average university student life. Is it very Singaporean of me? Craving after these academic achievements, seeking fulfillment in them. Perhaps. But it is very appealing! & I know that even if I don't end up on the Dean's List in any of my semesters after 4 years of study, in aspiring to be on it I will probably pull my grades up by quite a bit. And so that is my new aspiration for next semester. To get onto the Dean's List.

Deciding if I'm more irritable these days or more annoying people are sprouting up...

Exams are over!!! Am so relieved. It's 3.56am and I'm wide awake with no guilty feelings. It feels awesome. Have been reading HP6 because I want to, watched Modern Family and Glee... I'm super free it feels great. I have no plans for tomorrow but I also know that there's nothing stopping me from making plans. THREE MONTH HOLIDAYYYY I've been waiting for you

I can't even begin to describe how heavy on my mind a certain issue weighs. But it is so difficult to articulate it well without becoming extra lengthy and slightly soporific. It frustrates me to no end. I keep talking to Gus about it because it's intriguing yet it makes me want to pull my hair out and shout into the air. Maybe tomorrow I will be able to convey what I'm trying to say well enough to be put up here. At the moment things are just too messy.

First rally even though I have a paper at 5pm tomorrow. Already running late, crawling along the roads looking for parking, walking all the way to the rally site, shoes getting soaked. Gus got interviewed by Reuters!!! "It won't be shown on TV here don't worry" the woman said. I think they were quite unfortunate, lugging around a huge video camera with tripod and all, footsteps getting slower as the mud sucked everyone's shoes in. All in all I don't remember much of what they (WP) said because the echo and the distance from the stage (masses of bodies in between) made their speech hard to decipher. Also because at one point LTK spoke in Chinese and I interpreted about 2% of it. But! The experience was quite an interesting one, seeing the kind of people that showed up regardless of the weather conditions. A funny man made an electronic banner! It flashed "VOTE WP" and then a hammer. Really cool!

I mean... despite whatever division the elections are causing right now, it's always nice to see some solidarity among such a big number of Singaporeans. You hardly see that! I was very excited with all the commotion. Police everywhere, massive jams, etc. You can feel the buzz in the air and that's something you don't get very often. Gus got bitten by lots of ants and our shoes got super soaked with mud but it was all alright! It was a good night.

Am pleased with nails.

EXAMS END TOMORROW EVERYONE!!! JIO ME JIO ME JIO ME