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

Entertaining the thought of going out to do surveys to come to a conclusion exactly what kind of electorate Singapore has.

1) Childish, immature, "act cool"
2) Naive and gullible
3) Practical and pragmatic
4) Passionate but reasonable

From the way things are going I think the results will fall into 1 and 2, honestly. I will base this upon several questions:

- legitimacy and validity of reasons for supporting non-PAP parties
- legitimacy and validity of reasons for supporting PAP parties
- vertical variance in support between age groups
- horizontal variance in support between income groups
- variance in support between education level
- level of exposure to differing opinions/different media

By calculating the amount of variance between the various demographics I think you will be able to tell how being in different social strata can strongly influence the way you think. I cannot be sure at the moment, there are surprisingly quite a few people who have challenged my preconceived notions of what certain demographics are likely to be thinking. Although, from the looks of it I will say I think that my previous notion of Singaporeans getting "caught up in the hype", voting for non-PAP parties merely because everybody else is doing so and being anti-PAP is what's hip right now, without seriously considering why, will be true.

Anybody know a good way of carrying out this experiment? It will need some work but after tomorrow I will be so free, I don't mind. I will need a lot of people to survey, that's for sure. Getting people from our age group is fairly easy, but those from older age groups is tough. Anybody wanna help me... hehe

Gonna take the words of J. Lo's song to help me choose which countries I should aspire to visit in the near future:

BRAZIL, MOROCCO
LONDON TO IBIZA!
STRAIGHT TO L.A., NEW YORK
VEGAS TO AFRICA YEAH

Not bad eh

European exam was not bad I think. Hopefully I won't do too badly! TWO MORE DAYS!!! Ugh 7pm on Thursday cannot come fast enough... I was so excited after my paper today I went to get my nails done. Trust me, I am hanging my head in shame. But I couldn't help it and I am so pleased with my nails, I feel less stressed and ready to tackle a full day of studying tomorrow! THERAPY

Locking myself in library tomorrow to do work on public policy. Ugh my most dreaded module ends the latest, so typical of life to throw these damn sian things at you. I did get back my essay and do relatively well (by my standards) though so I take some comfort in that to push me along this agonizingly long path.

Just two more days. I should stop whining. Thursday, 7pm I will breathe a huge sigh of relief, drive straight home and take a 20 hour nap.

GUYS THESE R SO FUNNY 

I love all the Chiam See Tong ones!!!

&&& something that I wanted to say already. You know Lee Kuan Yew is pissing everybody off nowadays and shit like that, and people are so angry with him because he is anti-democracy, anti-opposition, bla bla bla. All I wanted to say was, I still respect him. For real. Even in the midst of all this threat, he is calm and steady, and FUCKING FEARLESS. He says whatever the hell he wants to say, and he honestly doesn't give a shit what people think. Who else can be so aggressively blunt, saying that Aljunied will "live and repent" for the next 5 years if they vote WP, but our beloved MM? Yet he says it and DOES NOT GIVE A SHIT WHAT ANYONE THINKS. In fact I'm quite sure he said "I stand corrected" to take some pressure off his son. He knew what he was talking about! & he sticks to his guns man.

He's crazy. And awesome. As a person I mean. Chill ok?

Also, I miss London and Paris so much.

Casual walk at the Louvre

BEST. GELATO. EVER. 

after checking out Tate in London

ABBEY ROAD!!! 

I wrote that. I think he will appreciate it. 

Random scribbling that has nothing to do with The Beatles, but awesome nonetheless. Dumbledore's Army! Haha

Tired after shopping along Oxford Street

Was so proud of the chanel when we bought it :') I was so scared I would dirty it or something

Loveliest bookstore located near the Notre Dame Cathedral! Quite famous actually, but I'd never heard of it until we stumbled upon it in Paris. STUMBLED, yes, what a find

Le chateau de Versailles, of Marie Antoinette fame. We actually didn't go see her chambers because Versailles is monstrously huge, it was all the way on the other side and we were rushing for time. Besides being monstrously huge, it was also amazing and beautiful! It was massive but what a lovely expanse of land. The garden is perfect. 

Sigh I miss it all so much :( I really love London and Paris. Add Tokyo to the list and they are my top three favourite cities. Above New York even... although we never really got to explore NYC a lot. I don't remember much about it anyway. I definitely remember more about Europe. 

Spent the day studying for European exam which is at 1pm tomorrow. I hate that they fit 3 essays into a 2 hour slot. It's harder to divide your time and feel at ease with it. Praying that questions come out easier than I expect. More straightforward, hopefully. I have emerged from the depths of mugging more informed and more knowledgeable but not necessarily enough to do well, I don't know.

I regret this semester of slacking away because I assumed I'd definitely go to Bristol. I'm going to spend the rest of my uni life pulling up my CAP if I stay.

3 more days until freedom! I can smell it. I can smell the days of waking up whenever I want, reading whatever I want, watching whatever I want without that disgusting, clingy feeling of guilt. Cannot wait for Australia which is in June, seems so far away... but so excited. Three whole months! I'm so jealous of those people who are done. This feeling of so close yet so far... ugh. Next sem I am going to choose modules that let me end the earliest!!! Also I think I've maxed out most level 2 PS mods... don't know what to take already.

Although I want to pat myself on the back for simply surviving. 4 PS mods this semester? I think I was high when I chose them.

Things to look forward to:
1. the moment at 7pm on Thursday when it will all be over
2. waking up on Friday
3. moving house (it got postponed :( )
4. polling day results (gonna go down to one of the stadiums!!! so fun)
5. Australia

3 MORE DAYS!!! Better make the best of it. Going to paint my nails a new colour to encourage me, does that make sense??? Hehe

Been doing research on Sweden for my European pol paper on Tuesday... can't decide if I want to migrate there or not. It's basically one of the best countries to live in -- low unemployment, low crime rate, high literacy rates, ranked the best country to be a mother in, high life expectancy, high ranking on HDI, blah blah blah. Sounds pretty awesome right?

Their taxes are bloody insane ok? You have an income tax of 30%, but if you earn more than 320, 000 kronos which is about 64000 sgd annually you pay an additional 20 - 25% of high-income tax which is almost 60%!!! Plus you have a VAT of 25% on lots of things bought by private citizens. SERIOUSLY that tax burden is insane. But apparently the Swedes are damn chill about it because they get a lot of welfare benefits, social service, government handouts, etc... but still! It's crazy. Seriously Nordic countries sound freaking awesome to live in but all of them have insanely high tax rates... think they're starting to wean off the welfare state, especially in the midst of inflation and financial crises happening every other day...

Gus bought an iPhone 4 in white! It's really nice... I want one too. Haha. He's been playing with it obsessively over the last two days. Obsessing mainly with how his battery is gonna die, also with downloading different apps and whatnot. I'm glad for him because his bb was the biggest piece of shit I've ever seen, so now he can stop suffering.

ALSO MY BOOKS FROM BOOKDEPOSITORY CAME!!! YAY they came in cute little packages protected with bubble wrap and stuff, so cute

Ugh ok I'm tired of studying gonna sleep bye