it was disappointingly ridiculous. and soooo discomforting.

at this moment i am very thankful that i've yuk staying over for the night and eugene's drive out for dinner/supper later.
can i run to my mommy with a broken heart.

the stay at hostel's been good. i've made friends with monkeys, which is not surprising when you've a forest right outside your window.
and i get my piece of quiet.

and i mend myself

over at the school hostel you dont really get the urge to blog.

but anyway i really want to note this down. someone has just burst my bubble, should i complain? no. the more sensible thing to do is to blow another bubble instead. dont question my rationality cos most of the time i'm right about being defensive. thats why i dont trust "feelings" that much.

i was still punching my calculator away until i decided that my bed's calling and so here i am punching on buttons of another form. thats it for the day. despite waking up at 430 in the morning with a nasty pain in the stomach and it lingered.., i went for school early, did my tutorial on the train, sat through a lecture in a blacked-out theatre (one thunder storm is enough to cause a black-out and a flood in biz school. how fantastic), checked out my new apartment, went for fiddle class and then after 3 hours and a half i was still on my MA tutorial and barely finishing.

no, i'm not going to finish it though i really detest leaving things half done. okay, to put it in a more positive manner, i've already have it half completed. (does it ring a bell to someone? half empty/half full)

tomorrow will be another madness day wheere i'll be officially moving in to school. i've seen it. the room's still stink-ing with the smell of abandoned apartment; the flooring and shelves not to my liking. it's so dull and empty for now. i'll make it vibrant and cosy in no time.

it's really so sweet of you to make time from your hectic wednesday schedule just to offer me a drive. i really really appreciate that and everything else you've done. (:

it's quite morbid to go around picturing drowning insects but that's nature.

i'm playing a two-player game with many watching on. like a reality tv at its very best. this game has no referee no judges(though the audience think that they're the ones), no winnings no defeats. there's no stated rules to the game. in some cases there're strong offense and defense; in others, reciprocal push and pull (i didnt take much physics though it's my favourite after econs). some people might say it's like watching how two person create fireworks. (maybe that is why it's so interesting to watch.) the audience enjoys strong offense and i think it can be quite exciting. but fireworks is the climax, the near to end. so it looks like the best way to play the game is either design and create many many rounds of fireworks or take it really slow (but risk player walking out of the game). i think the game is about kindness, understanding and respecting the other player's pace..
and if i go on and on this will become a thesis.

"game" isnt my favourite word to use for serious affairs like this but at the current moment i cant find another word more appropriate.

这就是夜上海。

i see there's a new video function to blogger. good news i can grab my old dv and play around with videos next time.

why do i feel a little down.

second week of school is a slapping gnarling call (not that friendly either). there are lesser modules with projects but the weightage in quizes, midterms is wwwaaay lopsided. it's unusual that i'm getting uptight over school. you can barely count the occasions. well, most of the time i'm just an average bummer.

the people here, generally speaking, walk alone, sit alone, stand alone. i cant help but pity the locals (including myself) that most of the time we dont actually realise how overly independent we can be as compared to the people living in the other parts of the world. some of us realised and weeped through the nights only to wake up the next day and walk along with the rest in armor. ah yes, the word is fortify.
i see in most eyes not comfort and love, but mundane and emptiness. there are fewer pairs of giving eyes; more of scrutiny and caution. you might not get me, you might want to travel for yourself to see.

it's pretty flattering isnt it. that so many people actually want a bit of you.

能在对的时间遇到对的人，又对彼此有了相同的感觉还真得来不易。这都是缘分，要好好珍惜。

杭州看西湖；到了扬州就一定要看瘦西湖。

i seem to have relatives everywhere. littered around china, the states, canada, europe. bascially anywhere you could have imagined. so next time you too might want to think twice before critizing the fella who's too loud, too fat, too smelly, too rude. you guys might just be related somehow.

i do have some distant relatives in 扬州, and one of my 舅舅 (my grandma's brother's son) who i saw for the very first time so happened to be working for the government. and because the tourism board is so nice to sponsor everything for us, we ended up paying nothing for the entire trip to 瘦西湖.(which amount to thousand over. ren ming bi of course)

it's quite pretty isnt it?

this is already the 3rd day into my coming back. my hair and skin is starting to adjust and accomodate itself to the drastic climate changes, and my appetite is picking up as well.
it wont be long you'll see me packing the luggage again (i barely did my laundry). i'm moving into school residences by the chance of fate.

i dare you to eat sea horses, starfish and lizards. the baby scorpions on sticks were still very much alive, wiggling their deadly stings, waiting to be deep fried. i was hanging around the stores for 10 minutes or so and much to my disappointment, no one ordered them.

photos for 8 august's up.

不懂怎么搞得，心情有点怪怪的。有一种好像还没做好心理准备就要去考试的感觉。可能因为这样，晚餐才吃得特别少吧。有你陪我说话，看电影，吃饭，送我回家，时间也就过得很快..

习惯了热闹突然要我回到原本喜欢的清静日子。咳！还真不习惯。

这种感觉好奇怪哦！

有点想学钢琴

i'm breathing the singapore air.
it's moist. it's...hm, my nose's blocked.

the sun here rises at 7, and even at 8 i can barely finish using all my fingers to quantify the number of people awake. the streets in beijing are already choking with exhaust fumes by now.
singapore's a lazy city on sunday mornings, with stout trees, short housings, narrow roads, and a happy yuan. and of course, "stout", "short" and "narrow" are adjectives most appropriate.

so i seemed to have vanished for 12 days. for the past 12 days, i was either in on the train, in the car, in shanghai, yang zhou, su zhou or hang zhou. it was difficult to track me and it was not that easy for me either to track a decent cyber cafe.

updates as usual shall go according to respective dates (till i get tired of my job)

i dont miss school at all.

颐和园又是皇帝的另一个御花园。
and one of the must-visit attraction of 颐和园is长廊 (loosely translated as long corridor) which is about 410m in length. note the photo on the right.





it took me a total of 8 days just to rake a miserable fragment of beijing. (thats roughly the amount time you need to travel around singapore on a sbs bus for 48 times.)

the following day was spent resting, packing and the 10-hour train ride to 扬州. (thats enough to travel east to west thrice)

enough mocking. lol. it's not our fault that we're small.

这是我第二次去故宫。第一次是我爸带我去的。哎，十四年前的事了。
有趣的是，故宫连一根草也不能有。要是有草，小太监地命可不保了！and please, the concubines were fugly. were the emperors blind or something?

bidding is giving me a little bit of problem but i know with a little bit of planning everything will eventually turn out fine. but when my little bit of problem is to add on, without much of a choice, to someone else's burden, the guilt amounts to a much bigger problem.

why is it that i always have to trouble you with this and that. dinner. supper. concert. and now leaving you with the whole timetable mess. i wish i could have done something for you.

why so naturally i turned to you.

这就是大观园的某一个角落
　
大观园是为了拍摄红楼梦而建的
如果你没读过那本书，你可能对那个地方就没什么感觉

今天去了天坛。another terribly huge place, where the emperor went just for his prayers.
well, most of these places are undergoing renovation and reconstruction, so this isnt exactly the best time to come. but anyway, i still have several take-aways.



this is the echo wall. my mom said when she last visited the place, they could hear each other even at the ends of the wall. now it's all fenced up and you see rows of crazy people climbing onto the fence and shouting at the wall.
maybe it isnt too disappointing since you still do hear something. like say, your own voice.

not tried and tested = still a myth.




the point where i was standing on had some special meaning of its own. but not so worth remembering.
there always seem to be reasons for everything thats there. like why the particular number of lamp posts, steps and bla bla bla.

but hey look, i stepped on every corner the emperor had possibly stepped on.



it's been almost a week. i'm very at home, yet extremely lonely.

the toilets here (even those at the parks) all have doors now.
great leap, BUT
what they need to do is to educate those chinese how to lock those doors.

today someone sold me an magnum mint for $8, but knowing her not knowing that i know i got cheated (you may need some time to figure this out) is worth more than the $4 she ripped from me.

that aside, i went to the imperial garden this afternoon.



this is the 11 year old cousin who we were wrestling with last night. because of him, our sudoko had two 2s, two 3s, and ... someone started filling the spaces with 8s. even roti prata temptation didnt work (it only works on me la dear).

he started declaring a nudge war with that someone.

boys are boys.




this is us in the middle of the lake. it's not exaggerating if i say the lake in the middle of the park itself is already bigger than our zoo.



for some reason, i have one more boy to babysit tonight but you aint here to babysit them with me. where arrreeee yyooouuu?

to the-someone-who-know-who-this-someone-is, this is my mom la.
she's forever this bubbly. and even though she isnt supposed to be the main subject of that second shot, she just have to steal my lime-light.

"if you are reading this, please be reminded that a normal human being needs 7 hours of sleep."

=P




i miss ya!

this is what beijing looks like at 5am in the morning



here's the basics you need to know about beijing:
1) the sun rises around 5am which makes the day exceptionally long
2) there's traffic jam all the time even at 5am in the morning
3) the air here has drastically improved over the years though still bad
4) there're a lot more white skin, blonde hair, red hair folks who speak a different tongue here than you could've imagine
5) this place is HUGE just in case you dont already know

today went roughly like this. i was already out of my house at 430 in the morning heading down to 天安门. and because today is 八一, there were so so so many people waiting for the flag-raising parade.

and then we headed down to 长城. where i got stung by a china bee.



the last stop was 十三陵, the tombs belonging to the 13 emperors of the Ming dynasty.

i'm stinging on the pictures and words just because. =P