My Mom is Awesome

I came home after 3 weeks to see this nice surprise sitting on my shelf. My mom visited a camera antique store while she was in Los Angeles but she didn’t know which one to get for me, so she just bought the oldest camera in the shop. She brought back my grandpa’s old Canon rangefinder as well.

My mom is awesome <3

I have a gazillion photos from my trip, I don’t know which ones I should post here. For some reason I didn’t feel homesick at all in those 3 weeks. The whole trip made me more appreciative of Singapore, but at the same time it made me feel discontented with it as well. I almost wished I didn’t have to come back.

In any case, I’m back and school is starting. I’m anticipating an agony-filled few months ahead.

Flying

I’m off to Europe for the next three weeks, so this space will be empty for a while!

Work & Play

The great thing about my internship is that it’s located in an awesome part of Singapore, so if Mou and I are feeling bored with work we can just wander around the place and find something interesting. We saw a cafe that looked promising (due to the fact that it sold alcoholic cakes) but the Baileys cake we tried was a little disappointing. The texture was like tough jelly, and it came with a cup of foam milk on the side which we didn’t know what to do with.

Plus, it so happens that it’s also located near Ann Siang Hill, so that’s an excuse to bring my camera to work more often!

Over

No more studying for the next month and a week. I can finally have long meals with my friends and cross off movies from my to-watch list, completely guilt-free. I’m so glad that the school term is over, but I have to say that it was a good distraction. Studying accompanied with the lack of sleep drove me crazy, but it doesn’t compare to how my own thoughts can potentially cause a breakdown.

I can’t wait to be in Europe! I can finally see the beautiful architecture and art that I’ve only seen in pictures and on the internet. Whoever says money doesn’t make you happy is lying. Money = travel = happiness. But I guess traveling without a companion wouldn’t make you happy, so okay money only makes up half of it.

I Exist

It’s been a while since a song made me tear.

A Break

The concert was way too short. People started leaving and I was like, “Wait, no encore? Why’s everyone leaving?! What’s happening?!” Apparently the ‘break/sound check’ I thought they had in the middle of the concert was the part when they came back for an encore. The whole event was strangely lackluster.  Matt Berninger’s voice is sex though.

ZW was completely exhausted afterwards but I was still energetic from the lack of concert experience. Something unpleasant did happen during the concert though. I have always been aware that chauvinism, sexual harassment and popped collars are three unfortunate things  that somehow exist in this world thanks to deluded, over-compensating douchebags. I have been fortunate enough all my life to avoid meeting or interacting with such poor excuses for men, and this was the first time I encountered one (two, if you count his other friend the other asshole).

Douchebags who are reading this, if you are somehow aware that your overbearing behavior is borne from the need to over-compensate for something you physically lack, the whole I-wanna-bang-every-chick mentality isn’t going to get you laid nor is it going to get you a girl at all in the long run. So button up your shirt because nobody needs to see your fine set of moobs, pull down your collar like a normal person and stay away from women.

Yes, I’m starting to think popped collars are almost as serious a crime as sexual harassment.

Scum aside, the concert was a break I really needed. Now, the last 3 weeks of school, let’s go!

Brain Fart

I just had a brain fart. For some reason I thought the 4th of November was next Tuesday instead of today, and I missed an appointment as a result. I even penned the appointment down on my calendar on the 8th of November, thinking for some reason that it was right. I’ve even looked at the email a few times before today, but somehow the mistake didn’t register. What an awful impression I must have made.

I feel terrible about it. My mind must be going.

 

8 Days

THE NATIONAL IN 8 DAYS!

I can’t wait to enjoy myself for one night after this hell week (oh wait, every week is hell week) is over. It’s a Sunday night though so I’m not sure whether I should indulge my lazy side and skip school the next day or try to be one of those students who pride themselves in being ‘awesome’ by having 3 hours of sleep each night. I think I will choose the former.

I’m extremely tired now but I must power through some readings. It’s probably not ‘awesome-like’ of me to want to sleep for at least 6 hours a day, but I think getting to live a longer and healthier life trumps appearing awesome to my peers.

Cupcake Cushion

A cushion I made for Shane for his birthday.

It’s already Week 11 of the school term. Suddenly my friends and I realize that it’s time to plan our degree and think about our internships. Things are going by so quickly, I don’t even know if I’m sure of what I’m doing. Some school mates are extremely gung-ho about everything they do, and people are telling me that it’s important to keep up, and so I just try to keep up and do the things that people tell me are important. Graduation will come before I know it, even though it seems very far away for now. All I can do is try as many things as possible for now and hope that eventually the future-me will go “Ah! That’s what I want.”

 

Scrap what I wrote earlier, I’m still having a terrible week.

Perfection

I was feeling pretty darn shitty today, until I came across a quote that turned things around (I usually do not believe in inspirational quotes because they never help and they all seem to stem from common sense but this one seemed to struck a chord).

“Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not, but remember that what you have now was once among the things only hoped for.”

I use to dream of going to law school, to finally meet “the one”, to remain best friends with the people I loved, to find a passion in something.

I’ve been feeling rather crappy lately because law school is far from a happily-ever-after and I’m starting to have regrets of not taking the chance to study overseas, Shane and my best friends are on the other side of the world, and I haven’t had the time to indulge myself in the things I like to do. But I guess another way of looking at things would be that I’ve actually attained everything I had hoped for when I was 14, even if all of it isn’t perfect. Not too shabby for a 20 year old I suppose.

There are still things that I hope will happen in the future. But hey, 3 out of the 4 dreams I had when I was a kid are the most important in probably anyone’s life, and they’ve all already happened. I think I’m pretty much set for life.

Salvador Dali in Film

Salvador Dali is bat-shit crazy. I can’t tell if if the stuff he draws is what’s really going on in his mind, or if he is constantly thinking, “Hmm how shall I make this look bat-shit crazier? Oh, I know!” His stuff is great, but I wish I could understand it, or maybe we’re not supposed to really understand it.

But one thing’s for sure, I will never look at snails, lobsters and unicorns the same way again.

Google > Law Databases

Stumbling upon a relevant article (okay not really stumbling upon it, more like seeing it in tiny font in some footnote in another article, trying to find it on Lawnet/LexisNexis/Westlaw and every other law database to no avail and resorted to googling it and found a free ebook download of the book on some obscure website) for my research paper makes me extremely, extremely happy, especially when I’ve been tearing my hair out over it for the past week.

The wonders of Google indeed…

 

Ways to Distract

1. Horseback riding
2. The wooden robot
3. Wolverine boots tag
4. Denim pouch with selvedge from Shane
5. Leffot namecard
6. Tickets to The National (!!!)
7. Souvenir camera keychain from Amanda
8. Film Festival lanyard
9. “Polaroids”
10. A calendar (The countdown to the trip in December makes time pass faster)
11. Vietnam
12. Washington DC & NYC
13. Taiwan
14. Slightly stalker-ish photos of Shane

When I get tired of pouring over a textbook, or staring at notes on the screen for so long that I start to wonder what’s the point of studying so hard, I look up at my wall and imagine myself to be somewhere else aside from my usual seat in front of a screen. Sitting on the top deck of a junk boat in Vietnam with friends, taking a stroll in Central Park, passing by the malls in Taipei, or just sitting and talking to my friends in a cafe. Or I’d look forward to what’s to come – The National (they’re coming back!!! I think I will die at the concert), the UK trip, seeing Shane and my friends again. I think that wall is the only thing that is keeping me sane.

Sleep-Deprived

I haven’t been able to get a good night’s rest for quite a while now, I keep waking up after a few hours and I can’t go back to sleep so I end up feeling zombie-ish for the rest of the day. The dreams I get sometimes make my days particularly crappy. A few days ago I dreamt that I was driving along a bridge that grew narrower and narrower until I was going to fall off and plummet into a river.

Last night, I dreamt that I was standing in my mom’s bathroom. It was pitch dark and there was someone screaming and pounding at my mom’s door. I tried to ignore the screaming but it was so desperate and blood-curdling that I went out to open the door. The person barged in, I asked him what was wrong. I sat on the floor at the corner of the bed as he told me that Shane was dead. I started to panic and the despair was welling up so much that I shook my head and screamed that it was just a dream. I opened my eyes and I was standing in the middle of a road. A car was speeding towards me and I woke up the second it was going to hit me. I couldn’t go back to sleep after that.

I feel like shit today.