"all my bags are packed, i'm ready to go."
that's not exactly true=P. everything feels, yes surreal. somehow i feel like i'm not involved in all this, like an outsider watching the action. or maybe i'm just not used to being the one to leave. it hasn't hit me obviously.
came close though. twice today. once with em (i thought you were kidding about being bad at goodbyes. but no, woosh.), and the second time with jennie. that was hard.
i love you emily, don't miss me, i'll be back before you realise it. at least one thing good about time passing faster and faster eh?
and hon and i rushed off to tuas naval base after lunch at nus with all the med pple (so many many..many) and whoever else available at nus, to send jennie off. we toured the ship a bit, rss perseverance. interesting, big. but then they were called up to the ship and... well. ouch. their salutes were cute, and the beret/hat waving even more so. saw shane too. they'll be sailing for 3 weeks. and pple wondering why jen and i behaved so exaggeratedly. you wouldn't know.
was considering bringing some sorta soft toy, but went through my collection and thought none of them had enough significance. now i have it! thank you jennie. i will really miss you. and this is bad because i know you'll be very busy and i'll be very far away. (when she gave me her present for me it was just ouch.. i had that feeling again, where it was difficult to breathe, like something constricting my ribcage (i'm so not poetical, but seriously, that's what it feels like), that feeling i've not had for a long time.) but yeah, like your gift said so. we'll always be in each other's lives.
and then i met up with teck tee. hell of a rush. it was good to see him.
and then rushed home.. qq xiz cai bena came over for dinner. took photos. then sang and hk came over at 3am. (just now... they walked from nus. wow. you're not sleeping on My mattress!!=P)
starting to feel excited. will be leaving for the airport in 2 hours time. go spend some time talking to sang bena and hk now!
thank you all my friends! your generosity and well wishes flatter me so. all the best!
next report from champaign!
p.s. jin: sorry i've neglected you for so long! if it's any consolation, you're the only i'm going Towards!
there always seems to be so much to leave behind.
just got back from dinner (actually a whole afternoon) with 3f at holland v (memories. though i actually never went there frequently while i was in rj). it was very good to see everyone but, the foreboding atmosphere of parting hung.
i have alot to say to each who showed up but not enough time! makes me wonder what happened in jc, when we had so much time together. yes what i'm trying to say is that, i wish i could've gotten to know some of you much better.
the significant pple whom i noticed not showing up were weili and eric. everyone else i'm close to came! bingrui yanjie wangning yingheng hon sang telle baorong bena hongking eve christine shifeng ros qq andy (both of whom left "early") very touched. of course it's not just for me but nonetheless!
photos..will be up soon. i promise=).
i'm even more touched that quite a number of pple wanna send me off (championed by bena. 7 years man.) despite my flight at an unearthly hour (well alright, it's earthly just that i've to go in an hour earlier) of 7.20am. i would've felt alot better if my flight weren't so early.
everyone's so =( and mature all of a sudden.
new chapter's sure exciting but overshadowed by the closing one.
haroldau is hilarious. he's more like my senior than my junior. but through all the jokes i'm still touched:
hey
yi lu shun feng
come back wif GPA of 4.0
i noe you will.
sonnig - am leaving wed morning & :harharhar
i gtg
in case i dun get to msg u before u get off
wish u all the best again
do focus on your studies
but don't forget to have a fair bit of fun
speak to overseas ppl
take part in cool stuff
(get a boyfriend there)
and dun miss local food too much
dun be homesick
dun come back wif
1.an angmoh accent (it sucks)
2. a beijing qiang (sucks more)
cyaz then
shen right.
went for jose's party yesterday, with diane. quite a number of the astar pple were there. yes we said our goodbyes too. it'll be a while before i see pple like zhihao, cheukka, diane and justin (the list is "by no means comprehensive") again. it was nice, we sat there, passed a tub of haagen dazs around (the green tea one was bad, who concurs), talked about our pasts and futures harhar. so heavy=P so happy birthday! to your brother too. 21 is a significant age=).
bah i was always sending pple off. i know how it feels to watch the person walk through the glass door underneath the "bon voyage~gute reise~some tamil stuff~some japanese stuff~selamat jalan~" sign, turning around, waving his/her hand. so..yeah. hmm. tsk. too many farewells to bid.
yeah so i will miss you guys! and since i'm not one to say such things i'll just use hon's: ilu! (hon..telle..jen..xiz..bena..sang..feng.. qq! (this one i feel extra rou ma. she gave me a hug leh, jealous oder=P) ...... em kai val bud ....grace cai! hannah looloo shu..... see, there's so much to leave behind.)
wed 100805
i went for the lecture with some of my watch/the astar pple. it was .. eh....
met baiping dr chan and ms ning (=)!) too. and then the 4 of us impromptu-edly (is there a word for this) met up with ooi on his way to bugis. we visited the new library, were absorbed in the used texts bookshops at bras basah before we went off for our separate dates/meetings.
mine was with zhenchang and yee onn. was really touched that they took the time and money to have dinner with me at cafe cartel @ ps. esp since i remember once upon a time when i was a student, poor in both, and so very stressed at this time of the year. soo cute=).
yesterday, thurs 110805 was our watch outing at kbox (2) . psyche up eh! we chionged from 2-8. -gasp-. -cough cough sputter-.
don't they look good! (sarcasm? go figure=)
wish i could post a few of the audio (and video too) clips (how?). hilarious.
will this be the last time, in a long time to come?
**
i have 4 full days left until... no lar nothing serious, just flying.=P so yes i'm flying wed 7.20am. my dad is gonna take over my hp number.
it's really different talking to different pple. christine has started packing though she's leaving late(latelate) sept, and then there's ooi who is leaving one day after me and doesn't intend to pack until the night before ("what's there to pack man, just throw my laptop and 3 shirts in". upon which joshua reminds him that there are still pants and other things too).
ok yeah i promise, i will start tmr.
**
i am homesick before i have left.
my parents have much to worry about (when winter comes, not enough blankets and things to wear etc...=S) but what worries me is that their worries may not be unfounded. am i ready? i'll find that out man.
and then there are these new friends i've just met and will soon part with. but like ooi says, "bo bian" (he's just so quotable). it was really -ouch- thinking about this after i came back from our outing but oh well it's better now, just keep moving on. (see you guys in chicago;)
of course there are the old friends too. but for them i believe we've built up a strong enough foundation (i'm at a loss for words nowadays, but i was never one to rattle off sophisticated intelligent sentences (hint hint, points to the shyh chang entry=) to start with), and we know we'll be in one another's lives for the rest of our own.
for one, my class is having a gathering on sunday, for christine wangning hk andy feng.. hmm who else is leaving? how sweet of them.
tracy and josh lim leaving on sunday. manjae is leaving today! (coz it's 3am) with some luck i'll meet him during winter. yes i'd like that very much.
hey all. you should just check back once a month. (you won't miss much=P)
i am flying next wed morning, 17th august.
i will miss you and you and you and mostly you.
let me update you on what has happened over the past month (oh boy. here we go again.=)
4th july - ili's bday! had one of the remaining "formal meetup sessions" with the astar pple, for our stress management workshop. we basically didn't listen much, much to my shame=P. we went for dinner after that, at prego. a whole group of us. that was fun=) love spending time with them
6th july - award ceremony song group had rehearsal at my house. it lasted from 9+ to 4.30!! not bad for a first rehearsal too. all girls though. what're we gonna do with/about the boys..
7th july - had my braces removed. hon noticed first!!=)
8th july - met kejia in the morning to go to anglo french and ask about tickets. Damn good, we only have to email around to settle our tickets. had lunch with yunlei em kai val jon at raffles city subway. met waikit. so cool right. i like running into nice pple every now and then.
evening, we had sports-after-work!! told you the astar pple are damn funky. alot of them went clubbing after sports (-faint-) or to the esplanade to chill.
9th july - went for the overnight cycling briefing at rj. met ningqi and his classmate there. my goodness. what did i say about running into nice pple.
10th july - girls + 6 guys came to my house for rehearsal again (not bad eh, 6!!). then brenda lihao diane and i went for dinner at imm. we talked for Really long. it was really interesting
11th july - had lunch at biopolis, as diane proposed last inght. i2r pple came down as well. funny, i was the only one who was there without (much of) a reason. damn free lar.
13th july - bean's bday!
15th july - went out with the song group girls to shop for our decor thing for our performance. then we went to biopolis for our first rehearsal. then we moved off towards rose's house, with 6 of us squeezed into yun's car. when we got there first we played tennis badminton some of them squash. some of them dipped harhar. so we spent the night at her house, the rest mahjonged the whole night, and i couldnt' fall asleep either. what's with the mahjong man!
16th july - we packed up and 7 of us squeezed into yun's car, back to biopolis for our morning rehearsal-_-. met baoluo there, and dickson. it was good to see them. i was totally zonked by the time i finished, and it was pretty late so i gave our class outing a miss (darn). but i heard it's good! but i probably missed the chance to see alot of pple for well..very long to come.
17th july - tennis-ed with hon and jen for a while (oops 15 mins. stamina is going down down down) then went to borders. hon and jen weren't free after that. darn, was all geared up to swim etc.
19th july - ice skating! with the short rascals!! price was good, for ladies. ngiam's tricks are damn good. (more to come...more to behold...-whoa-)
we skated till the rink closed! 10! once again. damn funky.
21st july - rehearsal. again. bah. hurry up and be over. and they're getting boringer by the day. must be coz we've sat through so many already. song group guys weren't around since it's a weekday, so what's the pt!
(oh no, rescue me! don't let me go through the unnecessary..)
22nd july - award ceremony. good everything went smoothly. took photos etc.
23rd july -
had the uiuc ssa talk in the morning. very useful! i look forward to being frozen, and having nothing to do. honestly, i don't feel as bad as i seem to sound.
met tracy arya kokhao kejia junwan there.
bought a camera. hmm...so far ok. takes long to recharge flash though. very long. but starts up fast...
overnight cycling!! met with josh ngiam and chris at cafe cartel at raffles city first for dinner. met val and some of her classmates there, and silvanus too! argh. yes, once again, will miss running into pple.
it was ndp rehearsal, and i stupidly suggested going to suntec to take a bus-_-. that caused some agony. finally we got there but about 45 mins late? bah. met xiz, leeting(!), hk (!) there. realised the psc pple were damn on too, had about 30 pple there. harhar we had... 6. tracy and junrong had joined us later. and rosanna even later.
ohoh here's the damn exciting part. i think all of us learnt how to cycle Hands-Free. thanks to ngiam. how damn cool is that. i think tracy has officially bai4 ngiam wei2 shi1 already. (he reveals his even mightier card tricks later on)
we cycled up and down, 4 laps altogether. in the middle we relaxed a bit and went sightseeing on bedok jetty=P there was a guy with lots of tattoos (who looked like he was gonna beat us up but that's irrelevant) who caught a snake i think..=S
and we watched the sunrise (tracy's photo)
(and planes) together. (i'm leeaving, on a jet plane..don't know when i'll be back again) and had breakfast. chris drove some of us to the mrt/home. Whoa. it doesn't really help to remember that like us, he hasn't slept and has been cycling from 11pm - 5.30am. harhar but c'mon, we should give the licensing authority some credit;)
25th july - but was thoroughly sick and weak today. sick and pampered.
26th july - ice skating day again! (tuesday). but i didn't go.. qq came over though! thanks for not minding my sniffles. we ate. and ate. yum. heheh hope you had fun. will miss you.
27th july - met ngiam ros josh tan tracy chris at chinatown for the concert. we wanted to do some shopping for a special someone whose bday was coming up;). then we went to the esplanade after our dinner at out of the pan at raffles city (some strange affiliation with it recently). we met mingjing too. AND AND i met jovina!!! heheheh it was sweet, hilarious. she's going to uk. anyway the concert, was good!! expensive. but good!! then we had dinner at at max brenner's. the hot mugs tasted Funny. mexican spices and chilli, java and orange peel. the suckao was Damn thick. =S.
28th july - veek's bday!
29th july - ah. jennie quah's bday. -hug-.
my first laptop arrived today. well, everyone's been naming their preciouses. i couldn't think of one so just used the ac boys' original "lappy". doesn't it remind you of a dog? yes that's what i would like...
i went for medical checkup in the morning. had lunch with the biopolis pple.
went for vick's chalet in the afternoon. fun! bbq-ed. ok They bbq-ed, i ate. and They mahjonged. christine and joanne came much later, and so some of us bridged instead. and then lihao and i left with christine and joanne soon after. bah. must say i was really impressed with justin's organisation. he really knew what he was doing, albeit being a little uptight (i told him i thought he sounded really cool and calm about the whole thing on yahoogroups, and got furious shakes of heads from sarah and vick harhar). the view was really good fromt he chalet. and then junrong proudly whipped out his $50 guitar and started playing, with a sea/beach/ubin/planes landing and taking off/tekong backdrop. aww man.
happy birthday man! it's so fun to be with you guys.
30th july - its 412 at sentosa! argh. i didn't go for the sentosa part, don't wanna recall the reasons why. well anyway, joined the girls for dinner. turn out was about... 16? not too bad. basically everyone was caught up with "hello!! where're you going when're you going what're you going to study".
went home with cai. gee can we talk=). hope it'll stay the same for us both cai, even after 3, 4, 9, 14 years..
1st august - kai's bday!
2nd august - finally finished digitalising my journal entries since..after As.
watch outing today!! went to jec at 10.40 as instructed (=P lihao, why so early!? oh make allowance for latecomers) basically there was no one there. lihao was there after i got my bank draft next door, then junrong and christine came, and ooi was woken up by lihao's phone call and in a semiconscious state. but yeah, he was coming.
we went upstairs and Whoa! i first spotted yonghe. then audry! then leeting!! psc pple are damn on. our 2 groups sized each other up and i believe was secretly impressed with the other's on-ness.
and then we went singing. christine is good!! junrong pls don't strain your voice next time=S it's hilarious but i'm sure it's uncomfortable for you. then ooi joshua came, and tianyi and vick much much later. it was damn funny before we left, we cheonged the remaining 10 songs, "quick quick sing two lines of each song!" and then there were the recalcitrant diehards who kept singing more than two lines even after veek gleefully and eagerly pressed "skip". we got to matrix 15 mins late=P
tea session was...interesting. settle the unsettled issues. i'm quite ashamed to say i don't mind being brainwashed. i believe none of this is my business actually.
and then this group of us went for dinner after tea session (oops. we just ate), and the other, larger group, went to jec for ice skating again. whoa! i will miss you guys for sure man.
3rd august - since i got my i20 yesterday, and got everything settled online last night, i visited the US embassy this morning. Don't go at 9am. go at 8. i was just too lazy to get up. bah. so i ended up going in at 9.20 and getting out at11.20. went fully psychologically prepared for qtns such as josh lim's "what made the pen drop?" and other weird recitations of "tell me about the theory of relativity". but all i got was "so you're an employee of astar? ("no....-some clarification-") what will you be studying? ok i've approved your visa." rather disappointing but Thanks!=)
4th august - deed signed. got a call at 10 in the morning to go down with my sureties at 5pm. Oops. when we got there (15 mins late!! tsk tsk. don't look at me though=S) i realised joshua tan shyhchang and their various sureties, and harwin were there already. (paiseh, guys). we signed! harhar. "sold!", in veek's famous line.
5th august - damn exciting day. but was lugging lots of stuff=(. picked up passport in the afternoon, bummed at coffee bean along orchard reading my book (time passed very slowly). at 6 i set off for orchard mrt, ran into leeting =) then went to serangoon, to zhihao's house for tennis with the rest. psyche up!! harhar i had a therapeutic time walking around being the ball girl. found out i've a bad sense of timing. then we made our way to sarah's house where we stayed over for the night. wah damn, i stayed up the whole night. dvds.
6th august - in the morning veek junrong chris and i set off for rj/j8. it's scholarship day. we had breakfast at j8, and then slowly made our way to rj. it was interesting, met chenglim, wenxian, teck tee at the very last minute. we went for the serc deputy director's talk. still the same, flamboyant engaging many facts and figures. it was good, seemed like i had more opinions about his presentation this time. -filled with hope and aspiration-. nah not quite there=P.
then rushed off to changi village at 11.30 (yes i was really pushing it). ran into teck tee on the way out and quite literally grabbed him for a shot. stop being so vain and combing your hair with your hands lar, it's Worse than it started harharhar=P supposed to meet hannah and co at 12. found out 12 was for lunch. boat left at 1++. =(.
so we took the boat for a while.. i love the sea. we got to the other side, cleared and took a few cabs (45 of us) up batu layar. which is about 10k south of desaru i found out. (all the pain we went through last time. this was so much easier). we got there at about 4, so we tanned and waited for the sun to set.
the sky was overcast in the east, so we had venus and jupiter left at dusk. interesting!! then the sky cleared a bit, and wow. wow i tell you. sagittarius scorpius summer triangle milky way were all out. and then they searched around for m57 27 11 .. albireo..hmm... some more.. some c object in scutum that had a magnitude of 8.2. harhar. random stuff that i recall. and then i KO-ed at about midnight. woke up intermittently coz i decided to stop being generous to the sandflies mosquitoes and jumped up and down. oo there's mars. oo now there's mars over there. then the sun came up again.
i missed andromeda(!) and mars (!!), with its polar caps in the rollsroyce-like 4" apochromatic. baaaaah. should've looked at some dso with the apo.
got to know more pple, sam, chris (with his homemade dobsonian/newtonian!! cool), this chinese couple who are from tianjin as well!! oh yeah this is the couple with the apo. the lady was very nice to me. she works at GIS, and her husband at ntu.
anyway the session wasn't very productive for me because i didn't really have an easily accessible telescope, and even if i did i'm not experienced enough to know what to look for. so i'd appreciate, a patch of mosquito- and sandfly-free ground to myself, a whole night (or more) to myself, a whole telescope and a star atlas to myself. clear and dark skies are essential too of course.
we came back the way we went, cabbed back with hannah and two others,got home unpacked and bummed. yay.
8th august - i'm such a good shopper. i go out, get everything settled in 2 hours. =) though i just found out i paid about $1.80 more for sth. @!$!%!#$^#$%. now all i have to do is..pack!=)
thanks for the portrait joshua =)
9th august - happy national day!
many pple came over. we ate alot. -_-.
10th august yes 4am i am quite dead. will there be a jetlag then, i wonder.
**
argh. why. warum bist du... it shouldnt' make a difference but i am affected.
it's so interesting how it's, well, "paid forward". a listening ear, to me, and then i am.
told you midnight conversations were...interesting (of which "nice" is a subset)
but yeah that was an interesting conversation. albeit a little =(, but considered pretty true. Oh Well. so much for "you can't do that!!".
hmm it's an intricate web btw. i know your secret, you know mine, i know his, he knows yours etc etc. harhar so amusing. i wonder hth we're gonna work together 3 (or worse, 9) years from now!! so paiseh after that. hmmm. either ways, these are Such interesting pple i tell you.
**
the key to being sunny (as an adjective). take everything lightly. take everything within your stride. no matter what anyone does, don't get mad don't get irritated Don't get bothered (i usually go by the "if i keep this on my mind i'm shortening my life by __ seconds"). usually that means don't formulate an opinion. or just don't trust anyone with that negative opinion of yours..
which contradicts myself just some time ago. i used to think this (the above) equals to fakeness. and i have this uncanny, gnawing suspicion i'm turning into what i really detested once upon a time.
i don't know. maybe one day i'll explode.
however, on the better hand, it might just be because i've a perfectly fine loving family, perfectly loving, reliable and worthy (in many aspects) network of friends. so i live a simple life where i dont' have to be self conscious all the time, and hide myself all the time.
(hence my dilemma..i guess the latter is real, and the former is .. fake. for new situations.)
**
so you're not ready.
OhWell. harhar. (that's sounds so convincing.=( )
